Roy FONTAINE

Real name: Archibald Thompson Hall

AKA "Monster Butler"

Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Jewel thief
Number of victims: 5
Date of murders: 1977 - 1978
Date of arrest: January 16, 1978
Date of birth: July 17, 1924
Victims profile: David Wright / Walter Scott-Elliot and his wife Dorothy / Mary Coggle / His half-brother Donald
Method of murder: Shooting / Suffocation / Beating with a spade / Beating with a poker
Location: United Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to life imprisonment, 1978. Died in Kingston Prison in Portsmouth aged 78 on September 16, 2002

Archibald Thompson Hall was a scot born in Glasgow on 17th June 1924. While still in his teens he ventured into a career of petty crime scam involving two Red Cross collection tins, the tin containing the small change was for the Red Cross while the other one was for paper money and this was for him.

In 1941 he received his first of many prison sentences for theft. Moving on to better things he graduated to confidence tricks and became a consummate actor, often posing as a member of the aristocracy or a wealthy American.

He was also a jewel thief and received ten years' in 1964 for his activities. Shortly after his incarceration he escaped from Blundeston Prison, in Suffolk, only to be recaptured in 1966 and for this he received another five years' on top of the ten he was already supposed to be serving. In 1972 he was paroled and it was during this time while in Preston that he met Mary Coggle, an Irishwoman, who became his mistress.

In between his periodic spells inside he worked as a butler to the rich and famous. By the end of 1973 he was back in prison and stayed there until 1977. This time when he was released he obtained a position in the household of Lady Hudson, the widow of an MP, near Waterbeck in Dumfriesshire.

While he lived there he was visited by one of his prison acquaintances, David Wright, who started to do various odd-jobs around the house. While Wright was staying with Hall, some of Lady Butler's silver and a ring vanished. This anoyed Archie as he liked his job and had decided that he wanted to 'go straight.' When he found out that Wright's girlfriend had the ring he persuaded her to return it. This time it was Wrights turn to be upset and when Archie was in bed asleep he was suddenly woken up by a loud bang.

Archie saw Wright standing next to his bed and pointing a rifle at him. The bullet had hit the headboard above his head. It was obvious that Wright had taken advantage of the fact that Lady Hudson was away and had consumed a number of bottles of her champagne. Wright jabbed the gun at Archie catching him in the face with the barrel. After quite some time Archie eventually managed to calm him down and get him to go to bed.

The very next day Archie and Wright went out hunting rabbits. After they had fired at several rabbits and Archie was sure that Wright's gun was empty he shot him n the head killing him instantly. He dug a rough grave in the bed of a stream and buried the body A little while later Lady butler was informed by the police about Archies criminal history and she dismissed him.

Moving down to London in November 1977 he once more got a position as butler, this time to 82-year-old Walter Travers Scott-Elliott and his wife Dorothy. It didn't take Archie long to notice that his new home was full of priceless antiques and he decided that this was going to be the big one, after this he would be able to retire. The Scott-Elliotts were very wealthy with many bank accounts around the world and were the owners of several houses in Britain. Not long after moving to London Archie was more met up with Mary Coggle, he saw her in a pub, she was chatting to a man named Michael Kitto.

Archie found that they had quite a lot in common as Kitto also had a history of petty crime. The three of them chatted and decided to burgle the house of the Scott-Elliots.

Mrs Scott-Elliott had to go into a nursing home for a few days and, on the evening of 8th December, Archie took the opportunity to show Kitto around the Scott-Elliott's house. Unbeknown to him Mrs Scott-Elliott had returned home earlier in the day. When he opened the door to the Scott-Elliott's bedroom he expected to see the old man fast asleep but was confronted by Mrs Scott-Elliott, who wanted to know what he was doing there, with a stranger. Panicking they both grabbed her and using a pillow managed to suffocate her. They decided to try and make it look like an accident so were putting her into bed when he husband woke up. Archie explained to him that his wife had had a nightmare and that he should go back to sleep.

The next day Mr Scott-Elliott went to his club for lunch and Hall, Kitto and Coggle tried to decide what to do next. They thought that if they kept the old man sedated with his normal quota of pills, then Mary would be able to impersonate his wife as least for a while The next problem they had to decide was what to do with the body. They put the body into the boot of the car and, that evening took Mr Scott-Elliott to a cottage in Cumberland that Archie had rented. Mary sat in the back with Mr Scott Elliott with wig and Dorothy's fur coat, and they all drove north.

The next day they buried Mrs Scott-Elliott's body by a lonely roadside near Loch Earn. Having got rid of the body they then drove back to the cottage and left Mr Scott-Elliott there with Mary Coggle still posing as his wife while they both returned to London and ransacked the house. They went back and picked up Mr Scott-Elliott and Mary Coggle and continued their drive north.

On the afternoon of 14th December, near Glen Affric, Hall and Kitto decided it was time to get rid of the old man so they attempted to strangle him. Perhaps fear gave him added strength but he fought back with unexpected strength. They used a spade to beat him to death and then using the same spade they buried his body in a shallow grave.

During the next day things were tense between Archie and Mary. She wanted to keep Dorothy's mink coat but Archie wanted to get rid of the evidence. When they got back to the cottage the row erupted into violence.

Hall struck Mary knocking her to the ground with a poker and put a plastic bag over her head suffocating her. Later that night Archie and Kitto drove the Carlisle to Glasgow road and dumped her body in a stream under a bridge.

The pair spent a quiet Christmas with Archies family. After the end of the festive season Hall and Kitto returned to their Cumberland hide-out this time with Hall's brother, Donald. Just like Archie he also had a criminal record for burglary but also for child molesting. Archie hated him for this and thought of him as pervert. When Donald started to ask too many questions about their new found wealth Archie decided he would have to go. He was rendered unconcious with chloroformed and drowned in the bath.

The next day, 15th January 1978, they once again drove north again looking for somewhere suitable to dispose of the body. It had been snowing and the ground was frozen so they decided to spend the night at the Blenheim House Hotel, North Berwick. The hotel proprietor was suspicious about his two new guests and telephoned the local police and asked them check out their car registration. Hall had fitted false plates to the Granada and this was to be his downfall.

When the licence number was checked it was found that it should belong to a Ford Escort and, consequently, two policemen appeared at the hotel to ask them to explain this discrepancy. They were taken back to the police station. Here, Hall asked to go to the toilet and escaped out of the window. His freedom was short lived and he was picked up later in a taxi on his way to Dunbar.

The police had searched the car and found Donalds body in the boot. Mary Coggles body had also been found and the disapearance of Mr and Mrs Scott-Elliott was also being investigated. Hall broke down in quetioning and made a full confession, even mentioning the earlier murder of David Wright.

Hall and Kitto were tried in Edinburgh in November 1978. Kitto received fifteen years' and Hall received life imprisonment without parole.

Roy Fontaine

Would Sir like his usual bullet in the head? The less than subservient butler of Kensington killed his lover, his boss, an accomplice and a brother in the 70s.

Roy Fontaine was born Archibald Hall in Glasgow in 1924. He started stealing when he was just 15 and received his first prison sentence at 17. At the same time a much older, divorced neighbour initiated him into sex and introduced him to a more sophisticated world and a taste for the high life.

Using the profits of his burglaries Hall moved to London. Hollywood and its stars fascinated him and, inspired by Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock’s film 'Rebecca', Hall changed his name to Roy Fontaine.

He had a short-lived marriage, but was openly bisexual and embarked on a string of affairs with men. London’s celebrity gay scene welcomed the handsome and charming Glaswegian with open arms and Fontaine claimed to have had sexual relationships with both Lord Boothby and playwright Terence Rattigan. In his memoirs he said that the great love of his life was a fellow con from Hull Prison named David Barnard who died in a car crash in 1974.

In between socialising with London’s elite his con tricks or burglaries would catch up with him and he’d spend more time in prison. During one lengthy sentence for theft he set about refining everything about his character so that he could pass without suspicion amongst the English aristocracy. He eradicated all trace of his Glaswegian accent, studied social etiquette and became a self-taught authority on antiques.

When he was released from prison in 1977 he found employment as a butler to Lady Margaret Hudson at Kirtleton House in Dumfriesshire and had an on-off relationship with a prostitute called Mary Coggle, also known as “Belfast Mary”.

The Crimes

Claiming he wanted to go straight Fontaine was in for a shock when an ex-cellmate from Hull Prison and former lover, David Wright, showed up. Lady Hudson employed 30 year-old Wright as a gamekeeper and gardener around the stately home, but he stole some of her silver and threatened to tell her about Fontaine’s past.

On a rabbit hunting expedition in July, Fontaine shot Wright in the back of the head and buried the body under boulders in a stream on the estate. With a new found taste for blood Fontaine gave up the idea of living an honest life and in November 1977 moved back to London. He acquired the position of butler to a wealthy antique collector and ex-Labour MP Walter Scott-Elliot and his wife Dorothy. Planning to extort them he asked small time crook Michael Kitto to help.

While showing Kitto round the couple’s home Mrs. Scott-Elliot returned unexpectedly with her husband. The two men put their hand over her mouth and suffocated her with a pillow before she could raise the alarm. They then drugged her 82-year-old husband with whisky and sleeping pills.

Mary Coggle put on a wig and wore Mrs. Scott-Elliot’s clothes. They put the dead woman’s body in the boot of a car and set off for the 400-mile journey to Scotland.

They buried Mrs. Scott-Elliot by the side of a quiet road in Braco, Perthshire. Still sedated they beat her husband to death with a spade and buried him in a remote spot near Glen Affric, Inverness.

The following day an argument broke out between the three of them. Coggle wanted to keep the Mrs. Scott-Elliot’s mink coat, but the men wanted the evidence destroyed. So Fontaine hit Coggle over the head with a poker and suffocated her with a plastic bag before dumping her in a stream in Dumfriesshire.

The two men headed for Fontaine’s family home in Cumbria only to find Fontaine’s brother Donald released from prison three days earlier. Donald was too interested in Fontaine’s recent adventures and with murder now second nature to him, Fontaine held a chloroformed rag over Donald’s face and drowned him in a bath. A few days later the two murderers found themselves driving north to dispose of yet another body.

The arrest

An antiques dealer in Newcastle became suspicious after two men offered him china and silverware well below its worth. He jotted down the number plate of the car the men were driving and alerted the police. The police found the car had been rented out to a Scott-Elliot and when they visited the Chelsea flat they found the walls spattered with blood and over £3,500 worth of valuables missing.

Mary Coggle’s body had been found a month earlier on Christmas Day by a shepherd and knowing that Coggle had once worked for Dorothy Scott-Elliot as a housekeeper and cook detectives began to wonder if the two murders were connected. Was she the same woman wearing a mink coat that they knew had stayed at the Tilt Hotel in Blair Atholl, Scotland with three other men, one of them very elderly? Two days later the two younger men had returned to the hotel alone.

In January 1978, Fontaine and Kitto stopped at a hotel in North Berwick. The owner, Norman Wight, became suspicious of the two guests and called the police. During a routine check the police found Donald Hall’s body.

Fontaine escaped out of a toilet window and got as far as Haddington before he was stopped at a police roadblock.

Following a failed suicide attempt on 18th January 1978 Fontaine helped the police search for Mr. Scott-Elliot’s body on the Highlands. They found him, chewed by foxes amongst a rhododendron bush. Days later they dug up David Wright, and soon after that Mrs. Scott-Elliot was found face down in a roadside ditch 100 miles from where her husband’s corpse had been uncovered.

The trial

During the trial in Edinburgh in May 1978 Fontaine was described as a psychopath. Fontaine made a full confession to the five murders and British and Scottish courts sentenced him to life imprisonment. He was charged with four life sentences for four of the murders – the fifth case remains open.

The aftermath

Fontaine attempted suicide several times whilst he was in custody and in 1999 wrote his autobiography A Perfect Gentlemen and said that there was “a side of me, when aroused, that is cold and completely heartless”. He died in 2002 in Kingston Prison in Portsmouth aged 78.

Rachel Scott - The Crime and INvestigation Network

Archibald Hall (a.k.a. Roy Fontaine, born Glasgow, Scotland, 17 June 1924; died Portsmouth, England, 16 September 2002) was a notorious British murderer and thief who became known as the Killer Butler or the Monster Butler after committing his most infamous crimes while working in service to members of the British aristocracy. Until his death, he was the oldest person serving a whole life tariff in prison.

Crime from the start

Hall began stealing at the age of 15, and soon progressed to burglary. After realising he was bisexual, he infiltrated the gay scene in London where he moved on the strength of his criminal profits. He served his first jail sentence after trying in London to sell on jewellery he had stolen in Scotland. During his stretch, he learnt more about etiquette and the aristocracy while also dulling his Scottish accent with elocution lessons and swotting up on antiques.

Upon his release he began using the name Roy Fontaine - as a homage to actress Joan Fontaine, of whom he was a fan - and working as a butler, occasionally returning to prison for sentences incurred after more pilfering of jewels. He got married and divorced during this time.

From thief to killer

In 1975, Hall was released from prison and went back to Scotland. He began working as butler to Margaret Hudson, a dowager who lived at Kirtleton House, Dumfriesshire. Hall initially had ideas to steal her valuables but he never carried them out when he realised that he liked both his job and employer too much.

When David Wright, an acquaintance from his last prison term and a former lover, was also given a job on the estate as a gamekeeper in 1977, the two had an altercation after Wright stole some of Lady Hudson's jewellery and threatened to tell her about Hall's own criminal past if he reported him.

Hall took Wright on a rabbit hunt in a trick attempt at coming to an amicable solution. Once out in the fields, he shot Wright dead and buried him next to the stream in the Kirtleton House grounds.

Hall quit his job immediately - much to Lady Hudson's apparent disappointment - and moved back to London where he combined more thieving and racketeering with working as a butler to the 82-year-old Walter Scott-Elliot, and his 60-year-old wife Dorothy. Scott-Elliot, who had been Labour Member of Parliament for Accrington from 1945 to 1950, was rich and from an aristocratic Scottish background. Hall's plan was to rob them of their money and retire, but in the end he killed them both after Mrs Scott-Elliot walked in on Hall and an accomplice, Michael Kitto, as they were discussing their plans. Kitto immediately put his hand over her mouth and suffocated her.

They then drugged her husband and drove them both up to Scotland, helped by a local prostitute and acquaintance, Mary Coggles. Mrs Scott-Elliot was buried in Braco, Perthshire, then they strangled and beat her sedated husband and buried him in woods near Tomich, Invernesshire.

Their next victim was Coggles, who had taken to wearing Mrs Scott-Elliot's expensive clothes and jewellery and was drawing too much attention to herself. After she refused to dispose of the fur coat, which was potentially incriminating evidence, Hall and Kitto killed her and left her body in a barn in Middlebie, Dumfriesshire, where she was discovered on Christmas Day 1977 by a shepherd.

The final victim of the pair was Hall's half-brother Donald, a pædophile just out of prison whom Hall hated. Hall and Kitto found him at Hall's holiday home in Cumbria, and Hall chloroformed him before drowning him in the bath. The abortive effort to dispose of this body led to Hall and Kitto's downfall.

Arrest

Hall and Kitto put the body in the boot of the car and again drove to Scotland to carry out another burial. However, the wintry weather made driving hazardous, and so on reaching North Berwick in East Lothian, they decided to check into a hotel overnight in order to lessen their chances of being in an accident.

However, the shifty movements of Hall and Kitto made the hotelier suspicious and, worried about whether he would be paid for their stay, he called the police as a precaution. When they arrived, they searched Hall's car and found the corpse.

Kitto was arrested but Hall escaped through a lavatory window. He was captured at a police roadblock in nearby Haddington.

The police then made a connection between Hall's car and the registration number of a vehicle noted by a suspicious antiques dealer in Newcastle upon Tyne, to whom two men had offered silver and china at a price well below its true value. The police traced the car to the Scott-Elliots' address in London and found the apartment robbed of many valuables and spattered with blood. This also linked with the murder of Coggles, whose body had already been found and who had been previously registered as a housekeeper for the Scott-Elliots. The police had evidence that three men (including a drugged Mr Scott-Elliot) and a woman had stayed at a Scottish hotel for one night, but the following night only two men - Hall and Kitto - returned.

Hall tried and failed to commit suicide while in custody, before revealing the whereabouts of the three buried victims. In deep snow and bitter temperatures, and with the media watching, police teams dug up the bodies of David Wright and Walter and Dorothy Scott-Elliot. They charged Hall and Kitto with five murders.

Imprisonment and death

Hall was convicted at courts in London and Edinburgh of four murders - the murder of Mrs Scott-Elliot was ordered to lie on file - and sentenced to life imprisonment. In Scotland, it was recommended that he served a minimum of 15 years and in England the judge handed down a recommendation that he never be released.

Kitto was given life imprisonment for three murders, with no recommended minimum in Scotland and a 15-year minimum in England. Police said in evidence that Kitto was, in a perverted way, fortunate to be able to go on trial, as Hall was planning to kill him too.

Successive Home Secretaries put Hall on the list of dangerous prisoners who should serve a whole life tariff, which unlike some criminals on the list, did not alter Hall's prison status at all, as it reciprocated the tariff set by one of his judges. When politically-set tariffs were declared illegal by the law lords and the European Court of Human Rights, Hall's status as a prisoner unlikely to be released never changed, despite being the oldest prisoner on the publicised list. In 1995, the Observer newspaper published a letter from Hall in which he requested the right to die. He made numerous suicide attempts which were all unsuccessful.

Hall published his autobiography, A Perfect Gentleman, in 1999. He died of a stroke in Kingston Prison, Portsmouth, in 2002 at the age of 78. By this date, he was one of the oldest of more than 70,000 prisoners in British prisons, and the oldest to be serving a whole life tariff.

In 2005, British actor Malcolm McDowell and Hollywood screenwriter Peter Bellwood announced that they were seeking a director and funding for a film based on Hall's life.

The monster butler who served up murder

Iain Lundy

FOR HOLLYWOOD star Joan Fontaine, it was her most famous role in a glittering showbiz career - that of the second Mrs de Winter opposite Laurence Olivier in the classic movie Rebecca. Little did she know that her performance so beguiled a young petty criminal from Scotland that he changed his name to hers - and that 65 years later the film industry which propelled Miss Fontaine to stardom would be preparing a silver screen version of his own bizarre life story.

Archibald Hall may have been captivated by one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest romances, and while there was a certain Hitchcockian element to the way Hall's life unfolded, it was far from romantic. Archibald Hall - also known as Roy Fontaine - graduated from small-time crook to bloodthirsty killer. The Monster Butler, as he became known, was more Psycho than Rebecca.

Hall's fascination with the stars of the cinema was entirely understandable. After all he was a consummate actor himself, a perplexing character who played a variety of roles throughout his life. A lengthy spell languishing in prison would be followed by work in a country mansion as a butler to the wealthy. Lessons in elocution and etiquette had eradicated all trace of his Glasgow accent and he became a self-taught authority on antiques.

Confidently posing as an aristocrat or a wealthy American, Hall became the perfect confidence trickster and jewel thief. He was a very good butler, he had access to some of the grandest houses in the country and he knew what was worth stealing. He also had few scruples and his rich and famous employers became victims of his thieving. There were aspects of the double life led by Hall/Fontaine which were farcical, even bordering on comic - but the eruption of murderous violence which seemed to overcome him in 1977 transformed his last act into a tragedy.

Born in Glasgow in 1924, Hall was involved in theft from an early age and received his first prison sentence when he was 17. Between the 1940s and the 1970s he was either serving time in jail or leading his "other" life as a butler and would-be aristocrat. Openly bisexual, he had a short-lived marriage and a string of relationships with men. Released from prison in 1977, he headed for the arms of his "mistress", Irishwoman Mary Coggle, and a new job as butler to Lady Margaret Hudson at Kirtleton House, near Waterbeck in Dumfriesshire. When David Wright, a lover he had shared a cell with at Hull Prison, visited at the house, Hall's life changed forever.

Wright started doing odd jobs around the house, but his presence was a constant threat. He knew too much about Hall's background and threatened to expose him to his new employer. He also stole items of Lady Hudson's silver which infuriated Hall, who, by now in his early 50s, claimed he was trying to "go straight". One day the two men were out shooting rabbits. Hall made sure Wright's gun was empty, then stopped, pointed his own gun at Wright and blasted him in the head before burying his body in a rough grave. It was his first kill.

But once he had the scent of blood, a darker side of Hall emerged. It was as though, having killed once, he couldn't stop. In November 1977 he moved to London and became butler to the wealthy ex-Labour MP Walter Scott-Elliot and his wife Dorothy. Having given up the idea of keeping clean, he was showing a criminal accomplice, Michael Kitto, round the couple's London home when they were disturbed by Mrs Scott-Elliot. The two men grabbed her and suffocated her with a pillow. They then drugged her 82-year-old husband, put the dead woman's body in the boot of a car, dressed up Mary Coggle in Mrs Scott-Elliot's clothes and wig and set off for Scotland.

When they reached Braco in Perthshire, a journey of 400 miles, the dead woman was buried by the side of a quiet road. Mr Scott-Elliot, still sedated, was taken to a lonely spot near Glen Affric in Inverness-shire and beaten to death with a spade. The following day an argument broke out between Mary Coggle, who wanted to keep the dead woman's mink coat, and Hall and Kitto who wanted the evidence destroyed. Hall hit her over the head with a poker and suffocated her with a plastic bag before dumping her in a stream between Glasgow and Carlisle.

The two men spent a quiet Christmas with Hall's family, including his half-brother Donald, a child molester despised by Hall.

In January 1978 the three men were in Cumbria, Donald started asking too many questions for Hall's liking, so a chloroformed rag was held over his face and he was drowned in a bath. Hall and Kitto again put the body in the boot and drove north, but were forced to stop at a hotel in North Berwick because of a snowstorm. The suspicious proprietor called the police, Donald's body was found in the boot of the car and the killing spree was over.

Under questioning Hall confessed to the five murders and led police to the bodies. He was jailed for life and died in 2002 in Kingston Prison, Portsmouth. (Kitto received four life sentences.) But what made the likeable rogue and well-spoken butler to the gentry turn killer? The answer will be explored in a new film The Monster Butler, being produced by actor Malcolm McDowell, star of A Clockwork Orange.

There are few clues save a few lines in Hall's 1999 biography, A Perfect Gentleman, in which he states: "There is a side of me, when aroused, that is cold and completely heartless".

'Mad Butler' dies in prison

31 October, 2002

A former butler who was at the centre of a notorious killing spree has died in prison.

Archibald Hall, who was jailed in the 1970s for life for the murder of four people, died at Kingston Prison, Portsmouth, on 16 September.

A spokesman for the coroner's office said that Hall, dubbed The Mad Butler by the press, died of natural causes aged 78.

Hall, who also went by the name of Roy Fontaine, was born in Glasgow in 1924, and his adolescence and early adult years were filled with petty crimes.

He then became a con artist, often posing as an aristocrat, for which he served several prison terms.

But in 1975, Hall's crimes became more serious as he served as butler to Lady Margaret Hudson.

Hall, who was bisexual, had intended to burgle her Dumfriesshire estate, which was packed with valuable antiques but his plans were disrupted when a former homosexual lover turned up.

After inviting David Wright to stay at the mansion, Hall found that he had stolen a diamond ring from Lady Hudson.

After an argument in which Mr Wright shot at Hall, the butler invited him on a shooting trip in nearby woods during which he shot him in the back of the head.

Panicked

Hall soon left the employment of Lady Hudson and moved to London where in 1977 he was employed by former Labour MP and minister Walter Scott-Elliott and his wife Dorothy.

Then in December 1977 Hall went drinking with a former girlfriend, Irish barmaid and prostitute Mary Coggle, who introduced him to small-time crook Michael Kitto.

Hall said he was going to burgle the Kensington flat of his 82-year-old employer, but as he gave his friends a tour of the apartment, showing off the goods he was going to steal, they were disturbed by Mrs Scott-Elliott.

The two men are believed to have panicked and killed Mrs Scott-Elliott by smothering her, although Hall has claimed it was Kitto who did this alone.

Covering his tracks, Hall plied Mr Scott-Elliott with drugged whisky and put the body of his wife in the boot of his car.

Poker

Coggle was dressed up in a wig and mink coat to look like Mrs Scott-Elliott as they visited banks to access the couple's money.

The group, with Mr Scott-Elliott still drugged and Coggle dressed as his wife, then drove to Scotland to dispose of the body.

After reaching a desolate spot in Perthshire, the wife's body was buried and Mr Scott-Elliott was killed a couple of days later by strangulation and buried in a shallow grave in the Highlands.

The killing spree continued as Coggle began to brag to friends about her new-found wealth gained from the murders.

Angered at her indiscretion, Hall killed her by hitting her over the head with a poker while Kitto held her arms.

Chloroform

Hall's final victim was his half-brother Donald Hall, who the butler hated because he suspected he was a sex offender.

Again with the help of Kitto, he subdued Donald with chloroform before drowning him in a bath.

The murderous duo were finally caught as they stopped at a hotel in North Berwick on their way to dispose of the body.

In the summer of 1978, Hall was given two life sentences for the murders of Mr Wright and Walter Scott-Elliott.

He denied murdering Mrs Scott-Elliott and the file was left open.

He was later given two more life sentences for the murders of Coggle and Donald Hall. Kitto also received four life sentences.