Who were the Railway Killers’ victims Alison Day, Maartje Tambozer and Anne Locke and how were they killed
Date: 2024-10-22A Channel 5 documentary series will tell the harrowing story of the Railway Killers, who were responsible several rapes and murders during the 1980s.
John Duffy and David Mulcahy strangled three women to death and dumped their bodies in a six-year crime rampage.
Who were the Railway Killers’ victims?
John Duffy and David Mulcahy are thought to have launched their first attack on July 1, 1982, when they raped a woman close to Hampstead Station in London’s Hampstead village.
For the next 12 months, women were assaulted across London and its suburbs.
In autumn 1983 the attacks suddenly stopped, with police later finding out this coincided with Duffy’s separation from his wife.
The attacks started up again in early 1984.
In July 1985, three women were brutally raped on the same night, all in the Hendon and Hampstead area.
Duffy and Mulcahy are thought to have brutally attacked at least 19 women, killing three of them.
Alison Day
Alison Day, 19, was the evil pair’s first victim to be murdered.
Day was on her way to keep her fiancé company while he was working overtime at a printers by Hackney Wick station in East London.
She was grabbed by Mulcahy when she got off a train on December 29, 1985, and Duffy produced a knife.
She was raped repeatedly after the men took her to the River Lea.
Fearing she could identify them, they decided to kill her.
Police found her body face down in the adjacent river.
Maartje Tambozer
Maartje Tamboezer, 15, was abducted from Horsley station in east Surrey on April 17, 1986.
She was last seen riding her bike after school to buy some sweets from a local shop.
The pair lay in wait in trees near a path and after watching her ride past knowing she would return the same way, they tied a fishing line across the path to trip the bike up.
After she was raped, Mulcahy turned on her, saying she had been looking at him, and struck her across the head with a stone and she fell to the ground.
After being raped and strangled, the teenager’s body was set on fire and dumped in nearby woods.
Anne Locke
Anne Locke, 29, worked for London Weekend Television as a secretary and had been asked to go in on May 18, 1986.
She left work at 8.30pm but never made it home to Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire.
Mulcahy and Duffy hid her bike, intending to snare its owner as she went to find it.
She was grabbed, forced down the railway tracks to a field where she was raped and murdered.
Her badly decomposed body was found two months later in undergrowth.
The men had attempted to burn her body.
In a TV appeal, her husband Lawrence choked back tears as he said: “Please, let us know that you’re alright, and if you can’t just hang on we’re looking for you we’re going to find you.
“I love you and I want you to come home.â€
Duffy was put on trial in February 1988 and was convicted of two murders and four rapes, though he was acquitted of raping and killing Anne Locke.
He was given a minimum sentence of 30 years by the judge.
Cops suspected Mulcahy had been involved for several years but didn’t have the evidence to charge him.
It was only after Duffy implicated him 15 years after he had been convicted that they could act.
Mulcahy, a married father of four, had been tracked for several months by police prior to his arrest.
DNA tests which were not used in the original trial but were now available managed to provide the evidence to convict Mulcahy.
He stood trial in 2000 with Duffy appearing as a witness, giving graphic evidence over 14 days.
Mulcahy claimed he was innocent, but on February 5, 2001, he was given three life sentences for murdering three women.
He received 24-year jail terms on each of the seven counts of rape and 18 years each for five conspiracies to rape, to run concurrently.
Mulcahy remains behind bars at HMP Full Sutton near Pocklington in East Yorkshire while Duffy is an inmate at HMP Frankland, County Durham.
The documentary, The Railway Killers, combines dramatisation of the murders with interviews with key figures involved with the case.
The three-part series delves into the devastating impact of the crimes committed by Duffy and Mulcahy, culminating in the shocking revelation of their identities as the killers.
The first episode focuses on the disappearance of Alison Day, who went missing in December 1985 after stepping off a train.
In the second episode, the police intensify their hunt for the culprits responsible for the murders of Day and teenager Maartje Tamboezer.
The final episode explores the events nine years after Duffy’s eventual capture and sentencing to life imprisonment for murder and rape.
The Railway Killers is available to stream on My5.
