Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
In 1986, a series of murders of four young men sent shockwaves through the gay community in the British capital, London. Within two months, four men were strangled, their bodies horrifically mutilated either before or after their deaths. The first victim was 37-year-old railway worker James Burns from Edinburgh, whose body was found on 15 March 1986 in a derelict flat in Kensington, a district in west London. Just a few weeks later, on 6 April, the body of 24-year-old Anthony Connolly was discovered on a railway embankment in the London borough of Brixton. Just six weeks after the horrific murders, on 18 May, Michael del Marco Lupo was arrested and charged with the murders of Burns and Connolly. Only three days later, the charges were extended to include two further murders – those of hospital employee Damien McCloskey and an unidentified man – as well as two attempted murders. The police had caught Michael out because two men had managed to escape from his clutches and told the police about their experiences with Michael in his torture chamber. The police then went to Michael’s house, where they discovered a chamber of horrors in the basement. They arrested Michael immediately. This did not bother Michael much, as he knew he would soon die. For Michael had contracted AIDS. This diagnosis, which Michael had received from his doctor a few months earlier, was the trigger for his series of murders of young men who had infected him with the disease. But who was Michael, who described himself as a wolf, given that his surname, Lupo, means ‘wolf’ in Latin? Michael was a native Italian, born on 19 January 1953 in Genzano di Lucania. He was an extremely handsome man who made no secret of the fact that he was attracted to men, whom he slept with in droves. He loved to take the dominant role during sex. Sadomasochistic practices, as well as the use of human faeces – known as coprophilia – gave him sexual pleasure. In 1975, after leaving his Italian commando unit, Michael went to Britain, where he initially worked as a hairdresser until he had saved enough money to open the Yves Saint Laurent boutique on Brompton Road in London. His clients were predominantly wealthy gay men, with whom he was only too happy to engage in sexual activities. Michael was downright obsessed with sex and boasted that he had slept with over 4,000 men. Michael, who earned a lot of money from his boutique, soon bought a house in Roland Gardens in South Kensington, in the basement of which he realised his dream of a torture chamber. After his visits to the usual bars, he would drag young men there, where he would subject them to a special treatment. The men usually left Michael’s house with bruises, cuts and strangulation marks on their necks. Michael’s life changed abruptly when he was diagnosed with HIV by his doctor in March 1986. From then on, Michael turned into a big bad wolf who wanted to take revenge on gay men. Over a period of two months, he strangled four men, slashed their scrotums, cut open their chests and smeared their bodies from head to toe with excrement, which became his trademark. Michael, who felt no remorse or empathy for his victims, was sentenced in July 1987 by the Old Bailey in London to life imprisonment plus 14 years. Michael served eight years of this sentence before he died of an AIDS-related illness on 12 February 1995 at Frankland Prison in County Durham. This marked the end of the Italian serial killer Michael del Marco Lupo, who had gone down in British criminal history for all time through his gruesome crimes.
