How a simple cup of tea became a serial killer’s deadly weapon

One victim's skin peeled off after an attack.

‘Guilty,’ proclaimed a jury at St Alban’s Crown Court in Hertfordshire on Thursday, June 29, 1972.

Over nine days, the men and women had heard in shocking detail how Graham Young murdered two colleagues and attempted to kill others with lethal doses of poison.

But the jury had one more shock in store. Once proceedings were over [a jury is not allowed to know of previous convictions during a trial] they were informed that Young’s morbid fascination with death was nothing new. The 24-year-old had attempted to murder several people with poison as a teenage boy. The authorities knew, but through a ‘tragic error’ had let Young be freed to fulfill his sick fantasies once more.

A serial killer is born

Born in Neasden, London on September 7 1947, Young was obsessed with toxicology, Adolf Hitler and black magic from a young age. He was known as the ‘Mad Professor’ by classmates and often wore a swastika on his shirt. The twisted schoolboy initially stole poison from his school and killed wild frogs and his pet cat with his concoctions.

He began to target humans in 1961 which was, ironically, when Agatha Christie released her novel ‘Pale Horse’ in which a killer poisons their victims.

By February 1961, many of Young’s family members had fallen ill after drinking cups of tea. His father developed stomach cramps, his sister had hallucinations and his stepmother vomited repeatedly. Young’s aunt, aware of the teenager’s collection of toxicology books, and his teacher, who found poison stashed in his desks, alerted the authorities. 

Young was arrested on May 23, 1962 and admitted to poisoning his father, stepmother, sister and a school friend. He also directed police to his stash of poisons hidden by the Welsh Harp Reservoir in Brent.

The teenager said his determination to poison people ‘grew… like a drug habit’ and that he relished the ‘power’ he experienced in each instance. Dr Christopher Fysh, the psychiatrist who examined him, noted the boy had failed ‘to develop a normal moral sense’ and warned it was ‘extremely likely’ he would re-offend.  

As it was, Young was sent to Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, a facility for serious criminals with mental illnesses, where he became the youngest inmate in its history. The 14-year-old’s own family said he should ‘never’ be granted freedom.

However, in 1970, Broadmoor psychiatrist Edgar Udwin suggested it was time for Young to have a second chance, as he was ‘no longer obsessed with poisons, violence and mischief’ and ‘no longer a danger to others.’ They were words that would carry a deadly weight, as Young was then released from Broadmoor in 1971 after eight years there.

It later emerged he had told a nurse; ‘When I get out, I’m going to kill one person for every year I’ve spent in this place.’

The teacup poisoner returns

Young, now 23, moved to a grotty bedsit in Hemel Hempstead. He stole a scrap of notepaper from the nearby Bedford College and headed to a chemist where he bought 25 g of antimony potassium tartrate [of which a strong dose can cause heart attacks] by claiming he was a student who needed the substance for a study.

In February 1971 Young relocated to a hostel in Cippenham, on the outskirts of Slough. There, he attended a training course where he learned how to keep inventories of items and companies. He befriended 34-year-old Trevor Sparkes at his hostel and snuck poison into a glass of his water. The other man fell violently ill with diarrhea and a strange pain in his testicles.

He tried to treat the pain with milk of magnesia, an over-the-counter treatment for stomach issues. Sparkes left Slough in April and made what he thought was a miraculous recovery from his strange illness, only to find out months later – ahead of Young’s trial – that he’d been targeted by a serial killer and narrowly survived. 

The mysterious ‘Bovington Bug’ 

After completing his training course, Young got a job at John Hadland Laboratories in Bovington working as an assistant storekeeper. His employers didn’t know he was a convicted poisoner and Young claimed the large gap on his CV was due to a nervous breakdown. Within months of his arrival, workers across the company were struck down by an illness which soon became known as the ‘Bovington Bug’. Young’s duties were varied, but one role he had was pushing the tea trolley.

Bob Egle, a storeroom manager at the laboratories and World War Two veteran, was one of first people secretly poisoned by Young. The 59-year-old was rushed to St Albans City Hospital in June 1971 after his body suddenly went numb. He died on July 7 and his autopsy report listed the cause of death as Guillain–Barré syndrome, a rare auto-immne condition. At Bob’s funeral, Young expressed to a colleague how sad it was that the war hero ‘should come through the terrors of Dunkirk only to fall victim to some strange virus’.

Now, Young was a killer hiding in plain sight. He stalked the corridors of John Hadland Laboratories and searched for mugs to sprinkle thallium into. One of his victims, a colleague called David Tilson, survived but lost his hair and developed erectile dysfunction.

A similar fate was suffered by Jethro Batt, a 39-year-old who commuted to Bovington from Harlow in Essex, and would often give Young a lift. Like Tilson, when Batt ‘caught the bug’, he became impotent and lost his hair, a series of incidents which left him suicidal for a period of time. In a rare moment of reflection at the time, Young wrote in his diary he ‘felt rather ashamed’ and had some regret over the attack on his travel companion. 

Diane Smart, another colleague, was another victim; whose poisoning led her body to emit a strange odour. So bad was the stench, her husband refused to sleep in the same bed as her.

Fred Biggs, 60, was the next worker to fall victim to the mysterious sickness. He suffered severe chest pains and struggled to walk. Young wrote in his diary: ‘I have administered a fatal dose of the special compound… it seems a shame to condemn such a likeable man to such a horrible end… he is doomed to premature decease… it will remove one more casualty from the crowded field of battle’. At hospital, Fred’s skin began to peel off and he became unable to speak. 20 days after he’d been administered the poison, Biggs died on November 19, 1971. 

The killer is unmasked

By this point, bosses at John Hadland Laboratories had launched an investigation into the ‘Bovington Bug.’ Young never seemed to be struck down by sickness, it was noted. His interest in toxicology was reported by several colleagues and it soon emerged that the ‘bug’ began to circulate when he had joined the company. A background check was soon ordered, which revealed his shocking criminal past.

Young, 24 by this point, was arrested on November 20, 1971 – just 24 hours after Fred Biggs had passed away. 

As he was led away by police, the killer asked; ‘which one is it you’re doing me for?’ It didn’t take long to prove his guilt; bottles, thials and tubes of poison were discovered at his home in Hemel Hempstead alongside a diary which detailed each dose administered. When detectives asked why he had targeted his colleagues, Young said: ‘I suppose I had ceased to see them as a people – at least, a part of me had. They were simply guinea pigs.’ 

At court, Young cruelly pleaded not guilty and claimed he’d made his initial confessions to get the police off his back. Susan Nowak, a court reporter for the Watford Observer, later said: ‘He was clearly a very intelligent fellow, but he also came across as incredibly creepy. You didn’t want to make eye contact with him because he just had this unnerving aura about him.’

Once the trial concluded, the jury took less than two hours to find Young guilty of two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and two counts of administering poison with intent to injure. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. 

‘You looked at the jury’ Susan later said, ‘and the blood drained from their faces when they heard about his previous convictions.’

Once behind bars, Young befriended infamous Moors murderer Ian Brady and the pair bonded over their interest in Nazi Germany. The latter murderer said he empathised with the tea-cup killer, and thought the younger man was ‘genuinely asexual’ and that ‘power and death were his aphrodisiacs.’

Young died in HM Prison Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight on August 1, 1990 aged 42 and the cause of death was put down to a heart attack. However, several theories suggest he was murdered – by a fellow prisoner or even a prison guard – as people were so fearful he’d find a way to poison him. Criminologist David Wilson suggested otherwise, and suggested Young died ‘by gaining access to whatever poison he was able to find. Poisons that he would be able to kill himself with.’

Young lives on in infamy

Today, you can ‘see’ Young in London, if you’re brave enough. A waxwork of his body can be found in Madam Tussauds Chambers of Horrors; an exhibition of notorious murderers. The serial killer’s story led to several true crime books and also inspired the 1995 film ‘The Young Poisoner’s Handbook’ starring Hugh O’Conor and Ruth Sheen.

The teacup murders also had a huge impact on how mentally ill prisoners were treated. Sir Arthur Irvine, Young’s own defence lawyer, had told his client’s trial: ‘It was only possible for Graham Young to commit these offences because he had been released on licence. The authorities had a duty to protect Young from himself as well as a duty to protect the public.’ 

As a result of the case, it was decided that no patient was to be discharged from a prison facility without recommendations from two psychiatrists. The Poisons Act 1972 was also created to restrict and control the sale of poisons.

The late Lord Hailsham, who spoke during a House of Commons debate on the treatment of prisoners after Young was convicted, said the case was ‘unique in the history of forensic medicine.’

He added: ‘This goes to show how extraordinary mental disease can be and how much it can be coupled with considerable ingenuity.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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