Untold horrors of the CROSSBOW CANNIBAL

Grisly case detailed by police for first time

- BY EMMELINE SAUNDERS

IT WAS the sickening stench that first hit police officers after they burst through the door of Stephen Griffiths' flat a "smell of death".

Moments later, they discovered the dismembered body of Suzanne Blamires, 36, who vanished from the red light district of Bradford days earlier.

She had been lured to the flat by Griffiths, who had befriended sex workers in the streets around his home.

Suzanne was seen on CCTV running in terror out of his apartment as he followed behind, brandishing a black crossbow.

After knocking her unconscious in the corridor, he dragged Suzanne back inside, before smirking at the camera and raising his middle finger at it.

Three days later, Monday, May 24, 2010, the caretaker viewed the footage- and it proved to be the evidence that snared the self-dubbed Crossbow Cannibal.

The criminology PhD student, who worshipped Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, had stockpiled weapons and books about murder and harboured ambitions of becoming a serial killer.

As a child, he would torture animals, pulling the wings off birds and taking a hammer to his pet rat.

His younger siblings were subjected to violence.

Griffiths would award them points for annoying him.

After accumulating a certain number, he would launch a vicious attack. But even they could not have predicted his later twisted crimes.