Allan Grimson was a petty officer in the Royal Navy who taught firefighting to young recruits at a naval school in Portsmouth. On the night of December 12, 1997, he took Nicholas Wright, an 18-year-old naval rating he had met on one of his courses, back to his flat and killed him. On the same night a year later he killed Sion Jenkins, 20, in the same flat. Neither man's body was found for two years. When Hampshire police questioned Grimson in December 1999, he confessed to both killings and took detectives to the places where he had left them, in the countryside north of Winchester.
He pleaded guilty to both murders at Winchester Crown Court in March 2001 and was given two life sentences, with a minimum term of 22 years. The judge, Peter Cresswell, called him a serial killer "in nature, if not by number." The minimum term ran out in December 2021, but he was still in prison when, in July 2026, a jury at the same court convicted him of 13 non-recent offenses against four males, committed between 1994 and 1999. He was remanded in custody to await sentence.
The dates of the two murders also drew detectives to an older case. On December 12, 1986, Simon Parkes, an 18-year-old radio operator on the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, went ashore in Gibraltar and was never seen again. Grimson was serving on the same ship. He has always denied any part in the disappearance, and he was never charged. Hampshire police closed their inquiry in December 2025, saying the full circumstances were still unknown.
Grimson is from North Shields, on Tyneside, in the north east of England. The Crown Prosecution Service gives his date of birth as October 5, 1959.
He served in the Royal Navy for 22 years, according to The News, Portsmouth's daily paper, and rose to petty officer. He was serving on HMS Illustrious in December 1986, when the carrier called at Gibraltar. By the mid-1990s he was posted as an instructor at the Royal Navy Firefighting School on Horsea Island. Prosecutors said in 2026 that the post gave him authority over a stream of young recruits, many of them in their late teens and new to the service, who were under strict discipline. The prosecutor, John Price KC, told a jury that Grimson was "a big powerful man" who was admired within the service as a capable instructor. The News reported in 2019 that colleagues knew him by the nickname "Frankenstein."
He was in his late 30s in 1997. The Parole Board records his age as 38 at the time of the first murder and 39 at the time of the second.
Nicholas Wright was 18, a naval rating from Leicester. He met Grimson in November 1997 on a firefighting course in Portsmouth, where Grimson was an instructor, The News reported.
On the night of December 12, 1997, the two men were seen talking at a nightclub in Southsea, Portsmouth. Grimson's own statement to police later placed him there with Wright. He took Wright back to his flat. By the account Grimson later gave detectives, he made an advance to Wright, was rejected, and attacked him. Wright was beaten to death. The Parole Board's summary of the case records the offense as taking place on December 12 to 13, 1997.
His disappearance began a Hampshire police missing-person inquiry.
Sion Jenkins was 20 and from Newbury, in Berkshire. The press has described him as a barman. The Crown Prosecution Service and the Parole Board describe both murdered men as being in the navy; the Parole Board's summary says both were known to Grimson and both were about 20 years younger than him.
Grimson killed him in the same flat on the night of December 12 to 13, 1998, a year to the night after Nicholas Wright. He beat Jenkins to death, by his own account to police, The News reported. The charge to which he later pleaded guilty gave the date of the killing as a range, between November 1, 1998 and December 18, 1999; the charge for Nicholas Wright's murder gave a range between December 11, 1997 and December 17, 1999.
At the 2026 trial the prosecutor told the jury that one of the complainants had been at the flat only weeks before Sion Jenkins was killed there. Grimson had told police in 1999 that this young man was "lucky to be alive" because a friend was in another room.
Police arrested Grimson in December 1999, during the inquiry into Nicholas Wright's disappearance, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Before the interview, a former detective inspector on the murder team told the 2026 trial, Grimson said that he knew about Wright's disappearance and "wasn't bothered" about waiting for his solicitor. A doctor who examined him after the arrest found him well and fit to be detained and interviewed.
The interviews were carried out by a detective, Neill Cunningham, The News reported in 2019. After a second day of questioning Grimson confessed. He described the attack on Wright, then led officers to Wright's body near Winchester and told them, "There's one more body."
Both bodies were found in December 1999, about four miles apart, north of Winchester: Nicholas Wright's near Cheriton and Sion Jenkins's near West Tisted, The News reported in 2026.
What Grimson told detectives about the killings has been reported from court. The prosecutor at the 2001 hearing, Anthony Donne QC, said the killing had been about control and power, not sex. Grimson told officers that he had felt "no feeling" about killing Jenkins. He also said he had wanted to kill again. "If I was not here," he told them, meaning in custody, "it would probably happen again."
In a telephone call to relatives from the police station, he said he had "told them the truth", with "a little more to follow", according to evidence given at the 2026 trial. In the same interviews, held with his solicitor present, he referred to other young men, including those who later became the complainants in the 2026 case. Searches of his flat and of family addresses turned up photographs that linked him to several young males, the Crown Prosecution Service said. He told officers who some of the people in the photographs were.
Hampshire police also looked back through Grimson's naval service for other young men who had gone missing. A naval officer who was present at an interview noticed that the date of the Wright killing, December 12, was the date on which Simon Parkes had disappeared in Gibraltar in 1986, The News reported. That observation began the police inquiry into the Parkes case.
Grimson pleaded guilty to both murders at the first opportunity, a former detective told the 2026 trial. He was sentenced at Winchester Crown Court in March 2001 by the judge, Peter Cresswell, to two concurrent life sentences. The minimum term, the time he had to serve before he could be considered for release, was set at 22 years, according to the Parole Board.
The judge described him as a "serial killer in nature, if not by number," The News reported. Later reports in the same paper have given the phrase as "in name if not number."
The minimum term, the Parole Board records, expired on December 20, 2021.
Simon Parkes was 18, from Bristol, and a radio operator on HMS Illustrious. In December 1986 the carrier was docked in Gibraltar. On December 12 he went ashore on leave with crewmates. After a night out with them he said he was going to get some food, and he was not seen again. The ship sailed back to Portsmouth days later without him.
The navy first treated him as absent without leave, and there was talk that he might have gone into Spain. That idea lost weight when his passport, his belongings and the Christmas presents he had bought were found on board, the Gibraltar Chronicle reported in 2023. A description issued by police gave him as slightly built, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, with a West Country accent.
Grimson was serving on the carrier at the time and was among the last people seen with Simon Parkes, according to The News and the Gibraltar Chronicle. He has always denied killing him, and he has never been charged. The Parole Board's 2024 decision records that the person who applied for a public parole hearing described him as "the sole suspect"; the board did not adopt that description itself.
Searches in Gibraltar in the 1980s and early 2000s covered the Upper Rock, South Barracks and its tunnels, and Trafalgar Cemetery, without result, the Chronicle reported. In January 2003, The News reported, police searching in Gibraltar found a body, but it was not Simon Parkes's. Detectives returned to Trafalgar Cemetery in December 2019 for a week-long search led by Detective Inspector Roger Wood, after what he called "credible" new information. The 2019 search found no further evidence, the Chronicle reported later.
In August 2023 nine officers from Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary spent four days in Gibraltar excavating a small area under a car park at Town Range, working with the Royal Gibraltar Police, the Gibraltar Defence Police and the Royal Navy under the name Operation Thornhill. The new line of inquiry followed information passed to police by Ros Astengo, a journalist with GBC, Gibraltar's public broadcaster, the Chronicle reported. Detective Chief Inspector Adam Edwards said afterward, "Disappointingly we have not identified anything that helps to move the investigation into Simon's disappearance forward." Officers returned to the same car park in January 2024 to follow up what police called "a new line of enquiry that has been presented to us."
On December 30, 2025, Hampshire police said they were ending the investigation and placing the case on file. Detective Superintendent Adam Edwards said the force had explored the information thoroughly, taking advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, and that "the full circumstances surrounding Simon's disappearance still remain unknown." Police said they would continue to support the coronial process, and they appealed again to anyone who had served on HMS Illustrious, or who had been in Gibraltar on December 12, 1986, to come forward. Edwards said cold cases are never closed for good if real new leads appear.
Simon Parkes's mother has spoken about the case for many years. In 2019, at 73, she told The News that she was "100 per cent" certain of Grimson's involvement, called him "very manipulative," and said she feared he would be released on parole. Without a confession or remains, she said, the family would still want closure. When police went back to the cemetery that December, she said the family was grateful for the new chance, while knowing that it might not give them the answers they wanted.
The Parkes case has been the subject of television programs. Grimson complained about a BBC documentary on the disappearance and an edition of Crimewatch that covered it, and the broadcasting regulator Ofcom ruled against him, The News reported in 2019. A documentary series, Murdertown, broadcast on the Crime+Investigation channel, also examined the possible link between Grimson and the Parkes case.
Grimson's minimum term expired on December 20, 2021, and from then on the question of whether he was safe to release was for the Parole Board, which sets out the steps of his case in a decision published in January 2024.
His first review ended on November 23, 2020, with a recommendation from the board that he move to open conditions. The Secretary of State for Justice did not accept it. On August 18, 2021, a board member referred his second review to an oral hearing. That hearing was adjourned on November 15, 2022, so that a separate matter could be investigated further, and it was relisted for February 15, 2024.
In November 2023 the board received an application for the 2024 hearing to be held in public. The applicant pointed to the continuing media interest, to the 1986 disappearance in Gibraltar, to the seriousness of the murders and to public concern about release. Grimson opposed it, arguing that a public hearing would put him, his supporters, his representative and the professional witnesses at risk of serious harm, and raising his right to privacy over confidential material. The Secretary of State supported transparency and asked for proper weight to be given to the applicant's reasons. In late January 2024, new material from Hampshire police reached the board through the Secretary of State: Grimson was the subject of a live police case that was relevant to the board's decision, and findings made in public could prejudice later proceedings.
The board's chair, Caroline Corby, refused the application on January 31, 2024. She accepted that the seriousness of the murders weighed in favor of a public hearing and that the case would be very distressing for the victims' families, but she found that the high bar for a public hearing had not been met while a police investigation was live and evidence critical to the decision could not be heard in public. Victims could ask to observe the private hearing, and the board would publish a summary of its reasons. Grimson was still in custody in November 2025, when he appeared in court by video link from HMP Winchester, and in July 2026.
The allegations that led to the 2026 trial were not new. Grimson had spoken about some of the young men in his 1999 interviews, and his photographs had been seized then. After he was sentenced in 2001, the youngest of the four, a schoolboy who had first told police at his school that nothing had happened, telephoned them himself and gave new interviews. Asked in court why he had changed his account, he said: "Cause I safe." The Crown Prosecution Service said one complainant described feeling able to come forward only once Grimson was in prison, because he "finally felt safe."
Police did not pursue the matters at the time. A former detective inspector, John Ashworth, who had worked on the murder inquiry, told the 2026 trial that he later visited Grimson in prison and told him that the investigation into these complainants would go no further. Officers told Grimson in 2004 that no further action would be taken, The News reported.
About 20 years later the matters came back. The Crown Prosecution Service said that one case was reconsidered after a referral to a joint police and Crown Prosecution Service review panel that looks again at cases in which police or prosecutors previously decided to take no further action. The Press Association, in a report carried by the Gibraltar Chronicle, credited Ros Astengo's investigation for GBC into Simon Parkes's disappearance with helping to bring the case to court. Prosecutors then authorized charges covering four complainants.
Grimson, by then listed in court reports as of Hollesley, Suffolk, appeared at Portsmouth Crown Court by video link from HMP Winchester in November 2025 and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Judge Michael Bowes set a trial date of June 29, 2026, at Winchester Crown Court. Police said the offenses had taken place in Portsmouth and in Tyne and Wear.
The trial opened at the end of June 2026 and lasted just under four weeks. John Price KC prosecuted; John Femi-Ola represented Grimson. The charges ran from February 1994 to November 1999 and covered four complainants: young men and teenagers Grimson had met through the navy and through personal connections, the youngest a 14-year-old boy from the north east of England. Several offenses took place at his Portsmouth flat, prosecutors said.
Price told the jury that Grimson's 1999 interviews were central to the case. In them, Grimson had said he met one complainant "in the same way" he met Nicholas Wright. He told police he would probably have killed the 14-year-old if other people had not known the boy was there. Price argued that such remarks should not be dismissed as exaggeration, given that Grimson had pleaded guilty to two murders. He said the complainants' accounts were broadly similar and showed a senior man in the service exploiting his power over younger men.
Witnesses included the complainants, the owners of a flat Grimson had stayed in, officers from the 1999 investigation, and the doctor who had examined him after his arrest. The court heard that Grimson later withdrew some of what he had said in 1999, telling officers he had been "confused" after confessing to two murders.
For the defense, Femi-Ola argued that police had looked at the matters before and had told Grimson in 2004 that no further action would be taken, and that this suggested he might not be guilty. He said Grimson's honesty about the murders should count in his favor. He also accused a journalist who was writing a book at the time of "marching" one complainant to a police station. Judge Paul Dugdale told the jury to consider each count and each complainant separately, and said they could take into account the way Grimson's explanations had changed between interviews.
The jury retired at about 1:20 p.m. on Friday, July 24, 2026, and returned at 3:05 p.m. on Monday, July 27. It found Grimson guilty on all 13 counts, twelve by unanimous verdicts and one by a majority of 10 to 2. The Crown Prosecution Service listed the convictions as non-recent offenses committed between 1994 and 1999 against four complainants, two of them under 18, with other charges.
The judge asked for reports before sentence. "There's no doubt in 1999 you were an extremely dangerous man," he told Grimson, and said he needed to know what had changed since then and to have an assessment of him as he is now. Grimson was remanded in custody and sentencing was listed for November 6, 2026, at Winchester Crown Court.
James Foster, a specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service, said afterward that the passage of time "is not a barrier to justice where there is sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution," and thanked the complainants for "the bravery they have shown throughout this investigation and trial."
In late July 2026 Grimson was in custody, serving his life sentences for the two murders and awaiting sentence for the 13 offenses of which he was convicted in July 2026. Sentencing was listed for November 6, 2026. The inquiry into Simon Parkes's disappearance was closed in December 2025 and remains on file, with a coronial process continuing.
The Simon Parkes case. Simon Parkes disappeared on December 12, 1986, the same date in December on which Grimson killed Nicholas Wright in 1997 and Sion Jenkins in 1998. Grimson was on the same ship and was among the last people seen with him. Parkes's mother has said she is certain of Grimson's involvement. Grimson has always denied it, no body has been found, and he has never been charged. Hampshire police closed the inquiry in December 2025 without establishing what happened.
The 2003 search. The News reported in 2019 that a body found during the January 2003 search in Gibraltar was not Simon Parkes's; a Press Association report from December 2019 said the earlier search of the cemetery area in 2003 had found nothing. Neither report links any remains to Parkes.
The judge's words. The 2001 sentencing remark is reported as "serial killer in nature, if not by number" (The News, 2026) and as "serial killer in name if not number" (The News, 2019).
Sion Jenkins's work. The press describes him as a barman; the Crown Prosecution Service calls both murdered men "Royal Navy ratings," and the Parole Board says both were in the navy.
The judge's name in 2026. The News gives the trial judge as Paul Dugdale; one Press Association report carried by the Gibraltar Chronicle spells it Dugale.
October 5, 1959: Allan Michael Grimson born (Crown Prosecution Service date); from North Shields, Tyneside.
December 12, 1986: Simon Parkes, 18, a radio operator on HMS Illustrious, goes ashore in Gibraltar and is not seen again. Grimson is serving on the ship.
February 1994 to November 1999: the period of the 13 offenses of which Grimson was convicted in 2026.
November 1997: Nicholas Wright meets Grimson on a firefighting course in Portsmouth.
December 12 to 13, 1997: Grimson kills Nicholas Wright, 18, at his Portsmouth flat.
December 12 to 13, 1998: Grimson kills Sion Jenkins, 20, at the same flat.
December 1999: Grimson is arrested during the inquiry into Wright's disappearance, confesses and leads police to both bodies north of Winchester.
March 2001: he pleads guilty to both murders at Winchester Crown Court; two life sentences, minimum term 22 years.
January 2003: police search in Gibraltar.
2004: police tell Grimson that no further action will be taken over the allegations.
December 2019: week-long search of Trafalgar Cemetery, Gibraltar.
November 23, 2020: first parole review recommends open conditions; the Secretary of State does not accept it.
August 18, 2021: second review referred to an oral hearing.
December 20, 2021: minimum term expires.
November 15, 2022: oral hearing adjourned for further investigation of a separate matter.
August 7 to 10, 2023: excavation at Town Range, Gibraltar.
January 2024: further work at Town Range.
January 31, 2024: Parole Board refuses a public hearing; the oral hearing is relisted for February 15, 2024.
November 2025: Grimson pleads not guilty at Portsmouth Crown Court to the charges.
December 30, 2025: Hampshire police close the Simon Parkes inquiry and place it on file.
June 29 to 30, 2026: trial opens at Winchester Crown Court.
July 27, 2026: jury convicts Grimson on all 13 counts; remanded in custody.
November 6, 2026: sentencing listed at Winchester Crown Court.