Man Admits Double Murder
18 July 2011, 16:19 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50
A man admits murdering two men in their own flats in Derby and has been jailed for life.
48 year old Andrew Dawson had already admitted to killing 2 men in the Chaddesdon area last July, but up until Monday afternoon had denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibilty.
Today though, Andrew Dawson pleaded guilty to the murders at Nottingham Crown Court of John David Matthews and Paul Hancock in Waterford Drive, Chaddesden in July 2010.
Dawson (48) was a neighbour of the two men in the same flats complex. He visited the flat of Mr Matthews, who was 66, on July 10th and attacked him on the doorstep, stabbing him 18 times.
Dawson then cleaned up and placed Mr Matthew’s body in the bath and filled it with water and bleach.
Then 15 days later, on July 25th, Dawson visited the flat of 59-year-old Mr Hancock and stabbed him to death. He started to clean up but was disturbed as he heard police officers attending Mr Matthew’s flat downstairs after work colleagues reported they were concerned about him not turning up for his shifts.
So he placed Mr Hancock’s body in the bath and filled it with water, returned to his own flat and left to get a train to Ormskirk.
Officers found Mr Matthews’s body that night and discovered Mr Hancock after neighbours contacted police on July 30th after being concerned at not seeing him.
Confession Letter
Officers have now also released a transcript of a "confession letter" which forensics experts recovered from indentations on a writing pad.
“to head of homicide
I wAnt to confess to a Murder
I stabbed a man to death
A man lies in a bath of wAteroweverH
2 mAjor wounds to his left side
1 Maybe two too his chest
ONE To his BACK ____ ONE
to his the base of his
neck
This is NO HOAX
IF U Don’t find him
In a week I will
Give you his ADDRe(s)(s)
The Pink Rose WAS
nice Touch
YOURS
(TH)e Angel (OF) MERCY
The Arrest
Dawson was identified as a suspect and traced to Whitehaven in Cumbria in the early hours of July 30th by local police. At first, he tried to getaway by swimming but later gave up.
Jailed Before
The court heard that Dawson had previously been convicted of a murder in 1981 when he stabbed a 91-year-old shopkeeper to death in his home town of Ormskirk. He was jailed but released on a life-licence.
Detective Inspector Paul Callum was the Senior Investigating Officer in the case. He said: “Dawson has shown no remorse for his actions and has simply sought to blame anyone he can for the direction his life has taken.
“He has stretched out this process unnecessarily for the families of those men that died for no reason and I would like to express my sympathies for the loss of their loved ones.
“Far from having diminished responsibility in this case, as Andrew Dawson was trying to initially claim, he has total and sole responsibility for the deaths of Dave Matthews and Paul Hancock.
“These were cold, calculated and savage acts. He has shown a degree of thought and planning and sought to conceal and destroy evidence where he could.
“Conversely there was no pre-cursor to this or sign that Dawson was about to carry out the most serious of offences.
“From what I can ascertain there was no motive or reason why these two men were killed.
“I’d like to thank all the officers and staff who worked hard on this case to bring it to a successful conclusion.”
