When you are little, you usually have idols: a singer, a footballer or you can even become Superman. Stefano Griffith (52) came out of the conventional and for him his references were serial killers. Stephen was a criminologist and had a museum in his house dedicated to Ted Budny, Jack the Ripper and Jeffrey Dahmer.

The man had great fanaticism for them and proudly showed them his “personal museum” to the people who visited him. No one imagined that he would become one of them.

In May 2010, Griffiths was caught on security cameras in the building where he lived beating an unconscious woman before shooting her in the skull with a crossbow. When the police arrested him, he called himself “The cannibal with the crossbow“. Stephen was sentenced to life in prison for killing 3 women and, according to him, there were many more.

your complicated life

Stephen Shaun Griffiths was born on 24 December 1969 in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. The boy spent most of his childhood with his siblings in an orphanage and, according to his neighbors, was a very quiet boy.

Despite his calm demeanor, Stephen enjoyed mistreating and dissecting animals, especially birds. He also collected RPG books with dragons and mythical creatures and loved martial arts and weapons.

At the age of 16, Griffiths dropped out of school and began to have problems with the law: he was sentenced to three years in prison for stabbing a supermarket employee and, during the time he was in prison, He assured that he fantasized about becoming a serial killer. After serving his sentence and despite his words, the psychiatric assessments were favorable and he was released.

In subsequent years, Stephen devoted himself to furthering the school, which enabled him to earn a degree in psychology from the University of Leeds and start a PhD in criminology at Bradford College.

Stephen started working in the Department of Criminology in Bradford, England. The man had no friends and to the few colleagues and people who visited him at home he showed his study of him carefully papered with photos of his idols of him: the most famous killers of all time.

In his personal and exclusive museum he had photos of John Wayne Gacy, Fred West and his wife Rose, the owners of “House of Horrors”, Ed Gein, and his favorite Jeffrey Dahmer, “The Butcher of Milwaukee”.

Since Stephen had a degree in criminology and was preparing his doctoral thesis on the subject, no one imagined that he was thinking of committing a crime. Everyone believed that he was passionate about his profession.

Registration and arrest

On May 21, 2010, security camera footage of the building where Stephen lived recorded the exact moment Griffiths shot and killed a woman. Stephen shot him with a crossbow in the head: the arrow stuck in the skull. On her tape you could see how the man carried the woman on one shoulder and walked away with her until he left the focus of the camera.

The security guard, barely able to react to the images, called the police. Together they watched another sequence, from the same night on May 21, but later, in which Stephen was walking around carrying two plastic bags. From the effort he seemed to be making, the bags were heavy.

Griffiths was arrested on the night of May 24 and the next day a woman’s dismembered body was found in the River Aire, about three miles from Bradford. She identified her as Suzanne Blamires, a 36-year-old prostitute. She was the woman in the security camera footage, the one with the crossbow bolt to her head.

Griffiths confessed to the crime without any resistance. She also claimed to have killed two other prostitutes: Susan Rushworth, 43, in June 2009, and Shelley Armitage, 31, in April 2010.

He also said that he had killed others, but that he did not remember their names or the dates on which he had done so. Police searched unsolved murder and disappearance documents in and around Bradford to try to identify other Griffiths victims.

In his confession he said so he hated prostitutes, because in them he saw his mother, who had separated him from his father and who slept with every man who came in front of her. And that she had to put up with it.

He said so too he did not arrange the corpses whole, but cut off some parts to eat them. He said he sometimes cooked them, but he also liked raw meat.

The case was quickly brought to trial and the trial was short-lived because the evidence was overwhelming and Griffiths never denied his guilt. Standing in front of the judge, he said, “I’m the cannibal of the crossbow, call me that.”

Your way of operating

Stephen devised his modus operandi to attract women to his home: he pretended to be a photographer willing to pay to photograph naked women on his bed and once there he hit them on the head and, after sexually assaulting them, he killed them with a crossbow.

So, he dismembered their bodies in the bathtub and saved some parts to eat them. The rest of the bodies were packed in plastic bags and thrown into the River Aire in Shipley.

The young man, being a criminology student, knew the area perfectly, with his blind spots without cameras to capture his future victims; Also, he had the confidence of the girls he lured with money and drugs to accompany him to his home.

“At the time we thought he was just plain stupid, because many girls took advantage of him and robbed him when he tried to help them,” Donna, a prostitute who was having an affair with the killer, told the newspaper. The Guardian.

Criminologist James Treadwell, consulted by the BBC, said Griffiths presented a mixture of two types of serial criminal: “We have the meticulous and detailed killer, who rarely leaves clues. And on the other side is the disorganized killer, who leaves traces and often commits sexual offenses on the spot. From what has emerged, Griffiths has the characteristics of both. “

On 21 December 2010, Stephen Griffiths was sentenced to life in prison by a Leeds court for the murders of Suzanne Blamires, Susan Rushworth and Shelley Armitage; he today he continues to serve his sentence without enjoying any benefit.