What I learned at University...

My name is Henry Fitzgerald. Five years ago I was a student at the University of Cambridge and would frequently sit in on additional lectures just to try and absorb as much knowledge as possible. Now, I won’t bore you with all of the details of my course, instead I want tell you about one of these lectures in particular.

Studying criminal psychology, it’s no surprise that my favourite lectures were the ones where our professor would delve into the cases of serial killers. He would generally start by giving us a brief biography of the murderers themselves, he would then go into the gruesome details of the killings, and then finally explore why the culprit may have committed these crimes.

Normally, these lectures fell on a Friday afternoon and I would attend every single one. After a particularly long week, I was exhausted and decided I would skip the class this time. As I was walking through the hallways to exit the building I bumped into my professor, James.

“Henry!” He grinned at me. “I hope you’ve already eaten lad, we’ve got quite the gruesome case in store for us this afternoon.”

“Actually James, I don’t think I’ll make it today. I’m so worn out, I think I’m just gonna head home and sleep it off for a while.” I said, not wanting to see the disappointment that I knew was creeping onto his face.

“Really?” He asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “Come on Henry, you’re this little groups number one fan, you can’t quit on us now.” He said placing his hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll go. I just hope this case lives up to the hype you’ve given it now.” I joked as we walked back down the hallway together.

“Oh, trust me, this is some dark s**t.”

Once we were in the classroom I was instantly glad I’d decided to stay. James loaded up the slide show he’d made on his computer and then the lights were dimmed so that the projection of his computer screen onto the wall made the room glow a light blue colour.

“Alright guys, let’s get this started.” James said to the class as we slowly murmured to silence.

“Now, as I said before, this case isn’t for the faint of heart and all of the victims in this case were children. This is your last warning before we start, in case you don’t think you want to see this.” He waited a few moments and nobody moved. He pressed a button on his projector controller and the face of a man in his mid-50’s appeared on the screen. He was overweight and greasy looking, his eyes yellowed and his skin dirty. As I looked at his face he seemed familiar but I just couldn’t match his face with any crimes I remembered reading about.

“Alrighty, I know that some of you may recognise this man, but for those of you who don’t, this is Theo Martin. Theo was born and raised in Hull, a few hours north of where we are now.”

A thought suddenly crossed my mind. I’m from Hull but we moved down to the south of England when I was a kid, maybe that’s why I recognised him, maybe I’d seen a picture of him in a newspaper somewhere when I was younger and not realised who he was. I realised I had been zoned out for too long when I noticed James was now at the end of the killer biography.

“Theo stayed in Hull for his whole life and from 1989 to 1997, that’s where he carried out his murders.” He finished, as he clicked onto the slides with the next chapter of this grisly tale. “For eight years, Theo would prowl the streets of Hull looking for young children aged between five and ten. He would look for children who were on their own, maybe walking to the corner shop or maybe children who had wandered a few feet away from their unknowing parents.”

Christ, I thought to myself. My parents had always told me that we’d moved south because of a job opportunity for my dad, but listening to this, I bet turning their backs on that dark town was a welcomed bonus.

“In those eight years” James carried on. “He murdered a total of 47 children… that the police can confirm anyway. It is believed that he may have killed up to 75 but no more bodies have been recovered.” He clicked onto the next slide which contained 47 little photographs of 47 smiling faces. “These are the faces of the 47 children killed by Theo Martin. Each one taken at a different time, but each one killed in exactly the same way.”

“With every single disappearance the child’s body was found within 48 hours. When the child’s body was examined it was the exact same way the previous bodies had been found. Fully dressed in the clothes they had disappeared in, but all had been freshly washed and dried by the killer. To look at the child like this, it was not immediately obvious what the cause of death was, but once the shirt was lifted the answer became apparent. Each child had the same wound on their abdomen. Two diagonal lines pointing upwards, like an arrow head, or a triangle without a bottom. Through this hole, thought to have been created with a knife or some scissors, the killer would then reach his arm inside the child and pull out every organ he could reach. It is not known what he did with the organs afterwards but it is believed that this was carried out while the child was still alive and conscious. After removing body parts to his satisfaction, he would then stuff the body with hundreds of pieces of paper. These pieces of paper would each have a number written on them. The number was thought to correspond with their victim number. So, for example, victim 34 would have hundreds of pieces of paper inside them with the number 34 written on them. As well as this, the killer would also shave off a large chunk of the child’s hair at the back of their head and carve in the same number with something sharp.”

James was quiet for a few moments after that. He looked around the class and saw that a few people were starting to look slightly pale. “If anyone needs a few minutes, I can wait before we go on?” He asked us. There was a murmur amongst the students for a few moments before we agreed to have a couple of minutes break. Some people went and filled up their water bottles or something like that, but I decided to just stay in my seat. I’ve always been so fascinated by serial killers; how could I not have heard of one as prolific as this? And from my own home town! It really did baffle me and as I was still deep in thought, I heard everyone filing back into the classroom.

“Okay, now that we’re all settled again, let’s start back up on a somewhat brighter note.” James said as the room started to quiet down again. “There was actually one known survivor of Theo Martin. No personal information, like a name, was ever disclosed to the public, but what we do know is that in 1997 he abducted a five-year-old boy from a playground whilst his unsuspecting mother chatted with other parents only a few metres away. Theo Martin then took the boy back to his basement, where it was later found that he had committed all of his previous murders, and began his gruesome routine. However, this time something was different. A passer-by heard the screams of a child coming from the house and called the police, something that had never been reported in any of the previous crimes. Had Theo made a critical mistake? We’ll never truly know. But when the police arrived, he was caught. When the police entered the basement they found a notice board with 75 scraps of blood soaked paper pinned to it, each one numbered from 1-75. They also found the boy, barely alive, with his abdomen cut open and his hair shaved off. Carved into the back of his head was the number 76. He was taken to the hospital and after a couple of operations and fighting off numerous infections, the boy was sent home, alive. It’s said that the family moved out of Hull shortly after that and to this day, no one knows any more about the boy who survived.”

James paused for a few moments again before carrying on. “Now, I wanted to do the positive part before I show you this next slide. The next thing you will see is a photograph from the police evidence. This photo is of the wounds on the body of one of the deceased children. It is pretty hard to see and if you don’t want to look at it then either turn around or close your eyes.” He said as a couple of people did in fact turn around.

He pressed the button on his controller and the next slide came on. There was a slight gasp as the photo filled the screen. It was black and white and you could see from the child’s shoulders to the top of their hips. There was a big hole exactly as James had described earlier, a few inches above the belly button. Next to this photo was another photo, this one of the back of the child’s head with the number 21 carved into their scalp. The photos were very hard to look at and my heart started racing as I realised I had an identical scar on my stomach. Whenever I had asked my mother about the scar in the past she had always told me it was from a big surgery I’d had as a child, only then was I realising she had never gone into detail and always quickly changed the subject. A thousand thoughts rushing through my mind, I started to try and piece parts of my history together, to see if it could be true…

I was five in 1997. I have the same scar as all of those dead children. We moved out of Hull that same year. Theo Martin’s face was oddly familiar to me. No, I thought. That’s ridiculous, I can’t just jump to a conclusion like that over a few coincidences.

“Henry? Are you alright?” James’ voice pierced my thoughts and brought me back to reality. At this point I realised I was sweating profusely. As I looked back at the screen, my eyes fixated on the number scratched into the back of the child’s head. If I had a scar like that on my head surely I would know about it? And then I realised that I had had thick, curly hair for as long as I could remember, I’d never even had more than a couple of centimetres cut off at the hairdressers. I had to know.

I bounded out of my seat, grabbing my bag as I launched myself out of the doors. I could hear James’ voice calling after me as I ran down the hallway. My flat was about a ten-minute walk from the campus and I ran the entire way there. When I got to my front door, I could barely get the key into the lock my hands were shaking that much. But when I finally unlocked it I threw the door open, slammed it behind me and went straight into the bathroom. I grabbed my electronic razer, bent my head over into the sink and started shaving. After shaving off most of the hair on the back of my head, I went and grabbed the hand mirror from the cabinet.

I stood in front of the mounted mirror and took a deep breath. I held the hand mirror up to my face, so I could see the back of my head and there it was in the reflection.

The number 76.