While other people were enjoying the Christmas cheer, evil Stephen Farrow was intent on murder….
Peace on earth and goodwill to all men is the usual Christmas message, as people forget their differences to join in with the festive cheer. But when Margaret and Alan Pinder returned to their pretty cottage, after their Christmas break, the message that greeted them was far more sinister.
Pinned to the kitchen table by two large knives was a piece of paper with a terrifying message scrawled in red ink: 'Be thankful you did not come back or we would have killed you, Christian scum. I f***ing hate God.'
Vine Cottage, the Pinders’ idyllic home in the pretty Wiltshire village of Thornbury, had been thoroughly trashed by an intruder. Their coats were strewn on the floor, half-eaten food had been left on the table and all the electricity switches had been turned off. The burglar had forced a back window and taken cash, two wallets, an old mobile phone, a radio and jewellery.
But upsetting as the theft and the mess were, it was the chilling message that sent terror into their very bones.
But while they lived near St Mary's Church and vicarage, the Pinders were not particularly religious, and the message did not make any sense to them. However, it was not long before they realised how lucky they were....
For 48-year-old Stephen Farrow - author of the hate letter - the burglary of Vine Cottage signalled the start of a two-month reign of terror, from which the couple had had a narrow escape.
A cannabis-addled drifter, with a history of violence, Stephen Farrow had already appeared in court six times. And in 1995 he'd been jailed for eight years for an aggravated burglary at the home of 77-year-old Stella Crow in Stourbridge, West Midlands. Admitting at the time to having a 'dark’ side: he'd 'wanted treatment' for a psychopathic disorder, confessing his sadistic rape and murder fantasies to a psychiatrist.
But, despite these revelations, he was freed from prison in 2000.
Even before coming under the radar of the law, Farrow's psychopathic tendencies had been clearly evident. In his childhood, he'd shot a swan with an air gun and killed other people's pets, displaying his first signs of religious hatred at 10, when he set fire to a church altar.
By January 2012, when he forced his way into the Pinders' cottage, he obsessively believed that it would be the year of the second coming of Christ. And on New Year's Eve he'd sent a text to a female friend saying the 'church will be the first to suffer'.
Instead, the first to suffer was retired teacher Betty Yates, a 77-year-old widow and mother-of-two from Bewdley, Worcestershire. Since the death of her husband seven years earlier, she'd lived alone in white-painted Riverscroft cottage. The cottage was situated in an isolated spot on the banks of the river Severn, where Stephen Farrow often fished.
Betty was a lively, sociable woman who went to a book group, art club and a walking group. She also volunteered at the annual Bewdley Festival, distributing leaflets. She had spent that Christmas with her daughter Hazel Costello and family.
On Wednesday January 4, when Betty did not turn up for an arranged walk and wasn't answering the door, a concerned friend raised the alarm.
Arriving at her cottage, a mile from the main road, police found a harrowing scene.
Betty's lifeless body lay in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs, her head resting on a cushion and a knife embedded in her neck.
Sadistic Stephen Farrow had committed his first murder. The 6ft 4in brute had beaten Betty with her own walking stick, hitting her so hard that splinters were left in her head. He'd then stabbed her four times in the head and plunged the knife three inches into her neck.
Then, before leaving his victim’s body bleeding on the floor, the callous killer tidied himself up and closed Betty's blinds.
Now the monster inside him was unleashed; nothing could tame this evil fiend…
Next on his hit list were the 'Christian scum' he so despised. Planning to start at the very top, he travelled to Canterbury, where he intended to kill the then Archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams. But his plans were foiled when he discovered the security around Dr Williams was too tight.
Undaunted, Farrow moved back to more familiar turf - targeting Reverend John Suddards, the vicar at St Mary's in Thornbury where weeks earlier, Farrow had burgled the Pinders.
By now it was February and Crimestoppers were offering a £10,000 reward for information about Betty Yates's murder. The case had appeared on Crimewatch, but still Farrow went about his evil work, unchallenged.
On the night of Sunday, February 13, he broke into Thornbury's large, stone vicarage, surprising 59-year-old Rev Suddards, a well-respected and kind-hearted man who was devoted to the church. In a sadistic attack, Farrow kicked him to the ground and stabbed him seven times in the shoulder, chest and abdomen, telling the bleeding clergyman to 'f***ing hurry up and die'.
Taking pride in his 'work', demonic Farrow then set about creating an elaborate 'calling card,' for people to remember him by. First, he turned a painting of Christ to face a mirror, so the image was reflected across the vicar's body, which lay in the hallway. Then he placed a bible on his chest, opening it at the ‘Letter of Jude’.
Next, in a warped attempt to tarnish Rev Suddards' memory, he surrounded him with gay porn DVDs, a condom wrapper, exploded party poppers and underwear - positioning a calendar of a male model on the lower half of his body.
Even that wasn't enough for this bloodthirsty monster….Using the vicar's mobile phone, he sent a text reading 'RIP Mr Suddards. Pervert' to a number on the dead man's contacts list.
Farrow's initial plans had been even more horrific. He had brought nails and a hammer, intending to crucify Rev Suddards, but he'd abandoned the idea, and instead stayed in the vicarage overnight, watching an Indiana Jones DVD and sipping beer.
At 10am the following morning builders working on the vicarage made the grim discovery.
The vile murder sent shockwaves through the close-knit Gloucestershire community, and hundreds of people held a vigil and attended a church service for the Reverend.
Meanwhile, Farrow's luck was running out….Thanks to DNA taken from the crime scenes, police had linked the murders and knew the perpetrator was Farrow. Releasing a photo of the evil brute, they warned the public that he was dangerous and 'under no circumstances should he be approached'.
Six days after the vicarage murder, following a tip-off from a woman he'd been staying with, Farrow was arrested at a house in Folkestone, Kent - miles away from the crime scenes. There, police discovered trousers, a jacket and a knife stained with the vicar's blood, as well as a radio stolen from the Pinders. Farrow’s boot prints had been found at both murder scenes and his DNA was on one of the knives he'd pinned on the Pinders' table.
Farrow, who claimed to have been abused by a priest when he was a child, admitted the manslaughter of Rev Suddards on the grounds of diminished responsibility, but denied his murder. He also denied stabbing Betty Yates, saying he had simply visited her at her home a few days before her death.
When Dr Tim Rogers, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, assessed Farrow, he told him that he'd met Rev Suddards by chance and that killing him was realising his fantasy of killing a church member. According to Dr Rogers, on the scale used to assess a psychopath, Farrow scored 31 out of 40.
After a four-week trial at Bristol Crown Court, the jury decided that Farrow still knew right from wrong and convicted him of double murder.
In November, sentencing him to spend the rest of his life in jail for the 'dreadful, horrific killings', the judge, Mr Justice Field, told him: 'To put a knife into the body of Betty Yates as she lay helpless on the floor, having arranged her head on the pillow, was an act of absolute sadism.
'I am satisfied that in your case a whole life sentence is an appropriate sentence in each of these dreadful, horrific killings.'
The following Christmas, while Farrow tucked into a turkey dinner in prison, and wrote rambling poems and letters to relatives from his cell, life for those close to his victims had changed forever. At St Mary's church in Thornbury - a community still shaken by the appalling crime - a different vicar stood in the pulpit to give the Christmas sermon.
And Betty's daughter, Hazel, and son, David, were denied the company of the fun-loving mother they adored. But they refuse to let Farrow tarnish their memories of Betty, saying, 'For us it is important that our mum does not become defined by the brutality of her death, but is celebrated for the 77 years of her life.'
Who knows what God-hating Stephen Farrow thinks of the anniversary of Christ's birth? One thing is certain, though, he will be celebrating every Christmas until the day he dies like that one - behind bars.
END