Is taale of Irish ‘serial killer’ just a myth?
It’s a story that spread worldwide in hours but as the Mail uncovers glaring mistakes in a British detective’s book, we ask...
ASERIAL killer prowling the platforms of the London Underground for years, throwing 16 innocent victims to their grisly deaths under Tube trains... by anyone’s measure, it was a cracking story — and that’s before the explosive allegations of a Scotland Yard cover-up.
Retired British detective Geoff Platt makes the sensational claims about Kieran Patrick Kelly in his book, The London Underground Serial Killer. If Platt’s theory is accurate, it would make Kelly the first — or at least only known — Irish serial killer, up there with the most notorious serial killers in history.
The story about the Irish ‘Tube killer’ — who Mr Platt says murdered 12 victims on the Underground and four by ‘other methods’ — was carried in most major newspapers at home, in Britain and around the world. Global online news channels including the Huffington Post and RT.com also gave it a big splash.
Where Kelly grew up in Rathdowney, Co. Laois, locals are shocked. ‘A serial killer, from a two-horse town like this, sure it’s absolutely beyond shocking,’ said a grandmother living in Rathdowney, where the talk last week was all about Kelly.
However, Mr Platt now maintains all coverage stemmed from one interview he gave to a British newspaper, which he claims ‘contains 12 errors’. But when quizzed by this newspaper, Mr Platt was forced to admit he, too, has made a number of errors concerning ‘facts’ on Kelly and his murderous reign.
On the RTÉ Radio One Ray D’Arcy Show two weeks ago, Mr Platt stated Kelly ‘ was born in Rathdown [sic], outside Co. Laois, outside Dublin, in 1923’. In his book, he says if Kelly was alive today, he would be 91.
Even forgiving Mr Platt’s confused geography, these ‘facts’ are incorrect, something easily verifiable with a cursory glance through birth records at the General Register Office.
Kieran Patrick Kelly was born in Rathdowney, Co. Laois, in 1930. If he is alive today, he would be 85.
Mr Platt admits: ‘I must have got that wrong. My date came from a chat I had with Kelly when he was in prison. He told me he came to London before the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 just after his 30th birthday so I counted back.’
That Mr Platt should misfire on such a basic biographical detail on the subject of his ‘ true crime’ novel reveals an alarming lack of veracity, to say the least.
He justifies it thus: ‘ My book was about my dealings with Kieran Kelly. It was never intended to be a biography of Kelly — it was meant to be [about] a relationship.’
In his book, Mr Platt writes that Kelly committed his first Tube murder when he pushed his best friend Christy Smith under a train at Stockwell Tube station shortly after arriving in London in 1953. He tells in rich detail of how Kelly suspected Christy knew of his homosexuality. The prostitutes they were with at the time who witnessed the murder disappeared, writes Mr Platt, who claims it was this murder that spurred Kelly on his Underground killing spree over the next 30 years.
But there is no evidence such a ‘murder’ even happened. Kelly was never charged with murdering Christy Smith — nobody was. His only ‘evidence’ is that Kieran Kelly told him so.
Mr Platt first met Kelly, a homeless alcoholic, when Kelly was arrested in 1983. His book i s based on confessions he claims Kelly made to him about his murders. He claims to have a 45-minute tape of Kelly’s Tube murder confessions.
When the Irish Daily Mail asked to listen to them, he said: ‘I haven’t been able to find it the last couple of weeks. I saw it about four weeks ago but all this came upon me unexpectedly.’
He says he will get back to us when he finds it.
So what do we actually know about Kieran ‘Nosey’ Kelly, aside from what Mr Platt says Kelly told him?
He was raised in Rathdowney, where one gentleman in his 80s remembers Kelly as a boy.
‘He was a gawpy young lad with fair hair and he came along the road with us to the John of God convent school,’ he said.
‘He was quiet and a bit slow. He didn’t make any i mpact. We considered him kind of a harmless fella. I couldn’t imagine him being a serial killer.’
He continues: ‘The family left when he was about ten or 11 — he didn’t make his Confirmation here.’
Mr Platt claims Kieran Kelly was married and had two children in Ireland before he moved to Britain in 1953. However, Kelly’s name does not appear on any marriage certificates registered between 1948 and 1957.
What we do know i s Kelly was a homeless alcoholic, well- known to police, when he was arrested on Clapham Common, in South London, following a robbery allegation in 1983. By then, he had ratcheted up 41 convictions for drink-related offences. He had been cleared of the murder of a fellow alcoholic in 1977 and attempting to kill another homeless man in 1982.
After his arrest on Clapham Common, in 1983, he was taken to Clapham Police Station, and put in a holding cell with another homeless man.
A fight broke out and Kelly strangled his cellmate.
The Irish Daily Mail has uncovered a clipping of a Central Criminal Court report about this incident, published in The Times of London, on June 8, 1984.
The story begins: ‘A tramp, who told police he had killed nine times in 30 years, was jailed for life yesterday, for the second time in a fortnight.’
It goes on to report ‘Kiernan’ Kelly was convicted of the manslaughter of his cellmate. The sentence followed his conviction and sentencing to life the previous month, in May 1984, for the
‘We considered him kind of a harmless fella’
murder of a drinking partner in a churchyard in 1975. The Times story also reports: ‘He was cleared of murder in 1977 but last summer he made a long statement admitting killing nine vagrants.’
Despite insisting to the Mail in interviews that Kelly had been actually convicted of a killing on the Underground in 1977, when presented with evidence to the contrary, Mr Platt said: ‘Oh I’ve misled you there, I apologise.’ It was at Clapham Police Station that Mr Platt first crossed paths with Kelly. Mr Platt, who says he was Acting Detective Constable at the time, claims he was present when Kelly was interviewed by ‘two very senior police officers’ about the killing in the cells.
He claims Kelly, ‘loaded with testosterone and adrenaline’, confessed to the murder and ‘went on to admit he had also previously killed 15 other people’ but that he was ‘ unable to elaborate on any details’. This is the confession Mr Platt claims he has on tape. At the time, nobody except Platt believed Kelly’s stories.
According to Platt, the other ‘senior police officers’ dismissed Kelly as a raving fantasist, talking ‘ bulls**t’. Yet, according to Platt, ‘I was selected to carry out the day-to-day investigation of the 16 murders’.
In his book, Platt claims that after Kelly’s confession at Clapham Police Station, an ‘officer’ was dispatched to the offices of the South London Press. Despite having no dates, in his book he writes this dogged ‘officer’ took just two days to trawl 30 years worth of newspapers and ‘discovered a number of reported suicides that matched the confessions made by Kelly’.
When this ‘officer’ cross-referenced dates with police and coroner reports, he writes: ‘All files showed a Mr Kieran Patrick Kelly was a witness for each and all of the reported “suicides”.’ It has since emerged this ‘officer’ was Mr Platt himself, although he refers to himself in the first person elsewhere in the book.
So, what of the bereaved families who spent years believing, wrongly, in Platt’s opinion, that their loved ones had died by suicide?
According to Platt: ‘One of my jobs was to contact all the victims’ families, and contact the insurance company and arrange interim payments.’
Did they not want this murderer brought to justice? Not according to Mr Platt.
‘Most of these women were shaken and numb,’ he says. ‘The most important thing was to try get the finance for them. I managed to negotiate interim payments and final payouts, so these women got some money.’
But why would an i nsurance company pay out some 30 years after a recorded suicide verdict, and no murder conviction? ‘I phoned them all and never found a company who wasn’t prepared to resolve the matter. I pointed out he had been arrested and investigations were ongoing. I pointed out it wasn’t suicide but we had somebody who was confessing to it. They were after good publicity. They consider it to be part of their reputation.’
Yet Mr Platt will not release the names of any of these i nsurance companies who are apparently keen on good PR.
Mr Platt also refused to divulge any names of victims or family details so we could check inquest reports and verify this.
Mr Platt also claims he made contact with Kelly’s wife in Ireland, with whom he says he had two sons. He said he found them with the help of a Garda Liaison Officer and spoke to the family by phone. ‘The rift was deep,’ he claims. ‘There was deep hatred there.’
Again, Mr Platt refuses to divulge any information on this.
In his book, Platt claims Kelly was kept in solitary confinement for two years in a prison he won’t name.
He explains Kelly opened up to him, ‘as almost the only person he was allowed to speak to was me’, and Kelly ‘had little choice about who he talked to, it was me or nobody’.
As to why he alone had such access, he clarifies: ‘There was a period when he was in the police station, a time he was appearing once a week in court, then six months on trial at the Old Bailey and I saw him every day in cells at the Old Bailey. We’d a lot of opportunities to talk. I saw him most days in those two years.’
So how did Kelly get away with pushing so many people under trains in busy London without being seen by train drivers or other commut- ers on platforms? According to Platt: ‘It’s a very, very traumatic situation for the drivers. These guys end up having nervous breakdowns after incidents like this. Most instantly retire.’
Along with the mislaid tape, Geoff Platt says there are 10,000 pages of historical evidence at the Public Record Offices at Kew, that ‘prove’ Kelly was a serial killer, despite the f act he was never convicted, l et alone charged.
Mr Platt insists: ‘It’s not a personal opinion. There’s been more than 20 directors of public prosecutions over 30 years who independently expressed the opinion Kelly was guilty of murder and numerous murder squads.’
When asked the names of one DPP or any other detectives l eading these squads, he said: I haven’t made a note of the individual names of the DPPs. They are all in the files at the record office at Kew.’
Since he retired from the police, Mr Platt claims to have written 41 books — although Amazon only lists a handful of these — and completed three PhDs. When pushed on this he said he completed one PhD in sports science in Edinburgh, has submitted another and the third is in progress. Many of the books are written and due out soon, he says.
This week a British Transport Police spokesman confirmed they had spoken to Mr Platt and enquiries are ongoing. They are also waiting to listen to his tapes.
Platt is confident: ‘There will be a full fresh inquiry and a public report. I don’t want to spread gossip.’
So why has Platt — who retired from the police force in 2001 after ‘somebody put a hammer in my eye in 1997’ — waited more than 30 years to make his astonishing claims?
And why didn’t any other police officers seem to take Kelly’s claims seriously? Mr Platt claims he built up cases on all 16 alleged Tube murders but the British Home Office and DPP decided it was not in the public interest to try more than five cases against Kelly, one of which Mr Platt says was about a man allegedly pushed under a Tube.
Bizarrely, Platt claims the j ury didn’t convict in this case because one of the jury members wanted to go home for their dinner.
In his book he says the story was ‘actively suppressed by Press Officers working for the Government’ and cl ai ms: ‘ HM Government gave instructions to the Met Police to restrict publicity about a serial killer on the London Underground’, as, Mr Platt, maintains, the British Transport Police were keen to avoid panic on the Underground.
He says he waited until now to write the book as papers held at Kew were only opened to the public in late 2014.
But, the fact remains; as far as the British justice system is concerned, Kieran Patrick Kelly was not an Underground serial killer.
It appears to all but Mr Platt that Kelly was a ‘fantasist’ in this regard.
Curiously, Mr Platt’s book does not make any reference as to whether Kieran Patrick Kelly is alive or dead.
That he would be 85 now and not 91 as Mr Platt believed, makes it even more curious.
Mr Platt says he lodged Freedom of Information requests with the Ministry of Justice on this matter but ‘they are ducking and diving’.
Yet when asked what prison he interviewed him in or where Kelly has been since, he says: ‘If I told you that you’d know where he might be now.’
This week, Mr Platt told the Irish Daily Mail that he has received a photograph from inside a prison — which he would not name — claiming to be a photograph of Kelly, alive and well. This has not yet been verified. One person who would know whether or not Kelly is alive and where he is being held if so is Kelly’s solicitor.
But Platt will not divulge the solicitor’s details, either. ‘I would rather not tell at the moment,’ he says. ‘When it’s confirmed I will give it to you. The solicitor has asked me not to disclose his name.’
The Ministry of Justice said: ‘We don’t give out any information on individual prisoners. If he did die in prison it would have been investigated and there would have been an inquest.’
So, it seems the only person who may be capable of separating fact from fiction is Kieran Patrick Kelly himself.
Certainly, Kieran Patrick Kelly’s old neighbours in Rathdowney — now known as the birthplace of the Ireland’s only known serial killer — would like to hear his side of the story.
As one man in his 90s said: ‘Sure you can say what you want about a homeless alcoholic. Who do they have to back them up?’
‘There will be a full inquiry and public report’ ‘Oh I’ve misled you there, I apologise’