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I thought about what Professor Wilson had said.
‘Not unless he slips up.’
Little did we know, he was about to do just that.
And that in slipping, we’d slip too.
Shining a Light on the Shadow
Morbidophile is a true crime website created by Emma G. Lowery. Using investigative research, it provides an in-depth examination of true crime cases from around the world.
* 4 min read
The ‘Shadow Murders’ of at least nine women and one child in the early ’80s, is one of the UK’s most gruesome crimes. In 1983, Matty Melgren, a bereavement counsellor from North London where the victims were killed, was convicted of their brutal slayings.
He is now serving a life sentence at Battlemouth Prison with no chance of parole. But is he really the Shadow? Or was he set up by his girlfriend’s neighbour, as he’s always claimed?
And if so, was this neighbour, Des Banister– a pornography obsessed shoe fetishist– in fact the true culprit?
Matty Melgren came to the police’s attention after a student claimed to have been approached in suspicious circumstances by an Irish man claiming to be a bereavement counsellor less than an hour before another woman was abducted and murdered from the same location.
She described the man as having blonde wavy hair (like Melgren’s) and driving a Mini Cooper (the same type of car Melgren owned).
But why would a serial killer give real details about himself? And would he not don a disguise given he had police on his tail?
Is it possible that instead, Des Banister who lived in the flat below Melgren’s girlfriend and had recently been rejected by her, sought revenge by setting up her boyfriend– a man he saw as his love rival?
Might he have put on a fake accent when he approached his victims? Even worn a wig and rented a Mini just like the one Matty owned? And is it possible he targeted women who looked just like the one he could never have?
In so doing, did he set in motion the UK’s most terrible case of mistaken identity, resulting in an innocent man being locked up for a crime he didn’t commit?
Article Rating: ****
