Colin Ireland
| Colin Ireland | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Colin Ireland 16 March 1954 Dartford, Kent, England |
| Died | 21 February 2012 (aged 57) HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England |
| Cause of death | Pulmonary fibrosis |
| Other names | The Gay Slayer |
| Criminal penalty | Five counts of life imprisonment |
| Killings | |
| Victims | 5 |
|
Span of killings
|
8 March 1993–12 June 1993 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
|
Date apprehended
|
21 July 1993 |
Colin Ireland (16 March 1954 – 21 February 2012) was a British serial killer known as the Gay Slayer because his victims were homosexual men.
Ireland suffered a severely dysfunctional upbringing. He committed various crimes from the age of 16 and had served time in borstals and prisons. Criminologist David Wilson believed that Ireland was a psychopath.
While living in Southend, he started frequenting the Coleherne pub, a gay pub in west London. It was known as a place where men cruised for sexual partners and wore colour-coded handkerchiefs that indicated their preferred role. Ireland sought men who liked the passive role and sadomasochism, so he could readily restrain them as they initially believed it was a sexual game.
Ireland said he was heterosexual – he had been married twice – and that he pretended to be gay only to befriend potential victims. Ireland claimed that his motives were not sexually motivated. He was highly organised, and carried a full murder kit of rope and handcuffs and a full change of clothes to each murder. After killing his victim he cleaned the flat of any forensic evidence linking him to the scene and stayed in the flat until morning in order to avoid arousing suspicion from leaving in the middle of the night.
He was jailed for life for the murders in December 1993 and remained imprisoned until his death in February 2012, at the age of 57.
Ireland was born in Dartford, Kent to an unmarried teenage couple. Shortly after his birth, his father left him and his 17-year-old mother. He is not named on his birth certificate and Ireland did not know his identity. He was raised in poverty by his mother; they moved many times. In the early 1960s, she married. When she became pregnant, she put Ireland into care; he later returned to her. In 1966 she married another man. During the 1960s in Sheerness, Kent, Ireland was propositioned on three occasions and spied on once by men who were sexually attracted to him. In his mid-teens, he was sent to borstal for theft and whilst there deliberately set fire to another resident's belongings. At age 17, Ireland was convicted of robbery. He escaped and was returned to borstal.
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