Police announced yesterday that the serial killer formerly known as ‘the Scented Slasher’, would for the time being be called ‘Killer A’, saying they needed more time to find a common theme to his crimes and a nickname to reflect them.
The first two victims, found with multiple stab-wounds and doused with L’Air du Temps in woods close to their homes, were both women in their early twenties who had worked on perfume counters at central London department stores. CCTV images and cash-register records confirmed that the same man had purchased a 30ml bottle of L’Air du Temps from both women on the days of their disappearances, leading police to link the two crimes and dub him ‘the Scented Slasher’.
His next victim, however, was a 53-year old taxi-driver, who was found by joggers shot dead in his cab in Richmond Park, with the index finger on his left hand removed, and the Chinese character for “Sun” written in blood on the windscreen.
‘With no perfume involved, a different weapon, and the other new details, we couldn’t keep calling him the ‘Scented Slasher’, so we called in a consultant,’ explained Detective Inspector Craig King, leading the investigation. ‘We showed him what we had, and he quickly noticed that each victim had recently come back from a holiday in the Costa del Sol. ‘Sol’ was Spanish for ‘sun’ which tied in with the pictogram, and they had all stayed at the same resort, so we settled on the ‘Marbella Murderer’. It was tying together, we thought we were getting somewhere, and we had the alliteration too.’
That nickname lasted only two weeks, however, because the next victim, an elderly woman found asphyxiated in her Finchley nursing home bed, had had no connection with Spain. The task was further complicated because the killer had placed a Vandoren V.12 reed on her forehead, and had shortened her emergency alarm cord with a double-loop bowline, suggesting, perhaps, a nautical clarinet player.
At a loss to bring all these elements together in one nickname, the police settled on “The London Serial Killer”, until last week, when the fifth victim, a 39-year-old bar manager, was found poisoned, his mouth stuffed with chess pieces, wearing a wetsuit, in his garden in Swansea.
Senior criminologist, Dr Bruce Yates is calling Killer A ‘the worst serial killer in decades’, adding, ‘I mean, he is apallingly bad - completely rubbish. His clues are derivative, half-arsed and disjointed. It’s ruddy amateur hour and makes a mockery of the whole thing. There’s absolutely no coherent crescendo of menace, he hasn't taunted the investigators and he shows no signs of ‘wanting to be stopped’. I can’t imagine anyone choosing to watch a TV adaptation of this tosser.’
It was also announced that if evidence linking Killer A to a series of ‘boiler room’ share scams defrauding members of the public of over 12 million pounds is confirmed , the police will consider ‘Random Crime Dude’.
