Peter George Dinsdale (aka Bruce Lee)
Peter was born on 31st July 1960 to single mother Doreen Dinsdale. He was born with a partially paralysed and withered right hand and leg. His mother, who lived in Manchester, England, was a prostitute. His father is unknown.
Within weeks of his birth, Doreen was back on the game and he was shut away and ignored whilst she entertained her clients. A year later she gave birth to a daughter, Sharon. Both children ended up in local authority care.
Peter first went into an orphanage at age three or four when his mother deserted him. The authorities could see that he hadn’t been adequately nourished and was very unkempt, small for his age and exceptionally thin. His hair was raggedly cut and was a dirty blonde shade, his eyes were sad and his expression haunted. He had received so little attention that his diction and speech were poorly developed for his years. His IQ would variously test at between 68 and 75, in the educationally subnormal range.
The neglected boy stayed in the orphanage for a year or so men the authorities tried to reunite him with his mum. The reunion was a failure. She alternately ordered him about or told him to hide away as she didn’t want her clients to know that she had ‘a crippled kid.’ At nights she’d walk the streets and he’d do the same, perhaps hoping to find her. Ill clad and underfed, he mentally retreated into his own little world. The recognised signs of neglect include constant hunger, emaciation, a lack of social relationships and increasingly destructive tendencies. Peter had all of them.
Returned to the orphanage within weeks, Peter became increasingly withdrawn. A second attempt was made to unite him with his mother when he was six, but this too failed abysmally. Doreen’s increasing dependence on alcohol and her own unhappy childhood rendered her incapable of loving and nurturing her bewildered son. Social workers could see that the little boy was becoming increasingly anti-social and disturbed.
Peter’s mother presumably thought of herself as bad and projected that badness onto her offspring. Over time the constant cruelty and neglect began to change the child’s way of viewing himself and the world.
Dorothy Rowe (writing in her book The Successful Self) has explained how a child’s mindset is changed by abuse. At first the child recognises that the parent who hits or mocks him is bad. But that is too terrifying a notion to live with, for it means that he is totally at the mercy of a bad person. So he changes his viewpoint to believe that the parent is good and he is bad and deserves to be hurt. This gives him back the illusion of control. But if the violence recurs again and again, the juvenile redefines the hurt so that he still believes he is bad – but determines that when he grows up he will punish others who are equally bad.
The increasingly punitive-minded Peter attended a school for handicapped children but he felt different to his schoolmates. They went back to loving homes each night whereas he returned to the functional briskness of council care. Here he was sexually abused by persons unknown, probably older male inmates. He’d later say that they used him sexually from the time he was small. Sadly, the abuse of such handicapped children is commonplace. In a study of over 40,000 disabled American children, 31% of them had been maltreated, often in the first five years of life.
With so much abuse to contend with, Peter found it hard to concentrate in school and though he learned to read and write, his spelling was very poor and he used language badly. The lack of nourishment and lack of stimuli that he’d received as a baby and a toddler may well have affected his growing brain. That said, he liked human biology and maths classes and enjoyed his trips to school on the bus.
Peter had by now been diagnosed as epileptic, but his anti-epilepsy medication kept the convulsions at bay. Unfortunately his partial paralysis meant that he limped with his right leg and held his right hand high and crooked across his chest, which made him look intellectually challenged. As a result, the local boys called him Daft Peter and often laughed at him.
But though Peter would never become scholarly, he was blessed with a native cunning. He’d found that when he shared his secrets with others they told someone else – so he learned the art of silence. The outside world was so untrustworthy that he preferred to live inside his own head.
During these formative years, Peter saw a bonfire for the first time and found it excited him. By nine he had become obsessed with fire.
When Peter was nine he lit a fire in a shopping arcade, causing £17,000 worth of damage. No one suspected the small disabled boy. Peter watched till the flames got out of hand then hurried away. He continued to play with matches and seek out bonfires and had dreams about people burning in flames that he’d created, but it was another four years before he killed for the first time. His first murder victim – and several of his later murder victims – were physically handicapped. He’d fallen out with them at school, or simply felt jealous that they had pleasant homes to go to, so determined to exact a terrible revenge…
The local authorities were still trying to forge a relationship between Peter and his mother, so sometimes sent him home for trial weekends. When he was eleven his mother married. From then on these weekends included a stepfather called Lee who he described as ‘alright.’ Often when he went home for the weekend, his mother and stepfather would be partying and he’d be expected to entertain himself as best he could. Trying to join in, the eleven-year-old went around the house finishing off all the beer cans, something he’d first done as an undernourished toddler. As a result he soon built up a remarkable tolerance for alcohol and could drink without getting drunk. At night he couldn’t sleep and would wander about the house or the darkened streets. The location of these streets would vary because his mother moved from Manchester to Hull and had several addresses within each city – but the lack of care he received didn’t vary. Peter simply didn’t have a childhood.
In June 1973 the twelve-year-old was living with his mother in Hull and tensions were high. In the middle of the night, he left the house and went walking around the town. Soon he made his way to the home of a six-year-old epileptic handicapped boy who travelled on the school bus with him. Peter entered the house by an open window and set the property on fire.
Both parents and their children suffered from severe smoke inhalation and the parents sustained injuries as they helped their able-bodied children escape by jumping from an upstairs window. But, despite Herculean efforts, they were unable to reach their handicapped child and he died.
It took firefighters two hours to bring the blaze under control, after which they carried out the six-year-old victim in a body bag. Twelve-year-old Peter was now a murderer.
On the streets, with his paraffin and his matches, he was in charge – but at school and in his local authority home Peter was still an obvious target for older boys who wanted sexual satisfaction. One man went to jail for having sex with the adolescent boy. In time, Peter would become more predatory and would persuade younger boys to ‘muck about’ (as he put it) with him. Though aware that these were homosexual acts, he told anyone who asked that he wasn’t gay.
Four months after killing the six-year-old boy, Peter was ready to set another fire. The date was 12th October 1973. This time he chose the house of an elderly recluse who lived in squalor. He entered the home by a window in the early morning and saw the man sleeping in his chair. Peter lit a fire then raced out of the door. The seventy-two-year-old man, a semi-invalid, died from smoke inhalation. He had refused the help of social services and bravely maintained his independence, only to be killed by a deeply disturbed child.
Less than a fortnight later the teenage Peter crept into a pigeon loft, possibly planning to torture or steal the birds. The pigeon fancier found Peter lurking there and hit him. Peter ran off, shouting that he would kill the man.
A few days later he strangled most of the pigeons. Then he crept into the owner’s house and poured paraffin on the thirty-four-year-old as he slept. His victim, clothes on fire, raced into the street and collapsed. He mumbled something about ‘why would anyone do that?’ to a neighbour then lapsed into unconsciousness, spending the next seven days in hospital in a coma before he died. The blaze was assumed to have started when some clothes drying by the fireplace went up in flames. Yet again, no one suspected an arson attack.
Either Peter didn’t start a fire for the following fourteen months, or he did but didn’t give the police details. All that’s known is that on 23rd December 1974 he entered the house of an eighty-two-year-old female. He went into her bedroom and saw her lying in bed. He lit a fire in the corner of the room and the unfortunate woman burnt to death. It’s unlikely that he knew her. He simply hated what she stood for – someone with a home and a family. The unwanted boy loved fire and despised the people it destroyed.
Another eighteen months elapsed before he started another lethal fire. It was June 1976 when he went to a house which included a seven-year-old spastic girl who went to the same special school as he did. Peter entered by an unlocked back door and heard someone moving about upstairs – the girl’s grandmother who was putting the child’s one-year-old brother to bed. Peter quickly started a fire in a downstairs cupboard and left
The grandmother came downstairs and found the rooms filled with smoke. She managed to get the seven-year-old girl to safety and her five-year-old brother made his own way out of the burning building. But, despite heroic attempts to save him, the one-year-old boy perished in the flames. Peter had done his work well, using paraffin as an accelerant, and the house was burnt to a shell. The grandmother assumed the five-year-old had been playing with matches, though his parents later explained they didn’t keep matches in the house. This fire too was seen as an unfortunate accident rather than an arson-related death.
No one knew about Peter’s arson attacks but they could see that his behaviour was deteriorating rapidly. That year, 1976, the local authority sent him for psychiatric tests suspecting increasing mental illness. But the analysis showed that his disturbance was a result of his dreadful childhood and his physical handicap. In other words, he had behavioural problems rather than mental ones.
Peter had by now been physically and emotionally abused for sixteen years and was increasingly out of control. He’d been told what to do so often in his formative years that he couldn’t stand authority. He’d quarrel with anyone who tried to direct him in any way.
On 2nd January 1977 Peter entered a house by the back door. He knew the woman and her children who lived there, and he had fallen out with the children’s father. The man had struck him and now Peter was intent on revenge. He started a fire beside the couch, having seen a cot in the room. Peter fled as soon as the flames took hold, burning a six-month-old baby girl to death in the inferno. Unusually, he was seen with other onlookers watching this particular fire. He would later say that he was sorry about this death as he liked babies – but he clearly wasn’t sorry enough to stop his arson attacks.
Three days after killing the baby, Peter killed again. By sheer chance, his next eleven victims were at the other end of the age scale, ranging from seventy-two to ninety-five. They had survived the rigours of war and illness, only to die at a teenager’s whim.
Peter felt the familiar tingle in his hands that said it was time to commit arson. Putting his paraffin bottle and his matches under his coat, he hurried into the night. He stole a bicycle and cycled along till he saw a large building. Unknown to him, it was an old folks home.
He broke a window, climbed into the home, found some kindling and soon had the huge house ablaze. Once again he felt powerful. Eleven men died and several of the rescuers were burnt. Peter allegedly heard some of them shouting ‘God help me’ – but no one saved them from the flames.
By now he’d been sent to stay with one of the area’s best foster mothers. She found him to be a very quiet teenager who had no friends. She had no idea that he was walking the streets looking for buildings full of victims that he could burn. Peter was happier with her than he’d been for a long time – but it was too little, too late.
Though still physically weak, he fantasised about being important and strong. He started to watch Kung Fu films over and over. He was particularly impressed with Bruce Lee, who could defeat several opponents effortlessly. In real life, Peter was called a cripple by his mother and mocked by some of the local children for his epilepsy, but in his dreams he had a sweet revenge. He lay there night after night imagining whose house he would torch next, how strongly the fire would burn – and how shocked his victims would be when their happy family dwellings went up in flames.
He began to take long walks along the old railway lines, thinking about his crimes. He soon felt depressed again and started to read a Bible that he found at his foster mother’s house. It said that ‘man cannot serve two masters’ so he decided that his master would be fire.
Three months later, in April 1977, he set light to a family home, killing a girl of thirteen and a boy of seven. It’s believed that he killed such victims because they represented family happiness, something the rejected boy could never have. Ironically, the seven-year-old boy had reached a window and definite safety – but he went back into the smoke filled rooms to rescue the thirteen-year-old and both perished in the fire.
In January 1978 Peter was feeling low and bored so went out with his beloved paraffin can. He chose a house at random and poured accelerant into it then lit a piece of paper. The resultant inferno killed a young woman and her three children, who were aged five, four and sixteen months. Peter didn’t know who he’d killed untill afterwards when he saw it on the news. Hearing that he’d incinerated four people in this attack seemed to shake him, and he again started to read his Bible, a book he turned to intermittently.
This fire was typical of Peter’s arson attacks in that it occurred in winter. Most of his fires were set in October, December and January between 1973 and 1979. Only three occurred outside these months, taking place in April and June.
The timing of these attacks presumably ties in with the depression that preceded them. Even those of us who have homes and life plans my tend to feel depressed in December and January. For a youth with no home, no education and no friends, the winters must have been incredibly bleak. But the anticipation of setting a fire gave him renewed purpose – and it was followed by the excitement of hearing the fire engines racing to the scene. Afterwards, Peter would hear people talking about the fire and about the victims and would feel a secret satisfaction in knowing that he’d caused such a destructive blaze. Most of us take pleasure in creativity, but he’d turned this value system on its head and taken pleasure in destroying buildings and their contents. And though he seldom said so, he clearly took pleasure in destroying the people that were inside.
He later said that he ‘didn’t think’ about the potential victims of his fires – but after the first deaths were reported he must have known that his fires killed the occupants. If he’d really wanted to cause fire without death, he could have targeted abandoned buildings. Instead, he torched family dwellings and a residential home.
Aware that he was often at a loose end, the authorities put him on a Community Action course. This involved painting, gardening and looking after children. He was to repeat this course and seemed to enjoy parts of it, later telling the police that he liked babies and was sorry when they died in his fires.
Peter had at least two relationships with females during these teenage years and had both their names – Barbara and Yvonne – tattooed on himself. Name tattoos are often a sign of insecurity, for people in secure relationships don’t feel the need to make such obvious public statements about their love.
Peter continued to be obsessed by the Kung Fu film star Bruce Lee, and in the summer of 1979 he changed his name by deed poll to that of the actor. Or, to be more precise, he changed it to Bruce George Peter Lee, reversing his Christian and middle birth names to form two middle names. This involved consulting a solicitor so it was a remarkable action for a youth with such a low IQ. The police would later tell this author that Peter had no one to help him contact the solicitor, that he did it on his own. Bruce Lee was the name under which he would later be charged when he went to court so from now on he is referred to by that name.
By this time Bruce was too old for council and foster care and ended up drifting from one place to another. Sometimes he’d stay at his mother’s house, though he’d be there alone if she was out drinking. At other times he’d sleep rough on the streets and on other occasions he’d rent a room in a Salvation Army Hostel where he kept himself to himself.
To pay his way, Bruce found a labouring job at the local meat market where he was paid seven pounds a day for penning pigs. He also claimed unemployment benefit. For kicks, he hung around the public lavatories and had sex with other boys. Presumably he was now taking the predatory role for one of his sexual partners, fifteen-year-old Charlie Hastie, always asked him for money afterwards. Sometimes Charlie took a pound from Bruce forcefully and Bruce was enraged. Charlie had two younger brothers and all three of them were well known for their wildness in the neighbourhood. Eventually Bruce decided to kill them with his beloved fire.
In December 1979 he crept up to the doorway of their house in Hull and put paraffin-soaked paper and rags through the letterbox and lit it. The three brothers – aged 15, 12 and 8 – all died in the flames and their mother was badly burnt. (Their father escaped injury as he was in prison at the time of the arson attack and their three sisters escaped as they were staying with friends.) As usual, Bruce disappeared unseen into the night. He spent the next few days alternately sleeping rough and hanging around men’s toilets in the hope of some sexual activity. At other times he played the one-arm bandits in a gaming parlour in a bid to stay out of the cold.
Originally the police had thought that a poison pen writer was responsible for the Hastie fire, for a year earlier the Hasties had received an anonymous note written on a cornflake packet. It said that the Hasties were ‘a family of fucking rubbish’ and warned that if they didn’t move house ‘then we’ll bastard well bomb you.’ But further enquiries revealed that the letter writer was a pensioner who had been stoned and mocked by the Hastie children. She was a regular at her local Methodist church who had written the swear words because she thought it was the only language that they would understand – then had been terrified that she’d be sent to prison when she heard a year later that the house had indeed been set on fire.
Shortly afterwards the police were faced with an equally unlikely suspect. In January 1980, the innocuous looking Bruce Lee was questioned by the police about so-called indecent acts with other men. He admitted having sex with Charlie Hastie and also admitted that Charlie had taken money from him. He didn’t say that he’d been enraged by this – in fact the police were impressed at how calm the thin, pale young man actually was.
The enquiry dragged on, and in June of that year the police invited Bruce back in to talk about his relationship with Charlie Hastie. Detective Superintendent Ron Sagar began to interview the surprisingly likeable young man. Earlier that day Bruce had been drinking but now the police had given him cups of tea and fish & chips so he was sober and relaxed.
Acting on a hunch, Sagar said to Bruce that he believed he’d started the fire at the Hastie house. Bruce’s features became serious but his voice was expressionless as he said ‘I didn’t mean to kill them.’ He went on to give full details of the accelerant he’d used, how he’d applied it and even what he’d worn that night. He seemed very proud of his actions, saying that the authorities tended not to assume house fires were arson and that he’d covered his tracks well. After taking many more details, the police took him to the cells for the night.
The next day, Ron Sagar spoke to Bruce again and got him a solicitor. A few hours later he charged him with Charlie Hastie’s murder. Bruce looked the detective square in the face but didn’t say anything.
The following day Sagar and another detective visited him in prison and said they believed that he’d set previous fires. At first Bruce denied this but after a little more conversation he continued ‘Do you know somat? You are the only bloke I know who shows any interest in me. You said before that in my life I’ve never had a chance. You are right.’
Sagar agreed that Bruce had ‘been kicked from pillar to post’ and then asked him if he had a grudge against various people. The youth replied that he did and added ‘My mum never cared a shit about me. No one ever has.’ At other times he swore that he just liked setting fires and hadn’t wanted to murder anyone. He was clearly reinventing history, either to gain favour with the police or to feel better about himself.
The boy seemed grateful for the few kindnesses the police had shown him and admitted that he’d expected to be beaten up. He talked some more about his life then the detectives suggested he might have set further fires. At this stage, Bruce’s eyes became tearful and he admitted that he’d killed a baby in a fire in West Dock Avenue. He also talked about killing a handicapped boy he went to school with in another house fire, a boy he claimed to have liked.
Promising to come back and see him tomorrow, the police left. They checked and found that a fire had occurred in West Dock Avenue in which a six-month-old baby girl had died and that another fire had killed a handicapped boy. Moreover, a woman who had been burned in a separate fire told the police that she and Bruce Lee didn’t like each other and that he’d been seen in the area shortly before her home became an inferno. Everything that Bruce said was checking out.
Detective Superintendent Sagar and Sergeant Martin went back to Leeds Prison the following afternoon and Bruce said that his solicitor had told him not to speak to the police but that he would anyway because ‘it’s on my mind, not his.’ He then spoke of setting the fire that killed a fellow school pupil, of setting the fire which killed Charlie Hastie and his two brothers, of torching the old folks home at Hessle in which eleven men died. He then asked if he could have a Bible to read, and Ron Sagar duly got him one.
On 30th June the police asked Bruce if he was willing to show them the houses he’d set on fire. Sagar privately thought that Bruce might have made the whole thing up to get attention. Deep down he hoped that the undernourished and ill-educated youth wasn’t guilty of the crimes.
Bruce seemed to enjoy the ride in the car and pointed out the scenes of his arson attacks. He was able to give full details of the fires he’d started – what his mood had been like at the time, which windows he’d broken or door he’d entered by, what accelerant he’d used.
Though responsible for twenty-six deaths, he was still only twenty. But he had far more insight into his problems than most serial killers, admitting that he’d caused such mayhem because no one had ever shown him love and his mother had failed to provide him with even a basic home.
Some arsonists fall into distinct groups. That is, they set fires for a revenge motive or because of some pathological compulsion (a form of mental illness) or because they are fire fetishists so it excites them sexually. Bruce could claim all three motives. Fire had become all things to this alienated boy. It rid him of his enemies, it calmed the restlessness in his psyche and it gave him sexual pleasure. (Though it’s untrue that this was his sole form of sexual release.) A legal report produced in December 1980 on his offending would say that he was likely to ‘continue to be sexually aroused by thoughts or acts of fire setting particularly in relation to killing people by fire.’
Bruce had the typical background of a pyromaniac. That is, he was abused during his childhood and was poorly parented. He also showed the common pyromaniac traits of sexual sadism and paranoia. He told the police that when he had the urge to start a fire it was very hard to ignore it. He even admitted that he’d felt like setting fire to his cell whilst he was awaiting trial. He added that he’d like to burn his mother for what she’d done to him – that is, for failing to provide him with love or a decent home. His mother would later take part in a documentary admitting that she was ‘back on the game’ within weeks of his birth.
Detective Superintendent Ron Sagar continued to feel sorry for Bruce Lee as a result of his sad childhood. He visited him in prison to make sure that none of the other prisoners were beating him up. By now Bruce had been on remand in prison for several weeks without a single visitor.
Ron Sagar also spoke to the prison doctor who confirmed that Bruce was immature and indifferent. But he was also streetwise as a result of his very tough life. Other professionals who spent time with him confirmed that he was perceptive and alert.
Bruce Lee’s trial, on 28th January 1981, only lasted for a few hours. He was charged with twenty-six counts of manslaughter and ten counts of arson. The victims were aged from six months to ninety-five years old. It was noted that he had a grudge against four of the victims, though the grudges were trivial. (That is, they seemed trivial to someone who was thinking rationally – not to a rage-filled youth who’d been mocked and rejected all his life.)
Bruce’s defence was one of diminished responsibility though he pleaded guilty to each of the charges. He was sentenced to be detained indefinitely in Park Lane Special Hospital near Liverpool under the Mental Health Act.
Bruce had initially wanted to go to such a hospital – but in time he changed his mind and decided he’d rather be in prison or have his freedom. This decision may have been prompted by newspaper reports which cast doubt on his convictions, suggesting that a physically handicapped boy could not have climbed into houses to set these fires. But Bruce had shown Ron Sagar how he held the petrol can – and he clearly was not without dexterity as he could even ride a bicycle. He’d also held down a job at the local cattle market for a while.
Most of the fires had originally been viewed as accidents, caused by gas leaks, lit cigarettes and so on, and a newspaper suggested the fires were still nothing to do with Bruce Lee. But several of the victims had attended the same special school as Bruce and several others had had arguments with him. There were too many such factors for it all to be coincidence.
Whatever his prompting or motivation, Bruce withdrew his confession. He now said that he didn’t like fire or watching fires. (But he’d been seen in the crowd watching one fire and was shooed away from the door of another house shortly before a fire started inside.) He also admitted that he’d changed his mind many times about everything, but that he now wanted to go to prison rather than stay in the special hospital. Bruce’s legal counsel explained that it was difficult to take instruction from the youth as he kept changing his mind.
Meanwhile a newspaper made allegations that Detective Superintendent Ron Sagar had influenced Bruce to confess to the fires in order that the police could clear their books. But this made no sense as most of the fires that Bruce had confessed to weren’t being treated as arson. Instead, they had been viewed as acts of negligence or as accidents.
That said, there have been many miscarriages of justice where educationally-subnormal or otherwise vulnerable youths have been questioned at length without a responsible adult or a solicitor present. (Two such cases are outlined in a later chapter, Watch Me Bleed.) But Ron Sagar had given Bruce tea and food and had spaced out the interviews. And Bruce would later write to Ron, wishing him well.
After a judgement about the case, the Lord Justice said that the police had behaved admirably and that certain sectors of the media owed Ron Sagar an apology. A full account is given in Ron Sagar’s own impressively detailed book Hull, Hell And Fire: The Extraordinary Story Of Bruce Lee. The book shows the full complexity of the case and also delineates the courage that Ron Sagar showed in taking on a powerful media in a determined effort to clear his name.
In March 2002 this author travelled to Yorkshire to interview Ron Sagar. The former Detective Chief Superintendent is a man with a lifetime’s worth of crime-fighting experience having spent thirty years as an operational detective in Britain before becoming a Criminal Investigation Adviser in Southern Africa. Though he and his wife have since returned to Yorkshire, they still make regular trips to Africa in their efforts to help the country’s poor.
Ron Sagar is equally aware of the poverty of Bruce Lee’s life. He interviewed the youth on at least twenty-eight occasions, both in police custody and in prison. Ron provided many of the details in this profile, details which aren’t readily available as so little truth – and so much fiction – has been written about this case.
Asked about his first impressions of Bruce, former Detective Chief Superintendent Sagar said that he was ‘insignificant – you wouldn’t notice him walking into a room.’ He could see that the young man was ‘an obvious loner’ yet he wasn’t totally reclusive as he was clearly searching for a friend. Ron Sagar quickly became a friendly figure to Bruce because of his non-macho approach to interviews. He simply refuses to engage in verbal battles. ‘I never fall out with offenders or potential offenders,’ he explains. This likeable manner would later work in his favour when he was libelled in a newspaper – many prisoners phoned up to say that he’d always treated them well and that they’d be happy to give him a reference.
Ron didn’t think that Bruce looked at all dangerous. His only previous conviction was for carrying an offensive weapon, but this could have been solely for self-protection as he was sometimes living rough on the streets. ‘It may even have been an appeal for attention,’ Ron says.
When Bruce first started to confess to fire after fire, Sagar wondered if the boy was simply fantasising. At one stage he even thought he’d caught the youth out in a lie. Bruce had said he’d poured a circle of paraffin through a letterbox – but later he’d mentioned that there was a net curtain over the inside of the door. Ron figured that the curtain would have made it impossible to pour the paraffin as neatly as Bruce described – but when policemen checked on the door they found that the curtain only covered the upper glass panel. Bruce was right once more.
Nevertheless, the police hoped that Bruce would plead not guilty to the crimes so that the entire story would have to be laid out in court. Instead, Bruce pleaded guilty to each charge of manslaughter. He was so calm and so clearly spoken when answering the charges that he appeared to have a very high IQ. He always seemed to be careful about his answers in a legal situation and remained alert
During my interview, Ron Sagar was able to squash many of the myths involved in the case. For starters, Bruce didn’t say that he was only happy when he could hear people roasting. (Though he did admit to getting a kick from some of the fires.) Instead, he seemed sad about some of the deaths, including the second major fire he’d started. He told a doctor that it ‘killed me, mate. I didn’t mean to do it’ then added ‘I don’t like speaking about that one.’
Another myth is that he could only orgasm if he started a fire. He did obtain sexual pleasure from some of the arson attacks and this was noted in a legal document. But it wasn’t his sole source of satisfaction – he had relationships with various men in public toilets. It’s clear that he wasn’t acting as a rent boy as at least one of the boys (Charles Hastie) had demanded money from him.
Bruce also told a female senior medical officer that he had had relationships with females but that he had no children because he used contraception. He said that he’d never cohabitated with a female because he liked ‘keeping by myself.’ But he’d had relationships with a few females and had two girlfriend’s names tattooed on him. He at first denied to her that he’d had any homosexual experiences, but later admitted it, explaining that it had started when he was in a children’s home.
A third myth about the case is that the police were running an investigation for a serial arsonist called The Holocaust Man. There was no such investigation because the police weren’t looking for a serial arsonist. Most of the fires had been wrongly attributed to electric faults, dropped cigarettes and so on.
Former Detective Chief Superintendent Sagar was also able to refute a fourth story that went the rounds, namely that he found a singed piece of paper at the Hastie fire which contained the address of the Salvation Army Hostel where Bruce had been living, went there and found a can of petrol under his bed. These stories may have been invented by writers looking for a sensational angle or by amateur crime writers trying to fill in the gaps of Bruce Lee’s life and arrest.
Bruce himself lied to his prison doctor and his exaggerations may have led to some of the myths. For example, he told his doctor that he was spending £20 a day on alcohol. In the seventies, this was a formidable amount of cash to spend on drink – and Ron Sagar says it’s unlikely to be accurate. Bruce was more moderate when discussing his smoking, saying that he bought forty cigarettes a week.
Bruce also told the doctor that he’d been paid to start some of the fires and was given between £300 and £500 for such arson attacks but he refused to elaborate on this. These allegations might have been true or could have been invented to boost his ego, but they weren’t brought about by organic brain dysfunction because an EEG showed that Bruce’s brain wave was only mildly abnormal. Instead, he was diagnosed as having a psychopathic personality disorder and written up as ‘a highly dangerous repetitive arsonist who derives pleasure from this behaviour.’
Asked by this author why there was occasionally a year between Bruce lighting a serious fire, Ron Sagar explained that it’s possible he started smaller fires which didn’t make the newspapers and which he subsequently forgot about. Or he might have set fires which failed to ignite.
Ron has maintained compassion for Bruce, though he’s aware that this isn’t a view shared by the general public. (This author has encountered the same attitude when delineating the horror of most killer’s childhoods. For some reason, the public doesn’t believe that it’s possible to have sympathy for the childhood yet hate the murderous actions that can spring from such a violent start.) Ron says that Bruce ‘still crosses my mind – with a touch of sympathy for him as a mere human being.’ At the time of his arrest, the youth clearly wanted to bond with someone for he befriended Ron Sagar and subsequently related to a female doctor who interviewed him as a motherly figure. When she asked how he got on with his birth mother he admitted he ‘never did – she did stick up for me sometimes. She was adapted (sic) to booze, an alcoholic.’ Bruce also bonded with his solicitor.
Asked if he’d met many offenders as disadvantaged as Bruce, Ron Sagar says ‘many people have had rough upbringings – but Bruce was disadvantaged in all three ways, mentally, physically and socially.’ This made him a particularly unfortunate case.
So does Bruce fit the profile of a typical arsonist? ‘Yes, he’s tending towards the classic profile. The arsonist is often a loner. Bruce fits the upbringing and personality type, the feeling of resentment towards his fellow human beings.’ So is this type of arson attack unique to developed countries like Britain and the USA? Ron Sagar says not, that ‘it could happen anywhere.’
Sadly, he knows of many other criminals who started offending as young as Bruce. ‘Eight or nine-year-olds were arrested with monotonous regularity in the early sixties and presumably in earlier decades, and paraded before the juvenile court.’ He goes on to paint a picture of unthinking adults and traumatised children that many of us are very familiar with.
‘These children would be described as difficult – but no one seemed interested in looking into their background to find out why they were difficult. They were thrown into approved schools and didn’t see a relative for many months. Nobody thought that the poor little devils would be homesick.’ These kids would try to toughen up in order to survive – and as a result they’d probably end up in borstal. An adult prison would be next.
Bruce’s life was as hopeless as many of these kids. Indeed, he’d had so little encouragement from society that he simply couldn’t envisage his future. His prison doctor would write ‘Asked about future plans, he has none.’
That said, Ron was pleased at how much better nourished and cared for Bruce looked when he visited him in prison after his arrest. For the first time he had the security of a roof over his head and three meals a day. He was later moved to the secure hospital in Liverpool where he still resides. ‘He’s better off since his arrival there than at any time in his life,’ Ron says.
Bruce also has friends of sorts for the first time. Ron says that the former arsonist ‘enjoys his reputation and likes rubbing shoulders with the more notorious inmates.’ Some of these inmates leave, of course, so he has to make other friends. He sometimes talks about his ‘defence team’, a term he seems to have picked up from another offender or from television. In truth, there isn’t one.
He still resents being told what to do (who doesn’t?) and acted strangely when first imprisoned, having shouting spells for no apparent reason. But he seems calmer now and has access to a snooker table and a TV.
Ron has understandably chosen not to keep in touch with Bruce, preferring to maintain a professional distance. But he was pleased to get a letter from him in 1990 via his solicitor. Bruce had heard that Ron was going to Africa to work and told him to take care.
It’s interesting that a boy as brutalised as Bruce Lee would worry about a detective, albeit a caring and insightful one. But it seems that Bruce could be two very different personalities at different times, an uncaring arsonist who wanted to seek revenge on society and a desperately uncared for child who simply wanted love.
Bruce once told Ron Sagar of his earliest memory, possibly stemming from an age before he could walk. ‘I was crawling about floor (sic) looking for anything left in beer bottles and cans at me home once. My mum always had men in for a drink and that and I used to get the slops they left. I was only little then.’
It’s unlikely that any psychiatrist will risk setting such a confirmed arsonist free in the future, especially now that Bruce has spent almost his entire forty-two years in some form of institution – that is, in orphanages and then a secure hospital. It’s a sad indictment of society, but this special hospital has provided Bruce with the closest he’s ever had to a secure home.