By News Ltd
08 August, 1963
By Roy McInnes
17 July, 1963
By News Ltd
17 July, 1963
By News Ltd
16 May, 1963
By News Ltd
16 May, 1963
By News Ltd
16 May, 1963
By News Ltd
14 May, 1963
By News Ltd
06 May, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
26 April, 1963
By News Ltd
01 January, 1963
The Sydney Mutilations refer to the gruesome murders of four homeless men in Sydney in the early 1960s. The perpetrator, William MacDonald, became known as ‘The Mutilator’, and is considered to be Australia's first true serial killer. The body of his first victim was discovered at the Sydney Domain Baths in June 1961. The man, a vagrant, had been stabbed more than 30 times and castrated with a long-bladed knife. Soon after, the bodies of two more homeless men were found in similar circumstances. MacDonald kept the genitals of his victims in a plastic bag, before taking them home and discarding them. In June 1962, police received a call about a stench coming from a small business store owned by MacDonald in Concord. The police broke into the shop and discovered the corpse of a half-naked man underneath the floorboards, and noted that the body was not MacDonald's. The police began circulating pictures of MacDonald, hoping that someone would see and recognise him. MacDonald fled to Melbourne, but was eventually arrested at a train station after two porters recognised him from an identikit image. MacDonald confessed to the four killings, and to the strangling of a Brisbane man prior to the Sydney killings. MacDonald, who suffered from schizophrenia, claimed he had an irresistible urge to kill after he was the victim of a homosexual rape as a teenager in England. He was convicted and imprisoned at Long Bay Hospital and was soon certified as insane and transferred to a secure mental hospital. He died on May 13, 2015, aged 90, as the longest-serving and oldest prisoner in New South Wales. 


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