#CROSSBOW CANNIBAL SERIAL#

According to his neighbors, he would walk them around on leashes and even take them to nightclubs. In 2001, Griffiths started buying up a bunch of pet lizards, including a four-foot-long monitor lizard. A personal favorite of Griffiths was Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called “Yorkshire Ripper” who was convicted of the murder of 13 women, most of them sex workers. He began taking out a bunch of books about his favorite murders.

#CROSSBOW CANNIBAL SERIAL#

Then, in 1991, he was diagnosed as a “schizoid psychopath.” And, in 1992, he was sentenced to two years in prison for holding a knife to the throat of a young girl.Īfter he was released from prison this time, he really ramped up his interest in serial killers. Again, this is classic serial killer behavior and probably should have raised some red flags. In 1989, Griffiths was sentenced to 100 hours of community service for carrying an air pistol, which he used to kill birds that he would later dissect. But after his sentence was complete, he was released back onto the streets with limited supervision.

This probably should have been warning enough to keep Stephen Griffiths under close surveillance. While in prison, Stephen Griffiths divulged to prison guards and psychiatrists that he fantasized about being a serial killer. This offense got Griffiths sentenced to three years in youth custody. However, when he was 17 years old, Griffith used a knife to slash the face of a store clerk that tried to stop him from shoplifting. He would shoplift from stores and steal from classmates. Apparently, on at least one occasion, Stephen would watch his mother have sex with multiple men in the garden.ĭuring his teenage years, Griffiths descended into petty crime. His parents divorced when Stephen was 13, leaving him to stay with his mother, an unstable woman with a criminal record. Stephen Shaun Griffiths was born in 1969 in Yorkshire, England to his father, a frozen food salesman, and his mother, a telephonist. In my opinion, it’s this attitude toward murder that makes the story of The Crossbow Cannibal truly terrifying. Griffiths idolized serial killers the way that other people idolize famous singers or athletes.

Stephen Griffiths also seemed to be a student of serial killing, idolizing past murders, studying criminology at university, and even claiming that he wanted to become a serial killer before he ever killed.ĥ Fictional Movies People Thought Were Realįrom Horror to Comedy: 5 Found Footage Films to Add to Your Watchlistĭespite the horrific nature of his murders and cannibalism, what may have been most terrifying about Stephen Griffiths was his attitude of ruthless indifference toward human life. Plus, after he was caught killing his third victim on a CCTV camera, he proudly brandished a middle finger directly at the camera lens. In fact, he seemed proud of his actions, even giving himself the nickname “The Crossbow Cannibal” during one of his court hearings. Secondly, he showed no remorse whatsoever for what he had done after he was caught. First of all, he killed all of his victims with a crossbow. While many serial killers become infamous for the number of people that they killed, Stephen Griffiths gained his notoriety for other reasons. Stephen Griffiths, a serial killer who murdered three women in 20, preferred an equally terrifying weapon: the crossbow. Others have a signature murder weapon, like the bolt pistol (a weapon used to stun animals before slaughter) used by Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Others dress themselves up in some sort of way, such as John Wayne Gacy who became notorious for his clown costume. Some have a particular thing that they leave behind at the scene of the crime (sort of like the playing cards left behind by The Joker from the Batman series). Most serial killers that achieve worldwide infamy do so by adding some defining characteristic to their murders. This was the footage that eventually led to his arrest. During his final murder, he was caught on CCTV footage, at which point he turned around and flipped his middle finger to the camera.After killing them, Griffiths would dismember them, eat parts of their bodies, and then dispose of the other parts of their bodies in a nearby river.Stephen Griffiths of Yorkshire, England murdered three sex workers, all of them with a crossbow, between 20.

Crossbow cannibal