Stephen Marshall was a thirty-eight-year-old nightclub doorman with a history of violence, living as Jeffrey Howe's lodger since November 2008 with his twenty-one-year-old girlfriend Sarah Bush. On the night of March 8, 2009 he stabbed Howe twice in the back while he slept, one wound puncturing a lung; Howe took up to an hour to die.
He spent about twelve hours dismembering the body in the flat. The Home Office pathologist said the limbs had been removed skilfully and cleanly, and the prosecution told the court that the flesh of the scalp and face had been taken off and that the eyes, ears, tongue and structures of the neck had been cut away. The parts were driven out and scattered across Hertfordshire and Leicestershire, and because they were unidentifiable police did not know for six weeks who the dead man was.
The motive was the tenancy. He intended to go on living in the flat, claim the housing benefit and sell what Howe owned, including putting his car on eBay. Bush helped dispose of evidence and lied to police. Two people were arrested in north London on April 23, 2009 and the victim was named the same day.
He told investigators he had dismembered four other men between 1995 and 1998 while working the door at a London nightclub, and had disposed of them in Epping Forest. Police reopened a number of missing persons cases on the strength of it. No charge was brought and no remains were recovered, and the archive records the conviction, which is one.