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Whitechapel Ripper will die in prison for killings
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent6 Oct 2008
The double killer who planned to emulate Jack the Ripper was jailed for a minimum of 30 years but refuses to reveal where he dumped his victims.
Delivery driver Derek Brown, 48, is now likely to die in prison, as his own barrister admitted today.
Brown, dubbed the new "Whitechapel Ripper", lured two women off the streets of the East End to murder them in his home. He then disposed of the bodies so successfully that neither has been found.
At the Old Bailey, Judge Martin Stephens imposed a double life sentence-and said he had thought carefully-about a "life means life" term. But imposing a fixed term he told Brown: "You will be very old if and when you are ever released."
Defence counsel Henry Grunwald QC added: "He could spend the rest of his natural life in prison because of his age."
The judge told Brown: "You have shown not a flicker of remorse. You took a devious and cowardly course at this trial, taking virtually a whole day to give your lying account to the jury then refusing to be cross examined.
"I have no doubt you took that course because you had no answer to the questions you would be asked. The jury demonstrated how your attempt to hoodwink them had failed when they took less than three hours to convict you after a four-week trial."
Brown butchered illegal Chinese immigrant Xiao Mei Guo, 29, who sold counterfeit DVDs on the streets of Whitechapel, and drug addict and prostitute Bonnie Barrett, 24, who worked in the same area. Both women were taken back to Brown's flat in Rotherhithe in three weeks in the late Summer of last year where he murdered them thinking they would never be missed.
Brown who is a convicted sex offender and was jailed in 1989 for rape, is the main suspect for a third murder.
The jury made legal history by returning the first guilty verdicts in a trial when the bodies of two murder victims have never been found.
Judge Stephens said that only Brown could bring comfort to the anguished families of the victims, "if you ever chose to tell the police where the bodies or remains could be found".
He added: "You murdered two vulnerable women plying their trade on the streets precisely because of their availability and their lack of protection.
"What you did to each of these women before you killed them can only be speculated on. What we do know is that you disposed of their bodies with frightening efficiency so not a trace of either women has been found."
Like Jack the Ripper, Derek Brown picked on young women victims who "scratched a living on the edge of society", the court heard.
When police later searched his one-bed council flat in Rotherhithe, they found a heavy-duty bow saw, a Black and Decker power tool, a waterproof sheet and roll after roll of industrial-strength clingfilm.
Traces of blood from both victims were found spattered throughout his flat even though he had tried to steam clean every surface.
He was also an avid reader about killers and mass murder and his library card showed that one of his favourite writers was Jack the Ripper author Nigel Cawthorne.
Three weeks before he began his murderous spree he had borrowed a library copy of Cawthorne's Killers: The Most Barbaric Murderers Of Our Time.
Reader views (2)
Copycat crimes, just like the 'Knife epidemic'the authorities are rarely able to detect these before hand. What a dangeous world!
- Chinedu Igwe, Bolton, Lancashire, 06/10/2008 22:28
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As sad as this is for the women and their families, at least this sick man is off the streets for good and he cannot harm anybody ever again!
- John, United Kingdom, 06/10/2008 15:32
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