Stephen AKINMURELE
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Robberies
Number of victims: 5
Date of murders: 1995 - 1998
Date of arrest: November 1, 1998
Date of birth: 1977
Victims profile: Eric Boardman, 77, and his wife Joan, 74 / Jemmimah Cargill, 75 / Dorothy Harris, 68 / Marjorie Ashton, 72
Method of murder: Strangulation
Location: Blackpool, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
Status: Hanged himself in prison on August 28, 1999
Man charged over murder of couple
BBC News
Sunday, November 1, 1998
Detectives hunting the killer of an elderly couple at their home have charged a 20-year-old man.
Stephen Akinmurele is accused of killing Eric Boardman, 77, and his wife Joan, 74, who were found dead at their home in Bispham, near Blackpool, Lancashire, on Friday.
A police spokesman said Mr Akinmurele, from Blackpool, would appear before the town's magistrates on Monday. Detectives will then seek to have him remanded in custody.
The bodies of the couple, married 27 years and well-known in the area, were discovered by one of their daughters.
Mr Boardman's body was lying in the hallway under a toppled wardrobe and his wife's was on the floor in a living-room.
A bloody cosh made from batteries bound together was found under Mr Boardman's body and a murder inquiry was started.
Post-mortem examinations found the former electrician and pleasure boatman had head, neck and facial injuries. His wife had neck injuries, but the cause of their deaths has not been determined.
The couple's family were said to be "absolutely devastated" by their deaths.
Man charged with third murder
BBC News
Friday, November 6, 1998
A 21-year-old man accused of killing an elderly couple in Blackpool at the weekend has been charged with another murder.
Jemmimah Cargill, who was 75 and another pensioner in the resort, died in a flat fire on Caunce Street in Blackpool last month.
Stephen Akinmurele is already accused of murdering Eric Boardman, 77, and his wife Joan, 74, also in Blackpool.
The bodies of the couple, married for 27 years, were discovered by one of their daughters.
The cause of their deaths has not been determined.
Detectives are also concerned about a man who was staying in the resort and has gone missing.
Fourth murder charge for Blackpool suspect
BBC News
Tuesday, November 10, 1998
A man accused of murdering three pensioners in Blackpool has been charged with a a fourth murder.
Stephen Akinmurele, 21, was charged on Monday evening with murder of Dorothy Harris at Glashen Terrace in Ballasalla on the Isle of Man in February 1996.
Mr Akinmurele, who lived on the island between 1988 and 1995, is also accused of murdering an elderly couple, Eric and Joan Boardman, and 75-year-old Jemmimah Cargill in Blackpool.
Strangled
The bodies of Mr and Mrs Boardman, married for 27 years, were discovered by one of their daughters.
Lancashire Police have now re-opened files on fatal arson attacks in north-west England over the last two years.
Mr Akinmurele, a former barman, was arrested on 1 November for the murder of Mr and Mrs Boardman at their home in Blackpool on 31 October. They had been strangled.
On 6 November he was charged with the murder of Ms Cargill, his former landlady, who died in a fire at her home in October.
Unsolved case re-opened
Mr Akinmurele was charged in connection with the fourth death following the setting up of a joint incident room between detectives in Lancashire and on the Isle of Man.
Officers are also looking into the unsolved murder of Majorie Ashton, who was found strangled at her home in Ballsalla in May 1995.
Police are contacting relatives of a number of individuals whose deaths are being reassessed as potentially suspicious in light of new evidence.
They are also appealing for any information about Mr Akinmurele, who lived in the Castletown and Douglas areas before moving to Blackpool.
Murder suspect in court for fifth charge
BBC News
Friday, December 11, 1998
A Lancashire man accused of killing four pensioners has appeared in court charged with murdering a 72-year-old woman on the Isle of Man.
Stephen Akinmurele was taken before magistrates in Blackpool on Friday, charged with the murder of Marjorie Ashton, who was found dead at her home in Ballasalla in May 1995.
He was remanded in custody for a further week during the one-minute hearing.
Akinmurele, from North Shore, Blackpool, has already been charged with the murders of Eric Boardman, 77, and his wife Joan, 74, whose bodies were found at their home in the resort in October.
He is also accused of killing his former landlady Jemimah Cargill, 75, who died in a house fire in Blackpool in October, and 68-year-old Dorothy Harris.
The body of Mrs Harris, a partially blind and deaf pensioner, was found after a fire at her home in Ballasalla in February 1996.
Police in Lancashire and the Isle of Man have set up a joint murder incident room and are re-examining a number of fatal house fires in Blackpool.
On the Isle of Man detectives are re-examining a number of sudden deaths dating back to 1994.
They have also dug up moorland on the island after receiving information about a missing local man.
Mrs Ashton's death is regarded by police on the island as the only unsolved murder in recent years.
'Tormented' serial killer commited suicide
BBC News
Monday, 2 October, 2000
A suspected serial killer tormented by his obsession with murder hanged himself in prison, an inquest has heard.
A jury at an inquest in Manchester recorded a verdict of suicide on Stephen Akinmurele, 21, who died in August last year.
He was discovered hanging by a ligature from a window in his cell in Manchester prison, formerly known as Strangeways, weeks before he was due to stand trial for murdering three Blackpool pensioners.
The inquest in Manchester heard Nigerian-born Akinmurele left a note to his mother saying: "I couldn't take any more of feeling like how I do now, always wanting to kill."
Manx murders
He was also accused of the murders of a nearby couple, Joan Boardman, 74, and her husband Eric, 76. They were discovered battered to death in the town a month later.
Akinmurele was further charged with the murder of 68-year-old Dorothy Harris, who died in a house fire in Ballasalla on the Isle of Man in February 1996, and 72-year-old Marjorie Ashton, who died in a house fire in the same town in 1995.
Those charges had been dropped due to a technicality.
The inquest was told of two previous suicide attempts and a warning given to prison authorities by his girlfriend, Amanda Fitch, that he was a danger to himself.
"He told me he wished the police had never found him and he didn't want to go to trial," said Miss Fitch in a statement.
A consultant forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Akinmurele and decided he was fit to stand trial said he was "haunted by the images of his victims".
'It's always on my mind'
Prison hospital doctor Andrzej Rozyki said Akinmurele told him he would lie in bed at night thinking about murder.
In the note found in his pocket after his death Akinmurele said: "I know it's not right always thinking like this but it's always on my mind."
"I can't help the way I feel, what I did was wrong - I know that and I feel for them - but it doesn't mean I won't do it again.
"I'll keep on having this feeling I'm going mad because I can't take any more of this and that's why I'm saying goodbye."
After his arrest Akinmurele was placed in a segregated unit and, in August 1999, tried to kill himself by overdosing on medication.
He was put in the prison's health care ward on self harm watch but staff then found he had a sharpened toothbrush and fantasised about taking a female member of staff hostage.
Akinmurele was moved back to the segregated wing, still on self harm watch, where he killed himself two days later.
