I linked a couple of articles about Shillibier back on 3 September:
Free Online Library: BEAST WHO FACED TRIAL FOR A GAY SEX MURDER; Killer cleared months before.(News) by "The Mirror (London, England)"; General interest
www.thefreelibrary.com
This is the man linked to the brutal killing and dismemberment of "bag of bones" murder victim Melanie Hall.
www.mirror.co.uk
Another case I have seen linked to him is the murder of another gay man, in Clifton, Bristol on 17 December 1989.
"Keith Burgess had been battered with a ball-headed hammer and stabbed in the back while at his Cllifton home...
Keith, originally from Norfolk, but who had lived in Bristol for 12 years, left church at around 12.30pm and walked to the nearby Alma Tavern pub for a drink before getting home at 1pm.
Exactly what happened next was unclear, but hours later he was discovered murdered with the weapons used to kill him never found despite police scouring the neighbourhood.
Neighbours were quick to talk to police and three people reported seeing a scruffy looking man in a bobble hat hanging around his flat between 12.30pm and 12.40pm.
Just days after the murder a sketch drawing of the white man, described as between 5ft 10in and 6ft, aged in his early 20s and of slender bill [sic], was put out by police.
They said he had “dark hair, sunken cheeks and a pointed jaw with a beard or stubble” and was wearing “dark rimmed glasses, a knitted bobble hat of two colours, a dark anorak and off-white training shoes”."
Shillibier leaving Bristol Crown Court after being acquitted of the murder of Kevin Muhyiddin in October 1998. He was described in the first Mirror article I linked as "33 today" on 19 December 2000.
"Following a post-mortem DS Stone revealed the “savagery of the attack” on Keith and that two weapons had been used by the violent killer.
“It was a frenzied attack – very many and quite horrific injuries were caused,” he told reporters."
Battered with a hammer and stabbed in the back, who killed Keith Burgess remains a mystery nearly 30 years on
www.bristolpost.co.uk
A Crimewatch reconstruction is shown here:
I know the Alma Tavern in Alma Vale Road (as kids we knew it as AV) quite well, as I do all Clifton locations. I've been in All Saints Church, where Keith went before going to the pub, too, when I were a lad, to see the John Piper stained-glass windows.
Were the bobble hat and glasses a disguise? The bloke was seen loitering around before Keith got back to his flat and then seen again leaving the property after Keith had returned. He was the right age to have been Shillibier.
"Rebecca [Storrs] had been viciously attacked and sustained injuries believed to have be caused by a hammer and Stanley knife. She had also been strangled and subjected to a sex attack...
Police later found tools in the boot of Shillibier's car, including a claw hammer. They also found a hammer in a clump of trees 100 yards downstream from the murder scene."
The teenager murdered as she left a party and a killer who may have struck again`
So we know Shillibier killed Rebecca with a knife and a hammer - the weapons used in the murder of Keith Burgess - and we also know he was linked to the murder of a gay man after having sex with him - Kevin Muhyiddin was knifed in the back like Keith. Hmm!
Another strange unsolved Clifton case - unconnected to Shillibier as he would have been too young - was the murder of Derek Grain with a sand-filled traffic cone.
"It was on the morning of Halloween in 1980 when a nurse on her way to work made a truly gruesome discovery.
As she walked over Brandon Hill she found the body of man, lying face down in a pool of his own blood.
The dead man was later identified as Derek Grain, a visitor to the city who had been on secondment to British Aerospace in Filton.
And the investigation took an even more shocking twist when it was discovered that the mild-mannered man had been killed by being battered around the head with a sand-filled traffic cone.
Mr Grain had been in Bristol for two months after moving to the city from Hertfordshire and had been staying in the city's Unicorn Hotel...
That night Mr Grain had been out, drinking heavily in Vicki's and Curves nightclubs, both situated on nearby Park Street at the time.
At 2am he left Curves alone and headed to Brandon Hill Lane.
Quite why he took that route baffled detectives at the time, and became one of the many mysteries of the case."
Brandon Hill. like many green spaces, was supposedly a gay rendezvous spot at one time, and on the other hand was once known as Mutton Tump - I have been told by older Bristolians that the "mutton" referred to female private parts, sexual intercourse or to prostitutes, not the sheep that may have grazed there!
"But there was one thing that detectives were sure of – and that was the motive for the murder.
Mr Grain's jacket had been torn off and around £50 to £60 stolen out of the pocket, which always made detectives think it was a robbery gone wrong. His bank cards were also scattered around his body...
The traffic cone murder weapon, found 80 yards from Mr Grain's body, was analysed but does not seem to have had the evidence police hoped for."
Investigation took an even more shocking twist when it was discovered that the mild-mannered man had been killed by being battered around the head with a sand-filled traffic cone
www.bristolpost.co.uk
