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‘He hated women. He hated blonde women.’

Prosecution barrister Brian Altman

Name: Levi Bellfield

Crime: Double murder

Date of Conviction: 25 February 2008

Age at Conviction: 38

Woman-hater Levi Bellfield was born in Isleworth, West London, on 15 May 1968. He was one of six children and when he was eight, his dad, Joe, died of a heart attack, aged 37. The young Levi went off the rails and by his early teens he was already displaying sadistic and deviant tendencies. When he was 13 he tortured and killed his sister’s pet rabbit. Former school friends recall a rumour that he had tried to have sex with the animal.

By August 2004, Bellfield – whose first name is an anagram of evil – had murdered at least two young women. Police believe he may have killed others, including schoolgirl Milly Dowler, who disappeared outside Walton-on-Thames railway station in Surrey, in March 2002 while on her way home from school. Six months later, the 13-year-old’s body was found in woodland in Hampshire. Despite a massive police investigation, detectives are yet to charge anyone with her murder, though Bellfield is the prime suspect.

On 25 February 2008, Bellfield – who throughout his trial at the Old Bailey pulled faces, yawned and mouthed obscenities from the dock – was found guilty of murdering students Amelie Delagrange, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19, and the attempted murder of schoolgirl Kate Sheedy, 18.

Bellfield trawled bus stops and followed buses late at night, looking for young blondes on their own. He would follow them, offering them lifts, drinks, drugs and sex, and, if they turned him down, he would react with rage. Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting, told the court: ‘He hated women. He hated blonde women.’ He added: ‘These women were targeted victims of a predatory man who stalked bus stops and bus routes in vehicles looking for young women to attack.’

In February 2003, Marsha McDonnell was just feet from her home in a quiet residential area of Hampton, West London, when she beaten over the head with a hammer and left to die on the pavement. Bellfield had followed her bus in his van.

The former nightclub bouncer stalked convent school head girl Kate Sheedy when she got off a bus near her house in Isleworth, in May 2004. When Kate crossed over to avoid the snarling brute, he aimed his vehicle at her and ran her over. He then reversed back over her to make sure she was dead and unable to identify him. His young victim said goodbye to her parents as she lay on the road, waiting to die, but the brave teenager survived to be the prosecution’s star witness.

Amelie Delagrange had been out with friends when she was battered over the head three times with a hammer in August 2004. After getting off at the wrong bus stop, she was followed by Bellfield as she walked back towards her home in Twickenham Green, West London and attacked after she refused to talk to him as she cut across the local cricket pitch.

Following the guilty verdicts, judge Mrs Justice Rafferty deferred sentence until the following day but Bellfield refused to attend court, blaming adverse accounts about him in the newspapers. His barrister, William Boyce, QC, announced: ‘He has waived his right to be in court today. Overnight, there has been what some consider to be a quite extraordinary explosion of bad publicity. There has been a welter of accusations of other crimes by him.’

Every national tabloid on the news stands the next morning carried the Bellfield verdict on the front page, alongside various damning stories about him, varying from allegations of rape to murder. The Sun pulled no punches and splashed the words: ‘HE KILLED MILLY TOO’ alongside his smug, bloated police mugshot.

Sentencing Bellfield in his absence, Mrs Justice Rafferty said: ‘You have reduced three families to unimagined grief. What dreadful feelings went through your head as you attacked and in two cases, snuffed out a young life is beyond understanding. You will not be considered for parole and must serve your whole life in prison.’

Explaining the whole life tariff, the judge added: ‘Aggravating features are the chronicle of violence directed towards lone vulnerable young women during the hours of darkness and substantial premeditation and planning. There are no mitigating factors.’

DCI Colin Sutton, who led the investigation, said outside court: ‘Levi Bellfield is a predator, who preyed on women over a period of time. He targetted his victims at random, attacking those much smaller and weaker than him. Only he knows why he did what he did.’

Survivor Kate Sheedy and the families of the dead girls held hands with friends and supporters as the verdicts were delivered. They burst into tears of relief when the man who had wrecked their lives was found guilty.

Kate, by then a 21-year-old university student, faced reporters outside court, saying of Bellfield’s absence at the sentencing: ‘I am disappointed that he was not in court to hear the judge’s words, which were so strong. I think it shows the type of person he is – a complete coward.

‘It means so much to me that he got a full life term; it’s what I wanted. The fact that he will never see the light of day again is brilliant. Even if it had been 40 years’ time, I would not feel safe if he was let out again. I have waited for nearly four years for this day.’

Amelie’s mother, Dominique Delagrange, paid tribute to her daughter and said of Bellfield: ‘We would like to have heard from Bellfield a confession of sorts, some evidence of remorse. In this we were disappointed. This guilty person has showed an unbelievable level of arrogance.’

A female officer who worked on the case said: ‘Bellfield has deprived us of the pleasure of seeing his face when he was told he will never leave jail, but at least we can be satisfied that this is the last time he will be in control.’

Bellfield, who had 11 children by five women, was arrested in November 2004. The jury found him unanimously guilty of murdering Amelie Delagrange and convicted him by a 10–2 majority of Marsha McDonnell’s killing and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy. After deliberating for six days, the jury was unable to reach verdicts on charges that Bellfield attempted to murder hairdresser Irma Dragoshi, 33, who received head injuries, and kidnapped Anna-Maria Rennie, 17. Those offences, which all occurred at bus stops, were ordered to lie on file.

The judge ruled that a great deal of the evidence gleaned while Bellfield was under suspicion was too prejudicial for the jury to hear. But once he was jailed, much of this evidence came to light. Several women who had earlier given statements to police about Bellfield have since told of the full shocking extent of his loathing and predatory attitude towards females. His former friends, work colleagues and prison acquaintances came out to speak of a psychopath who thought he was above the law.

Paul Jarvis met Bellfield while he was on remand at Belmarsh Prison, South-East London, in 2005. He said: ‘He was like a caveman. He treated women like dogs.’ Bellfield told him: ‘You feed them and keep them – you can do what you want.’ Jarvis also revealed that the thug confided in him that he murdered Amelie Delagrange after she refused his offer of cocaine. This evidence was not allowed at the killer’s trial.

Bellfield was renowned in his hometown of West Drayton, Middlesex, for trying to pick up teenage blondes, who he followed in his Toyota Previa people carrier. The car had blacked-out windows and he kept a mattress and blankets in the back – they came in handy when girls were drunk or naïve enough to fall for his propositions. Those who resisted his advances were sometimes drugged and raped.

As the years passed, fuelled by steroids, cocaine and mental instability, Bellfield’s violent obsession with young blondes worsened. His ex-girlfriend Johanna Collins, with whom he had a son and a daughter, described him as, ‘Six-feet-one of pure walking evil’. Johanna suffered three years of ‘hell’ with the killer, telling of how he ruled her with the fear of beatings and systematic rapes. She also admitted how he would return home from his work as a club bouncer and boast about the girls he had raped that night.

She said: ‘When he came in late at night after working on a club door, he would tell me how he had “another little slut” in the back. Levi took great pleasure in telling me how they fancied a kiss and a cuddle, but when he got them where he wanted them, he just took them.

‘I would be told to get out of bed and scrub the cars out so there was no trace left of whatever he had done. He would tell me straight out if he had raped a girl – or even two – on an evening. He’d laugh and say they deserved what they got.

‘When he finished he told the girls to ‘F**k off back into the nightclub’ or just to ‘F**k off’. He warned them what would happen if they went to police. I was just too scared to even think of saying anything.’

Johanna revealed how she had once found Bellfield’s ‘stalking kit’ in a bin bag when she was tidying the garage. She said: ‘I pulled out my dad’s old donkey jacket. There was also what looked like a bobble hat and a magazine, Cosmopolitan. The coat felt heavy and something was in the lining. The left-hand pocket had been cut out so your hand went right the way down to this hunting knife.

‘Then I realised the “bobble hat” was a full-face balaclava. I opened the magazine and all the pictures of pretty girls or models with blonde hair had been slashed or hacked-up.’ When she mentioned her shocking find to her husband, Bellfield flew into a rage. Johanna said: ‘He beat me and forced my face over the pictures of the blondes, shouting, “I f**king hate blondes, they should all f**king die!”’

Becky Wilkinson, mother to four of Bellfield’s children, said she felt safe for the first time in years after he was jailed. Becky, who was with the brute from 1989 to 1995, told: ‘For those years I went through a traumatic, violent relationship with Levi that I couldn’t escape. When I eventually did, he would stalk me.

‘For the time we were together he would hit me, rape me. I wasn’t allowed to speak to my family or see them – he wouldn’t let me do anything. It is a big relief to know he will die behind bars.’

Bellfield, overweight with a squeaky, effeminate voice, told a colleague at the wheel-clamping firm where he worked that girls who dyed their hair blonde were: ‘Impure sluts who deserved to be messed around with.’ He boasted that he regularly shaved his entire body to avoid leaving DNA evidence, saying he was ‘untouchable’.

A former bouncer friend recalled how Bellfield spiked a young blonde’s drink with date-rape drug Rohypnol at a club in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He raped the girl in the car park and stole her mobile phone. Later that night the girl’s mother called the phone and Bellfield taunted her with details of what he had done to her daughter.

Bellfield suffered wild mood swings and went from friendly and affable to murderous in a heartbeat. In 2004, he turned on his former friend Peter Rodriguez, hitting him three times in the head with a hammer and stabbing him with a screwdriver in the stomach and kneecaps.

The wheel-clamping business Bellfield ran was known for its bullying methods. He and fellow clampers demanded £250 in cash to release vehicles and those who argued were threatened with violence. Motorists who would not pay up were warned they would receive a visit at home. Bellfield told them he had police contacts that could trace addresses from car number plates.

Ricky Brouillard, who worked for the thug, told police that Bellfield once offered to sell him sex with his ‘naïve’ 16-year-old girlfriend and her sister, 14. ‘I would describe Levi as an animal,’ Brouillard said. ‘I remember being disgusted. I met his girlfriend on one occasion and he said, “Do you want to buy her off me?”’

Bellfield boasted that he made more than £70,000 in cash every year from his various jobs and he regularly flashed thick wads of money. He thought he was above the law and he was arrogant and reckless. But that recklessness was to prove his undoing. Bellfield had been clever on his nights out hunting down and beating women, being careful to dispose of vehicles and clothing used in the attacks. But he did not consider the CCTV cameras that caught him on film or the evidence of mobile phone records placing him at the scenes of his crimes.

Cameras on buildings and on buses captured detailed footage of four of Bellfield’s vehicles and placed him at the scene of the murders of Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell, and at the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy. The day before his arrest, police were following his car when he pulled up and started chatting to two young girls who were waiting at a bus stop. Later, the girls told police how he had offered them a lift and asked how old they were. When they said they were 14, Bellfield said: ‘You must be virgins – I bet you are nice and tight.’ He then drove away, laughing to himself.

Emma Mills – mother of three of his children – was living with Bellfield when police arrived at their West London home to arrest him. She recalled: ‘It must have been four or five in the morning when they came. The house was lit up with torchlights and I thought he must be in trouble with the police – he’d been in trouble before, for fraud.

‘But this was different. There were about 30 policemen with guns; there were dogs, all surrounding the house. They were banging on the door and screaming his name. I thought, “What the hell have you done now?”We were in bed and he turned, and he just looked at me and he looked so scared. It was complete fear. I’ve never seen him look like that before.

‘He said, “I’m sorry,” and then he ran out onto the landing, pulled out a chest of drawers and used it to jump up into the loft – that’s the last time I ever saw him. I went downstairs just as the door flew open and a load of police officers pushed past me, calling his name.’ Police found Bellfield naked in the loft, crouched behind a roll of insulation. Ironically, officers noted that the prolific sexual predator was anxious to hide his private parts that had shrunk after years of steroid abuse.

Police believe the three hammer attacks for which Bellfield was jailed are just the tip of the iceberg. They suspect he may be responsible for many more, similar attacks on women. Officers are currently working through cases where victims have no recollection of being attacked because of their horrific injuries. In many cases, their injuries were put down to falling over drunk or fainting.

DCI Sutton said: ‘There is a group of 20 or so other offences that we will be looking at because we feel they may be offences which Bellfield had something to do with. They are not 20 murders, they are 20 attacks on women.’

After the trial, it emerged that Bellfield’s first girlfriend, Patsy Morris, was murdered in 1980. The 14-year-old was found strangled in undergrowth on Hounslow Heath, 48 hours after going missing from a playground. Bellfield, then just 12, was said to have been fascinated by the unsolved killing – it is just one of the many crimes that police have said they will be questioning him about.