Cold-blooded psychopath Patrick Mackay, who went by the moniker “the Devil’s Disciple,” committed a string of gruesome killings in the 1970s.
The UK’s longest serving prisoner, who has been a forgotten serial killer for 47 years, could be released next month.
For three murders, including that of Kent vicar Father Anthony Crean, who was stabbed and beaten to death with an axe before having his head submerged in a bath for an hour, Mackay was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison in 1975. In London, he also killed two elderly women.
However, as the time for his release approaches, one MP thinks that his lack of renown is working in his favour.
Gareth Johnson said: “The public aren’t aware of Patrick Mackay and they should be, they really should be.”
Before retracting his plea, Mackay initially admitted to eight further murders, including the stabbing and hurling off a train of a 17-year-old au pair. These are still on record.
Confessions Of A Psycho Killer, a new Amazon Prime programme, explores why these other murders are still unsolved.
The currently airing programme explores the issue of whether 70-year-old Mackay, who is rumoured to be in Leyhill Open Prison near Gloucester in anticipation of a potential release, should ever be permitted to leave the facility on his own.
Author of a book on the killer’s atrocities, John Lucas, says of Patrick Mackay: “Patrick Mackay is what you may call a genuine psychopath.
“If he wanted to lose complete control and kill somebody, that’s what he did. He took life with the same kind of impulsiveness that a normal person might use to pick up a bar of chocolate.”
He benefits from his anonymity, said MP Mr. Johnson, whose district includes Gravesend in Kent, where Mackay was raised, and adjacent Shorne, where he killed Father Crean. Nobody is aware of him. The parole board will consequently find it simpler to release him without drawing criticism from the general public.
Dad Harold, a violent alcoholic who frequently beat Mackay and his mother Marian, passed away from a heart attack when he was only eight years old.
Assaulting his mother and sisters so frequently that police were called to the house up to four times each week, the young Mackay assumed his role.
Mackay was removed from the family home 18 times between the ages of 12 and 22 and placed in specialised schools, institutions, and jails.
At the time, Dartford WPC Amy Tapp said: “This person will kill.” She needed the assistance of four male coworkers to manhandle Mackay into a cell.
He had a psychopath diagnosis, and a psychiatrist predicted he would develop into a cold-blooded killer.He was nevertheless released in 1972 after spending four years in Merseyside’s Moss Side High Security Hospital.
Three years later, he revealed this in an excerpt from his 60-page confession: “I was labelled as a psychopath but without mania. I’ve always thought that I struggle with psychopathic mania in addition to just being a psychopath in and of myself.
“I believe no one can judge one’s mind better than oneself, since the mind is such a complex machine.”
In Mayfair and Chelsea, where he befriended wealthy elderly women to get access to their homes, he committed a string of robberies while residing in a hostel in London.
He started doing tasks for 84-year-old Isabella Griffith after offering to transport her groceries, and soon began stopping by her home in the upscale Cheyne Walk neighbourhood.
But on Valentine’s Day 1974, in his own words, he “grabbed her around the neck” in the kitchen.
“I must have pressed her neck hard with my left hand because she went unconscious,” he added.
He then calmly listened to a news bulletin on the radio and walked upstairs before having “a strong compulsion to kill her outright”.
Using a 12in knife from the kitchen, he stabbed her through the chest, adding that he rammed the weapon so hard, “I felt it embed itself into the floor”.
After the murder, he drank whisky while sitting in her living room before covering his victim’s body with clothing and putting her arms across her chest.
The elderly Adele Price was attacked on March 10, 1975, after she had invited the man into her Chelsea house for a glass of water.
He entered the apartment, strangled the victim in the bedroom, and then sat watching TV until he passed out. The victim’s granddaughter then tried to break into the apartment, waking him up.
Mackay visited his mother in Gravesend eleven days after he had stolen a chicken from a nearby shop. He gave her the chicken and asked her to cook it.
He then proceeded to the neighbouring village of Shorne to meet Father Crean, 64. Before their disagreement over a check Mackay stole from the monastery, they were close friends.
The cleric was attacked by Mackay, who punched him in the face before throwing him into a bathtub.
Getting “a little more agitated”, he grabbed a knife from his coat and sank it in Father Crean’s neck before stabbing him in the top of the skull with such force that bent the blade.
Finally, he whacked him several times with an axe before filling the tub with water.
I spent almost an hour in the restroom, he said. . and …………………… a s as and a.s if the “s ” the
