Tube StockA former detective has accused Scotland Yard of covering up claims that a serial killer pushed 18 people to their deaths in the London Underground in the 1970s.
Making the revelation in his new book ‘The London Underground Serial Killer’, Geoff Platt says Kiernan Kelly admitted to the murders when he was interviewed for a separate crime in 1984.
However, he says police chiefs decided not to take action to avoid public panic and because of fears over the backlash if it emerged someone had got away with murdering 18 people.
Mr Platt, 60, said Kelly made the confession when he interviewed him for strangling prison cell mate William Boyd for snoring in 1984. Kelly, a violent drifter, was in custody for robbery when he attacked Boyd.
The former officer said Kelly appeared “proud” of killing Boyd and then confessed to pushing 18 people under trains on the Northern Line in the 1970s.
Platt said:
He was loaded with adrenaline, he was loaded with testosterone, he couldn’t stop talking and he came out and started telling everything.
PinterestPlatt initially assumed that Kelly was making the stories up but when he investigated the claims further, he discovered that the drifter was in fact at the scene of a number of reported suicides on the Tube line.
He added:
What immediately came to notice was that there were a number of people who jumped off the platform into the Northern Line. But what especially smacked you in the face was every time someone jumped on the track… Kelly was next to him.
But despite the shocking claims, Mr Platt said his senior officers did not want to make the case public.
He said:
It was a cover up. Think about it, the police don’t want it getting out – there would be mass panic. They didn’t want people knowing a serial killer got away with pushing innocent people on to the tracks, they’d be afraid it could happen again.
A Scotland Yard spokesman has since said the allegations are being dealt with by the British Transport Police.
