Anthony Hardy

Early life

Anthony Hardy grew up in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, where his childhood was uneventful and he performed well in school and college. He earned an engineer's degree from Imperial College London and became the manager of a large company. Hardy married and had three sons and one daughter.

In 1982, he was arrested in Tasmania for trying to drown his wife, but the charges were later dropped. His wife Judith divorced him in 1986. After the divorce, Hardy spent time in mental hospitals diagnosed with bipolar disorder and received treatment in psychiatric hospitals across London for depression, drug-induced psychosis, and alcohol abuse.

He lived in various London hostels and picked up convictions for theft and being drunk and disorderly. In 1998, a prostitute accused him of rape, but the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. He became an alcoholic and diabetic.

Murders

In January 2002, police were called to Hardy's block of flats by a neighbour who complained that someone had vandalised her front door and she strongly suspected Hardy. When police investigated Hardy's flat, they found a locked door and, despite his claims to the contrary, discovered Hardy had a key to it. Inside the room, they found the naked dead body of a woman lying on a bed with cuts and bruises on her head. She was identified as Sally White, 38, a woman living in London.

Forensic pathologist Freddy Patel concluded White had died of a heart attack, despite the circumstances. Patel later came under scrutiny for this and other findings, including the 2009 death of Ian Tomlinson, resulting in a suspension from the government's register of pathologists pending an inquiry. In 2012, he was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council, meaning he could no longer practise medicine in the United Kingdom. Hardy pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal damage and claimed he had no knowledge of how White came to be in his flat due to his drinking problem.

While in custody, Hardy was transferred to a psychiatric hospital under section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983, remaining there until November 2002.

Arrest and trial

On 30 December 2002, a homeless person scavenging in school bins found the dismembered body parts of two women, wrapped in black plastic bin-liners. The victims were identified as Bridgette MacClennan, 34, and Elizabeth Valad, 29. The investigation led to Hardy, who was arrested a week later. He had gone on the run but was spotted by an off-duty policeman when he went to University College Hospital to collect his prescription for insulin.

During a search of the hospital grounds, Hardy was found hiding behind bins. A fight took place as he resisted arrest, during which a police officer was knocked unconscious and another officer was stabbed through the hand and had his eye dislocated from its socket. Despite these injuries, the wounded police officer held Hardy until backup arrived and he was arrested at the scene. A subsequent search of his flat found evidence, including old blood stains, indicating the two women had been killed and dismembered there.

Both had died over the Christmas holidays. Under arrest, Hardy replied 'no comment' to every question put to him by police. He was charged with the murders of both MacClennan and Valad, and of White, the woman whose death had originally been put down to natural causes. At his trial in November 2003, Hardy, despite his initial lack of cooperation with the police, abruptly changed his plea to guilty to all three counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Because of Hardy's history of psychiatric problems and violent behaviour, an independent enquiry was announced into his care. A November 2003 article written for the Evening Standard by Hugh Dougherty and Finian Davern suggested that Hardy was a pornography-obsessed necrophile who derived sexual gratification from posing and photographing his victims' nude corpses, and a BBC News article from the same month suggested that this photography was his primary motivation for the murders.

Hardy was diagnosed with a personality disorder. In May 2010, a High Court judge decided that Hardy should never be released from prison, placing him on the list of whole life tariff prisoners. Mr Justice Keith, sitting in London, said: 'This is one of those exceptionally rare cases in which life should mean life.'

Possible links to other murders

Police originally believed Hardy was possibly connected to the unsolved cases of two prostitutes found dismembered and dumped in the River Thames, and up to five or six other murders that bore marked similarities to the ones for which he was convicted but where not enough evidence was available directly implicating him. One of the murders Hardy was originally linked to, that of Paula Fields whose body was dumped in the Regents Canal in 2001, was solved in 2011 when John Sweeney was convicted of her murder.

Murder of Zoe Parker

Another murder linked to Hardy was that of Zoe Parker, last seen in Hounslow in December 2000 before her dismembered torso was found in the river. Detectives said that 'he is a suspect for the unsolved murders of any women whose bodies have been cut up and dumped'. The lower half of Parker's body was never found; investigators believed the body had been cut up with something sharp like a Samurai sword. Parker's incomplete body was found on 17 December 2000, 11 days after she disappeared, next to Chelsea Harbour on the Thames.

She was 24 years old and also known as Cathy Dennis, travelling around west London seeking clients, moving between Isleworth, Feltham, Hounslow and sometimes the West End. On the night she disappeared she was in Hounslow, seen with two men described as white and with dark hair; one wore a white casual jacket, dark trousers and white trainers, the other was stocky and wearing dark clothing. Investigators also asked for a woman named Carmen or Carmel to come forward as they believed she had information on the murder, saying she was apparently a friend of Parker from the Hounslow or Isleworth area.

Other cases

Two of the murders linked to Hardy occurred in Nottinghamshire, near to where Hardy grew up in Burton-on-Trent. In 2013, high-profile criminologist David Wilson released a documentary on Hardy as part of his Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story series, in which he examined claims Hardy could be linked to the murders of London sex workers Sharon Hoare in Fulham in 1991 and Christine McGovern in Walthamstow in 1995.