Arthur Hutchinson
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Arthur Hutchinson (born Hartlepool, County Durham, England, on 19 February 1941) is a notorious British murderer, serving life sentences for stabbing to death three members of the same family at their home following a wedding reception.
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[edit] The massacre
On October 23rd 1983, Suzanne Laitner got married and a reception was held afterwards at the family home in Dore, an affluent suburb of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. The reception was attended by the close families of the bride and groom as well as numerous friends, and the couple set off on their honeymoon at the end of the day before the guests dispersed. Remaining at the house were the bride's 28-year-old brother, Richard Laitner, who had qualified as both a Doctor and Barrister; her sister Nicola; and her parents Basil, a partner in a local firm of solicitors, and Avril, a doctor.
Richard Laitner subsequently went upstairs and a confrontation began in his bedroom which led to him being stabbed to death. The intruder then inflicted several fatal knife wounds on Basil Laitner, who had come upstairs to investigate the noise he heard. Several knife blows crashed between his ribs and he died whilst still on the stairs. Then the intruder went downstairs and stabbed Avril Laitner 26 times. She apparently said "Take what you want and go" and it appears that she made an attempt to defend herself before her death. Returning upstairs, he went to Nicola Laitner's room and raped her numerous times at knifepoint before fleeing. The following morning, Nicola Laitner raised the alarm, after the intruder fled.
[edit] Quick identification
Police launched a search for Hutchinson, identifying him publicly as their suspect after matching a handprint found on a champagne bottle with a print on his criminal file. Hutchinson was previously known to the police for petty thefts and violence, and he was already on the run after escaping from custody during an appearance before a magistrates court in Selby, North Yorkshire on a rape charge on 28 September 1983. He had previous convictions for indecent assault, unlawful sexual intercourse and fraud.
An appeal was made to help locate Hutchinson, who it was believed had fled back to his native north east, although ten police forces throughout the north and midlands were briefed to search for him. Fewer than two weeks after the killings, on 5 November, he was arrested in a field near Hartlepool, County Durham, after being spotted trying to call his mother from a telephone box. Hutchinson tried and failed to stab himself when he was apprehended. His mother had publicly told him to give himself up a week previously.
He was taken into police custody for questioning, before being charged with three counts of murder and one of rape. Whilst he had escaped from Selby, before committing the Dore murders, he visited Doncaster Royal Infimary for treatment for a leg injury under an alias. It also appears he briefly worked as a Labourer in Barnsley during this time. Just after the murders he spent two nights in a guest house in Worksop under the name A. Fox.
[edit] The trial
On September 4, 1984, Hutchinson went on trial at Durham Crown Court and claimed in his evidence that he was not at the house at the time of the killings, trying instead to implicate Michael Barron, then a journalist from the Sunday Mirror newspaper, of the murders. Hutchinson also said in court that he knew of the Laitner family and their address after meeting Nicola Laitner in a bar on her sister's hen night, and that she had told him in innocence where she lived.
The forensic evidence of the palm print, along with blood group matches and a bite mark from a piece of cheese was overwhelming evidence against Hutchinson and after a ten-day trial, during which time the jury became the first ever to see an entire scene-of-crime video shot by the police, he was found guilty on September 14 and jailed.
Outrage was expressed by representatives of Rape Crisis, a national organisation which counselled and assisted rape victims, after reporting restrictions were lifted at the outset of the trial, allowing media organisations to identify Nicola Laitner by name as a rape victim. She had been due to give evidence about the attack on her by Hutchinson - and indeed did so - but legal arguments were made, and accepted, to solve the problematic issue of her anonymity when it was common knowledge from the initial reports of the massacre that Hutchinson had also committed an act of rape on a further family member.
Representations were made which submitted that maintaining Nicola Laitner's anonymity would have also necessitated keeping the names of the three murder victims - her parents and brother - out of the trial; something deemed to be a legally pointless exercise as the case had attracted considerable public interest and their identities had been widely publicised and were widely known.
[edit] Aftermath
Hutchinson was denied compassionate release to attend his mother's funeral in 1985 and subsequently lost an appeal against his conviction. He remains in prison to this day and was on the published list of prisoners issued with a whole life tariff, making it unlikely that he will ever be released.
However, a European Court of Human Rights judgement decided that such tariffs were unlawful and as a consequence, all prisoners served with such tariffs reverted to the original recommended periods of incarceration from their trial judges. The judge in Hutchinson's case, Mr Justice McNeill, recommended a tariff of 18 years, but the Home Secretary of the time, Leon Brittan, later extended this to a whole life tariff. The minimum term recommended by the trial judge expired in 2002, and five years on Hutchinson is still in prison, though the practice of politicians setting minimum terms for life sentence prisoners was outlawed in November 2002. His bid for freedom could also be helped by a European Court of Justice case that is currently reviewing whole life sentences to determine that they are a violation of human rights.
The Laitner house was sold in 1984 and the firm of solicitors which Basil Laitner co-partnered and bore his surname was bought out and the name changed. Nicola Laitner assumed a new identity and left Sheffield permanently in 1987.
