Levi Bellfield
Levi Bellfield is a British serial killer and sex offender. He was found guilty on 25 February 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell in 2003 and Amélie Delagrange in 2004, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy in 2004, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 23 June 2011, Bellfield was further found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler in 2002.
In both cases, the judges imposed a whole life order, meaning that Bellfield will serve the sentence without the possibility of parole. He is the first prisoner to receive two whole life orders.
Biography
Bellfield was born Levi Rabbetts on 17 May 1968 at the West Middlesex Hospital, Isleworth, Greater London, to Jean Rabbetts and Joseph Bellfield; he is of Romani descent. When Bellfield was 10 years old, his father died from leukaemia. Bellfield and his siblings, two brothers and two sisters, were brought up on a Southwest London council estate. He attended Forge Lane Junior School, Rectory Secondary School then Feltham Comprehensive.Bellfield fathered eleven children with five different women, the three youngest with his most recent girlfriend, Emma Mills. In May 2022, the Ministry of Justice confirmed that Bellfield was engaged and had applied to marry while in prison. He proposed to a woman who had started writing to him two years previously, before becoming a visitor on a regular basis. Bellfield would need the permission of the governor at HM Prison Frankland. In June 2023, it was announced that Bellfield had converted to Islam and taken the name Yusuf Rahim.
Criminal history
Bellfield's first conviction was as a child for burglary in 1981. He was convicted of assaulting a police officer in 1990. He also has convictions for theft and driving offences. By 2002, Bellfield had nine convictions and had spent almost a year in prison for them. In an interview with the media, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton of the Metropolitan Police, who led the murder investigation, said of Bellfield: "When we started dealing with him he came across as very jokey, like he's your best mate. But he's a cunning individual, violent. He can switch from being nice to being nasty, instantly."Bellfield searched for victims on streets he knew well. Detectives tracked down some of his ex-girlfriends, who all described a similar pattern of behaviour when they got involved with him. "He was lovely at first, charming, then completely controlling and evil. They all said the same," said Detective Sergeant Jo Brunt.
At the time of the attacks, Bellfield ran a wheel-clamping business which operated in and around West Drayton, where he lived. Sutton speculated:
Bellfield was seen driving around in his van, talking to young girls at bus stops, while under police surveillance. Amélie Delagrange was seen by CCTV cameras which showed her walking towards Twickenham Green after she missed her stop on the bus home. She may have stopped and spoken to Bellfield between the last two sightings of her. She was attacked shortly afterwards.
Bellfield was arrested early on the morning of 22 November 2004, on suspicion of the murder of Delagrange. On 25 November, he was charged with three counts of rape in Surrey and West London. On 9 December 2004, he was charged with assaulting a woman in Twickenham between 1995 and 1997 and remanded in custody. Bellfield was rearrested and charged with Delagrange's murder on 2 March 2006, along with the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy and the attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm to Irma Dragoshi. On 25 May 2006, Bellfield was charged with the murder of Marsha McDonnell.
Victims
Milly Dowler
Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler was a 13-year-old girl who went missing on leaving Walton-on-Thames railway station on 21 March 2002 and was found dead in Yateley Heath Woods, Yateley, six months later. In August 2009, Surrey Police submitted a dossier to the Crown Prosecution Service containing evidence of Bellfield's involvement in the murder of Dowler. On 30 March 2010, Bellfield was charged with the kidnapping and murder of Dowler, as well as the attempted kidnapping of the 12-year-old girl Rachel Cowles on 20 March 2002. Bellfield did not give evidence at his trial and denied any involvement in Dowler's death. On 23 June 2011 a jury convicted him of Dowler's murder.Marsha McDonnell
Marsha Louise McDonnell, a 19-year-old woman, was beaten over the head with a blunt instrument near her home in Hampton on 4 February 2003. The wound was inflicted shortly after she got off the 111 bus from Kingston upon Thames at the stop on Percy Road. She died in hospital two days after being admitted. Bellfield sold his Vauxhall Corsa car for £1,500 six days after the murder, having bought it for £6,000 just five months earlier.Kate Sheedy
Kate Sheedy, then aged 18, was deliberately run over as she crossed the road near an entrance to an industrial estate in Isleworth on 28 May 2004; her mother called an ambulance and she survived with multiple injuries and spent several weeks in hospital. Nearly four years later, Sheedy gave evidence against Bellfield when he was tried for her attempted murder. Sheedy had described the car after the attack as a white people carrier with blacked-out windows and a broken wing mirror; Bellfield was found to have owned a Toyota Previa matching that description at the time of the attack.Amélie Delagrange
Amélie Delagrange was a 22-year-old French student visiting England. She was found at Twickenham Green on the evening of 19 August 2004, with serious head injuries, and died in hospital the same night. Within 24 hours, the police established that she might have been killed by the same person who had killed Marsha McDonnell 18 months earlier. Bellfield reportedly confessed to the murder while on remand.Charges of abduction and attempted murder
Bellfield was also charged with the abduction and false imprisonment of Anna-Maria Rennie, then aged 17, in Whitton on 14 October 2001. Rennie identified him in a video identity parade four years later. He was also charged with the attempted murder of Irma Dragoshi, then aged 39, in Longford on 16 December 2003. The jury failed to reach verdicts on either of these charges.Additional alleged victims
Patsy Morris
On 16 June 1980, Patricia "Patsy" Joyce Morris, a 14-year old schoolgirl from Feltham, London, was murdered by strangulation. She disappeared on the day of her death, having been seen leaving her school during her lunch break. It was believed Morris left school because she had forgotten her raincoat that morning, returning home to change into dry clothes.Two days later, on the evening of 18 June, Morris's body was found by a police dog handler on Hounslow Heath. She was discovered face down, fully clothed, in a copse beside a path on the edge of the Heath, a quarter of a mile from her home in Cygnet Avenue. She had been strangled with a ligature and there were no signs of sexual assault.
In February 2008, police revealed they were investigating a possible confession to the murder made by Bellfield. He was said to have been obsessed with the murder when it occurred and remained 'fascinated' by the unsolved killing. Bellfield was alleged to have made the confession to a cellmate while on remand. It was then revealed that Bellfield had attended Feltham Comprehensive with Morris and that he was her childhood boyfriend. Morris's family told the press that they had not known they had known each other, and her sister stated: "We did not know him. It was a shock when we found out they knew each other. Friends told us about it. It is horrendous."
Bellfield would have been 12 at the time of Morris's murder, which occurred a year before he received his first conviction, for burglary, aged 13. As a pupil he was known to have repeatedly played truant and was known to often frequent Hounslow Heath when he should have been at school. He was also known to have not attended school the day of the murder. Former partners of Bellfield recounted that he had a hatred of blond women and targeted them for attacks, and it was noted that Morris was blonde. Some claimed that Morris's death could have been the start of Bellfield's violent obsession with blondes.
After it was revealed that Bellfield was being investigated by police for the murder of Morris, her father George stated that he was certain that the teenage boy who had given him a death threat in a call at the time was Bellfield, saying: "He's a local man, which is why it could be him. And it's terrifying to think that someone of 12 or 13 could have done it".
Judith Gold
After Bellfield's 2008 conviction, police revealed they were reviewing the murder of 51-year-old Judith Gold in Hampstead in October 1990. Described as an "attractive and vivacious" middle-class housewife, she had died yards from her home after being hit several times in the face by an unidentified weapon. Police believed Bellfield could have been responsible for this alongside around 20 other unsolved attacks on women in London. These attacks, which took place between 1990 and around 2004, were all linked to Bellfield because the police researched the frequency of blunt-force trauma attacks on women and children using objects such as hammers; they found that these were so rare that only one unsolved attack in Greater London in that time period could realistically be ruled out as being the work of Bellfield.The circumstances of Gold's murder were somewhat mysterious: police were unsure why she had dressed as if for a business meeting just before she left her home at around 5:30 a.m. on the day she was killed, 20 October 1990. She left her home above the Midland Bank in Hampstead High Street and was found battered only yards away by a paperboy in Old Brewery Mews, while it was still pitch black. The place she was found was very dark due to recent problems with street lighting. Unusually, no witnesses reported hearing any screams, struggle or anything else suspicious, and her housemates reported having not heard her get up and leave for unexplained reasons in the middle of the night. Her husband had died two years previously and she lived with her 19-year-old daughter and a family friend.
Gold worked as an insurance and mortgage agent and also as a freelance financier, and was also known as Judith Silver. There was no sign of sexual assault and the motive also appeared not to be robbery as her handbag and jewellery were left untouched, although her very distinctive chain which she wore round her neck had been taken.
In February 1991, The Guardian had reported that the murder was believed to be linked to an "international financial swindle". Scotland Yard detectives said at the time that they were investigating fraudulent loan schemes in which Gold may have been involved, and it was found that she was involved in an "international advanced-fee fraud". Gold did not usually wake up early and her job did not involve working on Saturdays, so investigators theorised that she had arranged a meeting with someone and knew the killer. Her work was described as "shadowy" and involved negotiating large low-interest loans with businesspeople, which her daughter disliked her doing and which she said made her mother visibly stressed in the days before she died.
The lead detective on the case said in 1994: "We're sure she got in too deep and that's what led to her death." It was found that Gold had written the number of the local police station on the back of her chequebook. The day before her murder, Gold had mysteriously left the house and her daughter noticed that her car had been reversed into its parking space when she returned, something she never did, raising the possibility she had gone to meet someone then and that person had driven her car back home. In February 2022, it was reported that Bellfield confessed to the murder of Gold.