An Eye for an Eye

(Ayin Tachat Ayin)

Over the weekend of 24 June 1996, in the pleasant Victorian holiday town of Harrogate in Northern England, three horrific murders were committed. Although similar, the police believed them to be unconnected. However, as this story unfolds it would seem that they were connected but not in the way it would seem. It would appear they were committed by three unassociated individuals. The first was a beautiful, brilliant student doctor about to become qualified. She had been savagely beaten, raped, and then strangled. Vanessa Machin was twenty-five and a student doctor, who was on the threshold of a medical careera beautiful girl, full of life and vitality. She was found raped and brutally bashed on Saturday morning under bushes near the Church of Christ on the stray (a large grass area in the town). Her injuries were so severe, they shocked the detectives investigating. The second was a young girl with Downs syndrome. She was pleasant and friendly. A funny-looking mongol with her face beaten beyond recognition. She had chocked on her own blood and vomit. Shirley Wilson was a Downs syndrome girl; a dumpy girl so severely beaten that she was unrecongnisable and dumped near the river at Canal Road. This was the next victim found on Sunday morning. Her identity had to be sought by dental records. The third was an ordinary pretty young girl. The attractive twenty-year-old had been brutalised and raped, her injuries beyond belief. Helen Johnson was a shop assistant and like Vanessa was raped and beaten. She was found at Plumpton Rocks, a picnic spot on the Wetherby Road. Each of these girls were found within half a mile of each other on three consecutive nights in the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate, a pleasant old town centred on the stray which was a large open grassed area left to the townsfolk by an ancient philanthropist. Not since the Yorkshire Ripper had such brutality surfaced. Harrogate Police had no precedence for murders like these as nothing like this had happened since the Yorkshire Ripper days, ten years earlier. But Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was behind bars leaving them baffled. They could find no witnesses or connections between these three girls. Forensics in 1996 was not as sophisticated as it is today, and they could find no clues as to who or why these crimes were committed