Bradford murders

The Bradford murders refer to the serial killing of three women, all sex workers, in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, between 2009 and 2010. Susan Rushworth, 43, disappeared on 22 June 2009. Shelley Armitage, 31, disappeared on 26 April 2010. Suzanne Blamires, 36, disappeared on 21 May 2010. Parts of Blamires's body were recovered from the River Aire in Shipley, near Bradford, on 25 May 2010, and human tissue from the same river was later identified as belonging to Armitage. No remains of Rushworth were ever found.

Stephen Shaun Griffiths, then 40 and a semi-professional postgraduate student in criminology at the University of Bradford, was arrested on 24 May 2010 and charged with killing the three women. When he first appeared before magistrates in May 2010, he gave his name as "the Crossbow Cannibal." He was remanded in custody following a Crown Court appearance the same afternoon, and made a further Crown Court appearance on 7 June 2010 via video link from Wakefield Prison, at which a trial date of 16 November 2010 was set. On 21 December 2010, Griffiths pleaded guilty and was convicted of all three murders. At Leeds Crown Court that day, Mr Justice Openshaw sentenced him to life imprisonment with a whole life order, meaning he is not eligible for parole. While in prison, Griffiths has attempted suicide on several occasions, and in 2011 undertook a 120-day hunger strike during which he avoided contact with others.

Griffiths had a prior criminal history, including a three-year sentence at age 17 for an unprovoked knife attack on a supermarket manager. In 1991 he was diagnosed as a "schizoid psychopath," and in 1992 received a two-year prison sentence for holding a knife to the throat of a girl. He stated while in custody that he had seen himself becoming a murderer, and psychiatrists had previously warned that he fantasised about becoming a serial killer. Police had been observing Griffiths for two years before the murders and had already seized hunting weapons from him; after he was observed reading books on dismemberment, police contacted the housing association that owned his flat, which then installed improved CCTV in anticipation of an incident. At the time, however, police had no evidence sufficient to obtain an Anti-Social Behaviour Order against him.

Then-Prime Minister David Cameron described the murders as a "terrible shock" and said the decriminalisation of prostitution-related offences should be "looked at again," while cautioning against jumping to conclusions. Aides later said Cameron's focus was on addressing underlying social problems, such as encouraging agencies to help women off the streets and combat drug addiction, and on tougher action against kerb-crawling and drug abuse.

After his arrest, Griffiths told police he had killed five sex workers in Bradford, suggesting two additional unaccounted-for victims, but he later refused to speak further to police, precluding further investigation. Detectives examined possible links between Griffiths and the unsolved 2001 murder of 19-year-old Bradford sex worker Rebecca Hall, who was found dead near Griffiths's flat and had known him; he refused to answer police questions on the matter. Another suspect considered in the Hall case was a separately convicted killer. A 2013 documentary by criminologist David Wilson also examined a possible, but ultimately deemed unlikely, link between Griffiths and the 1994 murder of Sheffield sex worker Dawn Shields, whose case's prime suspect was a different, separately convicted man.