John Martin Scripps
The Tourist From Hell
 

 

 

 

After escaping from prison in 1994, Brittish convict John Martin Scripps went on a globe-trotting, three-nation murder rampage. Johnny was arrested in March, 1995, in Singapore for killing and dismembering a South African tourist. He was also charged with the murder of a Canadian mother and son in Thailand.

Trained as a butcher, after killing his victims he would skillfully cut-up their corpses at the joints using a pen knife to dispose of their body parts. Not the typical sexual sadist, John killed merely for money and credit cards.

The first serial killer to ever be arrested in Singapore, Johnny was swiftly convicted and sentenced to death. On April 19, 1996, he was hanged by authorities. His mother and sister attended the execution. Before she left Britain, Mrs Scripps said: "These bastards have no right to take my son's life. I brought him into the world. I am the only person who can take him out of it." In a semi-literate scrawl Scripps wrote that he gave himself to a god who had betrayed him. "You may take my life for what it is worth, but grant thows I love, pease and happiness."

London's Scotland Yard believe that John also murdered a Brittish tourist in Central America who's bank account in London was milked by Scripps after he vanished. In Mexico City, his ex-wife, Maria Arellanos, said: "John disappeared on several trips and went to the United States and South-East Asia. I knew something awful was happening, but I could not believe he had started killing people." While in prison Scripps wrote a story about how he escaped his own hanging to fall into the arms of his mother and sister. Unfortunately for John, that never happened.