World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 15 - Andrew Dawson - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: In August 1981, 91-year-old Henry Walsh was held up at knife point in his small hardware store
at Ormskirk, Lincolnshire, in England. The elderly shopkeeper refused to yield to his 18-year-old assailant.
He would pay with is life in the most horrific way. - Obviously threatened him with a knife,
two or three times. You could see minor marks on his clothing, and then he just pushed it through his chest.
And he's actually hanging on it on the door. - NARRATOR: The perpetrator was Andrew Dawson,
a known local thief who'd suddenly matured into a vicious murderer. He would spend the next 17 years behind bars,
but that did nothing to dull his killer instinct. - Almost inevitably as night follows day,
Dawson was going to kill again, it was only a question of when. - NARRATOR: Almost 30 years after his first killing,
Dawson was a free man with murder on this mind. In 2010, police in Derby would discover
two of Dawson's neighbors dead, but the convicted killer was nowhere to be found.
- This guy kept me awake at night because you just had this feeling that you had
to get the evidence, you had to put him away because he was an absolute danger to anybody in society.
- NARRATOR: Andrew Dawson had proved himself to be one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ - NARRATOR: In July 2011, Andrew Dawson pleaded guilty to the double murder of two of his neighbors
and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. It was the end of the road for the 48-year-old killer
who chillingly christened himself the Angel of Mercy. Dawson was no stranger to prison,
he'd already served time for murdering a popular shopkeeper in his hometown of Ormskirk in 1981,
when he was just 18. Local journalist Clifford Birchall covered the story of the brutal murder in the unassuming town.
- Ormskirk in the 80s was just a small country Lincolnshire town. They had a market that was on the streets
twice a week; came alive on those days. Just a small friendly place. Everybody seemed to know everybody and it was just
an ordinary place, nothing exciting happened very often. - NARRATOR: That was all to change in August 1981,
when 18-year-old Andrew Dawson entered a small hardware shop owned by popular pensioner, Henry Walsh.
- CLIFFORD: From what we learned from the, uh, evidence, he'd just gone in, he'd been looking for money
and he thought that Mr. Walsh would be a soft touch. He was, you know, 91-years-old, he wouldn't put up
much of a fight, he would, you know, do as he was told. But, uh, it turned out however more spirit
than Andrew Dawson thought he had. He refused to say where his money was. He refused to help him, sort of tried to get him out
of the shop and then he paid for it with his life. - NARRATOR: After serving seventeen years for the crime,
Dawson was released in 1999 and settled down in Derby with a wife and two children, but just over a decade later,
the killer found himself living alone in a flat and his lust for murder returned.
Former detective, Paul Callum investigated the killing of two of Dawson's neighbors in 2010.
- The people who lived in this block of flats, or his victims, were vulnerable for some reason,
either sort of, they're a little bit older and they've got ill health, uh, or alcohol problems
and this sort of thing, and I think Dawson knew that and he picked on vulnerable people
because he knew he could overpower them, and he knew he could control them. - NARRATOR: This killer's story begins in the market town
of Ormskirk in Lincolnshire, in the north of England. - Dawson was born in 1962 and he was one of six children and the family
were quite impoverished, they didn't have alot of money, so I think times were pretty tough.
He did have a very strict and domineering father, but that's nothing out of the ordinary,
and his relationship with his mother, doesn't seem to have a flagged up any concerns either, so his--his family life
wasn't particularly out of the ordinary. - NARRATOR: But even from a young age, Dawson displayed signs that he was in for a life of crime.
- GEOFFREY: He grows up in straightened circumstances in Ormskirk. A boy who wants whatever he wants,
whenever he wants to get it. When he's six or seven, he sees a little girl with money,
pennies literally, and steals them, because he can, because he feels he can get away with it,
because it doesn't matter. DR. YARDLEY: He had a very acute sense of entitlement.
If he wanted something, he would just literally go and take it, there were no moral
or ethical boundaries there whatsoever, and I don't think that behavior was ever really challenged.
There were never really any serious consequences for that and if there were, he didn't care.
So, this was somebody who was psychologically not quite normal. - In my view, Dawson was a sociopath
from a very, very early age. He did not know a responsibility. He did not know moral values, he did not know conscience,
he did not know forgiveness, he did not know saying sorry; grab it, "I'm gonna take it, it's mine, I want it."
- LOUIS: The majority of individuals who commit juvenile crime, petty or otherwise,
usually turn themselves around as they mature out of it. The younger someone is when they begin their criminal behavior,
the worse the prognosis is, the worse the outcome is, and so, when you look at Dawson's background,
what stands out to me from a distance is he was involved in crime right from the beginning,
he was a problem child, right from the start. - NARRATOR: As Dawson matured, so did his crimes.
- DR. YARDLEY: As a teenager, Dawson engaged in property crime. He committed a range of petty thiefs and the victims
he would target would be elderly people, and I think he was-- he was quite aware
of the vulnerability of the elderly, of the fact that they might keep money in their houses
or their work places. - NARRATOR: The burgeoning criminal was soon on the radar of the local authorities.
- Andrew Dawson had come to the attention of the police in the past, uh, through just, uh, petty thief.
He wasn't known to them, I don't think they thought he was one of the great criminals of the town,
but he was just perhaps more a nuisance than anything else. - NARRATOR: There appeared to be nothing obvious
in Dawson's young life that justified his criminality. - He had five siblings, they're not all
committing crimes and killing people, no, it was Dawson, he's the only one. He grew up in the same family with them.
The parents treated them, generally speaking, the same, according to all the other family members,
no, it was Dawson, it's within him. It wasn't an event that happened that created him,
it's who he was. - DR. YARDLEY: I think there was very much a sense of competition between Dawson and his siblings.
It's always that vying for attention and there are six of them, so I think that they're always
trying to outdo each other, and that's the case in many large families, but I think Dawson took it
a little bit further than most. He had a significantly antagonistic relationship
with his brother, he stole money from his brother. - NARRATOR: It was the final straw,
Dawson's brother reported him to the police and the young criminal was arrested and charged with theft.
- CLIFFORD: That was enough to have him sent to boarding school for, uh, about six months.
And then sort of, when he was released, he came back Ormskirk, but obviously, you know,
hadn't really learned from his ways. He just carried on as he-- as he had before.
- Somebody like Dawson and other extraordinary offenders who particularly those who commit
multiple crimes, they see the world differently then the average person, they function in a different sphere.
And so where punishment may help somebody straighten themselves out and get on the right track,
for somebody like Dawson it has no affect at all, just serves as an irritant for him,
just makes him angry because he wants to do what he wants to do; that's who he is.
- NARRATOR: By the age of 18, Andrew Dawson was already a veteran thief and his time in the youth prison,
nickname Borstal, had not curbed his criminal ways. But in August 1981, his life of petty crime
would take an even darker turn. - CLIFFORD: Henry Walsh had been a shopkeeper in the town for a long time, [unintelligible].
His shop didn't carry a lot of stuff, but it was stuff you couldn't find anywhere else,
it was sort of a--a time warp in some ways. He was just a loveable old character.
- NARRATOR: At some point, late on Thursday, the 13th of August, Andrew Dawson entered
Henry Walsh's shop, by the following morning, locals were concerned for the whereabouts of the 91-year-old.
- CLIFFORD: Mr. Walsh hadn't been seen on the Friday, which was unusual and somebody was going past,
noticed that two big, uh, gates which guarded the alley to the rear of the premises, they hadn't been closed
all night and his back door was open, which was unusual. - NARRATOR: The passerby dialed 999 and in a matter
of moments, Detective Jim Kay arrived at the scene. - JIM: I was driving through the town,
and the call came over the radio that this back door of the shop was open and there was no sign of the shopkeeper.
So, I just turned around the corner, it was a matter of 20 yards, and, uh, went into the shop
and another officer arrived. He arrived and I said, "Just follow me in." You're walking through expecting to find the old man
somewhere, maybe collapsed, to see this man hung on the door... It was a little bit frightening.
- NARRATOR: 91-year-old, Henry Walsh had been hung from coat hooks on the back of the door, tortured,
and then brutally stabbed to death with a carving knife. It wouldn't be long before news of the beloved elderly man
found viciously murdered in his own hardware store got out. It would send shockwaves across the quiet town
of Ormskirk, England. - CLIFFORD: I was in Moore street, uh, which is one of the main shopping streets
and about 250 yards away, at the other end of Moore street, I could see some unusual police activity.
I could see a policeman standing where a policeman wouldn't normally stand, and he wasn't moving,
so he was obviously guarding something, so I just acted on my reporter instinct that something was wrong,
and so, and so I got there and sort of based on the crime and ascertained that there had been a suspicious death,
and it was Mr. Walsh, so I arranged for a photographer to come out and take a picture that we used in the paper
of the police on the scene outside the shop. - Henry Walsh was a nice man. You know, one who spoke to every time I passed.
He would come to the door and say, "Good afternoon," and "Good morning," and very pleasant old man.
- He was just a really loveable person, and you just couldn't imagine anybody who would have it
in them to--to kill him, to be honest. - NARRATOR: News of the 91-year-old's horrific death began reaching the locals.
The nature of the crime was unthinkable. - CLIFFORD: He'd been stabbed with a knife,
been stabbed in the chest several times, but he'd also been hung up at the back of the door on some coat hooks,
and the last wound, the knife had gone straight through him and embedded itself in the back of the door.
He'd also tied a ligature around his neck presumably as a way to try and force information out of him.
- NARRATOR: The police didn't know it yet, but the killer was an 18-year-old thief
named Andrew Dawson, who had seemingly reveled in his first murder. - Dawson didn't just simply kill Henry Walsh,
he made this victim suffer. He stabbed him multiple times, some of the wounds were quite shallow, which is indicative of a torture,
of saying actually, "I have power over you, I am in control," and enjoying the reaction
of his victim to that. And he hung Henry up on the--the back of a door, so he's displaying his victim.
He's saying, "Hey, everybody, look at what I've done, look at what I can accomplish."
- GEOFFREY: You have to ask yourself, what is it that provokes an 18-year-old to kill him,
to repeatedly stab him, to pose him, and to leave him? There is something very, very depraved about that,
there is something monstrous. - LOUIS: I don't see him targeting a truck driver,
a 25-year-old truck driver out there, well, why isn't he targeting that guy. That guy can have money too, he just made his deliveries.
No, Dawson's way too smart for that, he targets somebody old and weak and vulnerable that he knows
he can get over on; that's who Dawson is. - NARRATOR: Dawson had killed a man 73 years his senior
for nothing more than the day's takings from the till, and the 91-year-old's pension book.
- When police conducted a search of the house later on, they found out that Mr. Walsh
did what most old people in those days did, and he'd hidden money in and around rooms
in the house, and I think they collected about £1800, uh, in cash, which is, you know, quite a lot of money
in those days, but I think Andrew Dawson had tried to get him to say where it was, but, uh, he refused,
which, I think perhaps it counts for the ferocity of his attack in the end. - JIM: He'd been frightened to death.
He was a very timid old man; not the type of man who'd look for trouble or get involved in trouble.
He's only picked on because he was an old man. He wouldn't fight back, I wouldn't have thought.
- NARRATOR: After taking the life of another man for the very first time, Dawson didn't panic
or attempt to flee Ormskirk, instead the cocky 18-year-old flaunted his newly acquired riches.
- Now, everybody knows he's got no money, you know, he goes to a pub, local pub where he's seen,
all of a sudden, feeding lots of coins into the fruit machine. Well, that's--that's rather odd, rather strange.
You're immediately going to say, "Where did you get the money from," it is unbelievably foolish.
- DR. YARDLEY: He was somebody who was perpetually broke, so this was something that was rather unusual
and that the police eventually catch up with him, and it emerged that Dawson had actually cashed in
Henry's pension book for £50 in the days following the murder. - CLIFFORD: Once Andrew Dawson was arrested, sort of, people,
in some ways they--they weren't surprised because they knew he did have a reputation, but who--
it was sort of shocked that he could have done such a--a savage act. - NARRATOR: At Preston Crown Court,
on the 10th of March, 1982, Andrew Dawson pleased guilty to the murder of Henry Walsh.
He had told police that he panicked after the 91-year-old had recognized him. In a statement, Dawson said, "I am sorry
"for what I have done, I had no intention "to cause anybody any harm. I wish it was me and not him."
- The judge at the Crown Court gave credence to Andrew Dawson's guilty plea and also to the fact
that, uh, he seemed remorseful to some extent. He was said to have told the police, you know,
"I wish it'd been me, not him," so the judge did give credence and mention this when she was passing sentence.
- DR. YARDLEY: I'm not convinced by this, whatsoever, we got to remember that this was a young man
who'd done a stint in Borstal, um, he was quite familiar with the types of things that he needed to say
to get sympathy, to get attention and to secure the best outcome for himself. - NARRATOR: Dawson, aged just 19-years-old
was jailed for life. He had graduated from Borstal to prison adding murder to his rap sheet.
- CLIFFORD: The murder-- from a murder trial, it's not exactly, when we said people
would love that sentence being carried out, we thought, Well, what I relief that, you know, some justice
had seem to be done and sort of the fact that the right thing had--had happened and people were now happy and so they were content
that the wrongdoing had been punished. - NARRATOR: Dawson spent the next 17 years of his life
behind bars, but during his time inside, he was no shrinking violet. He reportedly commented on serial killers
Peter Sutcliffe and Dennis Nelson, labeling them as wimps and claiming to be a better man.
- When he was in prison, he was comparing himself to other notorious offenders; that's a bad sign.
Anytime an offender wants to compare himself to other notorious killers, that's a huge red flag.
A sign of rehabilitation is, you wanna put that part of your life away, you wanna show
how you're different than other people, not how that you're more extraordinary than some of these
notorious people, that's a huge red flag. - NARRATOR: In early 1999, Andrew Dawson was deemed
ready for release from Sudbury prison in Derbyshire. Still, just 36-years-old, it was a chance for him
to start a new life. - After his release from prison, Andrew Dawson appeared to have turned over a new leaf.
He'd moved to a different area, Derby. He'd met a woman, he'd settled down with her
and they had two children together, and from the outside, he appears to be a regular guy,
but this was not to last because Andrew Dawson is a person who is prone to boredom,
he has that need for stimulation, he has that hedonistic streak to him, so he starts drinking and that leads
to the--the breakdown of his marriage. - LOUIS: He's matured now, he's older, maybe he's a different person, but it wasn't long
before Dawson reverted to who he was. - NARRATOR: Over the next decade Dawson would continually breach
the conditions of his release. - GEOFFREY: In that period between his divorce in 2003
and 2010, Dawson bumps into the law, and is returned to prison on a regular basis, three times.
He's drunk and disorderly, he's violent, he isn't in any kind of control and he's constantly
therefore--because he's out on license for the original life sentence-- straight back to jail,
almost as inevitably as night follows day, Dawson was going to kill again. It was only a question of when.
- NARRATOR: By July 2010, Andrew Dawson was estranged from his wife with limited access to his children.
He lived alone in a one-bedroom flat on Waterford Drive just outside of Derby. Former detective Paul Callum worked on the investigation
into the sudden death of one of Dawson's neighbors, 66-year-old, John David Matthews.
- The initial police incident came in at 7:00PM on the Sunday the 25th of July. Mr. Matthews worked at a local restaurant
and staff at the restaurant had been worried that he had not turned up for work in the previous week or so,
and, uh, police officers were called to the flat and they forced entry and they found, um,
Mr. Matthews' body in the bath downstairs. They looked at Mr. Matthews' body and; unfortunately, because they think
he'd been there for a couple weeks, there was quite a lot of decomposition, and at that time, uh, the incidence was recorded
as a potential suicide. - NARRATOR: But the postmortem told a different story. - DET. CALLUM: Late in the afternoon of Wednesday,
the 28th of July, I had a phone call from the coroner's office to say that the local
pathologist had started the postmortem of Mr. Matthews and that he said that there was,
uh, what he believed were stab wounds. - NARRATOR: It was clear, this was not a suicide;
it was, in fact, murder. The killer had done his best to cover up the murder. - DET. CALLUM: What he'd done at the crime scene
with Mr. Matthews is that, uh, after stabbing him, he'd re-dressed him, so he got rid of the shirt
that had the stab wounds through it and put a shirt that didn't have any marks on it.
And completely changed all his clothing and then put him into the bath. We started doing some early inquiries
and one of those which, you know, what--what do we have on the, uh, electro register? Who lives there?
What intelligence do we have around the block of flats? - NARRATOR: Detectives immediately singled out
convicted killer, Andrew Dawson as a potential suspect. - DET. CALLUM: It very quickly became obvious
that Andrew Dawson was gonna be our suspect. He had a conviction for murder, um, and he was on license
and there was some history of a recent assault with, um, somebody else at a previous flat that he'd lived at, um,
so, it was reasonably obvious that he was gonna be our main focus quite early on.
- We wanted to secure the scene at-at Dawson's house and then, obviously our biggest priority
was finding out where was Dawson right now. - NARRATOR: Whilst detectives launched a manhunt,
investigators forced entry into Dawson's flat. - The flat was completely empty, um, apart from a few
items of clothing, but what was particularly interesting about Dawson's flat was that it smelled of bleach
and it was very, very clean. - NARRATOR: Andrew Dawson was no where to be found.
He was on the run and presumed to be very dangerous. - DET. CALLUM: We were extremely worried,
we obviously knew that a murder had happened at some point before the Sunday the 25th,
and--and looking at the decomposition, we think probably up to two weeks before that,
so we had nearly a three week time period where we had no idea where Dawson had been.
- NARRATOR: John David Matthews, who was known as Dave, had actually been killed on the 10th of July,
stabbed 18 times by his seemingly friendly neighbor, Andrew Dawson, who often popped over to use the washing machine.
- GEOFFREY: Dawson arrives at his door with the conventional excuse that he used many times
in the block, "Can I use your washing machine? Because mine's broken," Dave lets him in, not suspecting anything.
- Imagine what must have gone through Dave Matthews' mind. It would've been indescribable.
Terrifying. Reduced him to absolute fear in an instant and yet there was nothing he could do, nothing he could do
to protect himself against a man who'd come there to kill him, and to kill him for reason entirely of his own.
This was not a motive of greed, this was a motive of the desire to kill. - DR. YARDLEY: After Dawson had killed David
and left his body in the bath, he actually left the flat, um, because this was the day when he was looking after
his children and he took them out for the day as if nothing had ever happened and he returned the next day and cleaned up the crime scene
and got rid of the blood. Now for somebody to be able to do this, to be able to function as normal after committing a murder,
is something that is very, very rare. I've met a lot of people convicted of murder
and their behavior in the aftermath is very rarely normal because they're so shocked
at the enormity of what they've done that they're unable to function with any degree of normality.
- NARRATOR: The crime had affected the whole community. As the search for the convicted killer continued,
detectives question the other neighbors at Waterford Drive. One neighbor even told the story to police
of how the killer had been involved in an altercation in his flat. - A resident started telling
the investigating officer that had sat down with him to take his statement, about, uh, the relationship
with Dawson and that they use to walk into each other's flats and this sort of thing.
- NARRATOR: The neighbor went on to describe an incident which had occurred just days before.
After inviting Dawson in for a drink, he caught him riffling through his drawers.
The neighbor confronted him and Dawson turned nasty. - He was grabbed from behind with an arm
around his neck and he felt something in his, uh, in his sort of lower abdomen. He'd sort of thrown Dawson off.
Dawson made light of it, and said he was just mucking around and this sort of thing,
and--and again at the time, he didn't particularly think anything of this, but we now know
when you listen to the account, uh, and you know what Dawson was capable of, that it was likely
that he was gonna be his first victim. - I think that's only further evidence of the fact
that in this small block in Chaddesden, not alot of flats, that Dawson, by now, was out of control,
completely and utterly out of control. He would attack anyone, driven by his own desire to kill.
- NARRATOR: On the morning of the 30th of July, detectives receive news that Dawson had been spotted
in Whitehaven, Cumbria over 200 miles away from Derby. While local police begin to search for the killer,
investigations were continuing at the flats. Detectives had accounted for all of Dawson's neighbors apart from one,
58-year-old Paul Hancock. - DET. CALLUM: So about half past seven or eight o'clock
while I was doing the briefing, we got to one of the detective sergeants stood at the back
of the--the room and was waving at me, and she came across and whispered to me and said,
"They found another body," and that the officers that were doing the house to house inquiries
had forced entry into Mr. Hancock's flat and had found him and he'd also been murdered.
We finished the briefing and it started again, and this is when you started to really feel concern that,
what had Dawson been doing in that three-week period when the-- we couldn't account for him,
and had he killed anybody else? - NARRATOR: How many more bodies might turn up at Waterford Drive?
It was a frightening thought for the investigators, and they soon had information that revealed the killer
had been in the building on the very same day the body of Dave Matthews was discovered.
- DET. CALLUM: It turns out on the Sunday afternoon, the call came in about Mr. Matthews,
the police had arrived at the flat and, uh, this came out with subsequent inquiries,
but it turned out that Dawson was actually upstairs in Hancock's flat when the police arrived.
Now, it's possible that he'd just committed the murder, at that point, or he may have committed the murder
over the previous few days and he was there cleaning, starting to clean up, we--we will never really know,
but what we do know is that Dawson was in Mr. Hancock's flat when the police arrived.
He came downstairs, he spoke to one of the special constables that was there and he was asked had he seen Mr. Matthews,
and he spoke to the police and said that, oh, no, he doesn't know him very well, he hasn't seem very much of him,
and we then know that within about 10 minutes he'd packed his bag, he'd ordered a taxi
and he'd left the house and had gone to the train station. - NARRATOR: Unbeknownst to the police,
they had stood face to face with the killer. Since that moment, Andrew Dawson had been on the run
for five days, but now, local police in Whitehaven had located him and were ready to make an arrest.
- The uniformed constable comes across Andrew Dawson sleeping on a bench on the sea front
in Whitehaven. He might almost have had a sign on chest saying, "I am Andrew Dawson and you really want to
look at me because I killed two people in Derby." - NARRATOR: But the police had to proceed with care.
They were dealing with a serial killer. Armed with seven knives in his backpack,
Dawson had no intention of giving himself up. - Dawson appeared to want the police to shoot him.
He wanted to go down in a blaze of glory and basically occupy alot of headlines.
There's a real kind of dramatic element to this perpetrator, and shortly after he was arrested,
he jumped into the sea and he started to swim away and it really is quite incredible,
the behavior of this man. He soon realized, "Actually, this probably isn't a good idea,
I'm not getting anywhere," and then swam back to shore where the police caught up with him again.
It's an attempt at being dramatic, it's an attempt at--at trying to create this kind of
feared persona, but it's one that always falls flat on it's face for Dawson. - Dawson is tazored rather than shot.
I'm sure he was very upset by that. I'm sure he'd much rather that armed response unit
had turned up and, uh, given him the glory that he'd wanted. - NARRATOR: With Dawson safely in custody,
investigators could begin to delve deeper into the 47-year-old killer. After his dramatic arrest
in Whitehaven, Cumbria, he'd been brought back down to Derbyshire to be questioned on suspicion of the murders
of his neighbors, Dave Matthews and Paul Hancock. The bodies of both victims had been bathed in bleach
to hide any forensic evidence. Detectives would have to use all their skills to prove that Andrew Dawson had killed again.
- DET. CALLUM: In terms of an investigation, normally you have some 36 hours of real, uh, urgent work to do
because you have to either have to get enough evidence to charge somebody or you have to release them,
uh, because he was on parole and because of the nature of this, uh, actually from an investigators point of view,
it made the job a little bit easier because we could recourt him to prison and actually we had a lot of time
to make sure that we could, uh, get the evidence together and get the case together, which was just as well
because despite it feeling like it was obviously him, you've got to get the evidence to prove that
and forensically, it was very, very challenging. - NARRATOR: On the same day of Dawson's arrest,
police had discovered the body of 58-year-old Paul Hancock. Just like his neighbor, Dave Matthews,
Paul had been found stabbed to death in his own bathtub. - With Mr. Matthews the flat had been cleaned,
there was alot of bleach poured into the bath, it clearly been tidied up and with Mr. Hancock's,
it was very disheveled, it had been very rushed. There was clothing in the bath, there was weapons in the bath,
there were all sorts- bits of gloves, marigold gloves and this sort of thing. All the drawers had been through the house
and we know that money was stolen and--and various other items, and apart from the fact
that there was bodies in the bath and they'd been stabbed, the two scenes were totally different.
- NARRATOR: It's believed that Dawson was still cleaning up the crime scene when the police had discovered
the body of Dave Matthews across the hall. Dawson likely panicked and threw his clothes
in the bath of bleach to kill any forensic evidence. - DET. CALLUM: On the yellow trousers he was wearing,
there was a slash mark on the right hand side, on the right leg. Dawson also had, uh, an injury to his right leg
and it's impossible to actually match that to the injury but again it's very likely that he was wearing
those trousers when he committed the murder, so he was very forensically aware, so I think he had a system.
He had a type of clothing that he wore to make sure that he doesn't get contaminated with blood,
and then he went and--and commits the murders and then he--he bleaches them and gets rid of any evidence.
- LOUIS: Bleach indicates forensic awareness. Bleach is one of those things that wipes up a great deal
of forensic evidence. Dawson's been a career criminal. He's been in prison his entire life.
He knows what bleach does. He was in the juvenile center, but he also went to state prison, that's like graduate school for crime.
All the criminals do all day is talk about their crimes and how they got caught and this and that,
and how to avoid law enforcement, so the fact that he used bleach doesn't surprise me at all,
it just reflects what he learned in prison and how to try to avoid detection. - NARRATOR: With Dawson being held in custody indefinitely,
it gave detectives more time to study the crime scene at Dave Matthews' flat. - When we first searched Mr. Matthews' house,
there was few, uh, items that we didn't really understand. One of them was a rose that was on, uh, pillow
in Mr. Matthews' bedroom, and it was just an old red rose. The other thing was, when we searched Dawson's flat,
there was a blank notepad, um, but you could see indentations on it. - NARRATOR: This suggested that a note had been written
on the sheet of paper above. If experts could decipher the faint indentations it could be a huge clue.
- DET. CALLUM: About three weeks after that inquiry had--had been sent off, I got a phone call from,
uh, our forensic team, really excited and they said, you know, they were saying, "Boss, this is amazing,
this is fantastic, we've got a confession," and I said, "What are you talking about?"
And it turned out that he'd written a letter to the police and it was to the--to the head of homicide,
it said, and he wrote this poem, a very badly spelled, but the poem talked about, in a bath,
uh, in--in Waterford Drive there lies a man, and he talked about if in two weeks time
you don't know about it, I will come and report it to the police, and he talked about the rose
being the, a nice touch and he signed it "The Angel of Mercy." - DET. CALLUM: Really, really chilling,
but very, very important key bit of evidence. - NARRATOR: Dawson had signed the note
with a chilling moniker. - DR. YARDLEY: The confession letter that police had come across
had been signed "The Angel of Mercy," and I think this is really testament to Andrew Dawson's narcissism.
He wanted a brand, he wanted an identity, he wanted infamy, and I think this was very much part of that.
He wants that recognition for the things that he's done. - He's pretended to be significant, he's not,
he's an insignificant, horrid, horrible, depraved, monstrous killer, but not in his mind.
- NARRATOR: As investigations continued, more evidence was uncovered at Dave Matthews' flat.
- DET. CALLUM: In Mr. Matthews' house, there was very, very little forensic evidence in there,
in terms of fingerprints, DNA and this sort of thing. He had destroyed most of the evidence,
uh, but we found marigold glove in the bath that had the thumb missing on it, and part of the forensic strategy was to find
this piece of rubber from the thumb. - NARRATOR: Paul knew that finding the tip of the glove may finally yield some forensic evidence.
- So, the whole house was completely emptied, uh, we spent weeks there meticulously going through everything in the lounge
and--and the scene's crime team found the tip of the marigold glove and we think that it probably
got caught in a drawer while he was stealing property from the flat, and it snapped off,
and in this small piece of the thumb--and it was, it was the tiny piece of the thumb there--
um, they managed to recover some DNA which, uh, proved that it was Andrew Dawson, which was a very, very
significant piece of evidence because forensically we had very, very little. There was alot of circumstantial evidence
but little forensic evidence. - NARRATOR: In total, 5,000 items were seized from the flats at Waterford Drive;
however, only one of these provided the conclusive forensic evidence investigators needed.
This new discovery undoubtedly connected Dawson with the murder of Paul Hancock.
In interviews with investigators, Andrew Dawson initially confessed to both murders.
- He talked about Mr. Matthews being a nice man. He talked about how he didn't really want to kill him,
but he just felt that he had to and he had an urge to do it, and this was what's particularly chilling and very frightening
about Mr. Dawson. There didn't seem to be any particular motive other than I desire to kill somebody,
so in that respect, you know, you--you tell me someone's mental state, I mean that's, uh, that's quite worrying
and certainly, I mean, I've dealt with a lot murder inquiries, um, for all sorts
of different reasons but to have somebody that said they just had an urge to do it,
is very, very frightening. - NARRATOR: By the time of his court hearing in July 2011,
Dawson had changed his story, denying the murders and pleading not guilty, but he didn't hide behind
his lies for long. - DET. CALLUM: You saw it in court, he was very, very inpatient.
He--he didn't like to wait around, He's like a very impetuous sort of character.
For example, at court he pleaded not guilty and after a couple of hours, he--he looked like he got bored
and he had a word with his solicitor and just said, "Oh, I can't be bothered, I plead guilty,"
you know, and that was, that was the court case, and that was kind of the way I think he was.
- DR. YARDLEY: This is a tactic we see with alot of offenders like Dawson. They enjoy playing with people, they enjoy manipulating people.
They enjoy having everybody running around sorting things out and then they chuck a grenade in
and cause chaos and I think that's exactly what he was doing here. - NARRATOR: In total, Andrew Dawson stabbed
Dave Matthews 18 times and Paul Hancock 22 times. He had received a fairly lenient sentence after his first murder
in Ormskirk in 1981, but there would be no similar result for him this time. - The judge, Mrs. Justice Dobbs, gave Dawson
a whole life tariff, "Life will mean life in your case." She told Dawson, in sentencing,
"These were premeditated and planned, brutal killings. "Each had the misfortune of being your neighbor
who had no chance." - DET. CALLUM: Relief, I think more than anything. There--there wasn't, you know, there's no particular reason
to sort of celebrate or anything like that, it's just, you know, really sad for the victims and the family.
These are both--both victims, uh, were just, you know, regular people that, uh, were tryn to live their life
and hadn't particularly upset anybody, for both had been described as very pleasant people
who had just sort of kept themselves to themselves, so very, very sad. - NARRATOR: Andrew Dawson remains in prison
and will never be released. Some experts believe that he was never rehabilitated
after his first murder conviction and should have never been in a position to be able to kill two more innocent victims.
- For me, what makes this case exceptional is the failure to realize how serious the first murder was.
It was interpreted as a homicide during the course of a robbery, but actually it was much, much worse than that.
This individual had been tortured, essentially, that the time that the perpetrator had spent
with the victim was quite significant, and the perpetrator was only 18 years old,
so I think this was, uh, a massive red flag for--for further potential violence and even though
he was convicted of murder, there was not enough work done to address what led to that.
- CLIFFORD: I think there--there is a case that sorta some people are so dangerous that they
can't be let out again, out of prison. It seems a harsh thing to condemn somebody
to die in prison, but sort of-- I think some people, you know, never learn and never alter.
I think it's one of those things that sort of sometimes you--you have to do it, and, uh, this is, you know,
probably one of those cases. - NARRATOR: Dawson was a selfish killer who had no regard for his victims.
The only reason he's ever given for his horrific crimes is that he had an urge to kill.
- When we look at the crimes of Andrew Dawson, they are so horrendous that many people say
this could only be the workings of a madman, but unfortunately, they're not, this is an individual who knew
exactly what they were doing. They knew that what they were doing was wrong and they carried on doing it anyway.
- GEOFFREY: It's conventional to talk about serial killers as having a trigger, sometimes it's in their childhood,
sometimes it's a moment in their adolescence. I don't believe there was such a trigger to Andrew Dawson,
I think there was something in him from the very beginning that led him to commit these heinous crimes.
- DET. CALLUM: I've dealt with alot of suspicious deaths and a lot of murder inquiries, and there weren't many
that's kept me awake at night, this guy kept me awake at night because you just had this feeling that you had
to get the evidence, you had to put him away because he was an absolute danger to anybody in society.
I think this idea that you can suddenly, um, get an urge to kill someone clearly makes you
extremely dangerous, doesn't it? - NARRATOR: Dawson is a killer who murdered innocent people
for his own depraved enjoyment. He may have started out as a petty thief, but that was an unlawful livelihood that didn't satiate
his urges, he needed something more to satisfy his twisted mind. His lust for murder and the pleasure
he gets from it, are what makes Andrew Dawson one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ ♪♪ - [swishing sound]

Andrew Dawson brutally stabbed his neighbors to death before leaving their bodies in bathtubs full of water and bleach.

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

Andrew Dawson, a serial killer, murdered three men over decades, showcasing his violent tendencies and lack of remorse.

Key points

The Murder of Henry Walsh. 91-year-old Henry Walsh is brutally murdered by 18-year-old Andrew Dawson in a shocking act of violence.
Dawson's Dark Path. After serving time for Walsh's murder, Andrew Dawson is released but remains a danger to society.
The Horrific Crime Scene. Henry Walsh's body is discovered hung and tortured in his own shop, shocking the community.
Andrew Dawson: The Suspect. Andrew Dawson, a convicted murderer, becomes the main suspect in a new murder case.
The Chilling Confession. Dawson's confession letter reveals his twisted mindset and desire for infamy.
The Final Sentencing. Dawson receives a life sentence for the brutal murders of his neighbors.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Dawson was going to kill again, it was only a question of when.

Narrator foreshadowing Dawson's future actions.

0:59WatchAug 17, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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