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Philip John Smith (born 10 July 1965, Gloucester, England) is a British spree killer serving a life sentence for the murders of three women in Birmingham. A former fairground worker employed at the Rainbow public house in the Digbeth area of the city, Smith killed his victims over a four-day period in November 2000, befriending two of them at the Rainbow before carrying out the crimes. All three victims were mutilated almost beyond recognition, but Smith was quickly identified as the killer because of the overwhelming evidence linking him to the deaths. Smith's first victim was Jodie Hyde, a recovering butane gas addict whom he met at the Rainbow before killing her hours later. He is thought to have strangled her before setting her body on fire near a recreation ground. Three days later, he met mother-of-three Rosemary Corcoran at the same public house and drove her to a rural location, where he bludgeoned her to death and drove over the body. Then, as he drove home, he hit care worker Carol Jordan with his car and, fearing capture, beat her to death. All three bodies were discovered soon after the murders were carried out. Smith was apprehended after he contacted West Midlands Police saying that he wished to make a statement about Corcoran's disappearance. At the time, however, her body had not been positively identified, and inquiries quickly established that some aspects of his account were false. The murder inquiry, named Operation Green, uncovered a large quantity of strong evidence incriminating Smith, but at first he denied responsibility. He maintained his innocence as his trial began in July 2001, but later in the proceedings he changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The motive for his crimes was unclear, but police who arrested him believed that a "lack of permanent sexual relations" was a contributing factor. Detectives also investigated the death of a woman who had been a colleague of Smith at the Rainbow. Patricia Lynott, a divorced mother of two from Ireland who had moved to Birmingham, had been found dead in her flat in October 2000. Police had not treated the death as suspicious, but after they discovered her connection to Smith, her body was exhumed for a second post mortem. This proved to be inconclusive, and in January 2003 a coroner's jury in Birmingham recorded an open verdict after hearing that the cause of her death could not be determined. ==Background== Philip John Smith was born in 1965 at the City Maternity Hospital in Gloucester and grew up in the city. The son of sawmill labourer Henry John Smith and his wife Rose Smith (née Luckins), he was the oldest of five siblings. The family lived in Midland Road, where they were neighbours of serial killers Fred and Rosemary West, before moving to Hailes Road on the Coney Hill Estate in 1971.〔 He attended Coney Hill Infants and Junior School and later went to a special school for children with learning difficulties. The family had a modest income, and their situation became worse when Smith's father was injured in a motoring accident.〔 Smith left school at 14 to join Billy Danter's Funfair, which toured extensively throughout the United Kingdom and also employed his father.〔 He worked out of season as a farmhand, labourer and security guard.〔 Smith moved from Gloucester to Tewkesbury and then Ross-on-Wye, where he lived with a female partner. They had a son in 1990 and two more children in 1992, but Smith left the family and moved to Cardiff when the relationship became difficult.〔 He then spent a year in Ireland lodging with a travelling family who took pity on him while he was hitchhiking in Athlone, County Westmeath, Ireland. He told them he was an English gypsy visiting Ireland, and they allowed him to live rent-free in a spare caravan, while he contributed a portion of his unemployment benefit towards food. They asked him to leave because they were uncomfortable about sexual remarks he had made to young female members of the family. He moved to Birmingham towards the end of 1999 and stayed briefly at the Trinity Centre, a hostel for the homeless in Digbeth, before moving to a property managed by a housing association in Braithwaite Road in the Sparkbrook district of Birmingham. He became well-known locally and was a regular patron of the Shamrock Cafe on Stratford Road and of the Rainbow pub in Digbeth, where he was employed on a casual basis as an odd-jobber and served as an unofficial taxi driver for drinkers.〔 Smith received over 30 criminal convictions for minor offences, beginning in May 1984 when he was fined £100 for theft. His record also included handling stolen goods, burglary and driving without a licence, but no violence. At and weighing 22 stone, with a dishevelled appearance and a soft West Country accent, he was considered gentle by those he met. In an interview with the ''Birmingham Evening Mail'' following Smith's trial in July 2001, Jim Smith, proprietor of the Shamrock Cafe, said, "He was a gentle giant who we named 'Bigfoot' because his boots always used to leave black marks on the floor. Ninety-nine per cent of the time he had a dirty appearance and looked like he had been working on a car."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Philip Smith (criminal)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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