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Bruce George Peter Lee (born Peter Dinsdale in Manchester, July 1960) became Britain’s most prolific killer when he was convicted of 26 charges of manslaughter in 1981. Yet he had managed to end the lives of 23 of his victims without anyone ever believing the deaths were suspicious.
The Hastie fire
It was only when a fire at a house in Hull, East Yorkshire, killed three young brothers that police began to look for an arsonist. They found their man in Lee, a 19 year old local youth of a disadvantaged background and a spastic disability, but when he started to confess to countless other fatal fires, a whole new chapter opened.
The fire on December 4 1979 killed Charles Hastie, who was 15, and his younger brothers Paul, 12, and eight year old Peter. All three died in hospital of acute burns. It also injured their mother and another brother. Due to the presence of paraffin on the floor of the front porch, noticed by fire officers who had extinguished the blaze, police were called in.
Lee was one of many teenagers who was questioned routinely about the fire. Six months after the inquiry began, he confessed in great detail about pouring paraffin through the letterbox and setting it alight as a revenge mission against Charles Hastie, with whom he had been indulging in homosexual activity. Lee said the 15 year old had threatened to go to the police (as he was a minor) unless Lee gave him money.
Confessions of an Arsonist
Under questioning, Lee then went on to confess to starting nine more fires in Hull over the previous seven years. None of the fires were treated with suspicion at the time; inquests recorded misadventure verdicts and arson was never considered. A total of 23 people had died in the blazes, ranging from a six month old baby; through a young mother and her three small sons; to eleven elderly men in a residential home.
Lee claimed that most of the fires were started at random because he loved fire, and he rarely considered whether he was endangering life when he started them. Only the Hasties and one other fire were at houses owned by people he knew and against whom he bore a grudge.
The Killer's Background
The son of a prostitute, Lee was not well educated. He was brought up in children’s homes and suffered from congenital spastic disabilities in his right limbs which left him with a limp in his right leg and a compulsion to hold his right arm across his chest. He worked as a labourer and although known locally as a loner, was never thought to be dangerous or ill. In 1979 he legally changed his name from Peter Dinsdale to Bruce Lee.
Guilty to Manslaughter
In October 1980, Lee was charged with a total of 26 murders, along with alternative offences of manslaughter, as well as eleven counts of arson and two of causing grievous bodily harm (he had admitted in interview to starting a fire in which a young mother and her daughter suffered severe burns but survived).
At his trial at Leeds Crown Court in January 1981, Lee denied every murder charge but pleaded guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter, as well as the arson attacks. The pleas were accepted. He was ordered to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act, with the judge stating that Lee had a psychopathic disorder which endangered the public.
Prolific - but poor publicity
Lee was taken to Park Lane Special Hospital in Liverpool and, although his current whereabouts are unknown, he remains detained to this day. It is not known whether he has been earmarked for release at any time. He became the most prolific killer in the UK yet got next to no national publicity at the time because a) he was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder; and b) the Yorkshire Ripper’s trial, a much more high profile case, was ongoing at precisely the same time. The fact that the Ripper’s existence was known throughout his offending time while Lee committed killings by fire without ever raising suspicion also affected the contrast between the publicity levels of the two cases. But the fact was that at the moment he finished pleading in court, Lee had admitted killing 26 people; more than the Ripper, the Black Panther and the Moors Murderers put together.
The convictions for the manslaughter of the eleven elderly men at the residential home were later quashed on the grounds that contrary evidence to Lee’s own insistent confessions made the convictions uneasy. This reduced Lee’s killing record to a total of 15 people, still more than any other British killer of similar time.
Whenever retrospective articles or documentaries discuss the UK’s worst killers, Lee’s name still never comes up, possibly due to his own youth and mental restrictions; the lack of any murder convictions; and the fact that nobody doubted that most of the fires were started for fire’s sake – ie, he wouldn’t have cared if most of the dwellings he ignited had been unoccupied. It’s also for this reason that people are reluctant to place Lee in the category of serial killers, in that it was the cause rather than effect which gave him his thrills.
Aftermath
The detective in charge of Lee’s case, Superintendent Ronald Sagar, later launched a libel action against the Sunday Times after they published articles suggesting Lee’s statements had been altered. The paper later withdrew the allegations and offered an apology, with the case finally settling out of court in 1987. Mr Sagar, now retired and awarded with an MBE, publicly stated in his critically-acclaimed book on the case, Hull, Hell & Fire, his hope that Lee will one day be deemed fit and safe enough to be freed.
The Victims of Bruce Lee
The following people all died as a result of either burns or asphyxiation due to fires started by Bruce Lee at their places of residence.
- June 23 1973 Richard Ellerington, aged six
- October 12 1973 Bernard Smythe, aged 72
- October 27 1973 David Brewer, aged 34
- December 23 1974 Elizabeth Rokahr, aged 82
- June 3 1976 Andrew Edwards, aged one
- January 2 1977 Katrina Thacker, aged six months
- January 5 1977 11 elderly men (convictions later overturned on appeal, though Lee maintains his guilt)
- April 27 1977 Deborah Hooper, aged 13; Mark Jordan, aged seven
- January 6 1978 Christine Dickson, aged 24; Mark Dickson, aged five; Steven Dickson, aged four; Michael Dickson, aged 16 months
- December 4 1979 Charles Hastie, aged 15; Paul Hastie, aged 12, Peter Hastie, aged eight
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