The Secret Senior Serial Killer
Or, how a murderer has been killing old people for decades unnoticed
Five double murders that all seemed solved… and one woman who linked them all together. Was there a secret serial killer stalking the streets of Cheshire?
Killer: ?????
Victims: Howard and Beatrice Ainsworth, Donald and Auriel Ward, Michael and Violet Higgins, Eileen and Kenneth Martin, Stanley and Peggy Wilson
Date: 28th April 1996 - 17th February 2011
Location: North-West England
Method of Murder: Bludgeoning, stabbing, hanging, suffocating
Timeline 27.04.1986 | Death of Howard and Beatrice Ainsworth 26.11.1999 | Death of Donald and Auriel Ward 21.02.2000 | Death of Michael and Violet Higgins 10.11.2008 | Death of Eileen and Kenneth Martin 17.02.2011 | Death of Stanley and Peggy Wilson 22.08.2020 | Stephanie Davies releases written report 06.2021 | Davies is suspended from the coroners office
In 1996, a quiet family home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, became the scene of a brutal double murder.
Retired gardener Howard Ainsworth and his wife, Beatrice, were 79 and 78 years old, respectively. They once joined a right-to-die group, which was certainly foreboding, and there was a suicide note found in the home. Written by Howard, it read: "It looks as tho [sic] our lives have gone so have given her some sleeping tablets and I will have to throttle her.1”
But there were some things that seemed a little suspicious. Howard was an older man and had recently been diagnosed with a viral disease2 which he evidently felt was serious enough to end both his and his wife’s lives. However, he somehow had enough strength to first bludgeon his wife with a hammer and then stab her in the forehead so hard that the knife snapped in half3.
Could it be that a man who was one half of a supposedly happy couple could kill his wife with such violence? Where did he get the prescription pills, which had not been prescribed to either of the couple and yet were scattered all over the floor? Why did neither of them have the sedative in their bloodstream? And why had he apparently stopped to wash the hammer he had used in the sink before sitting next to his wife and fastening a bag over his own head? Moreover, why were there droplets of blood on the plastic bag he had used to suffocate himself - which he could not have already been wearing when he killed her - when his pyjamas were almost totally clean?4
The coroner at the time, Christine Hurst5, saw a reason for concern. The placement of his body, she felt, was a sign he had been moved after death. Tellingly, his lips were also bruised - as though someone had clamped a hand over his mouth to make him suffocate faster. And though the pills were all across the room, he had apparently chosen the much more painful method of suffocating himself without the pills. Still, the deaths were ruled a murder-suicide.
Donald and Auriel Ward were another apparently happy and calm Wilmslow couple who died suddenly and violently. According to the coroner at the time, Nicholas Rheinberg, the story was clear. Donald, a retired, polite, and devoted former pharmacist had a mental break. He hit his wife over the head with a ceramic water bottle, stabbed her to death with the shards6, and then took his own life. He'd stabbed himself in the groin, wrists, and heart, as well as cutting his own throat.
But even Rheinberg admitted that it was an odd case. "This in all respects was so alien to Mr. Ward's personality — his whole life — not a single shred of evidence would suggest there was a timebomb waiting to explode," he admitted7.
It got stranger. When comparing Bea Ainsworth and Auriel Ward, they seemed to be arranged in a very similar way on their blood-soaked beds, and their garments were arranged in the same way too - the women’s nightgowns were lifted. Why would a loving husband do that to his wife? There was no history of violence at all in the relationship - just as with the Ainsworths. What was going on?
Michael Higgins loved his wife. He was 59 and Violet, an ex-police officer, was 76, but the age difference didn’t seem to bother them. Not until 2000, when the police were called to find two bodies in their home in Didsbury, Manchester.
Michael beat his wife to death using a rolling pin from the kitchen. Then, to put the nail in the coffin, so to speak, he stabbed her with a pair of scissors. To take his own life, he strangled himself with a coat hanger, of all things, after stabbing himself in the throat.
Even the coroner thought this was strange. He remarked on a “very sad end to many years of apparent happy marriage” and that “terrible violence took place that was completely out of character with Mr Higgins.”8
And all of this violence? It was apparently committed by a man who had advanced Parkinson’s disease and was barely able to make a cup of tea9.
Eileen and Kenneth Martin lived in Davyhulme, Greater Manchester. The 77-year-old husband had prostate cancer, while his 76-year-old wife had dementia. It seemed he was struggling to care for her and saw no other way out than the release of death for both of them. He told his daughter that he was at the end of his rope, and the next day, he killed his wife and then took his own life.
He appeared to have hit Eileen over the head and then cut her around the head, wrists, and neck, before cutting his own throat and wrists and hanging himself - perhaps overkill for an elderly man.
"Ken had been struggling for a few years. He just crumbled under the pressure," said a family member10. Everyone understood that this was an escape for them, in Kenneth's eyes.
But Kenneth had been old and weak. Did he really have the strength to kill his wife in such a violent way? And why would he kill her this way instead of choosing a more gentle route such as an overdose of medication or putting a pillow over her head, as you would normally see in mercy killings?
Stanley and Peggy Wilson were the last victims of the spree of killing that seemed to be washing through Cheshire - though they in fact lived in Cumbria, in Kendal. The 92-year-old ex-quarry worker attached the 89-year-old retired teacher in their home.
Stanley bludgeoned Peggy over the face and head until she was dead, and then stabbed himself… with a pair of scissors. He had been a loving and devoted husband and there was no history of domestic violence - the same story over and over again.
But the police had ruled each case as a murder-suicide. So, why and how are we talking about them now?
Stephanie Davies was a senior coroner in Cheshire who looked over the old files and must have felt her heart skip a beat. Over and over again, the same story seemed to repeat - and none of them added up.
She knew the answer. To her, it was obvious. The killer was staging each scene as a murder-suicide, taking pleasure in ending the lives of his elderly victims.
"This individual will not stop killing until someone or something stops him... the acts of dominating the victims, carrying out the murders and fooling the police, are all addictive to him. He will have meticulously planned each murder, ensured he left no forensic evidence and followed the cases in the media," she said11.
It got deeper, too. After using Freedom of Information requests across other parts of the UK, Davies discovered 39 cases of couples who died in similar circumstances between the years of 2000 and 201912, which suggests a rampage far beyond the range of Cheshire and Greater Manchester.
She thinks the killer is a younger and powerful man, someone who hates domineering women and finds them to be a trigger for his violence. She thinks he would befriend his victims before killing them, putting them at ease so that they allow him into their home. In this way, he is able to leave no evidence behind, including signs of a break-in.
Or is he?
The response to Davies’ 179-page written report13 was stark. After seven months of looking into the alleged serial killer triggered by her report, she was suspended from the coroner’s office and an investigation into her was launched by the police14. It transpired she had been sharing confidential files with outsiders in order to investigate a case which the police no longer believed had any merit.
“There isn't a story here,” said Graham Wilson, son of Stanley and Peggy. “It was just a tragedy caused by my father's illness. As we said at the time, the hospital was at fault for letting him out too soon.15” It transpired Stanley was suffering from paranoid delusions that the nursing staff had been trying to poison him.
The truth of the story, many feel, is a simple and sad one. Old age combined with diminished faculties can often make people feel as though they are boxed into a corner. Not wanting to suffer any longer16, and feeling that they are responsible for their wives and their own suffering, the men commit what would seem an unthinkable act17. Sometimes they simply don’t want to carry on in a world without their wives, whose suffering they desperately want to end18.
The explosion of violence speaks to the need for the death to ‘stick’, rather than leaving their loved one simply more injured and disabled as they recover. When it is done, they take their own lives - often using several methods, such as both cutting their own throat and hanging themselves, to ensure that they also do not have a chance of surviving or being saved.
It’s a stark picture. Maybe we want to see a serial killer more than we want to believe in a dark truth about life as we age. The police investigation ultimately found that all of the cases had been checked out and ruled on correctly, and that there was no basis for the theory.
Perhaps time will reveal more to the story. But in all likelihood, it will not - as murder-suicides are depressingly common amongst couples who are aging and struggling with increasingly debilitating illnesses1920.
https://www.grunge.com/415619/the-untold-truth-of-the-cheshire-double-murders/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8656557/Five-frail-couples-brutally-slain-Five-apparent-murder-suicides.html
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12480174/serial-killer-five-couples-cheshire-murder-suicides/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9656759/Senior-coroner-suspended-suggestion-serial-killer-murdered-elderly-couples.html
https://www.grunge.com/415619/the-untold-truth-of-the-cheshire-double-murders/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/23/cheshire-police-examine-serial-killer-theory-in-five-couples-deaths
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8656557/Five-frail-couples-brutally-slain-Five-apparent-murder-suicides.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8656557/Five-frail-couples-brutally-slain-Five-apparent-murder-suicides.html
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/23/cheshire-police-examine-serial-killer-theory-in-five-couples-deaths
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trail-of-couples-butchered-in-their-beds-sparks-fears-of-a-serial-killer-at-large-8qdfmtvfc
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/06/serial-killer-investigator-faces-charges-report-murders-elderly/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9656759/Senior-coroner-suspended-suggestion-serial-killer-murdered-elderly-couples.html
https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/murder-suicides-in-elderly-rise
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-equation/202003/the-tragedy-murder-suicides
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/suicide-pacts-rise-elderly-act-love-bad-economy/story?id=11439411
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elderly-murder-suicide_b_1402935
https://www.vpc.org/studies/amertrend.htm