Broadmoor patient jailed for deaths

Broadmoor patient Graham Fisher has been jailed for a minimum of 21 years for killing two women
12 April 2012

A "sadistic" Broadmoor patient has been jailed for a minimum of 21 years after pleading guilty to killing two women more than 12 years ago and attacking two others for sexual kicks.

Graham Fisher, 37, admitted the manslaughter of reclusive Clare Letchford, 40, and 75-year-old widow Beryl O'Connor on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

The two vulnerable women were discovered strangled and burned in their flats less than 100 yards apart in Hastings, East Sussex, in January 1998.

At Lewes Crown Court, Fisher was given the indeterminate prison sentence after he admitted attempting to murder and trying to rape a student on a train in the same month as the killings.

Fisher also pleaded guilty to two counts of rape of another vulnerable woman in her early 40s at her home in Bromley, south east London, in 1991.

He confessed to the offences while being held at the high-security psychiatric hospital two years ago after saying he found it hard to live with his crimes, the court heard.

Prosecutors said Fisher targeted lonely women, some of whom he knew, to satisfy what one psychiatrist described as a "sexually sadistic" aspect to his personality.

He told investigators, after confessing to the rapes, that he gained a thrill from seeing his victim frightened.

He said: "She looked really scared but this really turned me on even more."

Fisher, deemed to have a severe and enduring complex personality disorder, also admitted cutting a piece of flesh from the arm of Ms Letchford and eating it.

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