Bodies in the Back Garden - True Stories of Brutal Murders Close to Home

Nigel Cawthorne

Aug 2014 · Kings Road Publishing

About this ebook

For the killer, there is always the problem of getting rid of the body. Muswell Hill murderer Dennis Nilsen famously cooked the corpses of his victims in Cranley Gardens and flushed them down the lavatory, only to be caught when the sewers blocked up. But his first twelve victims were disposed of in the back garden of his previous home in Melrose Avenue. Fred and Rosemary West buried the bodies of three of their victims in the back garden of the House of Horrors at 25 Cromwell Street.Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer began his murderous career scattering human remains in the backyard of his parents' home in Bath, Ohio. Convicted killer Peter Tobin went back on trial after two more bodies were found in the back garden of his former home in Margate. And grisly granny Dorothea Puente murdered lodgers at her boarding house in Sacramento, California, dispatching them to the backyard while continuing to cash their Social Security cheques.This book explores these and many other cases that suggest that, whatever the motive for murder, the back garden is a convenient place to dump the corpse. The Mexican drug cartels use it. So do drug dealers in London and sex killers in France. Benjamin Laing, who killed a father and daughter to steal a ?7,000 car, went one step further, burying the bodies of his victims in the back garden of his girlfriend's house in Abbey Wood. She called the police. His crime, she decided, had come just a little bit too close to home.

Ratings and reviews

I've read a lot of books on murder, mostly from Australia. The chapters of murders in this book leave one feeling stunned that one person can kill so many people... A riveting book and if you like reading true crime then I recommend you purchase this such book

About the author

Nigel Cawthorne is a prolific writer. He has written a number of true-crime works including the high-selling Flight MH370: The Mystery (2014; revised and updated edition 2015) and The Great Diamond Heist (2016) which was optioned by ITV Studios.