John Thomas Straffen (27 February 1930 – 19 November 2007) was an English serial killer who committed the murder of three prepubescent girls between the ages of five and nine in the counties of Somerset and Berkshire, England, between 1951 and 1952.
All three of Straffen's victims were murdered by strangulation. His first two victims were murdered in Bath, Somerset, in the summer of 1951. Arrested shortly after the murder of his second victim, Straffen denied any sexual or sadistic motive for the murders, which he insisted he had committed to simply "annoy" the police, whom he blamed for most of his problems.
Tried before Mr Justice Oliver at Taunton Assizes in October 1951, Straffen was found unfit to plead on the grounds of diminished responsibility and committed to indefinite detention within Broadmoor Hospital. He briefly escaped from this facility in April 1952 and murdered a third child in the village of Farley Hill, Berkshire, in the four hours he remained at liberty prior to his recapture.
Straffen was brought to trial for this third murder at Winchester Assizes in July 1952; he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death, although his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by the Home Secretary following his personal recommendation to the Queen that Straffen be reprieved. He remained incarcerated until his death within HM Prison Frankland in November 2007.
At the time of Straffen's death, he was the longest-serving prisoner in British history, having served over 55 years' imprisonment.
Early life John Thomas Straffen was born on 27 February 1930 at Bordon Camp in Hampshire. He was the third of six children born to John and Elizabeth (née Morgan) Straffen, with one older brother and sister, and three younger sisters. At the time of Straffen's birth, his father served in the British Army, and his mother was a homemaker. When Straffen was two years old, his father was deployed overseas and the family spent six years in British India.
Straffen's early childhood was unremarkable. His mother would later recollect her son displayed no signs of mental limitation or behavioural problems until after he was stricken with encephalitis at age six during his father's tour of military duty in British India. Following his recovery, Straffen began to exhibit traits of antisocial behaviour. The family returned to the United Kingdom in March 1938, settling in a suburb of Bath, Somerset. Shortly thereafter, Straffen's father was discharged from the Army.
Upon his family's return to England, Straffen began committing acts of petty theft in addition to frequently truanting from school. He was referred to a child guidance clinic for this behaviour in October 1938. Eight months later, Straffen first appeared before a juvenile court for stealing a purse from a young girl; he was sentenced to two years' probation. Straffen's assigned probation officer discovered that he did not understand the general difference between right and wrong, or the meaning of probation. The Straffen family was living in crowded lodgings at the time, and his mother—with five other children—had little time to devote exclusively to her son. As such, Straffen's probation officer referred him to a psychiatrist, who officially diagnosed Straffen as a mentally defective individual.
In June 1940, the local council referred Straffen to St Joseph's School, a residential school for mentally defective children in Sambourne, Warwickshire, with instruction he remain housed within structured facilities of this nature until age sixteen. The same year, Straffen underwent an intellectual assessment, which revealed his IQ to be 58 and his mental age to be six years.
Straffen would remain at St Joseph's until 1942, when he transferred to Besford Court School in Defford, Worcestershire. Here, he was observed by staff to be something of a solitary individual and markedly resentful of having been placed in a structured environment by authorities. A second intellectual assessment conducted in the mid-1940s revised Straffen's IQ to 64; his mental age was also revised to nine years, six months. He would remain at this facility until March 1946.
Adolescence Straffen was released from Besford Court School shortly after his sixteenth birthday; he returned to live with his family in Bath. The same year, an examination by the Medical Officer of Health concluded that although potentially capable of basic manual labour, he still warranted certification under the Mental Deficiency Act. After several short-term menial jobs, Straffen obtained more stable employment as a machinist in a clothing factory. This employment lasted ten months before he was made redundant in 1947. Shortly thereafter, Straffen began to enter unoccupied local homes and steal small items; he is not known to have taken these stolen artifacts home or given these items to others, but instead typically hid or discarded them. As Straffen had no close friends, he invariably committed these burglaries alone.
On 27 July 1947, a 13-year-old girl reported to police that a blond-haired teenager named John had sexually assaulted her after putting his hand over her mouth and saying: "What would you do if I killed you? I have done it before." The police were unable to locate the assailant and would only link Straffen to this offence much later. Six weeks after committing the sexual assault, Straffen is known to have strangled five chickens belonging to the father of a teenage girl with whom he had recently argued.
HM Prison Horfield In the autumn of 1947 Straffen was arrested for burglary; he willingly confessed to the offence in addition to having committed thirteen other burglaries, many of which police had not linked to the same offender. He was remanded in custody and, on 10 October, was committed to HM Prison Horfield in Bristol under the Mental Deficiency Act 1913, with his committal paperwork stating Straffen was "not of violent or dangerous propensities." Straffen would remain at this facility for twenty months, during which he underwent a psychiatric examination by the medical superintendent, who officially classified Straffen as being intellectually disabled.
Straffen was isolated from other inmates at Horfield and well-behaved. As a result, in July 1949 he was transferred to a lower-security agricultural hostel in Winchester. Here, he initially functioned well, but soon relapsed into committing acts of petty theft within the facility. When he stole a bag of walnuts in February 1950, he was sent back to HM Prison Horfield. Six months later, he was disciplined by staff for leaving the facility without authorisation and resisting police when they attempted to return him to Horfield.
Unsupervised home leave In early 1951, Straffen was examined at a Bristol hospital, where an electroencephalograph reading revealed he had suffered "wide and severe damage to the cerebral cortex"—possibly originating from his being stricken with encephalitis at the age of six. However, Straffen was considered sufficiently rehabilitated to be allowed short periods of unsupervised home leave. He used the time to obtain a job at a market garden as an odd-job man using the skills he had honed while residing in Winchester.
Rehabilitation into society News of Straffen independently obtaining employment greatly impressed Hortham officials, and he was allowed to keep his horticultural job. Shortly thereafter, staff authorised Straffen to be returned to the care of his family, who by 1951 resided in Fountain Buildings, Bath.
By law, under the Mental Deficiency Act, Straffen underwent a further psychological assessment by Hortham medical staff shortly after his twenty-first birthday; these officials recommended he remain classified as mentally deficient for a further five years. His family disputed the outcome of this assessment and appealed the decision. Shortly thereafter, 10 July 1951, the Medical Officer of Health for Bath re-examined Straffen and found an improvement in his mental age to ten years; he recommended that Straffen's certificate of mental deficiency be renewed only for six months with a view to discharge at the end.
Two days prior to this re-assessment, a seven-year-old girl named Christine Vivian Butcher had been murdered in Windsor, Berkshire. The child had been raped, then strangled to death with the belt from her own raincoat. Her murder was never solved. Although Straffen is not considered a suspect in this case, according to author Letitia Fairfield, the intense police and public outrage generated by the case may have led Straffen—with his lifelong "intense resentment" and "smouldering hatred" of police—to believe the act of strangling young girls would cause maximum frustration and outrage to the authorities.
Murders
Brenda Goddard On the afternoon of 15 July 1951, Straffen left his home to visit the local cinema unaccompanied, as he typically did on a Sunday. His route took him past 1 Camden Crescent in Bath, where 5-year-old Brenda Constance Goddard lived with her foster parents. Although the child was not allowed to venture out of her garden when playing while unsupervised, on this day, she evidently crossed the road to a meadow close to her home to gather buttercups and daisies.
According to Straffen's later statement to the police, he initially observed Brenda as she gathered flowers in this meadow and the child "looked up and smiled" at him before he asked her, "What are you doing?" to which Brenda replied "Picking flowers" before extending her arm to display a "bunch of white flowers" as she continued to smile. After learning Brenda's name, Straffen stated: "I know a place where there are even more flowers; they're in that wood. Shall I show you?" Brenda eagerly agreed.
At the entrance to a nearby copse, Brenda allowed Straffen to lift her over a fence. Almost immediately thereafter, Straffen manually strangled the child although as he was both confused and frustrated that Brenda did not attempt to scream prior to lapsing into unconsciousness, he then repeatedly struck her head against a large stone. Straffen did not make any attempt to hide the body and simply continued to the cinema to watch the film Shockproof, after which he returned home.
Brenda's foster mother reported her missing at 3:15 p.m.; her body was discovered by a police officer at 7:10 p.m. The location of her body was just three hundred yards from her home. No effort had been made to conceal her body, and numerous clipped white convolvulus flowers were found at the crime scene. The child had not been sexually assaulted, and investigators were unable to determine the actual motive for the crime.
After eliminating Brenda's biological and foster family as suspects, police began questioning all locals with criminal records. Straffen was questioned by Bath City Police in relation to Brenda's murder on 3 August. He admitted to having worn a navy blue suit on the date of the child's death and that he may have been the individual in such attire seen by Brenda's foster mother walking past her home shortly before she had noticed Brenda missing from her front garden, but he denied any involvement in the murder. As police had no physical evidence linking Straffen to Brenda's murder, they were unable to charge him with the crime.
Employment dismissal Prior to Straffen's formal interview regarding Brenda's murder, police had also contacted his employer to verify his movements on the date of her death; this resulted in Straffen being dismissed on 31 July. Although Straffen blamed the police for his dismissal, his employer would later state he had already been planning to "lay [Straffen] off" within days of his interview with the police due to Straffen's recent lack of commitment to his work duties and his bizarre habit of hoarding flowers and vegetables in locations where he apparently believed they would not be found.