Six Sinister UK Prisoners Serving Time in HMP Frankland, County Durham
It is the most Northern and largest of the high-security prisons in the UK, and has previously housed notorious criminals such as Peter Sutcliffe and Charles Bronson.
HMP Frankland is a category A men’s prison sitting in the middle of a tranquil paradise in the Durham countryside, just west of Adventure Valley and south of Finchale Priory.
It opened in 1980 and is located around five miles from Durham city center and currently houses over 800 men serving sentences of four years or more. Garnering the nickname ‘Monster Mansion’ due to many of its inmates being high-risk offenders, convicted murderers or serving time for terror-related offences.
Here are six of the UK’s most sinister prisoners currently serving their sentences at HMP Frankland.
David Fuller
Convicted in 2021 of the murders of Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce. David Fuller sexually assaulted and strangled to death two women after breaking into their homes months apart from each other in 1987.
These would become known as the Bedsit Murders of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
The murders had remained unsolved despite a DNA sample taken from Wendy’s body being enhanced by forensic scientists in 1999.
In 2019 a reinvestigation was booted by an enhanced DNA sample from Caroline’s tights, but eventually, the breakthrough came from a sample from Wendy’s body.
When police attended Fuller’s home in Heathfield, East Sussex, he denied knowing the two women but was arrested and it was discovered that his fingerprint matched one left in blood on a plastic bag found in Wendy’s bedsit.
It was during a search of his house and home office that detectives would uncover over 14 million shocking images of sexual offences he had committed on the bodies of more than 100 female corpses, aged between 9 and 100, over the course of his employment as an electrician at the Kent and Sussex Hospital. Recorded on hidden computer hard drives, floppy discs and CDs.
Fuller worked as a maintenance supervisor and was given his own all-access swipe card to afford him entry into the mortuary.
Fuller was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order on 15 December 2021, and in October 2021, he was charged with an additional 16 offences committed at mortuaries in the now closed Kent and Sussex Hospital, and the Tunbridge Wells Hospital which replaced it, at Pembury between 2007 and 2020.
Wayne Couzens
Sarah Everard was kidnapped in South London on the evening of the 3rd of March 2021 as she was walking home to the Brixton Hill area from a house near Clapham Common.
Everard was stopped by an off-duty Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens, who identified himself as a police officer, handcuffed her; The trial judge later said that he had likely claimed that he was arresting her for having breached COVID guidelines.
Couzens and Everard were captured twice by bus CCTV. The first instance at 21:35 showed them beside the Vauxhall Couzens hired on the 28th of February, and the second at 21:38, showed the vehicle license plate.
Couzens put Sarah Everard into the vehicle and drove to Kent, the route tracked using CCTV and ANPR.
They arrived in Dover where Couzens raped and strangled Sarah Everard, and by 02:31 Couzens had left the scene and was spotted buying drinks at a service station.
Couzens visited the site where he dumped Sarah Everard’s body twice, leaving just before dawn. The next day as the search grew, Couzens bought petrol, which he used to burn her body inside a fridge, and dumped the remains in a nearby pond.
Sarah Everard’s body was found in a woodland stream a week later, just meters away from land owned by Couzens.
Couzens was charged with Sarah Everard’s kidnapping and murder on the 12th of March and on the 8th of June he pleaded guilty to kidnap and rape and admitted responsibility for her death after previously denying it.
On the 30th of September, Couzens was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order and as of December 2021 was imprisoned at HM Frankland. He was further charged with four counts of indecent exposure related to incidents in January and February 2021.
16 Metropolitan Police officers have so far been convicted of crimes since an investigation into their conduct was launched after Sarah Everard’s murder.
Michael Stone
Convicted in 1996 of the murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Josie Russell, Michael Stone was sentenced to three life sentences with a tariff of 25 years.
Stone has always maintained his innocence and continues to contest his conviction and him alongside his legal team argue that the serial killer Levi Bellfield could possibly be the true perpetrator of the attack.
Stone remains the prime suspect in an unsolved murder that occurred in Maidstone in 1976 and he is also known to have previously killed his partner through an accidental heroin overdose.
In July of 1997, police arrested Michael Stone for the Russell murders after receiving tip-offs resulting from a reconstruction on the Crimewatch television programme.
A Psychiatrist called to report their suspicions of Stone, as did another two nursing staff. Stone had allegedly told a psychiatric nurse that he dreamt about torturing people and that he fantasized about killing children.
Stone was convicted of killing Lin, 45, six-year-old Megan and their dog as they walked home along a secluded lane after a swimming gala in Chillenden.
The DNA found at the scene did not match his, but he was found guilty in 1998 on evidence from three other prisoners, stating that Stone had confessed while awaiting trial in Canterbury jail.
A retrial was held in 2001 after one of the three prisoners admitted to fabricating his account, but Stone was convicted again.
Peter Chapman
Convicted in March 2010 for the rape, kidnap and murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall in October 2009.
Peter Chapman used a fake Facebook profile impersonating a teenage boy to befriend Ashleigh Hall, who was a student from Darlington.
Chapman was a 33-year-old man living in his car and according to the prosecution, “When she met him on the 25th of October last year, he kidnapped raped, and murdered her.”
Chapman dumped the teenager’s body in a field near a layby on the A177, close to the services near Sedgefield, County Durham.
Chapman was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 35 years.
Mark Dixie
Convicted on the 22nd of February 2008 of murdering 18-year-old singer and model Sally Anne Bowman, on the 25th of September 2005 in South Croydon, London.
Dixie has 17 other criminal convictions and has been known by various pseudonyms.
Sally Anne Bowman was stabbed to death yards away from her home after a night out with friends, and it would not be until almost a year later that the DNA was matched to Dixie.
Dixie was arrested in Crawley, West Sussex after being involved in a fight in a pub while watching the World Cup.
In October 2006, his DNA was sent to Western Australia to be tested against that of the DNA evidence in the Claremont serial killer case between 1996 and 1997, as it is believed he was in the area at the time of the killings.
Dixie denied murdering Sally Anne Bowman, but claimed in his defence that he had spent the night on drugs and went out to purchase more cocaine.
Dixie claims to have come across the body of Sally Anne Bowman, whom he said was already dead, and claimed to have had sex with the body.
Dixie’s DNA has been matched to a stabbing and rape in Australia in 1998, and to the rape of a woman in Fuengirola, Spain in August 2003 but he has not been formally charged for these assaults.
Dixie was found guilty of murdering Sally Anne Bowman on the 22nd of February 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should not be released for a minimum of 34 years.
Ian Huntley
On the 4th of August 2002, Holly Marie Wells and Jessica Aimee Chapman were lured into the home of Ian Kevin Huntley, a school caretaker and local resident of Sohan, Cambridgeshire.
Huntley subsequently murdered the children before disposing of their bodies in an irrigation ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The girls’ bodies were not discovered until the 17th of August 2002.
Huntley was convicted of the murders over a year later on the 17th of December 2003 and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.
The High Court later imposed a minimum term of 40 years served.
His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, who was a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for conspiring with Huntley to pervert the course of justice by providing Huntley with a false alibi.
After the children disappeared, Huntley spoke to the police and claimed that he was the last person to seek them alive on their walk.
Huntley and Carr were both arrested on suspicion of abduction and murder at 4:30 a.m. on the 17th of August. During Huntley’s initial questioning, he refused to answer questions, occasionally drooling in an effort to feign mental illness.
This led to police referring him to a mental hospital to undergo an extensive psychological evaluation. Carr, however, quickly confessed that she had lied to the police about her whereabouts.
Huntly was charged with two counts of murder and on the 19th of September 2005, a High Court judge announced that Huntley must remain in prison until he had served a minimum of 40 years.
