Stephen Farrow killed two people in their own homes, six weeks apart, at the start of 2012. The first was Betty Yates, a 77-year-old retired teacher who lived alone in a secluded cottage on the River Severn near Bewdley, Worcestershire. She was attacked on January 2 and found two days later. The second was the Rev John Suddards, 59, a former barrister who had become vicar of Thornbury, South Gloucestershire, the previous summer. He let Farrow into his vicarage on the evening of February 13 and was stabbed to death in his own hallway.
Farrow was a homeless man in his late forties who moved around the country by bus, slept rough and carried his belongings in a rucksack. He had been jailed for eight years in the 1990s for threatening an elderly woman with a knife in her home, and psychiatrists described him as a psychopath. He had also said, repeatedly and in writing, that he hated God and the church. After a nationwide manhunt he was arrested in Folkestone, Kent, five days after the vicar was found. In November 2012 a jury at Bristol Crown Court convicted him of both murders, and Mr Justice Field ordered that he spend the rest of his life in prison. He died there, of cancer, in August 2023.
Little of Farrow's early life is on the public record, and most of what is known comes from evidence heard at his trial. His barrister, Peter Gower QC, told the jury that Farrow's mother had believed from his childhood that something was wrong with him. A consultant forensic psychiatrist who gave evidence described him as having been an uncontrollable child. The court heard that at the age of 10 he set fire to a church altar and watched it burn, that he was expelled on his first day at a school, that he shot a male swan dead with an air gun, and that he killed other people's pets. Farrow later claimed that a priest had sexually abused him at a boarding school, when he was 11; that claim was repeated in court and in the press but was never tested.
As an adult he built up a criminal record. The most serious entry came in August 1994, when he forced his way into the home of Stella Crow, then 77, on Heath Road, Stourbridge, in the West Midlands. In a statement read at his 2012 trial, she said the intruder had asked to use her telephone, saying he wanted to call his parents in Wall Heath, and that while her back was turned he produced a knife with a blade about 12 inches long. He demanded money and jewelry and threatened to kill her, and he told her he had killed before. She was knocked to the floor and injured her eye. Farrow pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary and was jailed for eight years. Mrs Crow had died by the time of the 2012 trial.
After his release Farrow had no settled home. By 2012 the police described him as a drifter with no fixed address and no ties to any area, who was six feet four inches tall, used a variety of names, and traveled widely in Norfolk, the Midlands, Devon, Cornwall, the south coast and the South East. He often slept in a tent. He knew the riverbank near Bewdley well, because he had fished in the Severn there many times.
In the weeks before the killings Farrow made his hostility to the church plain. Over Christmas and New Year 2011, while Alan and Margaret Pinder were away, he broke into their home, Vine Cottage, in Thornbury. When they returned on January 2 they found the house ransacked and a note on the kitchen table, pinned down with two kitchen knives. It told them to be thankful they had not come back, because he would have killed them, called them "Christian scum" and declared his hatred of God. Farrow later pleaded guilty to this burglary, which the indictment dated between December 21, 2011 and January 3, 2012.
On New Year's Eve 2011 he sent a text message to a friend, Michaela Rowsell, saying that she would soon know the truth and that "the church will be the first to suffer." She told the court she was petrified by it and telephoned the police. Farrow also said around this time that 2012 would mark the start of the "second coming of Christ."
Betty Yates was 77; she had celebrated her birthday on December 28, 2011. She had taught for many years in schools in Kidderminster and Streetly, including St John's Church of England Middle School in Blakebrook, Kidderminster, and Foley First School in Streetly, and had also taught in Walsall. She retired in 1999. Her husband, Raymond, known as Ray, a company director, died about seven years before her, after more than 50 years of marriage. The couple had searched for years for their ideal home and found it in Riverscroft, a cottage at the end of a mile-long track off Dowles Road, on the edge of the Wyre Forest and close to the Shropshire border. She lived there for decades and, after Ray's death, on her own.
She did not slow down in widowhood. She belonged to the Wyre Forest University of the Third Age, where she helped organize events and ran a book reading group, and to local art and walking groups and the Bewdley Civic Society. She swam regularly and went back into schools to help children with their reading. Former pupils remembered a teacher who held parties under the tables, took classes on cherry walks and taught lessons on the grass in summer. One, Verity Worthington, said she "brought real life to the classroom." A fellow member of the Third Age group called her the nicest and most genuine person he had ever met. Her children, David Yates and Hazel Costello, described a vivacious, independent and caring woman who was fit and active for her age. "As well as being our mother she was a true lady," they said. They had spent Christmas 2011 with her, and those days became their last memories of her. For her birthday that December they had given her an exercise mat.
Farrow admitted at his trial that he had visited Betty Yates at her cottage on December 30, 2011. That same day he sold items to a jeweler in Kidderminster and gave his address as a guest house in Bewdley. The prosecution did not suggest that the two were close; the Express and Star reported only that he knew her. He denied being anywhere near Bewdley when she died.
Friends or family last saw her alive late on the afternoon of Monday, January 2, 2012, a bank holiday. That afternoon two women walking by the river to try out a new camera photographed the cottage. A man walked past them, heading away from the house toward the car park, and one of them later said he seemed to be "on a mission." The other picked out Farrow from a set of nine photographs.
In his sentencing remarks Mr Justice Field set out what the jury had found. Farrow got into the house in the afternoon or early evening of January 2. He struck Mrs Yates from behind with a heavy walking stick, hitting her at least twice on the back of the head with its rounded handle and with such force that the stick splintered. He then arranged her body, put a pillow under her head and stabbed her four times, leaving the knife in the wound that would bleed most. The judge said she had been no threat to him, and that he had stabbed her as she lay helpless for the pleasure of doing it. Afterward Farrow tidied the room, drew the blinds and locked the doors. Nothing was ransacked or taken, and the prosecution did not suggest burglary as a motive, although her house keys and purse were missing.
Betty Yates did not turn up for her walking group, and a friend who could not reach her contacted the police. Officers entered the cottage at about 9 a.m. on Wednesday, January 4, and found her at the foot of the stairs. A post-mortem examination found that she had died from a stab wound.
West Mercia Police opened a murder inquiry from a major incident room at Stourport Police Station. More than 40 officers and staff were assigned at first, and later more than 60 took part in searches of fields, woodland and 16 acres of rural land around the cottage, while forensic examiners worked inside for many days. Detective Chief Inspector Neil Jamieson, who led the inquiry, asked to hear from anyone who had been near the track between lunchtime on the Monday and 9 a.m. on the Wednesday, and from anyone who had seen or spoken to Mrs Yates in the weeks before her death. He said it was possible she had known her killer, though police could not rule out that she had disturbed an intruder. Crimestoppers offered a reward of up to 10,000 pounds.
The inquiry produced several leads that went nowhere. Two anonymous typed letters arrived, one at a police station and one at the Kidderminster Shuttle newspaper, whose editor passed it straight to the police. Detectives believed they had been written by two different people, neither of them the killer. The case featured on the BBC's Crimewatch at the end of January, and police then sought the driver of a car seen being driven erratically on Dowles Road on January 2. On February 2 a man was arrested in connection with the killing and released on bail; he was not charged. Police also issued descriptions of two men seen near the cottage on the day she was believed to have died.
Hundreds of people later gathered at St Anne's Church, Bewdley, for a memorial service on April 18, 2012. Her children had felt unable to hold a large funeral and had promised one instead. Hazel Costello spoke of her mother's "zest for life, the twinkle in her eye and her generosity of spirit." Former pupils and friends held a candlelit vigil outside the cottage and laid flowers on a bridge nearby.
John Suddards came from Yorkshire and worked for years as a barrister. A serious road accident left him paraplegic for nine months, and he later told a local newspaper in Essex that afterward he felt strongly that God wanted him to become a priest. He served for more than 20 years in the Diocese of Chelmsford: as a curate at Halstead from 1989, as priest-in-charge of Great and Little Yeldham, Toppesfield and Stambourne from 1993, as rector of Upper Colne from 1997, and from 2001 to 2011 as team rector of Witham, where he was also rural dean. The Bishop of Colchester remembered him as the "faithful, good humoured and energetic" team rector of Witham. A local councillor recalled that he had officiated at his daughter's wedding a week before leaving Essex.
In July 2011 he became vicar of Thornbury and Oldbury-on-Severn in the Diocese of Gloucester and moved into the vicarage beside St Mary's Church in Castle Street, Thornbury, a market town about 11 miles north of Bristol. He lived there alone. He had been in the town only a few months, and when he died the police said they did not yet have a good picture of his friends and family. His only sibling, his sister Hilary Bosworth, who lived in Dorset, said he was an uncle to her three children and "a good man" who had given his life to serving God and helping others. The Bishop of Gloucester, Michael Perham, called him "a good man and a fine priest."
What happened at the vicarage comes from the trial evidence. Richard Evans, a mental health nurse, told the court what Farrow had said to him. Farrow said he had first wanted to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and had gone to Canterbury to see whether it could be done, but found the security too heavy. He said he had planned to crucify the vicar, but had left a bag containing a hammer and nails in Eastbourne. He said he went to St Mary's on the evening of February 13 and waited outside while the vicar made him something to eat. He said he accused the vicar of sexual abuse and that the vicar did not deny it; Evans made clear that Farrow was accusing priests and the church in general, not John Suddards himself. Then, Farrow told him, "I then stabbed the vicar."
CCTV shown to the jury tracked Farrow in Thornbury that day: getting off a bus, walking along the High Street, going into a shopping center with his rucksack and later heading toward the vicarage. The vicar let him in, and Farrow attacked him with knives in the doorway, inflicting seven deep wounds to the chest, shoulder, neck and abdomen. When the vicar tried to get up, Farrow kicked him back to the floor. Told that the vicar was dying, he replied, in words reported by the Press Association with the expletive starred out, that he should die then and hurry up.
He stayed in the house overnight. He drank beer, ate, and watched DVDs, including an Indiana Jones film, with the body yards away. He searched every room; a detective later said the house looked as if someone had gone through it to burgle it. Before he left he arranged objects around the body. A Bible lay on the vicar's chest, open at the Letter of Jude. A canvas of Christ on the cross was propped up so that its reflection could be seen in a mirror he had placed nearby, and party-popper streamers were scattered over the body. Prosecutor Michael Fitton QC said other items, including magazines, DVDs and a calendar, had been left to harm the vicar's reputation and memory. The judge later said Farrow had meant to humiliate John Suddards and desecrate his memory. The next morning Farrow drew the blinds and locked the door behind him, as he had done in Bewdley. CCTV caught him on a bus afterward, reading a newspaper, and later in a supermarket in Weymouth on February 14.
On the morning of Tuesday, February 14, two workmen, a builder and a plumber, arrived at the vicarage and could get no answer. Tim Giles, secretary of the parochial church council, came with a spare key. The downstairs curtains were drawn. In the dim hallway he found the vicar lying on his back, fully clothed, with his spectacles on. "I felt he was dead. He was very cold," Giles said in his statement. A kitchen knife lay by the vicar's arm. On a wall a detective later found the word "help," apparently written with a finger in blue ink.
Avon and Somerset Police opened a murder inquiry led by Detective Chief Inspector Simon Crisp. That day they arrested a 43-year-old man on suspicion of murder; he was released on bail and not charged. The Bishop of Tewkesbury, John Went, who had been due to meet the vicar that morning to review his ministry, led a packed Eucharist at St Paul's, Thornbury's other church. That Friday about 300 people attended a service at Thornbury Baptist Church, led by the Bishop of Gloucester. The Archdeacon of Gloucester, Geoffrey Sidaway, spoke of how clergy, who often deal alone with distressed and angry people, are left exposed, and said the door must stay open because that is the whole point of the job.
Detectives linked Farrow to Thornbury through partial DNA evidence and the national police database, according to the police account given after the trial. On Saturday, February 18, Avon and Somerset Police named him and circulated him as wanted for the vicar's murder. Crisp said he was distinctive, dangerous and not to be approached, and warned that he "may seek to exploit the charity of the church community." Parishioners were warned to be on their guard.
The appeal worked within hours. At about 4:20 a.m. on Sunday, February 19, acting on a tip-off from a member of the public, Kent Police arrested Farrow at an end-of-terrace house in Black Bull Road, Folkestone. A blood-stained knife was seized at the address; forensic tests matched the blood to John Suddards. His blood was also found on Farrow's overtrousers, on the cuff of his waterproof jacket and on a partly painted left boot. Later that day Farrow was also arrested on suspicion of murdering Betty Yates and of the Vine Cottage burglary. West Mercia Police announced that, after close work with Avon and Somerset Police, they had formally linked the two killings.
Farrow was taken to Trinity Road police station in Bristol and interviewed over three days, with a solicitor and an appropriate adult present. The police were granted a further 36 hours to question him. In one interview he said he felt strange and different and did not know what was wrong. Once he was told he had been forensically linked to Vine Cottage and the vicarage, a detective constable told the court, he answered "no comment" to every question.
On February 22, 2012, after the police had consulted the Crown Prosecution Service, Farrow was charged with both murders and the burglary. "There is sufficient evidence to charge Stephen Farrow with the murders of Betty Yates and John Suddards," said Sian Sullivan, a senior district crown prosecutor. The next day he appeared before North Avon magistrates, confirmed his name and date of birth and said he had no fixed address, and was remanded in custody. Hilary Bosworth said her brother's death had "turned our world upside down" and thanked the police for their determination to get justice for him.
On June 29, 2012, Farrow appeared at Bristol Crown Court by video link from HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire. He pleaded not guilty to both murders and guilty to the Vine Cottage burglary. Before the trial he also offered a plea of guilty to the manslaughter of John Suddards on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The prosecution did not accept it, so the question of whether he was guilty of murder went to the jury. He continued to deny any involvement in Betty Yates's death.
The trial opened at Bristol Crown Court before Mr Justice Field in the first week of October 2012, with a jury of eight men and four women. Fitton told the jurors that Farrow had attacked Betty Yates from behind, beaten her over the head with her walking stick and stabbed her while she was unconscious, and that the intention had been to kill. The forensic evidence, he said, connected all three offenses through the footwear Farrow was wearing when he was arrested. In the Bewdley case the key exhibit was a bootprint on the exercise mat her children had given her days before; DNA found on the back of her hand was described in court as a one-in-a-billion match to Farrow.
The jury heard from the two women who had walked past Riverscroft on January 2, from the people who found John Suddards, from the detectives and from the forensic scientists. The Pinders' note was read. Michaela Rowsell described the New Year's Eve text. Stella Crow's statement about the 1994 attack was put before the jury. Richard Evans gave his account of what Farrow had told him about Canterbury and the vicarage.
Farrow often refused to leave his cell, at the court building or at Long Lartin, and much of the evidence was heard in his absence. The judge told the jury this must not affect its verdicts. Some of Betty Yates's former pupils found that hard to accept; Verity Worthington asked where Betty's rights had been when he killed her.
The central issue on the vicar's death was Farrow's state of mind. Dr Tim Rogers, a consultant forensic psychiatrist who had assessed him twice and reviewed reports going back years, told the court that Farrow showed many characteristics of a psychopath, passed the threshold for psychopathy and was a "very dark" person. Rogers agreed it was impossible to be sure when Farrow was lying. Under cross-examination by Fitton he said he did not believe Farrow was mentally ill. Describing the vicar's death to Rogers, Farrow had said: "The system has always underestimated and ignored me and now someone has lost their life." The prosecution accepted that Farrow was mentally ill but argued that he remained responsible for what he did. Farrow also told a psychiatrist that he had intended to crucify the vicar on the floor and that the killing was part of a wish to fulfill his fantasy.
The jury was sent out on October 31. On November 2, 2012, after about eight and a half hours of deliberation by ITV's count, or nearly 11 hours by the Express and Star's, it convicted Farrow of the murder of John Suddards unanimously and of the murder of Betty Yates by a majority of 11 to 1. He showed no emotion and stood in silence as the judge sentenced him.
Mr Justice Field told him that in each killing he had acted sadistically. He called the stabbing of Mrs Yates as she lay helpless "an act of absolute sadism," and described the conduct toward the vicar as clearly sadistic as well. He said he had considered whether to set a minimum term, after which Farrow could apply for parole, but was satisfied that a whole life sentence was right in both cases. "In my view there is no question in this case of the imposition of a minimum term," he said. He imposed whole life orders for both murders and a concurrent three-year term for the burglary. The police said such sentences were very rare.
Outside court the families spoke. "We should all be relieved and thankful that Stephen Farrow is off the streets of Britain today," said Betty Yates's children, adding that they believed he would have killed again. They asked that their mother be remembered for her kindness, her determination and her humor, not for the way she died. Her daughter said she never wanted her mother's life to be defined by the murder, and her son said he would not let it spoil his memories of her at the cottage.
Hilary Bosworth called the verdict just and praised what she called the brilliance of the detective work that had found Farrow within six days. She also asked whether the country did enough to monitor psychopaths with a known history of violence, and the family said Farrow had not been watched closely enough. The bishops of Gloucester and Tewkesbury issued a joint statement saying the diocese would go on supporting everyone affected.
Crisp said Farrow would have killed again if he had not been caught, and that the arrest within 48 hours of his being identified had probably prevented further offenses. He said the inquiry had dealt with 2,782 exhibits, 347 witness statements and 1,013 documents, and that forensic work at the vicarage alone took three weeks. He thanked police in Dorset, Sussex, Kent and West Mercia and the members of the public who had reported sightings. Jamieson called Farrow a highly dangerous individual who had shown no remorse. "We will never know what went on in Steven Farrow's mind as he took the lives of Reverend Suddards and Betty Yates," said Sullivan of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Farrow spent the rest of his life in high-security prisons. He was held at Long Lartin before and during his trial. On June 19, 2017, he was transferred to HMP Frankland in County Durham, where he lived on the Westgate Unit, which treats men with severe personality disorder, according to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.
In September 2022 he told a nurse that he could not keep food down, could not eat solid food and was losing weight. He at first refused an urgent cancer referral but agreed to one in October, and on November 9, 2022, after being admitted to hospital, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. A stent was fitted in December and palliative chemotherapy arranged. In February 2023 he was told the oncology team could offer no further treatment, a decision the Ombudsman recorded he had the mental capacity to understand. Over the following months he moved between the prison's healthcare unit and Westgate, at one point asking to go back to Westgate to see friends, and he refused several offers of treatment or transfer while asking at other times for life-prolonging care. In July 2023 his condition worsened and he moved to the healthcare unit for the last time. On August 17 the prison arranged and paid for a visit from his niece, his next of kin. He died at Frankland on August 21, 2023, and his death was confirmed at 7:05 p.m. He was 58.
The Ministry of Justice confirmed the death. The Ombudsman, Adrian Usher, investigated, as for every death in custody. An independent clinical reviewer found that his care had been equivalent to what he could have expected in the community. The Ombudsman did criticize one hospital escort in April 2023: the medical section of the risk assessment had not been completed, the restraint authorization was unsigned and undated, and there was no evidence that his illness had been considered when he was double-cuffed. He drew this to the attention of the governor and head of healthcare rather than make a fresh recommendation. No post-mortem examination was held. At the inquest on April 10, 2024, the coroner concluded that Farrow died of natural causes.
In March 2017 a farmer working land at Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, found silverware and trinkets that Avon and Somerset Police believed had belonged to John Suddards and had been left there by Farrow. Police had searched the area in 2012 after Farrow was seen there, and some of his own possessions had been found on the downland, where he was thought to have slept rough.
The case raised questions within the Church of England about clergy safety. In 2012 the Church said it was deeply concerned about attacks on clergy, who inevitably work alone and open their doors to strangers, though it judged the risk of violence relatively low.
Proven by jury verdicts, and final: the murders of Betty Yates and John Suddards. Proven by his own plea: the Vine Cottage burglary. Farrow never admitted killing Betty Yates, and the jury convicted him on that count by a majority. He admitted killing John Suddards but claimed diminished responsibility, which the jury rejected.
Claimed, never substantiated: the killing of a backpacker in Devon in 1988. The Express and Star reported in 2023 that he had confessed to it but that the claim was never substantiated. Stella Crow said he told her in 1994 that he had killed before. No charge was ever brought, and no victim has been identified.
Farrow's own accounts: his plan to kill Rowan Williams, his plan to crucify the vicar and his claim of childhood abuse by a priest all come from what he told a nurse and psychiatrists, as reported in court. A psychiatrist agreed it was impossible to know when Farrow was telling the truth. The abuse claim was never tested in any court.
Details that vary between sources: the date of the Thornbury killing (most reports and the judge's account of the evening give February 13, while the charge was framed as between February 12 and 15, or February 13 and 14); the number of times Betty Yates was stabbed (four, according to the judge and later press, though early reports said only that she was stabbed in the neck and head); the length of the jury's deliberations (eight and a half hours or nearly 11); whether the burglary was charged as burglary or aggravated burglary; and the description of his diagnosis (psychopathic personality disorder in 2012 and 2023 reports, antisocial personality disorder in one 2023 report).
August 1994: Farrow threatens Stella Crow, 77, with a knife in her Stourbridge home; later jailed for eight years for aggravated burglary.
December 21, 2011 to January 3, 2012: he burgles Vine Cottage, Thornbury, and leaves a note threatening "Christian scum."
December 28, 2011: Betty Yates turns 77.
December 30, 2011: Farrow visits her at Riverscroft.
December 31, 2011: he texts a friend that "the church will be the first to suffer."
January 2, 2012: Farrow kills Betty Yates at her cottage near Bewdley.
January 4, 2012: she is found at the foot of her stairs; West Mercia Police open a murder inquiry.
January 2012: anonymous letters, a 10,000-pound Crimestoppers reward and a BBC Crimewatch appeal.
February 2, 2012: a man is arrested in the Yates inquiry and released on bail.
February 13, 2012: Farrow kills the Rev John Suddards at Thornbury vicarage and stays overnight.
February 14, 2012: the vicar is found by a church officer and two workmen.
February 18, 2012: Avon and Somerset Police name Farrow as wanted.
February 19, 2012: arrested in Folkestone; the two killings are formally linked.
February 22, 2012: charged with two murders and burglary.
April 18, 2012: memorial service for Betty Yates at St Anne's Church, Bewdley.
June 29, 2012: pleads not guilty to both murders, guilty to burglary.
October 2012: trial opens at Bristol Crown Court.
October 31, 2012: jury sent out.
November 2, 2012: convicted of both murders; whole life orders.
March 2017: items believed to be the vicar's found at Beachy Head.
June 19, 2017: moved to HMP Frankland.
November 9, 2022: diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
August 21, 2023: dies at HMP Frankland, aged 58.
April 10, 2024: inquest concludes death by natural causes.