World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 13 - Arthur Hutchinson - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: 23rd of October, 1983, Dore, South Yorkshire, England, Basil Laitner, his wife, Avril,
and their children, Richard and Nicola, had settled in for the night. They'd been hosting their eldest daughter's wedding
earlier that day. Unbeknownst to them, a stranger armed with a knife had broken into their house.
- GEOFFREY: He creeps up the stairs and mistakenly thinks that Nicola is in the room with the
bridesmaid's dress on the door and goes in. He discovers that it's not Nicola, it's Richard.
He wastes no time in killing Richard Laitner with a series of vicious knife wounds.
- NARRATOR: The deadly commotion woke father Basil who went to investigate, he too was stabbed to death.
The killer was 42-year-old Arthur Hutchinson, a violent criminal and rapist who was on the run from the police.
After murdering Basil and Richard he made his way to mother Avril's bedroom, where he stabbed her
repeatedly. - ELIZABETH: She had 26 marks of violence on her body, it was much more violence than he needed
to actually end her life. - NARRATOR: The killer then made his way to 18-year-old Nicola's bedroom, he raped the teenager
multiple times before going on the run once again. - ALAN: You'd had this very happy occasion,
this big family wedding, and then 12 hours later the world's being turned on its head and poor Nicky Laitner,
her life changed forever. - NARRATOR: His history of violence culminated in an unthinkable attack, a sadistic rape of an
18-year-old girl, having just murdered her parents and elder brother in cold blood.
This makes Arthur Hutchinson one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ - NARRATOR: On the morning of October the 24th, 1983
workmen made their way to Basil Laitner's house to dismantle the marquee in the garden, they made
a startling discovery. - MICHAEL: They found Nicola in a most dreadful state, totally traumatized.
They call the police and they realize the horrific nature of the crime. The major incident team were called out and I was
part of that. - He wreaked utter devastation in a matter of minutes, he took out three prominent members of the local
community and raped a young woman. - NARRATOR: News of the Wedding Day Massacre hit the headlines and spread fear across the whole
of the nation. The killer, Arthur Hutchinson, had been on the run for 26 days and quickly became Britain's most wanted man.
- It's only a few years after the arrest of Peter Sutcliffe for Yorkshire Ripper and you'd seen a reign of terror.
People remembered very quickly. And you've got a knifeman on the loose, a man who's
been prepared to kill three people in cold blood. So, very quickly, people changing their patterns
of behavior and women wouldn't go out at night unaccompanied. - NARRATOR: As fear gripped the nation, the brazen killer
who had a history of violent and sexual offenses, even taunted the police whilst on the run
and gave himself the nickname The Fox. - He wants to be recognized, he wants infamy, he wants
to develop a brand, he wants people to fear him. - He's sadistic, he's cruel, he has no empathy for anyone.
- NARRATOR: This killer's story begins on the 19th of February, 1941. Arthur Hutchinson was born in Hartlepool in the
northeast of England. - GEOFFREY: Arthur Hutchinson was born into an extraordinary family, in fact it was two families
in the end. His mother Louise had a husband called Cuthbert, with whom she had six children, but they also had
a lodger called Arthur Hutchinson, with whom Louise had two further children, the first of which was
Arthur Hutchinson, named after his father. - NARRATOR: Mother Louise eventually set up home
with Arthur Hutchinson, senior. For their son, Arthur, growing up wasn't easy. - His siblings didn't like him, they made fun of him,
he was an illegitimate child and they were legitimate children. So right from the word go, he was an outsider,
he was excluded, he was marginalized even within his own family. - NARRATOR: But young Hutchinson was close
to his mother, and would often seek comfort from her. - There's not a lot of doubt in my mind that
Arthur Hutchinson was Louise Reardon's favorite child. This was probably exacerbated by the fact he caught
meningitis as a small boy and would therefore have been extremely ill, it was a nasty disease to catch
as a young child. And then he rode into a lampost on his bicycle, fracturing his skull.
- And he was in a coma for three days, he had quite a significant injury to his head.
- And what happens in things like head injuries, in some cases, it weakens inhibitory controls
and then you act out more impulsively than you might otherwise do. - I don't think that head injury led him to become
a murderer, I think it might be a factor in the background. Because we can see when we study convicted killers
that there are higher rates of traumatic brain injury in them than there are in the general population,
but it's certainly not a causative reason and it's not an excuse. - NARRATOR: At school, Hutchinson struggled
academically and was often teased by his five sisters. - That type of bullying, and teasing, and humiliation
as a child stays with people, and it harbors an enormous amount of anger. They just build up so much resentment of people
that they want to get back at who hurt them. - Hutchinson's anger with his sisters, who were making
his life a misery, was to display itself very forcefully at the age of seven, when he stabbed one of them
with a pair of scissors. - NARRATOR: As he grew older, Hutchinson became disruptive, and his behavior towards the opposite sex
was disturbing. - From a very, very early age, Hutchinson was interested in sex, and he took the most
profound interest in it. - At age 11, he finds himself in juvenile court for indecent assault, now this is a really, really serious crime
for an 11-year-old to be committing. And these crimes do not just emerge out of the blue,
there tends to be an escalation of behavior. So this suggests to me that you have a child here
who doesn't care about harming other people. - He must have only just hit puberty, but I think
the moment he did, every kind of hormone in the young Hutchinson took off. - This is an opportunity to intervene.
And for somebody to be committing this serious an offense at this age tells me that they are capable
of much, much worse. - NARRATOR: In his late teens, he got involved in petty crime,
and would steal cars and switch their license plates. - He was a classic case of a bad lad gone worse,
you know, he started out being a bit of a handful as a boy, graduated into petty crime, got involved
with the police, and had an unhealthy attitude towards women. - NARRATOR: Despite his reputation as a bad boy,
he was popular with women. - He was obviously very attractive, he lived in a comparatively small area, his reputation must have
preceded him, but he was one of those ultimate bad boys that girls want to change.
- ALAN: I think Arthur's attitude to women was that they all fancied him, it was as simple as that.
He had this unquenchable belief that women wanted to be with him, wanted to be around him,
wanted to sleep with him. - NARRATOR: Throughout his teens, Hutchinson had 19 appearances in front of the magistrates, including
four charges of sexual intercourse with girls under the age of 16. After leaving school, Hutchinson joined the
National Coal Board as a trainee miner. - He's soon sacked from that job because he
breeches safety regulations. He's somebody who doesn't respect rules, he doesn't think they apply to him.
- He went into a number of professions, he'd worked as a farm laborer, he traveled with gypsies,
he worked with the circus. - These are jobs that involve him kind of going off the grid,
they're not regular jobs, and I think he's got that kind of proneness to boredom, that need for stimulation.
- NARRATOR: Eventually he did settle down, and in 1960, aged 18, he married his neighbor
in Hartlepool, and they had a child together. But Hutchinson quickly went back to his thieving ways,
and he lost his job as a milkman for stealing wages. - He was incorrigible, whatever job he took,
he couldn't keep, he wanted to break the law, that's the only thing he really knew about.
- NARRATOR: The marriage became strained and the couple split up. Not long after, he met a teenager who quickly
became pregnant, but again, this relationship didn't last either, and it wouldn't be long before
Hutchinson's deviant desires would surface. A year later, in 1963, aged 22, he was jailed
for unlawful sexual intercourse with an underaged girl. - There are no filters, there are no boundaries,
there are no moral brakes on his behavior that stand in his way. He's one of these people, when he wants to do
something, he will simply go and do it, when he wants to attain something, he will go and take it.
This is somebody who is potentially very, very dangerous. - NARRATOR: With the charges now mounting
against sexual predator Hutchinson, he showed no signs of stopping. The crimes he would go on to commit would be more
violent and soon turn deadly. After his release from prison, Hutchinson found work
in a chicken factory, where he met his second wife. The couple married just months later, and moved in
with his mother. - The second wife was only 16, and he was 27. She was rapidly pregnant, and he beat her.
She once said anything could provoke him no matter what. She also said that at one point, she saw him knock his mother
halfway across the room from her chair. - He felt that he was invincible and that he could charm
his way to anybody, and the other side of him, he was a very savage individual and could turn very,
very quickly. He had this sort of split personality that enabled him to get through his type of life.
- This is a person who enjoys controlling women, he enjoys having women look after him, have a roof over his head
and dinner on the table, and this marriage is one that is violent, it's one that's abusive, his wife describes
how he was promiscuous and controlling. - NARRATOR: Unsurprisingly after just three years,
this marriage also failed. - The day he left her, he beat her up in the street, knocked her to the ground, kicked her.
This was a man of violent tendency. - This is a pattern of behavior with him, this man is a parasite
who feeds off the women in his life, gets what he wants, and then discards them.
- NARRATOR: Hutchinson's appetite for sex continued, and in 1972, he was convicted of unlawful sexual intercourse
and received another prison sentence, this time for three and a half years. By 1978, Hutchinson was being investigated for
suspected Social Security fraud. He was adamant that his half-brother Dino had tipped
the authorities off. - He set off after his half-brother with a sawn-off shotgun determined to end his life.
Dino, thankfully, escaped, and Hutchinson was caught and indeed imprisoned. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson was sentenced to yet more
time behind bars, this time a five-year sentence in Leeds Prison for attempted murder and for carrying
a firearm. - Hutchinson is somebody who loves being in control. Now, when he is sentenced to a custodial term
that takes away a lot of his power. I think he would be feeling very resentful, he'd be
ruminating, he'd be fantasizing about what he was going to do when he was eventually released.
- NARRATOR: Alone with his thoughts, Hutchinson's deviant sexual desires were once again ignited.
He read in a newspaper about a woman in the north of Selby who'd recently come into money, she quickly became
his next target. - For some reason, he became fixated on, became obsessed with. She was divorced, she had a new boyfriend, she had
a lot of money, throughout the course of his day, he's looking at different people to see who he could get
over on, how he could go about it. - And she moved to live somewhere just north of Selby
in a bungalow right on the edge of a field, and Hutchinson had read this story and had made
drawings and sketches of what this bungalow would be like in the back of this paperback book.
And on his release from Leeds Prison, he was allowed to take the book with him. - NARRATOR: In September, 1982, six months after
his release, Hutchinson made his way to the woman's bungalow and broke in. He stole her checkbook and attempted to withdraw
cash from a local bank, but was refused. Penniless, he came up with another plan.
- And he then decided that he would follow this lady and present himself to her, and she was bound to
fall for his charm and want to marry him. He planned very, very carefully, he set up a hideaway
in a field near to the bungalow, watching the lady and her male friend. - He saw the woman in the house making love to her
boyfriend, he waits for the boyfriend to leave. - When the male friend left on the second night,
he then presented himself absolutely naked to this lady. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson made his advances, which were
quickly rebuked by the horrified woman. Unable to accept the rejection, Hutchinson raped her.
- Hutchinson is a misogynist and he feels entitled to use and abuse women. He hasn't had access to women in the time
that he's been in custody, so by the time his release comes around, he feels entitled to go and take
what he wants. - There was a struggle, and he was wearing a St. Christopher medal on a chain around his neck,
and that was broken. The very sensible lady advised him to take the medallion to a jeweler's shop to be repaired, and he did that.
And of course the first thing she did was to drive to the police station and report the horrendous attack.
They dispatched police officers and caught him just coming out of the jeweler's and arrested him.
They took him back to Selby Police Station and of course as he walked in, there she was in the
entrance foyer, and there was a huge battle with officers. - NARRATOR: Just months after his release, Hutchinson
found himself back in police custody. He was determined not to be sent to prison for the rape,
and decided to take action. - Hutchinson is to have appeared at Selby Magistrate's
Court, which is actually part of the police station, they were joined, so he's taken to it.
He persuades the two officers to uncuff him because he wants to go to the lavatory.
They make this mistake of uncuffing him, he jumps through the window, cutting himself in the process,
but then lands on a mesh which is protected by barbed wire. He cuts his leg really seriously on the barbed wire,
but doesn't stop, jumps over the barbed wire onto the pavement, and sprints off.
- Here's a potentially dangerous man, certainly somebody who should be under lock and key,
pending investigations, and he is now roaming Yorkshire free and unfettered. Nobody knows quite where he is, nobody has the first
clue of how to find him again, and he goes to ground, he just disappears. - The police, not surprisingly, launch a manhunt,
he's an extremely dangerous prisoner. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson lived rough for the next
three days. But with his leg badly cut, on the 2nd of October, he decided to seek help.
- He made his way the 19 miles to Doncaster and was treated at Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
- He's obviously disheveled, he's been living on dandelion roots and whatever he can forage for the last
three days, mud all over him because he's had to crawl along gutters, his trousers are ripped to shreds,
nobody in A&E thinks to say, "Well, how did all this happen?" or if they did, he had a very clever way
of describing it. - NARRATOR: Unaware that he was a wanted man, medical staff tended to his wound.
- And they treated it, dressed it, and gave him certain instructions that the dressing needs changing,
and you need antibiotics, you need to come back. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson returned to the hospital
two days later before going on the run again. During this time, he committed a number of burglaries
to obtain cash. - Nobody has a clue where to find him, and he's been on the run for about three and a half weeks
before he finally washes up in Sheffield in Dore, a suburb just to the south of the city center.
He would have been getting a bit desperate by this point. He's been living, almost literally, in hedge bottoms.
He's chanced upon this wedding party in this prosperous part of Sheffield, a large, expensive-looking house,
marquee tacked on the side. - NARRATOR: The owners of the house were hosting a wedding reception for their eldest daughter.
Hutchinson crept onto the grounds of the property and hid. - The house is owned by a local solicitor,
59-year-old Basil Laitner, along with his wife who is 55, Avril, she's a doctor.
Also attending the wedding is their son, Richard, who's 28, and their younger daughter, Nicola, who is 18
and is a bridesmaid at the event. - NARRATOR: Over 200 guests gathered on the 23rd of October to help celebrate what should
have been one of the happiest days of their life. - A lavish affair in Sheffield, a lot of champagne,
a lot of food, and a very, very happy day. Sort of draws to a close, it gets past seven,
or thereabouts, it's getting dark. Hutchinson is still hiding in the garden. Bride and groom depart for a local hotel.
Basil, Avril, and their son, Richard, depart for dinner with a relative not far away, but Nicola decides to stay.
- And at that time, unknown to everyone, of course, Hutchinson had made his way into the back garden
of the house, and had been observing what had taken place. And he stayed like that, in that area, for quite
some time because the family had returned home, probably about 11 o'clock, and then they retired to bed.
- NARRATOR: Under the cover of darkness, Hutchinson broke into the Laitners' house.
Armed with a knife, he was about to carry out the next stage in his sadistic plan.
- The motivation was sexual in this case. And in this particular case, he saw the young girl,
he became fixated on her, like he has done before, and his goal was to rape her.
- Hutchinson creeps up the stairs and mistakenly thinks that Nicola is in the room with the bridesmaid's dress
on the door and goes in. He discovers that it's not Nicola, it's Richard. - And Richard's out of bed in a flash and fights back,
but Hutchinson has the knife, so he prevails. - NARRATOR: Richard was stabbed multiple times
in the chest, the impact was so brutal that one stab wound cut through four of his ribs.
The commotion woke the rest of the family. - Mr. Laitner had obviously gone to investigate,
their bedroom was on the ground floor and the guest bedrooms were upstairs. And he was actually climbing up the stairs
when he was attacked. - GEOFFREY: Now you have Hutchinson who has already killed Richard, stabs Basil in the throat twice,
killing him, and he stabs him again in the back. Now he's only got two women in the house, and he knows it.
- Mrs. Laitner, hearing some noise, went out of her bedroom on the ground floor, and Hutchinson went down
the stairs again and attacked her. She tried to put her hands out to stop the assault
on her and then grabbed hold of the knife, it was a huge knife, probably one of the biggest bowie knives
I've ever seen. - NARRATOR: Again Hutchinson overpowered his victim and killed her.
- There were three dead bodies in this house, in Dore in Sheffield, and one terrified 18-year-old.
- You can't really imagine how it must have been in that house for those awful, awful few minutes.
And within a few minutes, both Nicky's parents are dead too. She's the last person alive in that house.
- NARRATOR: The merciless killer then made his way up the stairs once again. - He sets his sights on Nicola, she was what he wanted
to get to, essentially. He went into her bedroom, he put the light on, he threatened to kill her if she didn't do what he wanted
her to do. He marched her out to the marquee in the garden, where the family had been celebrating a wedding
earlier on that day, and he raped her. - Hutchinson takes her back upstairs again,
past the body of Basil, back into the bedroom, where he proceeds to rape her not once more, but twice more.
- NARRATOR: With her family lying dead around her, Nicola's survival instincts kicked in.
- She pretended to enjoy it when Hutchinson was raping her. Hutchinson was an incredibly narcissistic individual.
I think Nicola's behavior towards him and the performance that she was able to put on kind of
pacified him a little bit, validated him, and actually saved her own life. - NARRATOR: The heartless killer showed no signs
of emotion towards the deadly and bloody chaos he'd created. - After Hutchinson had murdered the family,
after he'd raped Nicola, he went and drank some of the family's champagne and ate some of their cheese.
Now, this appears to be completely bizarre behavior, somebody's gone from murder and rape one minute
to eating and drinking the next, but Hutchinson is somebody who simply follows his own wants
and his own desires. He's hungry and he's thirsty, it is as simple as that. He is so unaffected by what he's done.
- NARRATOR: It's almost dawn, and for some mysterious reason he ties Nicola up again, covers her
in the coverlet, there's blood from his knee on her bedclothes, and says, "Don't suffocate", and leaves.
- As the dawn broke, he made good his escape and then went on the run. - NARRATOR: The following day, workmen arrived
at the Laitners' house to dismantle the marquee. - They realized something was wrong, you know,
they could get no response, went into the house, saw signs of disturbance, came across the bodies.
- And then they discover Nicola. Nicola is clearly traumatized, I mean, it's been the most
terrible, terrible experience, there can be nothing that could have prepared any 18-year-old for that
sort of ordeal at the hands of a monster. - NARRATOR: The workmen call the police
and Michael Burdis was part of the major incident team. 18-year-old Nicola Laitner was now their key witness.
- She was extremely traumatized. We assigned officers to work with her, they produced
an artist's impression, and we used a local artist, and he produced a picture. - NARRATOR: The police now had a good idea
what the killer looked like. They just didn't know who he was. - At this stage, no one had actually joined the dots
between Selby and Sheffield. At this point, nobody was saying the man who escaped
from Selby three and a half weeks ago is the man who's committed these murders. - NARRATOR: The police set up an incident room
in the local village hall, and forensic teams quickly set about trying to gather any evidence that might
lead them to the killer. - We got probably 300 different people that we needed to identify to see whether they had seen
or heard anything that might have given us some clues as to who was responsible.
We discovered a champagne bottle on the kitchen table, and on that bottle, we discovered a palm print
and some fingerprints. And we were able to discover a fairly large piece of cheese
in the refrigerator which had bite marks in it, and we managed to get an impression of the teeth
that had made them. - NARRATOR: News of the murders hit the headlines, and the city of Sheffield was gripped by fear.
- Not surprisingly, the people of Yorkshire, and particularly those around Sheffield, were devastated that
three people should be killed on their doorstep in one night, on the evening of a wedding.
The tremble that would have gone through the whole community, it was literally extraordinary.
And what's more, the perpetrator has not been caught, there is a man on the loose.
- NARRATOR: Two days after the murder, the police had a major breakthrough with the help of
Nicola Laitner's description of the murderer. - We received a call from North Yorkshire Police,
from Selby, to inform me that they had experienced a man escaping from their police station, and he'd been
arrested and charged originally with a very serious case of rape. And it seemed to be the same type of crime that had
occurred in our circumstances. And we were able to compare the picture with a photograph
taken only a few weeks earlier by Selby Police Station, and it was almost a carbon copy,
it was an amazing likeness. We were able to get his fingerprints from the North Yorkshire Police, and our fingerprint experts
compared them and immediately said, "This is the man." So, we knew within two days that we were looking
for Arthur Hutchinson. - NARRATOR: Desperate to catch their man, on the 27th of October, four days after the attack,
the police took the unusual steps of releasing information on their number one suspect to the press.
- MAN: It was from Selby Magistrate's Court a month ago that Arthur Hutchinson escaped from
police custody. He got out through a toilet window. Hutchinson, said to be a physical fitness fanatic,
then climbed onto the roof of a police van which was parked in the backyard, climbed over a back wall,
and ran off. - It's a very rare event that the police will actually name who they're looking for.
But on this event, we took the decision that the public were at danger, and at risk from this man
being at large in the surrounding area. It was important we should say to the public,
"Look out for this man, but if you have seen him, keep away from him." - And those posters went up everywhere, you know,
they made a big, big impact. - There was a major front-page story in a Northeastern newspaper which announced that
Arthur Hutchinson was our number one suspect, and prime suspect, and that's who we were looking for.
- NARRATOR: The terrified public were keen to help the police with their search for the killer.
- It also brought with it additional problems. We had over 3,000 calls, 1,000 calls in the first day,
from members of the public thinking that they'd seen him, and some of them probably had, but a good number hadn't.
- NARRATOR: Hutchinson had now fled nearly 40 miles away, as far as Nottinghamshire.
His name and face was all over the news, so on the 30th of October, he decided to call The Yorkshire Post.
- He tried to put people off the scent, in fact he'd been traveling a great deal more than he let on
in the phone call with The Yorkshire Post. - And in these calls, this is just a narcissistic monologue,
this is all "me, me, me" there is no mention whatsoever about his victims, if anything, he's taken the victim role
for himself. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson reveled in the media spotlight. - ALAN: He started writing letters to The Yorkshire Post
taunting the police, that's when he gave himself the ludicrous nickname The Fox.
Because he could slip in and out unseen, and the police couldn't catch him. And he boasted of having been in and out of Doncaster
four times without being caught. - LOUIS: When you look at someone like Jack the Ripper,
for example, Jack the Ripper didn't give himself the name, the media gave him the name.
But in this case, Hutchinson gave himself the name, he's The Fox, he wants to present himself in
a certain way to other people, sly, cunning. - The police hired in a behavioral psychologist,
and she put a finger on it straight away and said, "This is a man bigging himself up, this is about him,
"his reputation, and his self image: the master criminal "that the police couldn't possibly catch."
- The context is really important here, only a few years prior to this, we'd seen the conviction of the
Yorkshire Ripper, and we saw the kind of celebrity status that was attached to Peter Sutcliffe.
And I think Arthur Hutchinson wanted a piece of that, he felt like he deserved that kind of recognition.
- NARRATOR: Hutchinson had now been on the run for six days since murdering three members
of the same family. The police had deployed all of their resources into finding him.
Nine forces joined in the hunt, spotter planes and helicopters scanned the Peak District, but there was no sign
of the deadly fugitive. - Hutchinson is intent on evading capture, he starts to alter his appearance, starts to use disguises,
he moves around a lot, mostly on buses. There were sightings of him at various points, particularly
at the end of October, about eight days after the killings, in a pub. But nothing happens.
- NARRATOR: The brazen killer thought he was invincible but the police were closing in on him.
- We were fortunate enough to know that a brooch had been manufactured specifically to give to
Avril Laitner, and that brooch was missing. And it was quite obvious that Hutchinson had stolen it,
and so we were able to circulate pictures into jewelers in surrounding towns. And we were able to trace some of his movements
into Nottinghamshire, Mansfield, Worksop, before he then moved further back north.
- NARRATOR: With the media frenzy and the killer's taunting messages, the pressure was mounting
to catch the killer, and the police had come up with a plan to lure Hutchinson in by leaking information about
the killer to the media. - Mick Burdis was aware that Hutchinson had injured his knee on a piece of barbed wire when he escaped from
Selby Police Station, and used this very cleverly by playing at the injury. That it might be worse than Hutchinson suggested,
and that he was highly likely to find he'd got an infected wound that might even turn gangrenous.
And he planted that thought knowing that Hutchinson would get to know about it. - NARRATOR: Michael and the team also decided
to exploit another of Hutchinson's weaknesses. - Well, he was close to his mother, and eventually
we persuaded his mother to allow us to broadcast the fact that she was seriously ill, which was true,
she did have a heart condition, and we arranged for her to be moved from her house by ambulance.
And that was well publicized, we thought that that would attract Hutchinson to the area, which it did.
- NARRATOR: Concerned about his mother's health, Hutchinson made his way back to Hartlepool.
- He knows the police are going to be keeping a watch on his mother's house, and he makes the mistake
of ringing her, and the police have tapped the phone. And he says, "I'm coming tonight,
I'll be with you at four A.M." And the police have got the information, they now
know the time he's going to arrive at the house, and they also crucially know the likely route
that he's going to take. So they flooded the area with police and tracker dogs, and waited, and waited, and waited.
- NARRATOR: Nearly 400 police officers and dogs lay in wait for the killer to appear.
- And they got a lucky break, a farmer out feeding his stock late at night came back in the house, his wife had been
watching him through the window, and she said, "Did you see him?" And the farmer said, "Did I see who?"
And she said, "Arthur Hutchinson, I'm sure that was Arthur Hutchinson." And of course it was, so they rang the police.
This draws the net in a little bit tighter still. - NARRATOR: Eventually, on the 5th of November,
Hutchinson was spotted by police aircraft near a farmhouse near Dalton Piercy, Cleveland.
Police dog handlers quickly closed in. - He sees them, brandishes a knife, and also wraps
his jacket around his arm in case the dogs bite him, and runs. He's not gonna outrun two police dogs and two
police officers, he realizes that and sits down holding the knife. Now, some speculated that Hutchinson was intent
on taking his own life at that point, he's pointing the knife towards his stomach,
the reality was I don't think he was. I've always believed that that was bravado, he was a coward.
- NARRATOR: After 39 days on the run, across nine counties, the deadly game was finally up
for Arthur Hutchinson. - The dog handlers were able to make that arrest, it was a long wait.
- NARRATOR: With Hutchinson now in custody, further evidence was discovered from during
his time on the run. - He made a recording on a little portable tape recorder, and he referred to himself as The Fox there,
and how he would overcome all the difficulties that he was experiencing, and it gave us clues as to how we might
use that knowledge of his mentality and his state of mind to our advantage, really.
- NARRATOR: The trial took place on the 4th of September, 1984 at Durham Crown Court.
Nicola Laitner would have to face her attacker. - The judge, Mr. Justice McNeil, decides that Nicola Laitner
can be identified because it was local knowledge that she had been attacked. Which meant that the Laitners were also
public knowledge. - NARRATOR: It was the first time in British history that they police used video footage to show
the crime scene. - For the first time, here were the police shooting a video moving around the house, piecing together
the story in the order that they understood from the forensic evidence that events had happened.
And the jury was shown it which was another first. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson took to the stand, but he
denied any role in the murders or the rape. - I remember a fairly slight figure, unkempt, but with
that slightly cocksure-- just the way he held himself. A man who fancies himself a bit.
And when he was giving evidence, almost everything he said, he was spinning a yarn.
- NARRATOR: As the delusional killer continued to deny any responsibilities for the murders and the rape,
the overwhelming evidence was presented. Blood samples that Hutchinson had left at the scene were also analyzed.
- Now, the police had very convincing evidence that he has a very rare blood group, one of only 50,000 in Britain,
and his blood group is on Nicola Laitner's bed. - NARRATOR: The police also had impressions of
the bite marks from the cheese left at the Laitner's house. - And we were able to link them to Hutchinson,
because he'd had dental treatment whilst he was in prison. So we were able to match the dental records with the
teeth marks in the cheese, which was quite a unique feature of any inquiry, really.
- It is pretty clear that they have a lot of evidence, as the police point out to him, "Look at this, and how do you
"explain your blood group? "And how do you explain these teeth marks? And how do you explain this palm print?"
Gradually he turns the story, he says, "I'd met Nicola "the night before in a pub, and she said why don't you
"come round after the reception and we'll have consensual sex?" It was an absolutely bizarre story.
- It doesn't surprise me at all that he would come up with this, a guy like Hutchinson, and any other type of
career criminal, all they do is lie, they don't know how to tell the truth. - NARRATOR: As the trial went on, Hutchinson
continued to fabricate his version of events on that fateful night. - The way he seemed to operate was that when
caught out in one story, he just segued into the next stories. And when this story began to unravel, he pointed to
a man called Mike Baron who reported with the Sunday Mirror and said, "He did this, you should
"ask him about these murders, he's the man who committed them." Poor Mike Baron was sitting there looking absolutely
dropped-on, you know, gobsmacked. - He is literally plucking stuff out of thin air at this point
in time, and obviously this does not stand up whatsoever. But what it does do, it creates a distraction, it creates
a sideshow, it diverts people's attention away from what he has actually done. - NARRATOR: On the 14th of September, the jury of
six men and six women took just four hours to reach their guilty verdicts for all three murder counts,
the rape charge, and the charge of aggravated burglary. He was given three life sentences for the murders
of Basil, Avril, and Richard Laitner. In addition, eight years for the rape of Nicola Laitner,
and another five years for aggravated burglary. - When he was first convicted, he received a minimum
sentence of 18 years, which was later upgraded to a whole life order by the home secretary, Liam Britain,
now these are not sentences that are given out just like that, they are reserved for the most
dangerous offenders in society. So I think this is testament to the evil things that this
individual did and the desire to protect the public from him. - NARRATOR: In 2008, Hutchinson appealed his
life tariff, claiming it was a breach of his human rights, he was the first British prisoner to do so.
His appeal was rejected, and subsequent appeals were also denied in 2015 and 2017.
- I think this determination to challenge the sentence really is testament to his character, he's not taking
responsibility for his actions, and for me that indicates that this is an individual who has not changed.
So, as far as I'm concerned, Hutchinson is exactly where he needs to be. - Hutchinson was so arrogant, so conceited, that he committed
a crime that never, never needed to have been committed. It was a monstrous act to take the lives of three
completely innocent people, in what? In the pursuit of a rape, it defies belief, it literally
sends a shiver down my spine. This is a man of the most deep depravity. - NARRATOR: Hutchinson was a sadistic sexual predator
who preyed on the vulnerable and defenseless, even trying to kill his half-brother.
His life as a career criminal culminated in a brutal triple murder of three members of the same family,
along with raping the teenage daughter at knifepoint. To this day, he has denied his guilt, and refuses to take
responsibility for his crimes. Undoubtedly, that makes Arthur Hutchinson one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ - [whoosh]

Rapist Arthur Hutchinson escaped from police custody in October 1983. Whilst on the run, he broke into the Laitners' house in Dore, Yorkshire and murdered three family members.

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

Brief Summary

Arthur Hutchinson murdered three family members and raped their daughter during a wedding night massacre in 1983.

Key points

The Wedding Day Massacre. A family wedding turns into a nightmare as a killer breaks in and murders three.
Arthur Hutchinson's Violent History. The backstory of a sadistic criminal who escalates from petty crime to murder.
The Attack on the Laitners. A brutal attack leaves three family members dead and one survivor, Nicola.
The Capture of Arthur Hutchinson. After 39 days on the run, Hutchinson was finally apprehended by police.
Trial and Conviction. Hutchinson was found guilty of three murders and rape, receiving life sentences.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He wants to be recognized, he wants infamy, he wants people to fear him.

Describing Hutchinson's desire for notoriety.

3:58WatchAug 17, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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