MacDonald's modus operandi was to select his victims at random (mostly derelicts), lure them into dark places, violently stabbing them dozens of times about the head and neck with a long bladed knife, before severing the victims' testicles and penis.

History

Years before his killing rampage, MacDonald was enlisted in the army and transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers. One night MacDonald was raped in an air-raid shelter by one of his corporals. At first he felt bad about what had happened. But soon after he realized that he actually enjoyed the experience. It was then he realized that homosexuality was an option. He eventually became an active homosexual, soliciting men in public toilets and pubs.

MacDonald emigrated from England to Canada in 1949 and then to Australia in 1955. Shortly after his arrival he was arrested and charged for touching a detective's penis in a public toilet. For this he was placed on a two year good behavior bond. In 1961 MacDonald moved to Sydney. He found accommodation in East Sydney and it was here that he became well known around the parks and public toilets that were meeting places for homosexuals.

Crimes

Amos Hurst (Victim 1)

The murders began in Brisbane in 1961. MacDonald befriended a fifty-five-year-old man named Amos Hurst outside the Roma Street Transit Center. After a long drinking session at one of the local pubs, they went back to Hurst's apartment where they consumed more alcohol. When Hurst became intoxicated William began to strangle him. Hurst was so intoxicated that he did not realize what was happening and eventually began to hemorrhage. Blood poured from his mouth and onto MacDonald's hands. MacDonald then punched Hurst in the face killing him.

Five days later he found Hurst's name in the obituary column. It said Amos Hurst had died accidentally. MacDonald had been in terror of the police arresting him for murder, even though he was certain that no one had seen him leave Hurst's room.

Alfred Reginald Greenfield was sitting on a park bench in Green Park, just across the road from St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst. MacDonald offered Greenfield a drink and lured him to the nearby Domain Baths on the pretext of more alcohol. Once at the Domain the need to kill had become overwhelming. MacDonald waited until Greenfield had fallen asleep. Once asleep he removed his knife from its sheath and stabbed Greenfield approximately thirty times. The ferocity of the first blow severed the arteries in Greenfield's neck. MacDonald then pulled down the victim's pants and underwear, he then lifted the victims testicles and his penis severing them from the scrotum before throwing them (his genitals) into Sydney Harbour.

William Cobbin (Victim 3)

Thereafter, a third victim, William Cobbin, was claimed. Similar to the second victim, Cobbin was stabbed repeatedly and mutilated in a like fashion as Greenfield. His body was found in a public toilet at Moore Park.

On March 31, 1962, in suburban Darlinghurst, Frank McLean was found mortally wounded by an unfinished assault from MacDonald by a man walking with his wife and child. The man found McLean still breathing but bleeding heavily and went to get police.

His residence in Burwood, New South Wales

After getting the sack from his job at the local post office, MacDonald went into business for himself. He purchased a mixed business store in Burwood. Here, MacDonald made sandwiches and sold various small goods. MacDonald lived in a residence above the store. When the urge to kill came about him, he could bring his victims home and not risk being seen by members of the public.

Patrick James Hackett (Victim 5)

On Saturday night, 6 June 1962, MacDonald went to a wine saloon in Pitt Street Sydney. Whilst at the bar he met forty-two-year-old James Hackett, a thief and derelict who had just recently been released from prison. They went back to MacDonald's new residence where they continued to drink alcohol. After a short period, Hackett fell asleep on the floor. MacDonald then got out a boning knife that he used in his delicatessen. He then stabbed Hackett in the neck, the blow went straight through. After the first blow Hackett woke up and tried to shield the next blow. This pushed the knife back into MacDonald's other hand, cutting it severely. MacDonald then unleashed a renewed homicidal rage on Hackett. He eventually brought the knife down into Hackett's heart, killing him instantly. MacDonald continued to stab his victim until he had to stop for breath. Hackett's blood was splattered all over the walls whilst MacDonald sat in a pool of blood next to his victim's body.

MacDonald then began to remove his victim's genitals. The knife was now blunt due to the blade passing through Hackett's bones so many times. MacDonald hacked around the penis and testicles a few times and then gave up. MacDonald was too tired to go downstairs to get another knife, so he sat head to toe covered in blood and fell asleep where he sat.

When MacDonald woke the following morning he found himself lying next to the victim's body covered in sticky, drying blood. The pools of blood had soaked through the floorboards and almost onto the counter in his shop downstairs.

After cleaning himself of all the blood, he went to the hospital and had the wound in his hand stitched by a doctor. He told the doctor that he had cut himself in his shop. After cleaning up all the pools of blood, MacDonald dragged the dead Hackett underneath his shop. Later on, when MacDonald had time to think about what he had just done, he became paranoid. He thought the police would come looking for his victim. He thought that if the police did come to his store to question him, they would see the blood stained floorboards and walls which he had trouble cleaning. MacDonald became so paranoid that he fled to Brisbane.

Three weeks later, local residents complained about a putrefying smell that was coming from a shop owned by MacDonald, which he purchased under an assumed name (Alan Edward Brennan). The smell was so overwhelming that neighbors called the health department, who in turn called the police. When the police arrived they kicked the front door in. The smell inside the shop led the police to the rotting corpse. Further investigation uncovered a nude body, so badly decomposed that it could not be identified. The body was so putrid that a doctor had to carry out the autopsy in a shed, out the back of the hospital. The only thing that could be determined, was that the body belonged to someone in their forties, the same age as the missing Brennan. The body was eventually buried on hospital grounds. Police at this stage thought that the rotting corpse belonged to MacDonald. MacDonald was presumed dead.

The case of the walking corpse

Shortly after the rotting corpse was mistakenly identified as MacDonald (Alan Brennan), a notice was put forth in the obituary column. This was read by his old work mates at the local post office, who attended a small memorial service that was conducted by a local funeral director. Around this time MacDonald was living in Brisbane and then moved to New Zealand, as he thought that the police would still be looking for him. The urge to kill was getting stronger, day by day. He felt the need to kill again, but for some reason he had to return to Sydney to do it.

Shortly after returning to Sydney MacDonald bumped into one of his old work mates, John McCarthy, who had attended his funeral service. McCarthy was in shock to see that his old work mate was still alive, especially after attending his funeral. MacDonald at this stage was unaware of the mistake the police had made in identifying the body. His old work mate explained what had happened and how they attended his funeral. The two men went and had a drink together. McCarthy asked him if it wasn't his body under the shop, then whose body was it? After this MacDonald became paranoid and ran from the hotel. Shortly after he fled to Melbourne.

McCarthy went straight to the police. At first they did not believe him. They accused him of having had too much to drink and he was told to go home and sleep it off. They even said that he was crazy. He even went back the next day and tried to explain what had happened but they still didn't believe him. This persuaded John to go to the Daily Mirror. He spoke to a reporter by the name of Joe Morris. McCarthy explained how he bumped into the "supposed to be dead" MacDonald, aka Alan Brennan. The reporter thought that the witness account was credible and decided to run the story under the headline 'Case of the walking corpse'. After the article was circulated, the police were forced to exhume the corpse. After running a check on the corpse's fingerprints, they identified the body as belonging to one James Hackett and not William MacDonald. Closer examination found that the body had several stab wounds and mutilation of the penis and testicles. Police now knew that they were on to MacDonald.

Under questioning MacDonald readily admitted to the killings, blaming them on an irresistible urge to kill. MacDonald claimed he was the victim of a teenage homosexual rape, and was inflicting his revenge on victims chosen at what appears to be random. Shortly after confessing to the crimes he was charged with four counts of murder.

The trial began in September 1963 and was one of the most sensational cases the nation had ever seen. The public hung on to every word that came from MacDonald's mouth. During the trial MacDonald spoke in great detail of the gruesome murders. He told the court of how blood had sprayed all over his raincoat as he castrated his victims, put their private parts into plastic bags and took them home. He even told the court what he did with the genitals once he got home. Some jurors fainted and had to be taken from the court. MacDonald pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity.

Before passing sentence, Mr Justice McLennan said that this was the most barbaric case of murder and total disregard for human life that had come before him in his many years on the bench. MacDonald showed no signs of remorse and made it quite clear that, if he were free, he would go on killing as often as the urges came about.

MacDonald was sentenced to prison for life with the strong recommendation that he never be released, and is currently held in Sydney's Long Bay Correctional Centre. In prison MacDonald is simply known as Bill. He has been in prison for so long now that he is Institutionalized, and has the title of being the longest current serving inmate in the New South Wales prison system. So much has changed since his imprisonment that he would not survive for very long on the outside. Staff at the Long Bay prison say that MacDonald's papers are marked: Likely to offend again.

2007

Sydney, the early 1960s. Australia’s largest city was under siege. A serial killer was on the loose. A homicidal maniac was luring his victims into dark places, violently stabbing them dozens of times about the head and neck with a long bladed knife and then mutilating their bodies in the most unimaginable manner.

Investigating police had no trouble in linking the murders to the same unknown psychopath, now dubbed “the Mutilator”. The warped killer’s crimes were easily recognised. His victims were always derelicts. All had been violently stabbed to death in a public place.

And in classic serial killer fashion their assassin had left his gruesome calling card… all of his victims had had their genitals removed.

But catching the Mutilator would prove to be no easy task. The fiend was as elusive as he was barbaric and when police finally got their man it was only a freak incident which became known world-wide as ‘The Case of the Walking Corpse’ that brought him to justice.

In 1943, at the age of 19 he joined the army and was transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers where he was raped in an air-raid shelter by a corporal who threatened him with death if he told anyone.

At first young private Ginsberg felt bad about what had happened, but as time went by he realised he had enjoyed the physical experience and believed this was the start of his life as a homosexual, a life that would bring him nothing but misery and humiliation.

Being raped by the despised corporal would be constantly on Allan Ginsberg’s mind throughout his life and would play an important part in creating the horrific events ahead of him.

When he came out of the army in 1947 psychiatrists again diagnosed him as schizophrenic and his brother had him committed to a mental asylum in Scotland that was straight out of the dark ages. The cells were crammed full of raving lunatics and it was freezing cold. He received shock treatment every day. After six months his mother got him out and took him home.

Disillusioned and convinced that his surroundings were to blame for his unstable mental condition, Ginsberg emigrated to Canada in 1949 and then to Australia in 1955 where he decided to start a new life completely and changed his name to William MacDonald.

But, new name or not, old habits die hard and shortly after his arrival, he was charged with indecent assault when he touched a detective on the penis in a public toilet in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, MacDonald was placed on a two year good behaviour bond.

He moved to Ballarat in the neighbouring state of Victoria but his life always seemed to be dogged with trouble. While he was working on a construction site, his workmates gave him a hiding for being a ‘poofter’. He retaliated by buying a very sharp knife and slashing the tyres of their bicycles.

The aging alcoholic was so drunk that he probably had no idea that MacDonald was strangling him until it was too late. Later MacDonald would claim that he had no intentions of murdering Hurst when they went back to his room. But the urge to kill him came on suddenly and he squeezed his hands tightly around Hurst’s neck.

As he was being strangled, Amos Hurst hemorrhaged and blood spurted from his mouth all over MacDonald’s hands. MacDonald punched him in the face and Hurst fell to the floor dead. MacDonald then undressed Hurst and put him into bed. He washed the blood from his arms, quietly left the building and returned to his lodgings in South Brisbane.

Unaware of his close scrape with retribution, MacDonald went about his new found career as a murderer with added enthusiasm and bought a sheath-knife and went looking around the wine bars and sleazy hotels of Brisbane for another easy victim to kill.

In a wine saloon full of down-and-outs, MacDonald met a man named Bill and the more they drank, the more Bill looked like the corporal who had raped him all those years before.

It wasn’t long before the voices in MacDonald’s head were back, urging him to kill and on the night of Saturday, June 4, 1961, his career as the Mutilator began when he struck up a conversation with 41-year-old vagrant Alfred Reginald Greenfield as he sat on a bench in Green Park, opposite St Vincent’s Hospital in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst.

MacDonald offered Greenfield, a homeless, unemployed blacksmith, a drink from his bottle and lured him to the nearby Domain Baths on the pretext that he had more bottles in his bag. But there was more than beer in the bag. MacDonald had bought a brand new, long bladed, razor sharp knife especially for the occasion.

By day, the Domain Baths was a popular public swimming spot situated on Sydney Harbour. By night the Domain’s environs were the haunt of derelicts. There were many alcoves to conceal the drinkers from the winter chill.

The press weren’t allowed to print the full extent of Alfred Greenfield’s injuries, but the rumours spread like wildfire. The press did say that he had been violently stabbed at least thirty times and certain parts of his anatomy were found in the harbour by police divers who were searching for the murder weapon.

However, the police were at a loss to come up with the slightest motive why anyone would want to murder a harmless vagrant, let alone cut off his genitals and throw them in the harbour.

The Mutilator had brought the knife up in a sweeping motion, the same way that a fighter delivers an uppercut, and it had the desired effect. Ernest Cobbin’s blood sprayed everywhere, all over the Mutilator’s arms, face and raincoat.

Severely wounded and most likely in shock, Cobbin instinctively lifted his arm to defend himself as the Mutilator kept stabbing, repeatedly wounding him on the arms, neck, face and chest. Even when Ernest Cobbin fell stone dead from the toilet seat, the Mutilator kept up the frenzied attack until blood was splattered all over the toilet cubicle.

The Mutilator pulled Ernest Cobbin’s pants and underpants down to his knees, lifted his penis and testicles, sliced them off with his knife and put them in a plastic bag he had brought with him. When he had finished, the Mutilator calmly took off his raincoat, wrapped his knife and the plastic bag in it, put them in his bag and walked out of the toilet. He stopped along the way to wash his hands under a tap.

The horror that the police confronted was unimaginable. Ernest Cobbin had been stabbed about fifty times. His private parts were missing. They had been sliced off as if by a surgeon. The toilet was awash with blood. In the minds of Sydney’s toughest detectives there was no doubt that if anyone had walked in on the Mutilator as he went about his business, they too would have been stabbed to death. A madman was on the loose. No one was safe.

Police issued this warning in the hope that it may flush out the mysterious Mutilator: “We believe police pressure is forcing this murderer into the open and he could now strike anywhere at any time. We feel that any man who is alone in a lonely street or park for more than ten minutes could be murdered and mutilated by this maniac. We believe he is a psychopathic homosexual who is killing to satisfy some twisted urge.”

As the months passed police had to concede that they were no closer to catching the Mutilator than they were when Alfred Greenfield’s body was discovered near the Domain Baths. But where and when would he strike again? They could only wait and see.

After he murdered Ernest Cobbin, William MacDonald’s rage had subsided and he went about his life as usual. He read every newspaper story about his exploits but had great difficulty in understanding that he was reading about himself. It was as if another person was doing these dreadful things and MacDonald was merely an onlooker. It frightened him.

It was raining slightly that night and William MacDonald was wearing his raincoat. At 10 p.m. he left the Oxford Hotel in Darlinghurst and followed Frank Gladstone McLean down Bourke Street and past the Darlinghurst Police Station. MacDonald struck up a conversation with the drunken McLean and suggested that they turn into Bourke Lane and have a drink.

Saturated in Frank McLean’s blood, the Mutilator dragged the body a few metres further into the lane, lowered his victim’s trousers and, slicing the knife from the bottom in an upward stroke, sliced off Frank McLean’s genitals.

For the first time the Mutilator was frightened that he would be caught in the act. He had committed the murder only a few yards from busy Bourke Street. As he put the genitals in his plastic bag, he feared that someone may see him. He had heard voices and a baby crying as people walked past the entrance to the laneway. In his paranoia he expected a police car to pull up any minute. But his luck held.

The Mutilator peeked around the laneway and, satisfied that no-one was coming, wrapped his knife and the plastic bag in the raincoat, put it in his bag and strolled down Bourke Street. He also took the bottle of sweet sherry that he and McLean had been drinking, as it was covered in fingerprints. He passed several people along Bourke Street, but they paid him no attention.

He was seen turning into Little Bourke Street at about 10.35 pm by three trainee nurses of nearby St Margaret’s Hospital. At 10.50 pm he was found lying dying in the gutter by a Mr and Mrs Cornish who believed that the crying of their baby in a pram may have warned the murderer of their approach and in turn may have saved theirs and their baby’s lives.

The police were so organised in their hunt for the Mutilator at the time of Frank McLean’s death that within minutes there were 30 detectives at the murder scene but again the Mutilator had fled without a trace.

A special police task force was set up to track down the killer who was causing them so much embarrassment. Teams of detectives worked around the clock checking out every possible lead. And there were plenty of possible leads. Police phones ran hot. Houses were raided on the slightest suspicion that the Mutilator might be hiding there. Night shelters and hostels were checked and rechecked. Nothing. Still the Mutilator eluded police.

By now the police dossier on the Mutilator was inches thick and they were prepared to try anything which included sending the details to Interpol in the hope that the killer may be identified by similar crimes overseas. This led to them investigating the whereabouts of an American soldier who had been charged with the murder of a 13-year-old boy in Germany in almost identical fashion to the Mutilator murders and the detaining in Melbourne of a 23-year-old German immigrant on the liner Patris who was questioned at Russell St Police Headquarters in an unrelated incident.

Both Interpol leads proved fruitless. The reward for information leading to the arrest of the Mutilator was increased to £5000 ($10,000), a staggering amount of money for the early 1960s.

Still using the assumed name of Alan Edward Brennan, he paid £560 ($1120) for a mixed business in Burwood, an inner Western suburb of Sydney. In his little shop, he made sandwiches and sold a variety of smallgoods. The shop was also an agency for a dry cleaning company.

MacDonald took Hackett back to his new residence and continued drinking until Hackett passed out on the floor. The Mutilator used a knife from his delicatessen to stab the sleeping Hackett. On the first plunge, the long knife went straight through Hackett’s neck but, incredibly, Hackett woke up and shielded the next blow with his arm thus diverting the knife into the Mutilator’s other hand, cutting it badly.

With blood pouring from the wound in his hand, the Mutilator unleashed renewed homicidal rage on Hackett. He brought the knife down with both hands and plunged it through Hackett’s heart, killing him instantly. The floor was awash with blood. But still the Mutilator attacked Hackett’s body with the knife until he had to stop for breath.

In the morning the Mutilator woke to find himself covered in sticky, drying blood. He was lying next to the victim Hackett. The pools of blood had soaked through the floorboards and threatened to drip onto the counters of his shop.

The Mutilator had a bath, cleaned himself up and went to the hospital where he had some stitches put in his hand. He told the doctor that he had cut himself in his shop. It took MacDonald the best part of the day to clean up the mess. The huge pools of blood on the linoleum couldn’t be scrubbed out and he had to tear it up, break it into bits and throw it out. He also removed all of Hackett’s bloodied clothing leaving only the socks.

MacDonald dragged the dead and naked Hackett underneath his shop and left him there. Every few hours he went back to the body and dragged it a little further into the foundations of the building until it was jammed into a remote corner of the brickwork, out of view and almost impossible to see. MacDonald left all of Hackett’s bloodied clothing with the corpse.

MacDonald panicked when he finally sat down and thought about what he had done. He thought that the police would come looking for Hackett. Only a few of the bloodstains had come off the walls and there was blood all over the floorboards.

The police bundled it into an ambulance and sent it off to the morgue at nearby Rydalmere Hospital where the body was found to be so putrid that the mortician carried out the autopsy in a shed in the hospital grounds. The only thing they could determine was that it was a male aged about forty, the same age as the missing Brennan.

At this stage police assumed it was the body of the missing shop proprietor, Alan Brennan, who had crawled under his shop for reasons known only to himself and electrocuted himself. Police had no reason to suspect foul play. Everything was normal. It looked like an accidental death. The body was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde, under the name of Alan Edward Brennan.

The only person who wasn’t completely satisfied with the police investigations into the death was the Coroner, Mr F.E.Cox, who quizzed the police thoroughly before he handed down his decision. Mr Cox listened as police told him that the body was naked except for a pair of socks and that there was no reason why they should suspect foul play.

Even without the knowledge of these incredible police oversights Mr Cox wasn’t convinced and returned an open verdict and said: “It seems extraordinary that the body of Mr Brennan should have been found in the position and in the condition in which it was found.

According to the evidence, the deceased had neither his trousers on, nor his boots, or shoes, or singlet. He was clad only in his socks, with his coat and trousers alongside him. Nothing was found to indicate to any degree of certainty that the deceased had taken his own life, even if it were his intention to do so.

It seems to me an extraordinary thing that the deceased should have gone under the house to commit an act that would result in his death. It could have been that the deceased was the victim of foul play, although the police report said there was nothing to indicate foul play. But I cannot altogether exclude that possibility.”

When his workmates at the PMG read of the unfortunate demise of their old workmate in the death notices they collected for a wreath and attended the small memorial service conducted by a local funeral director.

Mr Cox’s suspicions of a sloppy police investigation became a reality about six months after the ‘death’ of Alan Brennan when one of MacDonald’s old workmates, John McCarthy, bumped head-on into the ‘dead’ Brennan as he was walking down crowded George Street in the heart of Sydney.

McCarthy nearly died of shock. As he had no idea that the murdered Hackett had been buried as the missing Brennan, MacDonald was surprised when his old work friend was so stunned to see him.

“You're supposed to be dead” McCarthy told MacDonald.

“What do you mean?”, the puzzled MacDonald asked.

“They found your body underneath your shop at Burwood. We went to your funeral service,” McCarthy replied. “But if you're alive, who was the body under your shop? And why did you run away?”

And the desk sergeant didn't believe him the following day when he went back and told them the same story. They said he was crazy and in desperation John McCarthy rang the Daily Mirror and spoke to renowned crime reporter Joe Morris.

“I listened to the story before interviewing him. He didn't sound crazy to me,” recalled Morris. The Mirror ran the story and the legendary headline CASE OF THE WALKING CORPSE came about.

As a direct result of John McCarthy’s sighting of the dead man and the intense media interest in the bizarre case, police were forced to re-open the investigation. Closer scrutiny of the clothes found beside the dead man revealed that the number 1262 written in indelible ink on the inside of the coat sleeve was that of a garment supplied to a Patrick Joseph Hackett on his release from Long Bay Jail on October 27, 1962 after serving a ten day term for indecent language.

An embarrassed police commissioner was forced to exhume the corpse and closer examination revealed the stab wounds and the mutilation to Hackett's penis and testicles. From a much closer examination of what was left of the fingerprints, they discovered that the body was that of the petty thief Hackett and not the mild mannered shopkeeper Allan Brennan.

After the ‘Walking Corpse’ headline appeared in papers across the nation other witnesses came forward which included a man whose business was next door to Brennan’s shop who said that he was certain that he had seen Brennan and another man in the shop on the evening before Brennan disappeared.

They were to be disappointed. The thin, short, shy MacDonald was nothing like the beast that they imagined was capable of such unimaginable crimes.

William MacDonald confessed to everything. Charged with four counts of murder, he pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity. His trial, held in September 1963 was one of the most sensational the country had ever seen and the public hung onto every word of horror that fell from the Mutilator’s mouth.

When he testified how he stabbed one of his victims in the neck 30 times and then removed the man’s testicles and penis with the same knife, a woman in the jury fainted. Justice McLennan stopped the proceedings and excused the juror from the rest of the grisly evidence. He then ordered MacDonald to continue.

The gallery listened in awe as the Mutilator told of the killings in great detail. He explained how the blood had sprayed all over his raincoat as he castrated his victims, put their private parts in a plastic bag and took them home. The jury was repulsed when he explained what he did with the genitals when he arrived back at his lodgings.

William MacDonald was sentenced to prison for life and his papers were marked: “likely to offend again”. Shortly after his incarceration he bashed another prisoner almost to death with a slops bucket in Long Bay Jail and as a result was declared insane by a panel of doctors. MacDonald spent the next 16 years at the Morisset Psychiatric Centre for the criminally insane on the New South Wales central coast.

In 1980 William McDonald was found sane enough to be released back into mainstream prison society and has since been in the protective custody section of Cessnock prison about a two hour drive north west from Sydney. He requested to live in this section of the jail because it was quieter and he would not be disturbed by the prison louts. Here he lives a reclusive existence reading and listening to classical music and is known as ‘old Bill’.

The Mutilator is the second longest serving prisoner in Australia (child killer Leonard Keith Lawson has been in prison since November 1961) and has spent so much time locked up that he is convinced that freedom would kill him. In December 2000 he declined to attend a court hearing set down to grant him a date when he would be eligible for parole.

In a May, 2000 interview with author Paul B. Kidd, William ‘the Mutilator’ McDonald, the most feared serial killer in Australia’s history who held the nation’s largest city under siege, said without the slightest hint of irony:

But what of William McDonald the man? Was the jury right in finding him to be sane at the time of the murders? And if he was, then what could possibly have driven him to stab four complete strangers dozens of times and then souvenir their genitalia?

Was it really because the men he killed reminded him of the dreaded corporal who raped him and destined him to a life of homosexuality, an existence that he despised because it brought him nothing but ridicule and shame? Or was that simply an excuse put up by McDonald’s defence to justify his crimes.

Or did the jury get it wrong? Was William McDonald really as insane as his crimes would indicate? Joe Morris described him at the time of their interview as being ‘off his rocker’, and it appeared that he wasn’t the only one with that opinion.

Curious to know more about William McDonald and the motives behind his murders, I applied to interview him numerous times over the years only to be rejected each time, mainly on the grounds that he didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone, especially me because of the chapter I wrote about him in my 1993 book Never To Be Released.

The approvals for the interview from the various government departments took another two months and eventually on Friday May 5, 2000, my photographer son Ben and myself met up with New South Wales Corrective Services Media Liaison Officer Bob Stapleton at the entrance to Long Bay Jail for our 10am interview with the Mutilator.

So many thoughts raced through my head as we were cleared by the maximum security guards and ushered into a small un-barred meeting room that contained a laminated table and four kitchen chairs and was situated just off the foyer at the entrance to the prison wing.

What would the Mutilator look like after almost 40 years behind bars? The picture of the rather good looking young man with the receding hairline that MacDonald was when he was arrested and the pictures in the identikit composition were stencilled in my memory as they were the only pictures that I had ever seen of him.           

What of his disposition? Would he vent his rage upon me for writing the story about him in Never To Be Released? Was accepting my visit just a ploy to get near to me so he could unleash a verbal or physical assault upon me before they overpowered him and took him away?

But would he tell me? I was about to find out.

He extended his hand and I shook it and his handshake was firm, warm and friendly. But it was a handshake that hadn’t shaken another human being’s hand in many years.

“Hello Bill,” I said as I introduced myself. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a long time”.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he replied graciously as he sat down to face me. “I believe you have some questions you would like to ask me”.

As the guard left us I realised instantly that I wasn’t in any threat of danger and that the little serial killer sitting before me was an articulate, perfectly lucid, candid, well-read and gentle old man. And his candidness overtook the room. He managed a faint smile from time to time as he told us that he loved to read the classics and biographies of famous people of our times and listen to classical music, his favourites being the tenors Mario Lanza and Luciano Pavarotti, and Mozart, Chopin and Liszt, and the musicals of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Bill MacDonald would have looked more at home playing a violin or conducting a symphony orchestra than sitting before us in prison greens and telling us of his unfortunate life.

“I spend almost every waking hour in my cell listening to classical music,” he says. “I don’t associate with anyone else within the prison system. I never have. I have never had a friend in my life. I keep very much to myself. I prefer it that way.”

He went on to tell us that in his 37 years behind bars ours was the third visit he had ever had. The other two were from journalists; Joe Morris in 1963 and Sydney Morning Herald writer Greg Bearup in 1995. He had heard from one of his brothers many years ago but tore the letter up and never heard from him again.

Bill MacDonald is a homosexual who has never had sex with a woman or anyone for that matter for at least 37 years, has never used a telephone in his life, has never driven a car, has never learned how to play cards or chess and never smoked.

Confessions

“When I read about the murders in the paper the following day it was as if it was all a dream. I knew that it was me that had done it but it was as if I hadn’t done it, if you can follow what I mean. Then I would resume my life as normal until the urge to kill the soldier came over me again and then I’d go on the hunt again.”

“So you were only insane at the time of the murders?” I asked. “These days we call it diminished responsibility which is roughly the same as temporary insanity.”

“There is no doubt that I was insane at the time of the murders,” he says. “As you say, temporarily insane. Or in my case the other personality had taken over. And even though they found me to be sane at my trial I knew that I wasn’t and these urges to kill kept coming over me. After my trial they took another look at me and realised that I was insane and needed help. That’s why I was in Morisset psychiatric centre for 16 years.”

“Why do you think you chose derelicts to kill? Do you think it was because they were the easiest targets or was it the decent side of you saying that if you had to kill and couldn’t stop it then at least you were only killing people who would be the least likely to be missed?”

“No. Anything but. I had never committed any violent crime before in my life. I like the passive things in life. But the other person that committed those murders was very violent. But he’s gone now.”

“Are you sane now? Would you kill anyone now if you had the opportunity?”

“Yes, I am perfectly sane now. And the thought of killing another human being now would never cross my mind. I don’t get the urge to kill any more. I may still be a schizophrenic but murder is out of the question. It is not even the slightest consideration.”

“Do you feel sorry for what you did?”

“Yes, very much so. I feel terribly ashamed. Even though I had no control over it ”

“Apart from the murders, what is the deepest regret in your life?”

“That I couldn’t have had a normal life. A wife, children, a family home. If I had my life over that is what I would wish for.”

“Have you accepted the fact that you will die in prison?”

“Yes. I’d love to see the Opera House. It was just being built when I went to prison. I believe that Joan Sutherland was one of the first to sing there. And I’d love to see how much Sydney has changed. Maybe I will one day.”

On Wednesday, 4 October, 2000, I picked up Bill in company with the Cessnock Prison chaplain, Rod Moore, and drove him to Sydney for his first look in almost 40 years. We drove around the Opera House and through the city that had changed so much since he wreaked havoc in its inner suburbs all those years ago, but the highlight of his trip was to sit in the car and eat fish and chips as we overlooked beautiful Bondi Beach.

“You know Paul,” he said as he watched the topless beauties in wonderment, “I often wonder if I had the choice to live my life over again exactly as it has been or have been dead, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

CrimeLibrary.com

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: T MOTIVE: Sad./PCrevenge

DATE(S): 1961-62

VENUE: Sydney, Australia

VICTIMS: Four

MO: "Ripper" of gay males; allegedly sought revenge for homosexual rape in his teens

DISPOSITION: Life sentence, 1962; later ruled insane and moved to an asylum.