Police find 5 skulls

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 8

Police find 5 skulls

NZPA London Police searching for massmurder victims in the back yard of a “House of Horror” yesterday reported their most significant find yet — pieces of at least five skulls. The remains were unearthed at the house in north London's Cricklewood district, said a spokesman at Scotland Yard. Authorities have said that as many as 17 people, most of them young drifters, may have been killed by the murderer over an eight-year period. The police spokesman said that the skulls, some of them crushed together, were found

buried along with bones and other remains in land behind the house. “It is probably the most important discovery we have had here," said / Detective Superintendent Norman Briers. The police have been searching the house and grounds — dubbed a “House of Horror” by Fleet Street newspapers — since discovering hacked-up human remains from three victims at another north London address, eight days ago. The police had decided not to give information about any further finds of human remains at the “House of Horror,” after a direction

from the Director of Public Prosecution. A Yard spokesman said: “We have been contacted by the D.P.P.’s office and told that it could be a possible contravention of the contempt laws if we discussed the matter further." But later a spokesman for the D.P.P.’s office said: “There appears to be a slight misunderstanding, the Yard appear to have been slightly misinformed. “We have suggested that this matter be handled only through the press bureau rather than through the officers. But obviously what they give out is their own concern."