John Childs (murderer)

Investigation and trials

John Childs was arrested in September 1978 for a string of bank and security van robberies in Hertfordshire. In June 1979, he confessed to Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Cater that he had also committed murders. The inquiry was run out of Waltham Abbey police station in Essex. Childs was found guilty of killing six people: Terence Eve, Robert Brown, George Brett, Terry Brett, Frederick Sherwood, and Ronald Andrews.

The murders took place between November 1974 and October 1978. No bodies or murder weapons were ever recovered. At the Old Bailey, with John Mathew QC leading the prosecution, Childs was convicted on 4 December 1979. Mr Justice Lawson handed down six concurrent life sentences.

After his conviction, Childs turned Queen’s Evidence, accusing his former bosses, Essex businessmen Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney, of involvement in Eve’s murder and the others. Two other men, Leonard Thompson and Paul Morton-Thurtle, were also charged. Eve, an ex-prisoner who made teddy bears in Dagenham, vanished in November 1974. He had worked in a converted church hall that Pinfold and MacKenney also used to manufacture diving gear.

Haulage contractor George Brett and his ten-year-old son Terry disappeared on 4 January 1975. A second trial, lasting eight weeks, began at the Old Bailey in October 1980. Mr Justice May presided, David Tudor Price prosecuted, and Michael Mansfield QC defended MacKenney. Childs testified that Eve was beaten, strangled, dismembered, and burned so his business could be taken over.

He claimed MacKenney shot George and Terry Brett with a Sten gun after luring them to the factory with a job offer. Childs said Andrews was killed because MacKenney was having an affair with his wife, Sherwood because of a seven-thousand-pound debt, and Brown because he knew too much about Eve’s murder. Childs also stated he once considered killing MacKenney with a crossbow out of fear.

Claims of Childs

In July 1986, while held at HMP Winchester, Childs wrote a statement admitting that Pinfold was "only convicted because of my perjured evidence". In 1997, The People reported that Childs had written to a penfriend describing how he dismembered bodies and burned them on a 55-gallon drum in his council flat in Poplar. While at Long Lartin and then Frankland Prison, Childs was interviewed by the Daily Mirror, which reported in 1998 that he had confessed to five more murders.

Appeal of co-accused

Pinfold and MacKenney lost their initial appeal in 1981, and a further request to appeal was refused in 1987. Pinfold was let out on bail in September 2001. The Criminal Cases Review Commission later sent the case back to the Court of Appeal, which overturned both convictions in December 2003. The panel, led by Lord Woolf alongside Mr Justice Aikens and Mr Justice Davis, decided that Childs’ testimony could not be trusted because he was a “pathological liar.”

Psychiatrist David Somekh had diagnosed Childs with a personality disorder causing compulsive lying, but the trial jury was never informed of this. Childs’ own version of the killings shifted over time. According to Pinfold’s lawyer Danny Simpson, former Detective Chief Inspector James Harrison-Griffiths was told in 1976 by Commander Bert Wickstead that the victim Eve was still alive in West London. Simpson also noted that Childs had written a letter claiming his wife asked him to murder Eve after he sexually assaulted her.

Eileen, MacKenney’s ex-wife, wrote in her 2011 autobiography that Childs’ account was untrue. She stated he was actually a Welshman named Martin Jones, and had adopted the name Childs from an earlier flat tenant.

Did You Know?

• Childs joined the British Army as a sapper but was expelled after nine months for committing burglary.
• He collected weapons and war books.
• His wife Tina divorced him in 1982 following his conviction.