Anthony Russell | World's Most Evil Killers | Forensic Files

Fred Dinenage: In 2020, pregnant Nicole McGregor disappeared from Leamington Spa.
Her frantic boyfriend, Chris, searched for her, helped by a new friend. He had no idea that his friend was stone
cold killer Anthony Russell. Jim Mahon: Chris saw a newspaper and realized that Anthony was the person
that the police were looking for in connection with the two murders in Coventry.
Fred Dinenage: The last person to see Nicole alive was wanted for the brutal murders of Julie Williams
and her son, David. And now, Anthony Russell had killed a third victim. Jane Monckton-Smith: He was saying things
to Nicole's boyfriend like, oh, he must be really looking forward to becoming a father.
He knew that Nicole was dead. Fred Dinenage: Anthony Russell went on the run, sparking a huge manhunt.
Geoffrey Wansell: This wasn't an act of madness. It was calculated. And that calculation had cost three people their lives.
[indistinct yelling] Fred Dinenage: Russell murdered three innocent people and destroyed the lives of those left behind.
- Daniel didn't want to live without his mum or without his brother. Fred Dinenage: His week long murderous rampage
left a trail of death and destruction, making twisted Anthony Russell one of the world's
most evil killers. [theme music] ♪ ♪ The search for 39-year-old Anthony Russell was one of the largest in West
Midlands Police history. Jim Mahon: We launched a huge manhunt. I think we had 200 officers that were working on it.
We've got a responsibility to protect the public. That's our number one responsibility.
And you've got someone who's already been prepared to kill who's on the loose. Carol Scrivens: The police put in the papers
a photograph of him. And it came on the radio every half hour, this man is dangerous.
Do not approach him. So the police already knew what he'd done, and they were frightened for the public.
Fred Dinenage: Over the course of a week, Anthony Russell killed three people.
This was a murderer without mercy. Jane Monckton-Smith: This wasn't just enough violence
to kill somebody. This is what we call overkill. So that's way more violence than is
needed to kill that person. Fred Dinenage: The carnage that Anthony Russell left behind will stay with his victims' loved ones forever.
Carol Scrivens: You never expect something like that ever to happen to your family, ever.
You might watch it on the television or read about it in a book, but to actually
have it happen to you absolutely ripped our families apart. Fred Dinenage: This killer's story
begins in the West Midlands city of Coventry. Jim Mahon: Anthony was born on the 16th of April, 1982.
He'd got a number of siblings, had a difficult childhood, and he grew up mainly in care.
He used to regularly go missing when he was in care, and he was often difficult to find.
So he would be reported missing on a regular basis, and it would take quite a long time to find him.
Fred Dinenage: As he entered adulthood, bad behavior became criminal behavior.
- Anthony Russell had a track record of low level crime-- theft, burglary, possessing weapons.
Jim Mahon: There was a bit of violence in there. I think he was convicted of a robbery, crimes
that are often associated with people that have substance issues. Geoffrey Wansell: It's pretty clear that Anthony Russell had
a very big heroin addiction. Fred Dinenage: In 2020, Russell was 38 years old and
living in a flat in Riley Square in the Bell Green area of Coventry. Jim Mahon: It was a 1960s development.
It's sort of a precinct type design. It was built in a quadrant, so you have shops all around the bottom of the quadrant.
And then I think there's about four or five stories above that which contains flats, so a very
urban area with local shops. So it was quite a close knit community. Fred Dinenage: On that same estate,
living in a one bedroom flat was 58-year-old Julie Williams. Widowed young, she'd raised her sons alone.
Carol Scrivens: Julie was my brother's partner, the love of my brother's life. My brother, unfortunately, passed away when he was 39.
Fred Dinenage: Julie and her eldest son, David, shared a close bond. Carol Scrivens: David is my nephew.
David didn't have long with my brother, which was a great shame because his dad absolutely adored him,
him and his brother, Daniel. He absolutely adored his mum. They lived together, and they went out together.
He lived for his mum. He was very family orientated. He had lots of cousins that he got on with everywhere.
Everybody absolutely loved him because he was such a happy chappie. Fred Dinenage: On Wednesday, the 21st
of October 2020, 32-year-old David did not come home as planned. Three days later, Julie still hadn't managed
to get in touch with David. Carol Scrivens: My daughter phoned me up and she said,
there's something on the internet. She says that Julie's looking for David. [tense music]
♪ ♪ She put out on the local radio, has anybody seen David. But we just thought, oh, he's crashed
out at one of his friend's houses, and he'll be back in touch. Jim Mahon: He first came to the attention
of police on Saturday, the 24th of October, 2020. And that was a report made by Julie to say that her son
David had gone missing. Jane Monckton-Smith: Police will always do a victimology when they get a missing person report,
and that will be largely around vulnerabilities and how unusual it was for this person to go missing.
Jim Mahon: His daily routine involved him being in the local area and associating with friends and
spending time with his mother. So it was really unusual for him not to be in contact
with her or to come back home. We have a dedicated team that deal with missing persons.
Inquiries were started to be made around house to house inquiries, looking at CCTV to see when they
could see his last sighting. Fred Dinenage: West Midlands Police identified David as a man struggling with addiction.
Carol Scrivens: He didn't want to do drugs but all those around him were. And unfortunately, David got into that way of living,
which changed him as a person. And I think that's why his mum always kept an eye out
for him all the time. - He'd been using drugs, it seems, for some considerable time.
And all his connections were in the world of people who had similar addictions. Jim Mahon: We knew he regularly visited
the chemist for medication. So they started to look and see when the last time it was that he picked up his medication,
do work around his phone to see when that was last active. Fred Dinenage: The police obtained David's phone records.
Amongst the people that he called friends, there were some that worried his mother.
Jim Mahon: She mentioned one person, that she was concerned that he owed some money for drugs.
And she'd also received a text from David that said he was potentially having to get out of the area
because he owed money for drugs. I think she thought that was unusual because David could often owe money for drugs,
but that wouldn't cause him to go missing. Fred Dinenage: The circumstances surrounding David's disappearance were unclear.
Police kept an open mind about what may have happened. But on the afternoon of Sunday, October the 25th,
just 24 hours after Julie Williams reported David missing, there was an unbelievable
twist in the investigation. - Julie herself is reported missing by one of her sisters.
Carol Scrivens: Julie kept in touch with her sisters and her brothers every single day.
So when she wasn't around, that's why her sister then reported it to the police,
because she knew that that was out of character. Jim Mahon: Once we'd done all the background
checks into the fact that David was missing, then it became a real concern. So at this point, they went to Julie and David's address,
and they couldn't get a response there. Geoffrey Wansell: The police, at 11 o'clock that Sunday evening, break into Julie's flat,
and they find her dead. Fred Dinenage: The scene that met them was one of carnage.
In the center lay Julie's bloodied body. - Julie had been subjected to this episode
of prolonged beating, essentially, punching and blunt force injury. Jane Monckton-Smith: Julie had an enormous number
of injuries, something like 113 injuries to her body. So that suggests a rage fueled attack.
- The final act which caused her death was the application of a ligature. The ligature which was used in Julie's case
was an electric flex from an electric fan. Fred Dinenage: The case was allocated to the homicide team,
with Detective Inspector Jim Mahon put in charge. Jim Mahon: I am a senior investigating officer,
which means that I am the lead investigator for any serious crime. I went there in the middle of the night.
It's dark, it's gloomy. So just even the inquiries around just trying to establish who was going in and out at the time
was going to be really, really challenging. Fred Dinenage: Julie's family woke to the news of her murder.
Carol Scrivens: We heard about Julie, and that was from the papers telling us that they'd
found a woman's body. It was so final. It was so traumatic. It was so evil, frightening that somebody could do
that to another human being. And straight away then, I think that's when we felt something
bad's happened to David. Jim Mahon: We obviously then had immediate concerns about the welfare of David because he
was still a missing person. But now, Julie had been killed. So it just really ramped up in terms of, one, trying
to identify who the killer was, and secondly, to try and find where David was. Fred Dinenage: There were many questions and no answers
to what may have happened. Investigators needed to find David Williams fast. [tense music]
♪ ♪ On the 26th of October, 2020, the investigation into the murder of 58-year-old Julie Williams
in Coventry had just begun. Jim Mahon: At this point, we were in the evidence gathering stage.
There was some blood and what looked like a fingerprint in blood on the radiator.
There was only a bedroom and a living room in the flat. David would sleep on a bed in the living room,
and Julie would sleep in her bedroom and watch telly there. Julie was dead on the floor in the room that David occupied.
Her telly was still on in the bedroom. The neighbors had heard someone approach Julie's flat the night
before, but they couldn't really hear what was being said. The person that had killed Julie had taken the keys
and had locked the door behind them, so was probably known to Julie for her to have let him into the house.
Fred Dinenage: For the family, not only the horror of Julie's death, the worry of David's
whereabouts, but also the rumors surrounding the murder. - People were saying, David's done that.
He's gone, disappearing, and David's gone and killed his mother. And I said, no, he wouldn't do that.
He loves her too much. He definitely wouldn't do that. And he hasn't got a bad bone in his body.
Jim Mahon: We didn't have a suspect at all. The main focus then was on this fingerprint in blood.
Now, that might have been Julie's fingerprint. But if it wasn't, then it's most likely to be the killer.
That became the priority submission, to take a photo and then see if we could match it to the fingerprint database
to somebody on it. Fred Dinenage: Whilst the forensic investigations were underway, the search for David intensified.
Accessing his phone records provided police with vital information. Jim Mahon: When we examined David's phone,
we saw that he was in regular contact, quite a lot of contact with an individual that, when we checked
him out on our police systems, was known to supply class A drugs. That phone activity dropped off at the point
where David had been reported missing. So there was an assumption there that that person knew that David was no longer
going to be using his phone. On the Sunday night, we had that individual identified, located, and arrested
and brought into custody. And he protested his innocence straight away and provided an alibi.
Fred Dinenage: Part of David's routine included regular visits to the Riley Square Pharmacy,
where he collected his methadone prescription. - What we found out, as our enquiries went through
on the Monday, was that David had been seen going in and out of the chemist with an individual
called Anthony Russell. They were both drug users. They lived near each other. They used to beg in the area for money,
so we were quite keen to trace Anthony. He was the last person, other than Julie,
that had seen David alive. Fred Dinenage: Five days after David Williams had been reported missing, police had a name--
38-year-old local man Anthony Russell. Jim Mahon: We realized that he was a close associate of David
and he lived in the area. He would hang around Riley Square or around the local supermarkets that
surrounded the area and would beg for money with other people in that community.
And then once they'd got enough money, they'd tended to head towards each other's flats
and use drugs. Fred Dinenage: He was a well-known figure in the area and one with a reputation for trouble.
Carol Scrivens: He was unhinged. He wasn't normal, you know. His behavior wasn't normal.
But people were always frightened of him. So he got moved on, but nobody ever did anything about it.
He used to go up to the hospital and annoy them. My daughter works at the hospital,
and she said that the security had had to move him on several times. [police sirens blare]
Jim Mahon: We tried to locate him. We went to his flat, couldn't get any response from the flat.
We forced entry into his flat to try and search for Anthony and David. Fred Dinenage: Anthony Russell's sparsely furnished
flat was spattered with blood. A brief search uncovered the source. Jim Mahon: On that Monday evening,
we found David's body hidden underneath Anthony's bed. What was evident was that he'd been quite savagely beaten,
so there'd been quite a lot of brute force used on David. Jane Monckton-Smith: Either those injuries
were defensive and came as a result of a full out fight with his attacker or, again, they
could have been about the rage that the attacker was feeling. Carol Scrivens: My daughter phoned me up,
and she was screaming down the phone at me. She says they found David. We was devastated.
I couldn't eat or sleep. And every time I closed my eyes, I kept thinking about what David must have gone through.
He must have been so scared because he probably wouldn't have believed it. If somebody went to attack him, he'd probably just
laugh thinking it's a joke. He wouldn't have realized until it was too late. Fred Dinenage: David's death meant
the police faced an entirely different investigation. - It had gone from a missing person on Saturday,
a murder and a missing person on Sunday, we've now got two murders. This now is where the investigation
really, really ramped up. David had suffered from 81 external injuries, some including a knife.
So he'd been stabbed. He'd got some severe wounds and bangs to his head. Brett Lockyer: Also, there was a lanyard around his neck,
which was causing neck compression, which would be very similar to Julie. Fred Dinenage: The lanyard ordinarily held David's keys,
but they were not with his body. Detectives believed and his mother's deaths were linked.
Brett Lockyer: The fact that I could see similarities between Julie's body and David's body
supported the notion that it was likely to be just one person. And I could see that the changes in which
were present in David's body would suggest that he was, in fact, the first victim, with Julie
following on afterwards. [tense music] Jim Mahon: We've got two crime scenes that we're working through, working through all the phone
evidence, working through who were the last people to see everyone alive and understanding their background.
But the main priority is we've got someone who's killed two people on the loose and is a real danger to the public.
Fred Dinenage: The double murder investigation was codenamed Operation Inshore.
And detectives had one person at the top of their list, Anthony Russell. Geoffrey Wansell: Anthony Russell
is a person of considerable interest in the killing of David and Julie Williams.
Jim Mahon: When we spoke to his family, we found that he had left the area. But he never had a phone.
He never had his own mobile phone, so we had no way of tracking his phone or understanding who he was in contact with.
And he just disappeared from Coventry. So we'd got a big manhunt on the go, but we had no idea where he was at this point.
Fred Dinenage: With a suspected double murderer at large, every precaution had to be taken.
The alert on Russell was put out nationwide. Carol Scrivens: They put it on the internet
and in the Coventry Evening Telegraph. They were showing you photos of this Anthony Russell,
saying do not approach him. He's very, very dangerous. Jim Mahon: We were getting sightings all over the country,
and we couldn't ignore these sightings because we had no way to confirm whether that sighting
was correct or not. So we had to link in with all the different police forces to try and do those enquiries.
Jane Monckton-Smith: He didn't have a vehicle of his own, so they weren't using the usual ANPR
tracking, that kind of thing. But they would have been looking at all public transport.
Jim Mahon: What we did find, as we moved through the tracking on the CCTV, so we'd got some points where people who
knew him had last seen him. He'd certainly been to a supermarket, which allowed us then to track him from the supermarket, which
captured him getting on a bus. Now, this bus then, we were able to track him going into Coventry city center,
but then we lost him within the bus station area, which wasn't covered by CCTV. So we assumed he'd gone into the city center
to then travel onwards, but we had no idea where he would have gone. Fred Dinenage: Anthony Russell had been
running away since childhood. By 2020, he was a man skilled in staying under the radar.
- Anthony Russell took it upon himself to adopt various disguises. He was a man who hadn't lost his senses.
He was extremely aware that he was the focus of interest by the police. - All the CCTV, when you put together each still
of what he looked like, he was changing his appearance all the time. He was stealing glasses.
He'd wear different hats, he'd wear hoods. His clothing was changed quite regularly.
Fred Dinenage: Russell was as organized as he was brutal. On Monday, 26th of October, just hours since Julie's body
was discovered and David still lay dead in his flat, Anthony Russell was already thinking ahead.
Jane Monckton-Smith: He needed cash, and he needed a phone. Geoffrey Wansell: He attacks a 78-year-old man,
stealing his mobile phone. He goes to Kenilworth where, believe it or not, Russell attacks a 71-year-old woman and steals 200 pounds.
He drags the poor lady along the ground, injuring her. Once again, the act of a man who
has absolutely no concern for anyone but himself. - Anybody coming into this man's path at this time
is in danger. Fred Dinenage: On the run from the police, wanted for two murders, Anthony Russell was a desperate man
with nothing to lose. And his murderous rampage was far from over. [tense music]
♪ ♪ By the 27th of October 2020, Coventry double murder suspect, Anthony Russell, had been on the run for two days.
12 miles away in the town of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire Police received a missing person alert.
Jim Mahon: A man reported that his girlfriend had gone missing. They were begging in Leamington Spa.
They had a different spot in the town where they would beg. And when he went to see where she was when he finished
begging, she'd just gone. He made that report on the Tuesday, so Warwickshire Police started a missing person inquiry
into a girl called Nicole. Geoffrey Wansell: Nicole McGregor, at this point, is five months pregnant and extremely proud of it.
Jim Mahon: She got a boyfriend called Chris. They lived in a flat in Leamington.
They were both drug users, but they were trying to get off drugs. Fred Dinenage: Nicole had not been
seen since the previous day, when she'd spent the morning with her partner and a new friend.
By Tuesday afternoon, Chris was frantic with worry. Jim Mahon: Chris wasn't the sort of person really
to interact with the police. I don't think he was particularly fond of the police.
But he got so worried by that evening, that he actually approached a uniformed police officer
and said, I'm really concerned that my girlfriend is missing. When the police started to get the information from Chris,
he started to disclose that the day before, they'd befriended a person called Anthony.
He was from Coventry. It was at that point when the realization came in that this
might be Anthony Russell. Fred Dinenage: That same evening, the investigation into the double murder of Julie and David got a result.
The bloodied fingerprint from Julie's flat found a match on the national database.
It belonged to Anthony Russell. Jim Mahon: The fingerprint was the confirmation that Anthony was the suspect that we were looking for.
Fred Dinenage: The chilling revelation that Nicole McGregor had been in the company
of a man suspected of murdering two people in cold blood was one police took very seriously.
They knew that time was of the essence. Jim Mahon: We scoured Leamington for CCTV
and seized all the CCTV of the town center. We were able then, with the information from Chris,
to piece together where Nicole was. Geoffrey Wansell: Then the story, dark, although it already is, begets gets even darker
because, for some reason known only really to Anthony Russell, he targets Nicole McGregor.
Jim Mahon: What we saw was that Anthony Russell had approached her. He had been begging over the other side of the road,
and they'd walked away together. Geoffrey Wansell: Anthony Russell invites Nicole McGregor to join him in a place
called Newbold Comyn, a wooded area in Leamington Spa. Quite quiet, quite secluded.
It was suggested that she'd taken up the invitation because she thought that he could supply more drugs.
Fred Dinenage: CCTV showed Nicole and Anthony Russell entering the woods together.
40 minutes later, Russell emerged alone. Jim Mahon: That gave us then, the last sighting
of Nicole McGregor. And we were able to go through the woodland in the area where he could have got to on foot
in that 40-minute period. Fred Dinenage: The CCTV cameras captured Russell walking the short journey
back to the town center. Geoffrey Wansell: He goes to seek out Nicole's boyfriend, the father of her unborn child.
Jim Mahon: What we were able to do then was track Anthony Russell. And what we found was that he spent the Tuesday
with Chris, Nicole's boyfriend, going round Leamington looking for her. Jane Monckton-Smith: He was like sympathetic to him,
and he was inserting himself into an investigation as a good guy. He was saying things to Nicole's boyfriend
like, oh, you must be really looking forward to becoming a father. Fred Dinenage: On the 29th of October,
three days after Nicole was last seen, police searched Newbold Comyn. Jim Mahon: We knew Anthony had already killed two people.
We've got a girl going missing with Anthony, so our biggest fear was that she was dead.
[grim music] On the Thursday, there was a specialist police teams that are trained to search wooded, difficult areas, do
a methodical search to make sure that they search every area and they take it piece by piece.
Storm Barbara was hitting the UK. The river was riding quite high, so the terrain was really, really difficult.
Her body was found in some bushes, and she had been strangled with her own leggings.
Brett Lockyer: I received another phone call from the police to inform me that they
had found another victim. And this victim was Nicole McGregor. Nicole's body was found with her face down.
And what I could see was that there was vegetation within Nicole's mouth, which is likely to have
been when she was face down on the floor, but alive. Geoffrey Wansell: The sheer terror
that she must have felt when she was being attacked by this man she thought she trusted.
Brett Lockyer: The position in which she was found was very suggestive that she was
likely to have been the subject of a sexual assault as well. Fred Dinenage: Both Nicole and the baby
she'd look forward to bringing into the world were dead. Brett Lockyer: It can be a very sobering experience
when you perform a post-mortem examination on an expectant mother, when you find the unborn child lying peacefully
inside the mum's womb. This woman, who was excited about the prospect of being a mum, has had that taken away from her.
Fred Dinenage: The death of Nicole McGregor meant police suspected Anthony Russell
of killing three innocent people in a period of less than a week. Their biggest concern was what he would do next.
Jane Monckton-Smith: Russell is becoming more and more dangerous. So he's committed murders.
He then is attacking people, taking their money, taking their phones. But again, there's a kind of a logical reason for doing that,
even if the methods are brutal and awful. But now, he's escalated to killing for the sake of it
because it pleases him. So at the end of this seven days, he's about as dangerous as he can possibly get.
Fred Dinenage: Once again, Russell went on the run. A wanted man, he was prepared to do whatever
it took to make his escape. Jim Mahon: He left Leamington. He'd walked away on foot.
We saw that on CCTV and lost the tracking of him as he disappeared. We then found that there'd been a robbery just
outside Leamington. An old man called Roy, he'd had a brick smashed over the top of his head.
Fred Dinenage: The attacker was a man with a plan, a man without mercy. Geoffrey Wansell: He steals the car.
He leaves the 78-year-old with a fractured skull in his own front door, takes the car, and leaves.
Jim Mahon: He only survived because there were some people that were doing gardening that had turned
up to help with his garden, that actually found him there, and were able to get paramedics there and do
first aid to keep him alive. Fred Dinenage: Police suspected the attacker was Anthony Russell, a fugitive hell bent at getting
away no matter what the cost. Jane Monckton-Smith: Russell is what I would call on a spree, one emotional event.
He's not coming down. He's gone up into that rage when he's killed the first person, and he kind of stayed there.
Spree killers don't stop until they're stopped. Fred Dinenage: Preventing Russell from killing again
was the police's number one priority. - We're working closely with Warwickshire Police
to locate Anthony Russell as soon as possible. But I'd appeal to the public if they've got any information
as to where he might be, if they see him at all, make sure that they call us on 999.
Fred Dinenage: They put out alerts on the red Ford C-Max he'd stolen. - It was picked up on some ANPR cameras,
and it's headed towards the Staffordshire Police area. But it had pretty much disappeared
into the countryside, and it hadn't been hitting any ANPR cameras from that point.
Fred Dinenage: In October 2020, there was a large police presence in rural Staffordshire
due to a recent spike in theft there. In the early hours of the 30th of October, one of the patrol
cars made an unexpected find. Jim Mahon: They came across the vehicle. And when they did the check on the vehicle,
they realized that it had been stolen in a violent robbery. It might have been linked to our murder suspect.
police officer: There's the car. Strike, strike, strike. Jim Mahon: They approached the car.
[rustling] police officer: Police! Jim Mahon: Found Anthony asleep. [indistinct yelling]
- That's where he was arrested. police officer: Anthony Russell, you're under arrest for the murder of three people.
You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense. If you do not mention, when questioned,
something which you later relay on in court as you do say may be given in evidence.
Fred Dinenage: At 4:17 AM on Friday, 30th of October, the man suspected of killing three
people was taken to Perry Barr Police Station in Birmingham. Jim Mahon: He refused to be interviewed.
He wouldn't leave his cell, so he was eventually asked the questions at his cell.
And he just put a blanket over his head and ignored all the questions and refused to make any comment.
Fred Dinenage: Having caught their fugitive, the police would now need to use all their skills
to link Russell to all three murders and make sure a suspected triple killer didn't escape justice.
[tense music] ♪ ♪ On Monday, the 2nd of November, 2020, Anthony Russell appeared via video link from Birmingham
Magistrates' Court charged with the murders of David Williams, Julie Williams, and Nicole McGregor.
Nicole's unborn baby was too young to be classed as a victim. - He killed Julie, he killed David, he killed Nicola.
But they didn't say he killed the baby because she wasn't born. I don't understand how that baby was
not even classified as a body. Fred Dinenage: The violent robberies Russell had carried out whilst on the run
were added to the list of offenses. Jim Mahon: The team that worked on it were brilliant.
The real fear there is that you can find him within a week, but if you've not got the evidence to hand,
he could be back out the door again. So it was really, really key that the team worked as hard as they did to make sure
that they got that evidence. Fred Dinenage: Whilst Russell awaited trial, another charge was brought against him.
Jim Mahon: We also charged him with rape of Nicole because we found evidence that he'd had
sexual intercourse with her. We knew that Nicole wouldn't have willingly gone with him to have sex,
so we charged him with the rape. Fred Dinenage: In the lead up to trial, the Williams family suffered further heartbreak.
For Julie's son, David's brother Daniel, the loss was too great to bear. Carol Scrivens: Daniel didn't want to live without his mum
or without his brother, which is why he decided to hang himself, which is heartbreaking to think
that he's in that much pain that he thought that was the best outcome. [grim music]
♪ ♪ As far as I'm concerned, Anthony Russell should be charged with Daniel's murder as well.
Fred Dinenage: As the team prepared for the court case, investigators put together an account of that fateful week
in October. Jim Mahon: We did piece together some things from Anthony's associates and
David's associates. And we realized that Anthony thought that David had slept with his girlfriend,
so we think that was the motive for killing David. Carol Scrivens: It was all lies.
But all this was going on Facebook, saying Anthony Russell's looking for David because he's
been seeing his girlfriend. Fred Dinenage: Police believe that Julie's murder was
directly related to her son's. Jim Mahon: Anthony's never really given us a full account
as to exactly what happened. So we've never understood the real motives, but we think Julie reporting David missing
was the potential motive for killing Julie. Geoffrey Wansell: Russell calculated
that he couldn't keep up the charade of David having disappeared and decided, in a cold blooded,
premeditated manner, to kill David's mother, Julie. - The police said that Anthony Russell probably
knocked on Julie's door because she wasn't shutting up, and she weren't going away.
My heart breaks thinking she's just been told that her son is dead and now, you're next.
Fred Dinenage: In the case of Nicole McGregor, the evidence suggested Russell had raped her, then killed
her to cover his tracks. The team put together a case which the Crown Prosecution Service felt confident of winning.
Jim Mahon: It was really, really challenging because we're used to dealing with one
murder, one crime scene. And suddenly, we were finding murder, murder, murder, scene, scene, scene.
Fred Dinenage: The investigation gathered almost 9,000 hours of CCTV footage and put together a timeline which
shone light on the message Julie had received from David about leaving town due to drug debts.
Jim Mahon: We believe that that text message has actually been sent by Anthony, after David had been killed,
to Julie to try and put her off the scent of it being Anthony that had killed him.
Fred Dinenage: It was 14 months after the murders before Anthony Russell was tried for his crimes.
On the 14th of February, 2022, his trial began at Warwick Crown Court. Jim Mahon: Everyone was there, and it was
before the jury was sworn in. So we were expecting quite a lengthy trial, but then he pleaded guilty on the first day.
He pleaded guilty to everything, apart from the rape. - That's not unusual, actually, because murdering somebody
has some kind of machismo to it. You can hold your head up in the prison when you get your sentence.
You're much more likely to get sympathy because you can say, oh, I thought this and I thought that,
and I was being treated badly. He can't say anything like that about a rape. Jim Mahon: So that left us with a decision
then whether we were going to proceed just with the rape or not, and we decided we would try him for the rape.
[grim music] Carol Scrivens: Julie's sister went to the court every single day. I couldn't go because I kept thinking,
if I go and I see something, I won't be able to unsee it. The things she's seen and the photos she's seen,
and what she heard that never come out in the papers, I think people would be very, very shocked if they'd
known just how bad he was. Fred Dinenage: The jury heard the testimonies of those involved in the case.
Brett Lockyer: The focus of the trial was whether or not Anthony Russell had raped
Nicole prior to her death. The fact that she was found in a state of undress, the position in which her body was found,
would suggest to me that she had been subject to a sexual assault. Fred Dinenage: Called to give evidence for the prosecution
was Nicole's boyfriend, Chris, who had searched for Nicole with the very man who'd killed her.
Jim Mahon: It was the first time he'd seen Anthony since Anthony had been with him.
He was unable to give any evidence in a calm way because he reacted so badly to seeing
Anthony in the courtroom. And that resulted in a jury failing to reach a verdict.
Fred Dinenage: A new trial date was set for the following month. And on the 7th of March, 2022, at Warwick Crown Court,
Russell returned to face the charge of raping Nicole McGregor. Jim Mahon: We ran exactly the same trial.
And the second time round, I think because Chris had actually seen Anthony, he'd faced him,
he was able to stand and give evidence. Chris's evidence was quite compelling. Geoffrey Wansell: When the jury came back,
they found him guilty after only deliberating for 83 minutes of the rape of Nicole McGregor.
Fred Dinenage: At his arrest and during the trial, Russell had remained relatively silent.
When the time came for sentencing, he declined to leave his cell. Geoffrey Wansell: Russell is so uncooperative,
he isn't even prepared to leave his jail cell to go to court to hear his sentence.
Jim Mahon: A whole life term, which means he will never, ever be released. And that is reserved for the most serious offenders.
I think there's less than 100 people that have received that sort of sentence in the UK.
Fred Dinenage: It was the result everyone had hoped for, but there was little cause for jubilation.
Carol Scrivens: The families are the ones that are doing the sentence, not Russell.
He's got the easy bit to do, but the people that have to live with what he's done
is unbearable. Jim Mahon: It's really difficult to feel any good feeling from it
because it just is so horrific. But the only satisfaction you get is that he's in prison now.
He won't come out, and he won't hurt anybody else. Carol Scrivens: The bodies weren't released
until after the court cases. David and Julie had a funeral together at the Canley Crematorium.
And they also had a picture of Daniel. And his ashes were there so that they could
include the three of them. And we're all sat there, all looking at each other like everything's surreal
because you might see it on the television, you might read about in the newspaper.
But that doesn't happen to people like us, just ordinary people. If only Julie hadn't opened the door to Anthony Russell,
if David had realized what an evil, evil person his friend was, the story would be completely different.
Fred Dinenage: Anthony Russell was a man who took what he wanted and gave nothing back
in return, a man motivated only by serving his own needs, who terrified the elderly victims he brutalized and stole
from, who subjected three people who trusted him to sadistic and torturous murders.
To this day, he's refused to explain or apologize for his actions, making Anthony Russell one of the world's
most evil killers. [theme music] ♪ ♪ [audio logo]

A violent spree left three innocent people dead as Anthony robbed, fled and attacked without hesitation. Police launched a massive manhunt, racing to catch him before he could claim yet another victim.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

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Brief Summary

Anthony Russell murdered three people in a week, including a pregnant woman, leading to a nationwide manhunt and his eventual capture.

Key points

The Disappearance of Nicole McGregor. In 2020, pregnant Nicole McGregor vanished, sparking a frantic search by her boyfriend Chris.
The Brutal Murders. Anthony Russell, the last person to see Nicole, was linked to multiple murders.
A Shocking Twist. Just 24 hours after Julie reported David missing, she herself was found dead.
The Investigation Intensifies. With two murders confirmed, the investigation into Anthony Russell escalated dramatically.
The Manhunt for Anthony Russell. As a double murder suspect, Anthony Russell evaded capture, leading to a nationwide alert.
Nicole McGregor's Disappearance. Nicole, five months pregnant, goes missing after befriending Anthony Russell.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You never expect something like that ever to happen to your family, ever.

The shock of violence impacting families.

2:56WatchJun 11, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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