Trevor Hardy
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Trevor Joseph Hardy, aka The Beast of Manchester, (11 June 1945 - 25 September 2012) was a British serial killer who murdered three teenage girls in Manchester from 1974 - 1976.
Biography edit
Hardy was born in Manchester in 1945. He attacked a friend with a pickaxe in 1972 and was jailed for five years. He served two years in HMP Albany before being paroled in 1974.
On 31 December 1974, Hardy attacked Janet Lesley Stewart, who he had mistaken for a schoolgirl he was obsessed with. He stabbed her to death and buried her body in a shallow grave. She was reported missing and was not revealed as dead until Hardy was apprehended in 1976. For weeks afterwards, Hardy would return to the grave to mutilate Stewart's body. He would cut parts off and dump them around the city in order to make it harder to find the corpse.
On 19 July 1975, Hardy attacked a second victim, Wanda Skala. Hardy beat her unconscious with a brick, raped her, bit off her nipple and strangled her to death with her own tights. He kept the nipple and Skala's handbag as trophies to remind him of his crime. Hardy was arrested after bragging about raping and killing Skala to his younger brother, but his girlfriend Shelagh Farrow provided him with a false alibi and the toothmarks on Skala's body did not match Hardy's teeth because he had filed them to cover up his crime. As a result, Hardy was released without charge.
After being released Hardy attacked Sharon Mosoph in 1976 while she was walking home. She was raped, stabbed and strangled to death. Hardy then attacked another would-be victim, Christian Campbell, and attempted to rape and kill her. Campbell managed to escape and provided a description of her attacker to the police, who recognised it as Trevor Hardy. They were initially unable to find Hardy, who had gone off the grid after his previous arrest, but by placing Shelagh Farrow under surveillance police were able to find where Hardy was hiding out and arrested him.
Upon being apprehended Hardy confessed to the murders of Skala and Mosoph. He also confessed to the murder of Janet Stewart, who was still considered missing, and lead police to the location where he had hidden her head. At trial Hardy sacked his lawyers and pleaded diminished responsibility, but was convicted of three counts of murder. He received three life sentences with a minimum term of 30 years; however, the Home Officer later imposed a whole-life order banning Hardy from ever being released from prison. Hardy spent the next 35 years imprisoned in HMP Wakefield until he eventually died from a heart attack on 25 September 2012.