Manchester killer hid body parts in a bag in front of passersby
Nobody paid any attention as he walked down a busy street on a Tuesday afternoon. Stopping occasionally or switching hands, it seemed as if the man was carrying a heavy bag of groceries home after a trip to the supermarket.
As he made his way down Bury New Road, one of the main thoroughfares in and out of Manchester, other pedestrians minded their own business.
They had no idea that the bag, which appeared full to the brim with groceries, actually contained human body parts.
That day, Marcin Majerkiewicz was on his way to Kersal Dale.
The nature reserve is a sanctuary of greenery and wildlife, away from the hustle and bustle of nearby city life.
Popular with dog walkers, Kersal Dale was later transformed into a crime scene, and the starting point for a huge search operation which would last months.
Two days after Majerkiewicz had dumped the human remains there, they were discovered by a member of the public.
They were the lower abdomen and thighs of a person, wrapped in cling film and left in an isolated bunker.
It was the kind of area teenagers would use to drink or take drugs, or where people would fly-tip rubbish.
Although it was off the beaten track, it was an area people used.
Those remains would be discovered, sooner or later.
By April 4 last year, the day they were found, Majerkiewicz had already dumped more human remains at four other sites.
But at that time, police were unaware of this.
Kersal Dale was the first discovery, after which a murder investigation was launched.
Officers were initially unable to identify who they belonged to. DNA tests were carried out, but there were no positive matches on the police’s national database.
It left officers within Greater Manchester Police’s Major Incident Team scratching their heads.
They were left with the daunting task of catching a killer, with no identifiable victim.
Officers within the force’s Visual Evidence Retrieval and Analysis (VERA) were tasked with trawling the area with CCTV, to track any likely suspects.
Investigative support officer Stuart Hynes, one of the staff within the unit, explained his approach while giving evidence in court: "If you take Kersal Dale for example, albeit that was the first occasion, so we had nothing to go on, at that point the objectives set were any individual that is seen going into that area that appears to be carrying a heavy item or heavy bag, and then came out of that area without it."
It was only after the arrest of Majerkiewicz that police could identify the remains as belonging to 67-year-old Stuart Everett.
He had been picked out by the VERA unit as a suspect on CCT. On April 25, VERA officers were out in the field carrying out CCTV enquiries when by chance they noticed a man who fit with the profile of the suspect identified on CCTV.
This astonishing coincidence, coupled with the diligence and vigilance of the officers, gave police a huge breakthrough.
That first discovery in Kersal Dale marked the start of an incredible search operation which lasted 110 days.
GMP opened 19 crime scenes in properties, on land and over water. Evidence was recovered from 15 sites. Human remains were recovered from five locations, including Kersal Dale, Linnyshaw Colliery Woods and Blackleach Country Park in Walkden, land off Chesterfield Close in Winton and Boggart Hole Clough in Blackley.
Other areas, including Buile Hill Park and Parr Fold Park, were identified as suspected ‘deposition sites’, but no body parts were discovered there. A black bin bag containing Stuart’s blood was found at a sixth site, in Worsley Woods. A hacksaw was also found in the water at Blackleach Country Park.
Working backwards and guided by CCTV, officers began to track Majerkiewicz’s movements. New searches were ordered at sites he had been seen close to, carrying a bag. Footage from over a two-month period was analysed to check where he had been. It all began with the footage on April 2, showing Majerkiewicz as he made his way to Kersal Dale.
Det Supt Lewis Hughes told reporters: "As crude as it sounds, we had a working hypothesis that a ’heavy bag man’ must have taken the body parts to the woodland.
“The torso that was recovered weighed 12kg. So someone would have had a struggle carrying such a large portion of remains to the woodland. We seized a ring of CCTV footage from around the woodland."
Footage showed Majerkiewicz emerge from Kersal Dale empty-handed. Working backwards, officers pieced together his movements and identified locations of interest. They discovered that Majerkiewicz had made two trips to ‘deposition sites’ in the hours after he had murdered Stuart.
One was to Worsley Woods, a short trip from the home he had shared with his victim, where a bin bag containing Stuart’s blood was found. No body parts were discovered there.
Later that day, Majerkiewicz was seen carrying a ’large blue bag’ away from Worsley Road to the area near Chesterfield Close.
Nine packages of body parts were recovered, including internal organs such as Stuart’s heart, kidney, lungs, and his genitalia. The following day, on March 29, he took the bus to Blackley, carrying further human remains which he dumped in Boggart Hole Clough.
Police spent more than 10 days scouring the site, finding a section of Stuart’s spinal column. But Majerkiewicz had more to do that day.
He took the bus back to Salford, again using the bus to travel to Linnyshaw Colliery Woods. Another significant find was made there. Stuart’s skin, a section of his forearm, the left side of his chest wall, part of his upper arm area, a partial diaphragm, and his larynx were discovered there wrapped in cling film.
The front and back of a skull and some skin was subsequently discovered there. A hacksaw was found in the water containing Stuart Everett’s DNA. A few days later, Majerkiewicz made the trip to Kersal Dale, the fifth and final location where body parts were discovered.
Only a third of Stuart Everett’s body has ever been recovered, despite the huge search conducted by police. Majerkiewicz casually transported dismembered body parts on our streets, using our public transport network.
It was on the bus that Majerkiewicz was eventually caught, a stroke of luck for police after a painstaking trawl of thousands of hours of CCTV footage. Having recognised their suspect from that footage, officers struck.
Having hidde in plain sight for so long, the game was finally up.
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