Bullseye Killer: The Double Life of a Serial Murderer

John William Cooper, a name synonymous with terror in the Welsh town of Pembrokeshire, was born on September 3, 1944. His life was a stark contrast of two seemingly incompatible personas.

On one hand, he was a seemingly ordinary man, a family man with a job and a reputation for being friendly and helpful.

On the other, he was a cold-blooded killer who committed some of the most horrific crimes in the region's history.

The truth about Cooper's double life began to unravel in the mid-1980s.

In 1985, two young siblings, Richard and Helen Thomas, were found brutally murdered in their home. The police were baffled, the killer leaving no trace of his identity.

Five years later, the specter of violence returned to Pembrokeshire. Another set of siblings, Peter and Gwenda Dixon, were discovered dead in their cottage, victims of a savage attack that mirrored the earlier murders.

As the investigation into these crimes, dubbed the "Pembrokeshire Murders" or the "Coastal Murders," progressed, the police were met with a wall of silence.

The killer seemed to have vanished into thin air, leaving behind only a trail of blood and shattered lives.

However, there was a twist in the tale.

In the mid-1980s, Cooper appeared on the popular British game show "Bullseye." This seemingly mundane detail would later prove to be a crucial piece of evidence in the case.

In 1996, Cooper's dark secret was finally exposed. He was arrested and subsequently convicted of the double murders of the Thomas and Dixon families.

The evidence against him was overwhelming, including DNA evidence linking him to the crime scenes and the testimony of witnesses who recognized him from his appearance on "Bullseye."

Cooper was sentenced to a whole life order, meaning he would spend the rest of his days behind bars.

His crimes had shattered the lives of countless people, and his conviction brought a sense of closure to a long and painful ordeal.

The story of John William Cooper serves as a chilling reminder that appearances can be deceiving. Beneath the facade of a seemingly ordinary man, a monster lurked, capable of unspeakable acts of violence.

Blood in the Canal: The Scissor Sisters' Gruesome Crime Shocks Dublin"

The Scissor Sisters: An Irish Nightmare

There are crimes that stick in the mind like a shard of glass embedded deep, refusing to be dislodged. Crimes that crawl into the dark recesses of our imaginations and squat there, feeding on our fears, waiting to be remembered in the dark.

The story of the Scissor Sisters—Linda and Charlotte Mulhall, the sisters who dismembered a man with the cold indifference of butchers at a slab— is one such tale.

A story soaked in blood, set in the narrow, crumbling flats of Dublin, where secrets fester behind thin walls and the shadows have shadows of their own.

A Night of Madness

It all began, as these things often do, with a drink. Or several. It was March 20, 2005, a Sunday, and the Mulhall family—two daughters and their mother, Kathleen, an aging, washed-out woman who'd long ago let life slip from her grip—sat together in their flat in Ballybough, Dublin.

They were joined by a guest, Farah Swaleh Noor, a Kenyan immigrant, a man with his own skeletons rattling around in his closet.

He had a past—a rap sheet longer than an Irish winter, crimes that spanned continents. But that day, he was just a man sharing a drink. Maybe he felt safe in that shabby little room, hemmed in by the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke.

Maybe he even let himself relax, not knowing he was about to step over the edge into a hellish landscape.

It was Linda, the older sister, who first lost her temper. Noor was leaning too close, his breath hot and rotten with alcohol.

He muttered something—a joke, a suggestion, something that pushed Linda past the breaking point. Her hand found the claw hammer on the kitchen counter, and it flew across the room like a comet.

The sound of the blow—a dull thud, a crack—split the air. Noor staggered, his head split open, blood pooling at his feet.

But that wasn't the end; it was just the beginning. Charlotte, her sister, a wild glint in her eye, grabbed a kitchen knife.

The blade flashed in the dim light, slicing through the thick, cold air, sinking into flesh again and again. The sisters were in a frenzy, a red mist descending.

There was a madness there, in that tiny flat—a madness that smelled of blood and fear and stale beer.

When Noor finally lay still, his body crumpled on the floor, they didn't pause. No, they knew what they had to do.

There was no question, no hesitation—only the raw, animal instinct to survive. They dragged him to the bathroom, leaving a slick trail of red across the linoleum floor. They shut the door.

And in that cramped space, they set to work.

A Grisly Task

They were not surgeons, these two—no, they were more like wolves with knives. There were no precise cuts, no careful dissections.

Just hacks, and slashes, and the wet sound of metal against bone. The head came off first, rolling away like a grotesque doll's head.

Then the arms, severed at the shoulder. They worked feverishly, their hands slick with blood, their breath coming in ragged gasps. The bathroom tiles, once a dingy white, were painted in crimson.

They stuffed the pieces—his legs, his arms, his torso—into black plastic bags.

Linda’s hands were trembling, her eyes wide, but Charlotte had that wild grin, the look of someone who’d crossed over into some dark territory and found herself at home.

They dumped the bags in the Royal Canal, the water swallowing them up like some ancient beast, leaving only ripples behind.

But the head—that was a problem. It wouldn't sink, bobbing like a macabre apple.

So they weighted it down with rocks, tied tight in another plastic bag, and hurled it into the black water.

Then they went home, cleaned up the gore with bleach and towels, and left the flat smelling like a swimming pool.

The Water Gives Up Its Dead

The canal, dark and quiet, held its secrets for a while. But rivers and canals, they have a way of giving up their dead.

Ten days later, on March 30th, a jogger noticed something strange in the water—something that didn't belong. He peered closer, his breath catching in his throat.It was a leg. Human. The Gardaí were called, and the investigation began.

One by one, the body parts surfaced, as if the canal itself had grown tired of holding onto the evidence of such a monstrous act.

DNA testing soon identified the victim: Farah Swaleh Noor. A man who’d come to Ireland seeking a new life and had found only a brutal, unmarked grave instead.

The Gardaí began piecing together the puzzle, sifting through the debris of human lives, asking questions no one wanted to answer.

They followed the trail to the Mulhall family, who, when questioned, offered nothing but a thin veneer of lies.

But the Gardaí dug deeper, sniffing out the secrets hidden in the shadows of Ballybough. They examined phone records, scoured surveillance footage, and spoke to anyone who might have seen or heard something that terrible night.

Then Linda cracked. Maybe it was the weight of it all—the blood, the secrets, the sleepless nights, the endless questions.

Maybe she saw her sister Charlotte, with her wild eyes and her caged animal grin, and felt something shift deep inside her. Whatever it was, she confessed.

She told them everything. The hammer, the knife, the blood, the water, the dark thing that had overtaken them both.

Charlotte tried to deny it at first, but the story was out there now, clinging to her like a second skin. She was arrested, charged, and marched into the courthouse, her face pale, her eyes dark and haunted.

Judgment Day

The trial was a circus. The newspapers gobbled it up, splashing the sisters' faces across their front pages, calling them the "Scissor Sisters" like it was some kind of sick joke.

In the courtroom, the truth spilled out in lurid detail: the drugs, the drinking, the hammer and the knife, the dismemberment, the cold, filthy water of the canal.

Linda Mulhall, the older sister, the one who swung the hammer first, pled guilty to manslaughter.

She was sentenced to fifteen years. Charlotte, the one who had wielded the knife with a fury that seemed to know no bounds, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life.

And their mother, Kathleen, who had cleaned up the blood and scrubbed the floors and washed the stink of death from her hands?

She got five years for helping her daughters cover up their crime, though she served only three.

The Haunting Aftermath

The city of Dublin shuddered at the horror of it. People whispered their names in the pubs, in the shops, on the buses.

Mothers watched their daughters with a new kind of caution, wondering just what dark thoughts might be swirling beneath the surface.

And the canal, that dark, oily water that had held the secrets so briefly, flowed on.It had witnessed the worst, the madness, the frenzy, the blood. But water forgets.It moves on. It leaves behind only the faintest traces, ripples fading into the night.

Linda was released in 2018, her sentence reduced for good behavior.

She emerged into a world that had moved on, but a world that still remembered.

Charlotte remains behind bars, a life sentence stretching before her like a long, dark road.

And as for the head—Farah Swaleh Noor’s severed head, that piece of evidence that could never be found?

It’s still out there somewhere, deep in the muck, a secret waiting for someone, someday, to stumble upon it in the murky depths of the Royal Canal.

Maybe the water will give it up. Or maybe it will keep it, one last secret clutched tight in the cold, dark heart of Dublin.

Whispers in the Dark: Uncovering the Grisly Secrets of the Isle of Man Serial Killer

The Cul-de-Sac Killer

The Isle of Man, 1988. Dark clouds rolled across the sky like a premonition, casting shadows over the quaint, narrow streets of Ballasalla. Stephen Oladimeji K. Akinmurele, a ten-year-old boy with deep, soulful eyes, had just arrived with his mother, a white British woman whose face bore the lines of hardship. Stephen, born to a Nigerian father, had been uprooted from Lagos and transplanted into this foreign soil. The Isle of Man, with its eerie quietness and ancient stone houses, was nothing like the vibrant chaos of his birthplace. It was here that the whispers began.

By the age of eleven, Stephen was already showing signs of a troubled mind. His fascination with the elderly wasn't the gentle curiosity of youth; it was something darker, more insidious. The police would later assert he got a "kick" out of it, but in truth, the shadows had taken root in his heart, whispering malevolent secrets to him.

Fast forward to October 30, 1998, in Blackpool, England. The coastal town, known for its bright lights and seaside attractions, was about to witness a night of unspeakable horror. Eric Boardman, seventy-seven, and his wife Joan, seventy-four, lived in a modest home on a quiet cul-de-sac. They were the picture of serene old age, their life a series of gentle routines. But that night, as the wind howled outside, Stephen's dark impulses took over.

He broke into their home, moving with the silence of a shadow. Eric was beaten to death, his body contorted grotesquely beneath a wardrobe in the hallway. Joan was found in the living room, strangled, her lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. A makeshift cosh made of bound batteries lay beneath Eric's body, a grim testament to the brutality of the attack. It was their daughter who found them, the sight of her parents' twisted bodies forever seared into her memory.

Stephen was arrested on November 1, 1998. His facade of the mild-mannered barman shattered, revealing the monster beneath. But even as the police closed in, the whispers continued. They urged him to confess, to boast of his other kills, each more gruesome than the last.

Jemmimah Cargill, seventy-five, had been his landlady. She died in a flat fire in October 1998, mere days before the Boardmans were murdered. Dorothy Harris, sixty-eight, partially blind and deaf, perished in a house fire in Ballasalla in February 1996. And then there was Marjorie Ashton, seventy-two, strangled in her home in May 1995. Each death had been a quiet suburban tragedy, slipping under the radar until now.

The detectives in Lancashire and the Isle of Man began to re-examine old cases, house fires, and sudden deaths. Stephen, now dubbed the "cul-de-sac killer," was charged with five murders. But even in custody, he continued to play his twisted game. He confessed to three more murders, including that of a rambler on the Isle of Man, claiming he had buried the body on a cliff overlooking the sea. The police found a gun with his fingerprint, but no body despite extensive excavation. They believed these false confessions were a smokescreen, masking his true motive: a pathological hatred of the elderly.

August 28, 1999. Manchester Prison. Stephen Akinmurele, awaiting trial, ended his life. He hanged himself with a ligature, his body swaying gently in the stale prison air. It was his third suicide attempt; his girlfriend had warned the authorities, but the whispers had finally won. In his pocket, they found a suicide note, a chilling glimpse into his tormented mind.

"I know it's not right always thinking like this but it's always on my mind. I can't help the way I feel, what I did was wrong - I know that and I feel for them - but it doesn't mean I won't do it again. I'll keep on having this feeling I'm going mad because I can't take any more of this and that's why I'm saying goodbye."

He had also written to his mother, "I couldn’t take any more [sic] of the feeling like how I do now, always wanting to kill."

The Isle of Man and Blackpool, places of peace and quietude, were left scarred by his legacy. The elderly residents, once symbols of wisdom and tranquility, became reminders of vulnerability and fear. The shadows that whispered to Stephen had dispersed, but their echoes lingered in the minds of those who remembered the cul-de-sac killer. On stormy nights, when the wind howled through the streets, the whispers returned, a chilling reminder that the darkness within can never be fully extinguished.