A New Year’s Resolution to Kill

On the first day of 1993, while London toasted hope and fresh starts, a man in a modest flat made a different kind of vow. He studied maps. He packed rope and handcuffs into a neat kit. He promised himself five bodies—the threshold, he’d read, to be called a serial killer. That man was Colin Ireland. He chose his hunting ground with cold precision, plotted his exit routes, and walked into the city’s gay nightlife as if he belonged. Within months, men were dead. Not by accident. Not by impulse. By design.

This is the story of calculated brutality hidden in plain sight—of a killer who turned a social scene into a hunting ground, and a police force that raced against a careful mind determined to leave no trace. The revelations were chilling. The psychology, worse.

What follows is the investigation thread by thread. How he planned. Who he chose. How he taunted. And where he made the fatal mistakes that would eventually bring him down.

The Past That Didn’t Let Go
To understand the man behind the vow, you start in Dartford, Kent, mid-1950s. A boy raised by a single mother, cycling through temporary homes, temporary men, temporary schools. He learned detachment early. He learned to walk away. As a teen, he fell into petty crime—robbery, burglary, blackmail—and into custodial institutions that hardened a talent for control. The world wasn’t gentle. He refused to be, either.

He drifted—odd jobs, failed marriages, affairs, thefts from those who trusted him—and moved to Southend-on-Sea. In that flat, alone, he read. He devoured manuals on profiling, forensic failures, FBI case studies. He studied the geography of crime like a map to immortality. Somewhere in that quiet came the decision that would change lives forever: he would become a serial killer. Deliberately. Methodically. With rules.

He would avoid his home radius to confound geographic profiling. He would commit at least five murders to “qualify.” He would kill on a schedule. And he would do it clean.

The System Behind the Violence
Ireland was not chaotic. He was orderly. He built a kit: rope, handcuffs, and spare clothing. He spent evenings in London’s West End, inside the Colherne (often stylized “Kern”) Pub, a gay bar with coded subcultures where colored handkerchiefs signaled preferences, roles, and risk. He learned the signals. He posed as a dominant partner. He targeted men who preferred passivity and sexual restraint—those more likely to submit, less likely to resist.

He didn’t rush. He watched. He chose. He moved only when he sensed confidence.

He was not seeking sex. He was seeking control. That’s where the terror begins.

The Kill Count: A Timeline of Calculated Harm
Victim 1 — Peter Walker (45), choreographer.
Ireland met him at the pub, went to his flat, restrained him, suffocated him with a plastic bag. Then he staged the scene—placing teddy bears in sexual positions on Walker’s body, burning pubic hair to ensure the smell stayed. When he found HIV medications, he jammed condoms into Walker’s mouth and nostril in a grotesque mockery. He stayed for hours. He walked out in daylight.

Victim 2 — Christopher Dunn (37), librarian.
Same pattern: pub, flat, restraints. Dunn was beaten, tortured, suffocated with cloth packed into his mouth. Ireland withdrew cash using Dunn’s PIN. Police viewed it as an SNM accident gone wrong. He’d just executed two murders—the first critical test. He’d passed.

Victim 3 — Perry Bradley III (35), businessman, son of a prominent Texas fundraiser.
Bradley resisted restraint. Ireland lied—said he couldn’t perform sexually without tying him. Then, calmly, he told Bradley he was there to steal and needed the PIN. After Bradley fell asleep, Ireland strangled him. A doll placed on the dead man’s body—another signature.

Victim 4 — Andrew Collier (33), housing warden.
Ireland strangled Collier, then killed his cat. He staged a vile scene with a condom and the cat’s mouth, its tail in Collier’s mouth—a grotesque tableau he later admitted was meant to appall. The cat meant nothing except as a prop for humiliation.

Victim 5 — Emanuel Spiteri (41), chef.
Restraint. Strangulation. Then he stayed—ate, watched TV, cleaned what he could. He set a fire for misdirection; it caused only minor damage. But this time, he made a mistake. He left behind a fingerprint.

He had reached his self-imposed serial threshold. The vow fulfilled. The escalation complete.

The Pattern That Stalked a Community
Men were being murdered in their homes—restrained, suffocated, degraded. The weapons were simple. The staging was theatrical. The scenes were scrubbed. In the early cases, police assumed consensual SNM gone wrong. That assumption gave Ireland cover. He understood perception. He exploited bias.

His hunting ground—one bar, one scene—bore the burden. The city celebrated nightlife, and inside it, someone chose vulnerability as a tactic.

And while London danced, he planned the next exit.

The Phone Calls That Broke the Silence
Serial killers sometimes avoid the spotlight. Ireland wanted it. After the early murders, he started calling—The Sun, the Samaritans, local police. He boasted, scolded, taunted. Why had they stopped investigating? Didn’t the death of a gay man matter?

He said he’d read FBI materials. He quoted the “body count” threshold. He warned—if they didn’t stop him, he would kill weekly. He wasn’t just committing crimes. He was scripting his legacy.

Those calls changed the tone of the investigation. The police reexamined their assumptions. A killer was watching them watch him. The race began in earnest.

The Mistakes That Ended a Method
At Andrew Collier’s flat, a noise outside pulled them to a window. Ireland gripped a metal bar. He forgot to wipe it. Investigators lifted a fingerprint—his first tangible tie to a scene.

Around Emanuel Spiteri’s killing, CCTV cameras captured a man on Charing Cross station platforms—one of the first major surveillance aids to a homicide case in London’s nightlife. Witnesses recalled Spiteri leaving the pub with someone. The route home was traced. The camera caught the silhouette that memory filled in.

He saw himself becoming visible. He did what men like him do when control slips—he tried to control the narrative.

He went to a solicitor. He said he’d been at the flat for sex, saw another man, didn’t want a threesome, left. He told police he’d studied their cases and their tactics. He had read about profiling, watched crime dramas, learned from them. The bravado didn’t move the evidence.

The fingerprint connected. The camera confirmed. Witnesses remembered. The phone calls matched. The pattern closed around one man.

Colin Ireland was arrested.

The Confession That Wasn’t Repentance
Faced with physical evidence and a timeline he couldn’t escape, Ireland confessed. Not a rant. Not rage. Calm, clinical recountings. He described tying, gagging, strangling. He described staying through the night, watching bodies cool and blotch. He detailed staging choices—the bears, the cat, the condoms—like a designer describing a set. No sadness. No remorse. No compassion.

Investigators later said it felt like listening to someone narrate someone else’s actions. He was detached enough to be disturbing. The courtroom didn’t gasp. It bristled.

He pleaded guilty. The judge called him “exceptionally frightening and dangerous,” described the spree as “carnage,” and said plainly: “You should never be released.”

Ireland received five life sentences. He was later linked to additional suspicious deaths by rumor, but he never claimed them. He did claim something stranger: once, that he had almost targeted a celebrity at a London bar—Tom Cruise—before Cruise left unexpectedly. The story was never proven. It shook people anyway.

He died in 2012, in prison, of pulmonary fibrosis and complications from a fractured hip.

What He Studied, Who He Exploited
Ireland’s education wasn’t classroom. It was consumption. He studied serial killers, profiling theories, geographic models. He learned the radius rule—most killers operate near home—and defied it by commuting to London. He learned thresholds—at least five bodies to be “serial.” He learned to scrub surfaces and time exits. He learned how to talk to authorities just enough to be memorable, never enough to be caught.

He exploited a community, and he exploited perceptions about it. Early police conclusions framed deaths as sexual accidents. He knew that assumption would be made. It gave him time.

Ireland also read signals in nightlife—a handkerchief code, roles signaled in subtle ways. He posed as a dominant. He targeted men predisposed to surrender control. He wasn’t drawn to them sexually. He was drawn to what they allowed him to do without a fight.

That is the psychology of premeditated violence: to recognize vulnerability as a tool.

The Disease of No Remorse
Criminologists sometimes avoid simple labels. Not here. Ireland’s lack of empathy, his relentless control, his cold narration—these weren’t just traits. They were structure. They allowed him to plan, to execute, to scrub, to return and stage. He was not angry at victims. He wasn’t fantasizing about romance. He was fulfilling an identity he had chosen for himself. Not the one he was given. And that choice required detachment to survive emotionally.

He described the “buzz” of his first kill like a sexual first time. He said he felt triggered when approached and believed that the approach absolved him—if he hadn’t been approached, “nothing would have happened.” Responsibility was something he refused to hold. He hung it on chance.

That is not insanity. That is cold. That is choice.

The Investigation That Learned Fast
Police misread the first scenes. They corrected fast. When Ireland called, they listened. When fingerprints appeared, they moved. When CCTV offered angles, they built routes. When witnesses remembered a man leaving a bar, they built timelines and matched the cameras. The shift from assumption to pattern recognition saved lives. It pushed the case into speed, and speed mattered.

The case is now studied—for investigative pivots, for the role of community witnesses, for the power of early CCTV, for the danger of initial bias. It also seeded change in how law enforcement frames crimes against marginalized communities: it cannot assume the narrative that hides a killer’s signature.

The Legacy: Questions You Don’t Want Answers To
Did he choose gay men out of hatred? Or cold convenience? Evidence suggests strategy—not ideology. That doesn’t make it less monstrous. He picked targets where compliance was more likely. He counted on stigma to slow investigators. He planned for misinterpretation. He did not rage. He calculated.

Did he hide other crimes? Serial killers often withhold. Rumors tethered him to earlier deaths, including a man found in Soho in January 1993. He never admitted them. That silence gives him control in the only currency left to him—ambiguity.

Did his crimes have a mercenary layer? Yes. He stole, used PINs, withdrew cash. He didn’t kill for money—but if it was available, he took it. Control first. Everything else second.

Was he violent for humiliation? Often. Staging—burned hair, condoms, dolls, the cat—was content for degradation. He wanted the scene to speak after he left.

Was he ever remorseful? By all accounts, no. He did not moralize. He mechanized.

Slow–Tight–Explosive: The Narrative That Holds
This case does not move fast because crime scenes were clean. It moves slowly because the killer learned from others’ mistakes. It tightens when he calls. It explodes when print and camera meet across victims whose lives deserved more than a bitter, clinical close.

The pressure builds because it must. The reveal isn’t a twist. It’s a suffocating truth: some killers are not driven by compulsion. They’re driven by decision.

That is why this story holds. That is why police recall this case in quiet rooms. And that is why communities remember the victims, not just the killer—because those names must outlast the man who wanted headlines and got handcuffs.

The Men Who Deserved More
– Peter Walker, 45 — choreographer, life-maker, first to be staged like a prop.
– Christopher Dunn, 37 — librarian, trusted his guest, didn’t deserve the cruelty he received.
– Perry Bradley III, 35 — businessman and son, strangled in his sleep after giving his PIN in fear.
– Andrew Collier, 33 — housing warden, died in a scene designed to disgrace.
– Emanuel Spiteri, 41 — chef, killed while hospitality still filled the kitchen.

They weren’t symbols. They were lives. They deserve remembrance beyond the killer’s carefully chosen ending.

The Takeaways That Might Save Someone
– Never assume. Investigations must interrogate early narratives, especially in subcultures where stigma distorts police instincts.
– Community matters. Witnesses who speak, remember, and help reconstruct routes can cut through a killer’s quiet.
– Technology changes everything. Early CCTV in Charing Cross helped stitch a route. Today’s cameras do more. Use them.
– Staging is a language. When scenes try to humiliate, you’re looking at a killer who wants to keep control even after leaving the room.
– Detachment is a red flag. Calm, clinical confessions without empathy reveal intent—and often earlier planning not yet connected.

The Final Image You Can’t Unsee
A fingerprint on a metal bar. A camera angle in a London station. A phone call that demanded attention. A rope laid out, a pair of handcuffs, a plastic bag. A cat that never should have been part of anything. A courtroom where a man explained cruelty like a math problem and found it elegant.

He wanted a reputation. What he left was a case study on how to stop a calculated predator before he reaches body number six.

He made a resolution to be known. He is. For the worst kind of reason.

And for the best: he did not get away with it.