Anthony Hardy is an English serial killer, guilty of having killed at least 3 prostitutes, although the number of victims could be greater.
The discovery of the bodies
December 30th, 2002, London. It is very cold and winter is a particularly difficult time for people who find themselves living on the street. In addition to the cold, there is the issue of the food, which is difficult to find without money. For this reason, many homeless people find themselves rummaging through the trash bins of the city’s bars, hoping to find a bite to eat.
It is one of these homeless people who, while rummaging through a pub’s trash, discovers something disturbing: human remains. The man calls the police and the investigation begins, leading straight to Hardy who will be arrested a week later. Other parts of the victims’ bodies will be found in his apartment.
Anthony Hardy
Who’s Anthony Hardy? At the time of his arrest, he is almost 52 years old and has a turbulent past. Although his childhood and adolescence seemingly passed quietly, during the years of his youth the people around him begin to notice that something is wrong.
He married a classmate in the 1970s and together they moved to Tasmania, Australia, where they raised their four children, two boys and two girls.
In 1982 the first documented incident: Hardy tries to kill his wife by first hitting her in the head with a bottle and then trying to drown her in the bathtub. Following the accident, his wife does not file a complaint, but Hardy is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he will stay for a few weeks. Once he got out, both he and Judith, along with the children who are now in the custody of the mother, will return to England and divorce in 1986.
Life in England did not improve and Hardy began to stalk his ex-wife. For this reason he is arrested and once again enters a psychiatric hospital, where he is diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy.
After getting out of the hospital, he uses alcohol and drugs, commits petty thefts and becomes the protagonist of some brawl. In the ’90s things didn’t get better, he didn’t have a house and spent the nights in hostels. Alcohol and drugs only make his mental problems worse.
In the yera 2000 he moved into a one room apartment, but he didn’t calm down. He becomes the protagonist of acts of vandalism and in 2002 his neighbors call the police because they think that something strange is happening in his apartment.
Finding the bodies
The police find the body of a woman in her bedroom, whose death will be determined as the cause of a heart attack. In December of the same year, however, a homeless man found human remains in the trash. He alerts the police and Hardy is arrested a week later.
Investigations will reveal that the woman found months earlier in his apartment was also one of his victims.
The three victims were prostitutes, with whom Anthony Hardy was obsessed. The apartment was not chosen at random, but precisely because it was close to a place where prostitutes used to work. In addition, the man had an obsession with sex, wanting to dominate women.
Modus Operandi
Bringing his victims closer and attracting them to his home, given their work, wasn’t difficult at all. All the victims were then strangled and raped post-mortem. After killing them, Hardy took pictures of them, putting the bodies in positions he thought were exciting.
Then he would rip the victims apart and dispose of some parts of their body by throwing them into the trash, while he kept other parts, probably as a trophy.
Confession and conviction
Although Anthony Hardy initially tries to deny his involvement in the deaths of the three women, in the end he confesses, saying however taht the women died during consensual sexual relations, although a bit ‘violent.
However, Hardy was judged to be a lying and unreliable person and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003. Officially, the sentence refers to the three women found, but other bodies found in the area in the same period suggest that the victims of the ripper of Camden may have been as many as nine.
Why was a violent man, mentally unstable, with several previous records still free? Could this massacre have been avoided? Tell us your opinion in the comments below
