Kenneth Erskine

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Kenneth Erskine (born 1962) is an English serial killer who became known as the Stockwell Strangler.

During 1986, Erskine murdered seven elderly people, breaking into their homes and strangling them; most often they were sexually assaulted. The crimes took place in London's south west and also in Islington, north London.

His first victim was Mrs Eileen Emms (78), of Wandsworth, who died on 9 April 1986. Her death was originally not believed to have been murder, and it was only established that she had been murdered when a television set was detected missing from her flat. A post mortem examination revealed that she had been raped and strangled.

His second victim was Mrs Janet Cockett (67), who died on 9 June 1986 after being strangled in her flat on the Wandsworth housing estate on which she was chairwoman of the tenants association. Erskine's palm print was found on a window at Mrs Cockett's flat.

On 28 June 1986, Erskine claimed his third and fourth victims (both men) at a residential home in Islington. His victims were Polish pensioners Valentine Gleim (84) and Zbigniew Strabawa (94). Both men were sexually assaulted and strangled.

Erskine's fifth victim was Mr William Carmen (84), of Islington. He stole cash from Mr Carmen's flat before molesting him and strangling him to death in an attack on 8 July 1986.

He claimed his sixth victim on 21 July 1986, when he committed a similar fatal attack on 74-year-old Mr William Downes in a Stockwell bedsit.

The final victim was Mrs Florence Tisdall, an 83-year-old widow who lived at a retirement complex in Fulham. She was found dead by the caretaker on the morning of 23 July 1986.

A homeless drifter and solvent abuser, Erskine was 24 years old when he committed the crimes, but had the mental age of a 12-year-old. He was convicted of seven murders.

Police suspected Erskine of four others murders. These include the murder of Wilfred Parkes (aged 81, at Stockwell, on 2 June 1986) and Trevor Thomas (aged 75, at Lambeth, on 21 July 1986). Erskine has never been charged with any of these murders.

Erskine was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 40 years, but has since been found to be suffering from mental disorder within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1983, and is therefore now held at the maximum security Broadmoor Hospital. He is unlikely to be freed until at least 2028 and the age of 66. Some 20 years later, the trial judge's recommendation is still one of the heaviest ever handed out in British legal history.

In February 1996, Erskine was again in the news, this time for preventing the possible murder of Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper", by raising the alarm as a fellow inmate, Paul Wilson, attempted to strangle Sutcliffe with the flex from a pair of stereo headphones [1].