Yahoo News Moment triple killer who raped and killed pregnant woman is arrested while sleeping in stolen car
Watch: Moment triple killer who raped and killed pregnant woman is arrested while sleeping in stolen car
This is the moment a heroin addict who murdered a mother, her son and a pregnant woman over a six-day killing spree was caught by armed police while sleeping in a stolen car.
Video footage shows officers descending on the car, smashing its windows to get to Anthony Russell, who was asleep inside.
The moment was the culmination of a huge manhunt for Russell, from Coventry, following his "callous and calculated campaign of crime" between 25 and 29 October 2020.
Russell first murdered David Williams, 32, at his flat in Coventry by strangling him with a lanyard and leaving him with 81 injuries before attacking his mother 24 hours later.
He strangled Julie Williams, 58, using a cable from a broken fan and leaving her with 113 separate injuries.
Russell fled from Coventry to nearby Leamington Spa, where he went on to befriend pregnant Nicole McGregor, 32, luring her to woodland in Newbold Comyn Park before raping and murdering her.
A court heard Russell strangled McGregor with her own leggings before her body was found dumped by a river with twigs, leaves and a piece of wood stuffed in her mouth.
The six-day spree sparked one of the biggest manhunts in the history of West Midlands Police, which worked with neighbouring police forces to find the killer.
He was eventually found in the village of Rolleston-on-Dove, Staffordshire on 30 October in a car he had stolen.
Russell admitted the three murders, as well as the three robberies and wounding of the carjacking victim and his week was found guilty of raping McGregor on the day he killed her.
Speaking ahead of his sentencing at Warwick Crown Court, Detective Superintendent Shaun Edwards, said: "This was an appalling series of violent attacks.
"Don't lose sight that at the heart of this - that there are three people who lost their lives and three people who were subject to violent robberies and again, left for dead.
"Each of these, in their own way, were vulnerable people, due to mental health, due to illness, due to age."
He added: "He was an extremely dangerous man, he used extreme violence in all of the offences," the leading officer said.
"He has shown no remorse - indeed when he was questioned by the police, he would not be interviewed, he held a blanket over his head and would not engage with the officers interviewing him."
