John Childs

John Childs, also known as Bruce Childs, is a British hitman and serial killer from East London who was convicted in 1979 for a series of apparent contract killings, though none of the bodies have been found. He implicated Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney in the murders, but they were released in 2003 after the judge ruled that Childs is a "pathological liar".

Investigation and trials John Childs confessed to having committed the murders to Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Cater in June 1979, after Childs was arrested in September 1978 for a series of bank and security van robberies in Hertfordshire. Childs was convicted of carrying out six murders of Terence "Terry" Eve, Robert Brown, George Brett, Terry Brett, Frederick "Freddie" Sherwood, and Ronald Andrews from November 1974 to October 1978. Their remains have not been found, and no murder weapons were uncovered. Childs then turned Queen's Evidence to implicate his supposed former employers, Essex businessmen and former prisoners Terry Pinfold and Harry "Big H" MacKenney, in the murder of Eve and the other victims. Other co-accused were Leonard Thompson and Paul Morton-Thurtle. Former prisoner Terence Eve, who had become a toy maker in Dagenham, went missing in November 1974. Eve had made teddy bears in the same converted church hall that Pinfold and MacKenney used to make diving equipment for their company. Also missing was a haulage contractor, George Brett, along with his 10-year-old son, Terry, who had disappeared on 4 January 1975. Childs said he had considered killing MacKenney with a crossbow because he was afraid of him.

The defence called as witnesses two prisoners who said that Childs had confessed to them that he had falsely implicated MacKenney because he was worried that his own wife Tina would be accused of murder.

Claims of Childs Childs wrote a statement in July 1986 when he was held at HMP Winchester, admitting that Pinfold was "only convicted because of my perjured evidence".

In 1997, The People reported that Childs had written to a penfriend through the Prison Reform Trust, describing how he dismembered the bodies of his victims and burned them on a 55-gallon drum in his council flat in Poplar. When he was at Long Lartin and then Frankland Prison, County Durham, Childs was interviewed by the Daily Mirror newspaper, who reported on the front page in 1998 that he had confessed to committing five more murders.

Appeal of co-accused Pinfold and MacKenney unsuccessfully appealed against their convictions in 1981 and were denied leave to appeal in 1987. A forensic psychiatrist, David Somekh, concluded that Childs had a personality disorder that led him to compulsively lie, and the original trial jury were blocked from being told this.

Childs' account of the murders changed. Pinfold's lawyer Danny Simpson said that former Detective Chief Inspector James Harrison-Griffiths, when investigating Eve's disappearance, was told by Commander Bert Wickstead of the Metropolitan Police in 1976 that Eve was alive and living in West London, and that Childs had previously written a letter that said Childs' wife had asked him to kill Eve after he sexually assaulted her. MacKenney's former wife Eileen said in her autobiography, published by Simon and Schuster in 2011, that Childs' story about the murders was false, and that he was really from Wales and called Martin Jones; he had taken the name Childs from a previous tenant of his flat.

Personal life Childs joined the British Army as a sapper, but was expelled after nine months for committing burglary. Childs was married with two daughters, but his wife Tina divorced him in 1982 following his conviction.