CrimePsych

William MacDonald was originally born in England and migrated to Australia. He committed his first murder in Brisbane sometime in 1961 when he befriended a man by the name of Amos Hurst outside the Roma Street Transit Centre. They headed to one of the local pubs and after a lengthy drinking session headed back to the soon to be victims apartment where they drank more. Eventually MacDonald straddled Hurst and began strangling him; Hurst was so intoxicated he never even realised what was happening to him. Hurst’s cause of death was actually listed as accidental and had MacDonald not confessed to the crime he would not have been charged with it.

Then, later that year on June 4th a brutal murder was discovered in Sydney at the Sydney Domain Baths beneath the dressing sheds. The body was that of Alfred Greenfield who was nude, had been stabbed more than 30 times and had had his genitals removed. Detectives almost immediately labelled it as a homosexual assault.

Later that same year yet another victim of the killer now labelled ‘The Mutilator’ was found in a public toilet in Moore Park. William Cobbin had been stabbed and had his body mutilated.

It wasn’t until 31st March, 1962 that MacDonald would strike again; at the time investigators on the case were scouring homosexual hangouts attempting to find leads and witnesses. Frank Gladstone McLean became the 4th victim of The Mutilator when he was found, mortally wounded in Darlinghurst. Although he was alive when found he died a short time later without having the chance to offer a description of his attacker to anybody.

By mid-November 1962 MacDonald had yet again given in to his self-confessed compulsion to kill although at first it was thought he had become a victim. Shop owners in the suburb of Concord filed official complaints of a rancid odour coming from William MacDonald’s recently purchased shop and when it was established he hadn’t been seen since November 4th searchers held grave fears for his safety. Eventually they located the body of a man under the shop floor, once again the victim had been stabbed to death with a total 41 stab wounds and had had his genitals slashed.

Eventually clothing beside the body was traced through a laundry mark on it and the victim was actually identified as Irishman Patrick Hackett. Subsequently the search for William MacDonald begun again.
On April 22nd 1963 a former co-worker of MacDonald’s spotted him on a Sydney street after an indentikit photo of him was released in the national press. By late May, although he had attempted to disguise himself he was traced to his new job in a Melbourne railway station under the alias of David Allan.
When he was interrogated MacDonald confessed not only his identity but to all the murders he had committed and he blamed it on an irresistible impulse to kill. The reason for this irresistible impulse though i hear you ask? As a teenager he had been raped by another man and as such chose homosexual men at random for slaughter in a misguided attempt to deal with his anger. Given a life sentence and sent to Long Bay Correctional Centre but was later transferred to Morriset Home for the Criminally Insane. Today he resides within Long Bay Hospital and is the labelled as the longest serving inmate in Australia’s correctional service history.