A triple murderer is threatening legal action after his ‘award-winning’ matchstick model of a Formula One car – which took him 2,000 hours to build – was ‘stolen’ after being shown at an exhibition.
David Mulcahy, 60, was given three life sentences for the rape and murder of three women at the Old Bailey in 2001.
He committed the crimes with pal John Duffy, with the pair being dubbed the ‘Railway Rapists’ after attacking and killing a string of women near railway stations in the mid-1980s.
David Mulcahy, 60, was given three life sentences for the rape and murder of three women at the Old Bailey in 2001
His Koestler Arts prison award entry, a matchstick Formula One car (pictured) which saw him win a £20 prize, has now been lost or ‘stolen’
The pair were also known as the Thriller Killers as they listened to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album while hunting victims near train stations.
Duffy was caged for life in 1988 after being found guilty of two murders and four rapes, but it wasn’t until 2001 that Mulchay was jailed and given three life sentences.
He was convicted of the murders of Alison Day, 19, Dutch schoolgirl Maartje Tamboezer 15, and newlywed Anne Lock, 29 – as well as being convicted of seven rapes.
The 60-year-old killer, however, is an avid ‘artist’ and regularly submits entires to the annual Koestler Arts prison art awards, which has been running since 1962.
At last year’s award he won a bronze award – with a £20 prize and a certificate – for his F1 car made out of matchsticks.
Alison Day (left), 19, was visiting her fiancé when they pulled her off Hackney Wick platform, raped her twice, and strangled her with her blouse. Maartje Tamboezer (right), 15, was raped, killed and badly burned by the pair. She was cycling home from school in Horsley, Surrey, when they tripped up her bike with a fishing line
He was left fuming, however, after finding out his matchstick model had been ‘lost’ or ‘stolen’ after being shown at the exhibition held at the Southbank Centre between September and November last year.
Writing in a recent edition of prisoners’ magazine Inside Time he said: ‘We all know the good work that Koestler do to give us a platform for our creative side but be advised that on occasion they can totally lose your exhibit.
‘I spent almost 2,000 hours constructing a scale model of a Formula One car completely out of wood, all cell made.
‘I have, over the years, won numerous gold awards, so I can’t be too bad at it.
‘I have also, over the years, had several exhibits badly damaged whilst in the care of Koestler. So now I make arrangements for my exhibits to be hand-delivered and collected.
‘I’ve also had a custom display case made at a cost of £175.’
He added in the letter from his cell at maximum security HMP Full Sutton: ‘You can imagine then my utter dismay when after five unanswered letters (I) was told that my exhibit was ”lost” by Koestler staff.’
Third victim: Anne Lock, 29, pictured on her wedding day, disappeared after leaving work at London Weekend Television in north London four weeks after getting married. The pair raped and killed her in a nearby field
He added: ‘Koestler state ”We accept no responsibility for any loss or damage however caused”, the defence being ”so sorry we let someone take it from our secure location, it was in our care, but you get nothing, and we won’t check our CCTV to see who took it”.
‘I did not use the postal/courier system, so unless I did such a great job that the car could actually drive off itself then someone took it.’
He said he wanted to know if there was any ‘legal precedent’ which would allow the ‘we accept no responsibility defence’ – and asked legal minds at Inside Time to help him out.
Bosses at the prisoners’ magazine said it had sent the questions raised by Mulcahy to Koestler.
In 2014, Mulcahy won £515 in compensation for a damaged parcel he had sent out – and then claimed he was subsequently banned from sending out parcels, which he said stopped him from entering one of his artworks to the Koestler awards.
A spokesman for Koestler said: ‘As you can imagine, to protect confidentiality, we cannot confirm or deny names of participants in our programmes or discuss any individual cases.
‘Koestler Arts handles all artworks with respect, returning over 3,000 visual artworks to people in the criminal justice system across the UK annually.
‘In the rare instances where something is lost or damaged on its way to us, in our care, or on return, we try to find out what happened, and do our best to put things right.’