Amelie killer linked to five attacks (From This Is Local London)

Amelie killer linked to five attacks

8:20am Tuesday 21st September 2004 in

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A serial attacker is behind the murder of French student Amelie Delagrange and at least five other attacks on blond women in south west London, police confirmed today.

Five weeks after Amelie was battered to death on Twickenham Green, detectives have formally linked her murder with the killing of gap-year student Marsha McDonnell and four near-miss assaults.

Although there are no forensic links between the cases, criminal profilers found the similarities between the victims and the nature of the attacks are too obvious to ignore.

All the victims were young females, aged between 17 and 36, mostly blond. All of them were struck from behind with a heavy, blunt object. All six incidents happened late at night on dark streets or open spaces within 5 miles from each other, in one of the capital's safest areas.

None of the victims could describe their attacker.

"We cannot discount that the attacks may have been committed by the same person," Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Murphy, head of the investigation, said today.

DCS Murphy believes the killer is a man who knows the area and has possible links with Twickenham and Walton-on-Thames, where he dumped Amelie's Walkman, keys and purse in the Thames. His method of striking young women from behind suggests he is "very callous, very brutal".

The first attack happened in Walpole Gardens, Strawberry Hill, on January 8 last year. An unnamed 17-year-old girl was left for dead with serious head injuries as she walked home from the shops at 9.00pm. At first she thought she slipped on the ice, but a pathologist found she was battered with a blunt object.

Less than 2 miles away on February 4, Ms McDonnell was bludgeoned thrice on the head after a night out with friends. The 19-year-old had just got off a bus near her parent's home in Hampton.

On November 5 last year, Dawn Brunton barely survived an assault from behind as she walked through an alley in Hatton Cross near Heathrow airport. The accounts clerk, 36, suffered a fractured skull and facial injuries.

In a similar attack on April 18, Ms Edel Harbison, a 34-year-old accountant, was left unconscious after an evening in Harrington's Pub on Twickenham Green.

Then, on August 19, Amelie was murdered as she took a shortcut home across the Green.

Only four days later, a sixth unnamed woman was hit on the head as she walked along Hounslow Road, Feltham. She thought she had fallen over until hospital staff told her she may have been attacked with a blunt instrument.

It is "very unlikely" that Amelie was hit with a "traditional hammer", DCS Murphy said. The killer used something like a club hammer, baseball bat, pipe or even a heavy branch, which he carried with him or picked up on the way.

Neither the murder weapon nor Amelie's handbag and mobile phone have been found. After a three week lapse, police divers have restarted their search for her possessions in the Thames at Walton-on-Thames.

According to DCS Murphy, seven people have been arrested and released in all six cases. Although the police quizzed various "persons of interest", there is no prime suspect yet.