Convicted killers seldom kill again – or do they? Andrew Baldwin reviews a new book in which author Charles Rickell uncovers cases – some with Huddersfield links – where people convicted of murder or manslaughter have killed again

WITH the dishonourable exception of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, killers seldom strike again.

It’s even more of a rarity among people who have already served a term for murder or manslaughter and then been freed.

But two such cases happened in Huddersfield.

John Robinson first killed in 1962, when he slit the throat of a nine-year-boy who had been fishing on the River Aire near Shipley.

Robinson’s wife had given birth to a boy just 18 days before and while there was no evidence of a sexual assault on the young victim it was very strongly suspected to be the motive.

It was a dark deed which earned a recommendation from the judge that Robinson should stay in prison for the rest of his life.

Yet Robinson, who was 32 at the time, was released less than 14 years later, in May, 1976.

That fateful decision was to spark another tragedy just five months later in Huddersfield.

By that time Robinson was working at a brickyard in Wakefield, spending most weekends visiting his nephew, Thomas Batty.

He was a 25-year-old textile worker who lived with his wife Mary and son David, four in Whitacre Close, Deighton.

It was a turbulent marriage and Thomas eventually moved out and went to live in Golcar.

Mary and young David stayed at Whitacre Close and Robinson continued to visit them.

The last and fatal visit was on October 1, when banging and shouting was heard coming from Mrs Batty’s house.

It was the last appalling scene between Robinson and Mrs Batty.

Robinson had gone up to the bedroom where Mrs Batty was asleep with her son and pulled the bedclothes back.

She was awakened and started screaming.

Robinson grabbed her round the throat and simply strangled her.

He took the body downstairs, but woke David, who was consoled by Robinson and went back to sleep, oblivious of his mother’s death.

Robinson later admitted that he cut parts of her body, put them in a plastic bag and dumped it under a hedge at the end of Whitacre Street.

At his trial in 1977 it emerged that the Director of Public Prosecutions had been very anxious to know why Robinson was released from prison and had written to the Home Office.

But the Home Office had replied simply that it did not want the reasons made public.

Life was really to mean life when Robinson was sentenced in 1977; he died of cancer in prison in May, 1980.

Doubts about the system for releasing violent killers were to be raised just a few years later over George Unsworth.

He killed eight-year-old Huddersfield boy Andrew Cross just eight months after his release from a previous life sentence for the manslaughter of a Hong Kong prostitute while a 21-year-old soldier in 1970.

Unsworth strangled Andrew in a cellar beneath Moldgreen Civic Youth Club in a slaying described by the trial judge as horrible and disgusting.

He had been released on licence from his first sentence in 1979 after having brain surgery to try to cure his behaviour.

Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman demanded an investigation by Tory Home Secretary William Whitelaw into his release.

Mr Sheerman said: “This is the second time in recent years that one of my constituents has been murdered by a prisoner released on licence.

“My constituents need to be reassured that the system is working correctly.”

It was a plea which brought little response, except for a reply that the system for releasing life prisoners was complex and could not really be tightened.

Crime writer Charles Rickell records the murders in his new book, Yorkshire’s Multiple Killers.

He has tracked down a further 22 cases with Yorkshire associations of people who have killed again after doing time in prison for murder or manslaughter.

Rickell’s interest began when he read a newspaper article stating that 70 convicted killers had repeated their offence since the abolition of capital punishment in 1965.

“Many of these cases raise the fundamental question of why such individuals were freed from prison, a situation which must be so distressing for the relatives and friends of the victims,” he says.

Yorkshire’s Multiple Killers, by Charles Rickell, is published in paperback by Wharncliffe Books and costs £12.99.