The Cutter - It started as an obsession with hacking hair from women's heads. It ended with murder. Michael Litchfield
that catches the worm’ was one of her favourite maxims.
Everything in her life was so normal that Tuesday morning. No alarm bells or portent of the seismic events just around the corner. Known by one person only, the countdown towards oblivion had already begun. Without warning, without a chance to take avoiding action, without prior threats, death came cold-calling with a knock on the front door, probably a few minutes before 9.30am.
* * *
Now fast-forward the clock to mid-afternoon of the same day.
Terry and Caitlin left school shortly after 3.30pm and walked home together as usual. Their mother’s car was parked in the drive. Everything appeared routine and normal so far. Their modest but comfortable home was the ground-floor flat and they made their way to the side of the house, where the entrance was situated.
Caitlin tried the door; it was unlocked. She opened it and skipped inside, happy to be home, as always. Another day of school over; always something to be celebrated! Going into the house ahead of her brother was yet another little afternoon ritual, a gesture of old-fashioned respect – ladies first.
As soon as Terry had closed the front door behind him, Caitlin called to her mother, something else she always did on their return from school. There was no answer. Strange, thought Caitlin, especially as the car was outside. Heather always liked to be indoors to greet them with a hug, kisses and eager questions about their day at school. If there was any shopping to be done, she tried to do it in the morning.
Terry thought his mother might be in the garden. However, almost immediately, he was overcome by an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. ‘There was a big silence,’ he would later tell the police. ‘I didn’t like it.’ The silence was eerie and seemed to engulf and swallow up the pair of them. Unlike the comforting and peaceful silence of a church or cathedral, this was brooding and malevolent.
Terry noticed that the bathroom door was closed. Caitlin knocked on it, saying, ‘Mum! Are you in there … Mum?’ Silence still. Creepy silence. So she tentatively inched open the door.
Theirs was a home of laughter and fun. A good-to-be-alive home. Whatever was happening outside, within their four walls the sun always shone, even on miserable, damp November days like this one. Not any more, though. In the next few seconds, everything for those two children was to change for ever.
Terry and Caitlin were far too young, of course, to have seen the classic Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho, but for an older generation the gore that confronted these children would have triggered violent images of Janet Leigh and a bloodbath in a shower.
Heather Barnett had not gone out. She was on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. Her legs were straight and her left hand rested beside her body. Her right hand had been placed on her lower stomach, a clump of light-brown hair grasped in the palm of her hand. About 30 human hairs, of a different colour to hers, were in her other hand. Her upper clothes had been pulled up to the level of her breasts, while her jeans had been unfastened and pulled down slightly, exposing the top of her pubic hair. Her bra had been snapped at the front between the two cups. Both breasts had been cut off and lay on the floor beside her head. Her throat had been cut ear to ear, the wound gaping to the extent that her spine was exposed. There was also a palpable injury to the top of her head.
Heather’s head and shoulders lay in a pool of blood. A trail of this same oozing red liquid led from the workroom, through the lounge, to the bathroom. Further bloodstains and smears were noted on various surfaces at around waist-level, near an upturned stool, adjacent to the patio doors in the workroom.
But the sight the children will remember to their own dying day was that of their mother’s butchered breasts. Each one had been sliced off and placed beside Heather’s head on the floor.
Seconds later, they were in the street again, this time dashing into the road, running up and down in a daze like headless chickens, flailing their arms, stopping traffic and pedestrians, their screams muted, shock paralysing their vocal cords.
Breaking away from his sister, Terry stumbled back into the flat to make a breathless 999 emergency call, willing his voice not to desert him again. His call was answered almost immediately.
‘My mum’s just been murdered!’ he blurted, his voice strong again, but tortured. He was no fool. He knew there was no life left in his mother and that this carnage was in no way the result of an accident.
The telephone operator tried to calm Terry, who, fearing that he might not be taken seriously, felt it necessary to add, ‘This isn’t a joke. She is dead.’
Trained to deal with these situations, though mercifully they were only rarely of such depravity, the operator knew the importance of keeping the line open for as long as possible, so that all the priority information could be elicited from the caller, simultaneously noting the time that was on her screen.
Often callers caught up in tragic circumstances who are hysterical or panicking can hang up before providing all the necessary information. All 999s are automatically recorded to enable the police later to hear exactly what has been said when a crime or accident was first reported. A caller claiming to have been genuinely panicking, for example, when making a 999 call might be found to lack the ring of truth when played in court months later to a jury. Therefore, operators who field 999 calls are trained to remain calm and logical, but clearly directive in their questioning, in order to elicit essential information as efficiently and as accurately as possible.
Despite the harrowing situation he was caught up in, Terry managed to keep his head while on the phone, but quickly went to pieces afterwards as shock kicked in.
Terry joined his sister in the street, where a couple were just pulling up opposite their house. The woman in the car was Fiamma Marsango, who lived at 93 Capstone Road, and she was accompanied by her future husband, Danilo Restivo, an Italian, who had moved in with her a few months earlier.
Terry beckoned frantically to the woman, pleading with her to come to them. Fiamma wondered what on earth was going on. As another neighbour said, ‘When children are running about shouting, “Murder!” it takes some while to compute. It’s the last thing in the world you’re expecting to hear and you don’t, at first, take it seriously. You start looking around for the tell-tale signs of something like Candid Camera. Murder comes to other people, to other streets, not your own.’
Restivo went with Fiamma to the children. The staccato, disjointed and muddled narrative, naturally devoid of chronology, that spilled from the children appalled Fiamma. ‘You poor children,’ she muttered. ‘Have you called the police?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Terry said tearfully.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Caitlin held her head in her hands, the tears dripping on to the road, her entire body shaking in shock.
Restivo put his arms around both children, pulling them into him, hugging them tight.
‘Come with us,’ said Fiamma. ‘Don’t go back into your home. Come with us to wait for the police.’
Restivo assured Terry and Caitlin that they would be safe with them. Still with his arms around the children, he guided them into number 93.
Another passer-by who tried to console Heather’s children also made a 999 call. By then, however, the emergency services – police and paramedics – were already on their way. Grief-stricken, the children were now inconsolable – shivering, sobbing, muttering incoherently, trying desperately to convince themselves that this was not happening.
Little groups were gathering on both pavements. Most of the people were casually interested, keen to discover the cause of the commotion, and shocked when scant news of the discovery filtered through. They were most concerned for Terry and Caitlin, whose distress had been obvious. And yet none of them was aware at this point of the full horror of the situation and the traumatic sight that had greeted the children. Very sensibly, none of the bystanders had ventured into the house. Natural instinct might have been to rush into the flat to try to administer first-aid and revive Heather, but Terry’s