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Daniel Gonzalez |
Hospital probe into killer’s death
Spree killer’s suicide in Broadmoor was another ‘preventable tragedy’
A KILLER who styled himself on horror film villain Freddy Krueger committed suicide in Broadmoor on Thursday by slashing himself with a broken CD.
Mental health experts said Daniel Gonzalez’s death was the latest in a series of “preventable tragedies”.
A spokesman for Broadmoor has pledged a full investigation.
The 27 year-old, sometimes known by the nickname Ziggy and considered by other patients as the most dangerous inmate inside the secure hospital, was detained under the Mental Health Act after a horrific three-day murder spree in September 2004.
He killed four strangers including Derek and Jean Robinson, who lived in Makepeace Avenue, Highgate.
The husband and wife were stabbed to death in their hallway after Gonzalez had barged through their front door.
Derek Robinson, 76, was a respected paediatrician, while Jean was a retired music teacher. Gonzalez stripped naked after killing them and was about to have a shower when he was disturbed by the couple’s decorator.
“I had no idea who they were,” Gonzalez said later. “It was just the place I went to. I wanted to kill someone. It was the luck of the draw that I went to their house for a bit of mischief.”
It was revealed after his arrest that he had killed a woman in West Sussex two days before he had reached Highgate. On the same day he stabbed former Camden Town publican Kevin Molloy in Tottenham High Road.
Gonzalez said: “I wanted to see how many I could do before I was caught.”
He was on suicide watch before and during his Old Bailey trial. Even highly feared fellow patients at Broadmoor were said to be terrified by the matter of fact way he reinacted his knife attacks, including the murders of Mr and Mrs Robinson.
He tried to bleed himself to death by chewing veins and arteries in his limbs, said Broadmoor consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Edward Petch.
Gonzalez grew up in Woking, Surrey, before becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol. He admitted all the attacks but claimed diminished responsibility, insisting that he was guided by “voices in my head” and recurring dreams of becoming a real-life Freddy Krueger, the fictional slasher killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
Months before he began the killings, Gonzalez wrote to doctors asking for help. Two days before, his mother Lesley Savage said she rang police asking for their intervention after he was seen running naked in the street. She said that she had written a letter to the authorities with the suggestion that her son had to kill someone to get help.
Marjorie Wallace, from the mental health charity SANE, said: “The death of Daniel Gonzalez in Broadmoor hospital is a sad outcome in a series of preventable tragedies.
“Daniel Gonzalez and his family were let down by multiple failures in the mental health services and those supervising his care in the community.”
At his trial, a jury heard that he went on the rampage after getting “bored” at home watching hours of films, playing violent PlayStation games and reading Stephen King books.
The court heard he binged on drink and drugs and had “a quite chilling lack of remorse”.
Gonzalez had previously slashed his wrists with a sharpened spoon in Belmarsh prison in south London. He was rescued and taken under armed guard to hospital.
Later, he commented: “I can’t do the time. I’ll always take the short way out.” |
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