Lonely women's sadistic killer gets 21 years

A sadistic Broadmoor patient was jailed for a minimum of 21 years yesterday after pleading guilty to killing two women more than 12 years ago and attacking two others for sexual kicks.

Graham Fisher, 37, admitted the manslaughter of reclusive Clare Letchford, 40, and 75-year-old widow Beryl O'Connor on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The two vulnerable women were discovered strangled and burned in their flats less than 100 yards apart in Hastings, East Sussex, in January 1998.

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At Lewes Crown Court, Fisher was given the indeterminate prison sentence after he admitted attempting to murder and trying to rape a student on a train in the same month as the killings.

Fisher also pleaded guilty to two counts of rape of another vulnerable woman in her early 40s at her home in Bromley, south east London, in 1991.

He confessed to the offences while being held at the high-security psychiatric hospital two years ago after saying he found it hard to live with his crimes, the court heard.

Prosecutors said Fisher targeted lonely women, some of whom he knew, to satisfy what one psychiatrist described as a "sexually sadistic" aspect to his personality.

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He told investigators, after confessing to the rapes, that he gained a thrill from seeing his victim frightened.

He said: "She looked really scared but this really turned me on even more."

Fisher, deemed to have a severe and enduring complex personality disorder, also admitted cutting a piece of flesh from the arm of Ms Letchford and eating it.

Police were unable to retrieve forensic evidence from any of the crimes Fisher committed.

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They only came to light years later after he developed a sense of regret and confessed to officials at high-security Broadmoor in Berkshire, in 2008.

He was transferred there under the Mental Health Act part-way through serving a five-year jail term for indecently assaulting two Spanish students at knifepoint in Eastbourne in 1998.

Shaven-headed Fisher told a doctor that he felt it necessary to confess to his earlier crimes "because it's so hard to live with it in my head".

In the weeks and months after the killings, police had questioned Fisher about them but during one interview he was deemed unfit to be interrogated and on a later occasion he declined to answer questions.

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Prosecutor Richard Barton told the court there was insufficient evidence at the time to charge him over the deaths and he was released by officers.

As part of his confessions in 2008, Fisher also claimed responsibility for crimes where there was insufficient evidence and where no complaints had been made, Mr Barton added.

Dr Philip Joseph, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, told the court that Fisher had a "sexually sadistic aspect to his personality" and that a lot of his rage stemmed from an unhappy childhood.

The court also heard that Fisher had since shown remorse for his crimes and had wanted to bring some form of closure to the victims' families.

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Judge Mr Justice Keith said Fisher's detention in hospital under the Mental Health Act would be subject to progress of his treatment. But he added that it could be decades before Fisher is released back into the community.

The judge said: "Over a period of a week or so in January 1998, no woman who Graham Fisher encountered was safe from him."

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