John Duffy and David Mulcahy

Duffy and Mulcahy were a friends since their education at Haverstock School in North London. Whilst in school they were once excluded after being found laughing and covered in blood, after bludgeoning a hedgehog. In 1982, a woman was raped by two men near Hampstead Heath railway station. Eighteen more women were attacked over the next year, mostly late at night in dark, quiet places often near railway stations in and around North London, especially Hampstead, Barnet and other places. The women described their attackers as a short ginger-haired man and a larger man. DNA technology was not then available, but some suspects could be eliminated by blood grouping: one attacker, believed to be the ginger-haired man, was an "'A' secretor with a certain PGM factor of his blood". Unlike DNA, many people share the same blood grouping, so this evidence could eliminate suspects but not identify the offenders. Police further stepped up their search for the attacker, who had been nicknamed by the press the "Railway Rapist". With the murder of Day, this changed to the "Railway Killer", a tag reinforced by the rape and murder of 15-year-old Dutch schoolgirl Maartje Tamboezer in West Horsley in Surrey on the afternoon of 17 April 1986, after she was knocked from her bicycle with a wire that had been tied between two trees. As well as suffering rape and strangulation, Tamboezer had been repeatedly struck on the head with a rock and her body was set on fire. Surrey Police set up Operation Bluebell. Meanwhile, the Day murder inquiry was taken over by Detective Superintendent Charles Farquhar (a highly experienced east London murder investigator) and he linked that murder with the previous railway rapes. He then drew a link with the murder of Tamboezer when he spotted that a belt and twig in a crime scene photo were the parts of a tourniquet ligature. A month later, on 18 May 1986, Anne Lock, a 29-year-old secretary at London Weekend Television, was abducted and murdered after she got off a train at Brookmans Park railway station, Hertfordshire. This heralded the first multi-police-force murder inquiry (Operation Trinity) since the badly executed Yorkshire Ripper inquiry. It was the first such investigation to utilize basic computers and an early version of HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System). == Investigation ==

Duffy, a martial arts exponent and former railway carpenter, was identified by Detective Superintendent John Hurst as a suspect. He was known to police as he had been charged with the rape of his estranged wife. This inquiry led Canter to set up investigative psychology. As well as working together with Mulcahy, Duffy had started to rape alone; he was arrested on 26 November 1986 while following a woman in a secluded park. Items linking him to the Tamboezer murder were discovered, and rape victims identified him. There was evidence to charge him with the three murders and some rapes. He was questioned about the crimes, and the next day he was charged on all counts. Police knew that he had not committed the offences alone, but Duffy was not forthcoming about his accomplice. Mulcahy was arrested as a likely suspect, but there was not sufficient evidence to charge him. == Duffy ==

Trial and conviction Duffy went on trial in February 1988 and was convicted of two murders and four rapes, although he was acquitted of raping and killing Anne Lock (Lock's body had not been found until weeks after her murder, meaning forensic evidence could not be found on her body). He was given a minimum tariff of 30 years by the judge, later extended to a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary. Duffy chose not to appeal against his sentence, later claiming that he regretted his crimes and considered the sentence justified. Following the trial, much was made of the psychological profile constructed by Canter, as Duffy fitted 13 of the 17 observations he had predicted regarding the attacker's lifestyle and habits. Such profiling became commonplace in policing thereafter. Duffy interviews Following his conviction, Duffy revealed to a forensic psychologist what the police knew already: that he had not attacked the women alone. However, he did not reveal any more at the time. A junior police officer at the time of the investigation and 1988 trial was interested in the case and had risen by March 1995 to a position where he could commence or progress an investigation; he visited John Duffy, who agreed to be interviewed, but said it would take a very long time. A series of visits followed, and Duffy eventually requested assistance from the prison psychological service. In late 1997 a new psychologist started work at the prison. Bolland told her that real progress could be made if Duffy received counselling; this was arranged, and in June 1998 he agreed to start making full, proper, detailed admissions to the police. Interviews in the prison were difficult, so Duffy was secretly taken to a remote Hertfordshire police station for a week. There were complications, such as the football World Cup being on; Duffy asked for the interviews to be scheduled around the games, which Bolland, also a football fan, was happy with. The interviews were carried out under police caution, although Duffy was not in legal jeopardy, and taped. He confessed to a number of rapes but said he could remember no more. Further possible cases were put to him from police archives to jog his memory, and he remembered further cases. He was very clear that they were committed with his friend David Mulcahy. Duffy ultimately admitted all his offences, including the three murders with Mulcahy. He also explained in detail what had happened to Anne Lock. Bolland wrote that Duffy's confessions "gave a chilling insight into the serial killer/rapist's mind". Duffy told Bolland that a song by Michael Jackson called Thriller had played a part in the offences; the two men would play it loud in their car to psych themselves up before an attack (the tape was found in Mulcahy's house when he was arrested on Duffy's evidence). Duffy also explained how the way they approached and then controlled a victim developed over time so that they became in Bolland's words "shockingly skilled". Duffy spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact way, except when speaking about the Tamboezer murder. Nine months after the series of interviews Duffy was charged with seventeen offences of rape and conspiracy to rape; he pleaded guilty to all offences, all of which he said he carried out with David Mulcahy. He could not be charged with murdering Anne Lock as he had been found not guilty, but was charged with raping her. In March 1999 Duffy appeared at the Old Bailey and pleaded guilty to seventeen offences. == Mulcahy ==

Following Duffy's claims, Mulcahy was tracked for several months by police, then arrested in February 1999; DNA tests (which were not yet available during the original investigation) conclusively proved his involvement, supported by evidence from a search of his home. He did not answer any questions at interviews. Mulcahy already had a criminal record by this time: in the years following Duffy's conviction he had been convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for beating one of his sons and received a non-custodial sentence. Duffy was going to appear as a prosecution witness at Mulcahy's trial; Mulcahy's defence team sent letters to prisoners on Duffy's wing claiming to be under lawyer/client privilege, informing them that Duffy was the main prosecution witness against Mulcahy, and that if he gave evidence, a miscarriage of justice would take place. This put Duffy in obvious danger, and the prison authorities took action to protect him. A complaint to the solicitors, who had written to prisoners who were not their clients, led to claims that the letters were an error made by a clerical worker. After Mulcahy was found guilty, police re-opened investigations into hundreds of unsolved rapes and murders across the country, suspecting that the two men may have committed more offences than those Duffy confessed to. Despite these inquiries, neither man was ever charged with any further crime. == In the media ==

• In 2001 a television documentary Witness of Truth: The Railway Murders was broadcast. • While not in the public media, Bolland, who had been involved in the case from beginning to end, starting at a junior rank, and played a significant part, wrote a detailed article about his experience in the journal Medicine, Science and the Law in 2002. ==See also==