They are extraordinary pictures of a psychopath trapping and killing his prey.
But it is the chilling images of ‘Crossbow Cannibal’ Stephen Griffiths brazenly celebrating his final murder in front of a CCTV camera that will ensure his place in the criminal history books.
Never before has such explicit video footage of a murderer in action been revealed.
The camera in the corridor outside the serial killer’s flat clearly shows the PhD student’s face contorted with rage before he executes prostitute Suzanne Blamires, 36, with a crossbow bolt and a knife to the head.
Moments later, accepting that the murder has been caught on film, he coolly strolls up to the camera and brandishes his crossbow in an act of bravado.
Executed on camera: Bradford prostitute Suzanne Blamires was Stephen Griffiths' final victim
Griffiths also makes an obscene one-fingered gesture and, as he walks out of the building to search for another victim, holds up a bottle of Sprite as if to toast his success.
Police were called in after Peter Gee, caretaker of Holmfield Court, a housing association block of flats in Bradford, carried out his usual Monday task of checking the weekend’s CCTV video last May.
Griffiths, who was studying for a doctorate in the history of homicide, had remained at his flat and was waiting for officers to come and arrest him.
When marksmen burst in, he called out: ‘I’m in here. I’m Osama Bin Laden.’
Last week at Leeds Crown Court, 40-year-old Griffiths was jailed for the rest of his life after admitting the murders of Miss Blamires and two other prostitutes, Susan Rushworth, 43, and Shelley Armitage, 31.
He chopped up their bodies in his ‘slaughterhouse’ bathroom and ate sections of their flesh before disposing of the remaining body parts.
He told police he had killed ‘loads’ of women and compared himself to Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered 13.
Griffiths is currently on a hunger strike. He has lost several stone and is said to be refusing even liquids. Police hoped to question him further about other possible murders, but are unlikely to make progress while he continues his apparent suicide bid.
The shocking CCTV footage would have been shown at a trial, but because Griffiths admitted the murder charges they were never screened in court.
Security camera number 14 at Holmfield Court shows Griffiths arriving at his flat with Miss Blamires in the early hours of May 22.
They are seen chatting as they walk along the corridor and she enters his flat willingly.
Minutes later a terrified Miss Blamires is shown running for her life along the corridor, chased by the killer, now wearing black gloves and with his teeth bared like a snarling animal.
Just off camera there is a struggle. She is knocked to the floor and her body goes limp. In shots which we have decided not to publish, Miss Blamires is then dragged back down the corridor towards Griffiths’s flat. He casually retrieves his crossbow and fires a bolt from point-blank range into her body, then her head.
His victim is dragged back inside the flat before he reappears to pose triumphantly in front of the camera.
Same fate: Susan Rushworth (left) and Shelley Armitage (right) were also murdered by Griffiths
Over the next couple of days he is captured leaving the flat carrying bin liners and holdalls.
At one point he has a heavy black plastic bin bag balanced on his right shoulder, his shirt sleeves rolled up.
He is seen casually weaving between traffic as he crosses the road and walk towards the railway station.
He boards a train to nearby Shipley where he dumps the remains of Miss Blamires in the River Aire.
Police divers later found 81 pieces of her body in the river, including her hands and head, which still had the crossbow bolt and knife embedded in it. Parts of Miss Armitage’s spine and flesh were also found in the area.
When police asked Griffiths how many women he had murdered he held up six fingers and said: ‘Five’.
He admitted that after killing the three women, he had dismembered and skinned them using power tools, a hammer, knives and a samurai sword.
No remorse: Griffiths pictured in police custody. The killer celebrated the murder of Suzanne Blamires by gesturing to a CCTV camera
He cooked the first two but ate the third raw after his cooker broke.
Following his arrest he told police: ‘This is the end of the line for me … I’ve killed loads.’
Police are believed not to have shown the CCTV footage to the victims’ families, although relatives of Miss Blamires and the other two women were in court to hear the horrific evidence.
In stark contrast to her final years as a drug-addicted prostitute, Suzanne Blamires enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing. She had her own pony, went abroad on holiday and wore designer clothes.
But she started experimenting with drugs after completing her A-levels and her life began to spiral downwards.
She was studying to become a nurse but became hooked on heroin and thrown out of college. To pay for her habit, she started working on the streets.
After the verdict her mother Nicky said: ‘Our daughter was deeply loved and her death has left a huge hole in our lives.
‘I wake up and think about my bright, articulate and much-loved daughter every day and I am serving a life sentence as a result of what that man has done.’
I'm the luckiest woman alive, says girl who got away
Close encounter: Rosalyn Edmondson was invited into Griffiths' flat but 'instinct' made her turn away at the last moment
Within an hour of killing Suzanne Blamires, Griffiths was looking for a fourth victim.
CCTV footage from outside the killer’s block of flats show just how close another young woman came to death.
Pumped up from the crossbow murder, Griffiths approached drug addict Rosalyn Edmondson, 28, who was collecting the heroin substitute methadone from an all-night chemist near his home.
The serial killer complimented her, persuaded her to buy crack cocaine for him from a dealer and then invited her back to his flat.
Initially she agreed to go with the dark-haired stranger. Miss Edmondson, referred to in court only by the initial R, is captured on CCTV at 3.35am walking with Griffiths.
She is seen to chat with him near the apartment block, but at the last moment her ‘instinct’ warns her off going inside and she is shown walking away towards her own flat.
Miss Edmondson said: ‘I know I am so lucky, the luckiest woman alive. I wouldn’t have got out of there alive. I didn’t like his smile and I didn’t like the way he suddenly changed when he did the cocaine. He invited me to his flat. Some instinct inside made me say no.’
Prostitute Bridget Farrell, 35, was friendly with Griffiths’s other victims and claimed to be walking the streets with Shelley Armitage minutes before she was picked up and killed with a crossbow.
Miss Farrell also said she was touting for clients with Miss Blamires shortly before she died and called at Griffiths’s flat 24 hours after he killed her.
She had known Griffiths for 15 years and he acted ‘like a brother’ to her and cooked her meals.
‘The first thing I noticed was his flat was a total mess. It was like he had trashed the place in a rage. I tried to clean it up. There was no sign of blood but there were clothes all over. I offered to wash them for him but he refused.
‘He was sweating and started banging on his temple, saying he was cracking up. On the table there was a sketch of some clippers like a gynaecologist would use. There was also a drawing of a guillotine and a head clamp.’
She added: ‘So why did he let me live? Why didn’t he kill me, too? I knew him the best, I saw him the most – so why am I still here now? I can’t answer any of it.’
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