Colin Ireland was born in Dartford on March 16, 1954, into poverty, and spent his childhood between his mother, care homes and a borstal. He was a survivalist, physically large, and by 1993 was thirty-eight, divorced twice and living in a bedsit in Southend with a string of petty convictions and nothing else.
He decided, he said afterwards, to become a serial killer, and he made it a New Year's resolution for 1993. He had read a criminology book giving the FBI's working definition, which at the time required four victims, and he set out to reach it. He chose gay men because he judged that they could be persuaded to be tied up, that the police would be slow, and that the press would care less. The London press called him the Gay Slayer, a name the case is still filed under despite what it says about the coverage.
He used the Coleherne, a leather pub in Earl's Court, and went home with men who were looking for a dominant partner. Once they were restrained he killed them. Peter Walker, a theatre director, died in March; Christopher Dunn, a librarian, in May; Perry Bradley III, an American businessman, in June; Andrew Collier, a housing warden, days later; and Emanuel Spiteri, a Maltese chef, in mid-June. He stayed in each flat for hours afterwards, cleaned it, took the money, and in one case burned a condom on the cooker to remove evidence. He killed Collier's cat and arranged it on the body. He telephoned the Samaritans, a newspaper and the police, taunting them and complaining that they were not calling it a series.
He was caught by the fifth. Spiteri had been picked up in central London, and station CCTV at Charing Cross showed the two men together on the concourse. A fingerprint from a window frame at Andrew Collier's flat matched Ireland's, taken years earlier for a minor offence. He gave himself up through a solicitor in July 1993.
He pleaded guilty to five murders at the Old Bailey in December 1993 and the judge recommended he never be released, which the Home Secretary confirmed as a whole-life tariff. He was one of a small number of British prisoners never to be given a release date. He died at Wakefield prison on February 21, 2012, aged fifty-seven.