Cutter - It started as an obsession with hacking hair from women's heads. It ended with murder
Regular price
€13.99
When Heather Barnett happily opened her front door to a caller one morning in November 2002, little did she know that she was about to come face to face with her killer. Tragically, her mutilated body was discovered by her son and daughter on their return home from school that day. The police quickly ascertained that the murder was premeditated and meticulously planned to the last macabre detail; the killer had not left a single DNA clue - even the bloody footprints made by a distinctive pair of trainers did not lead out of the house but ended in the front room, without further trace. As a bizarre and sickening calling card, the killer had placed a lock of someone else's hair in the victim's hand. Detectives were shocked by the savagery of the murder and baffled by the apparently sadistic ritualism of the killing. Many long months of enquiries followed and, eventually, a lead came from Interpol: the parents of a missing girl in Italy had been sent a lock of hair in the post. Could the two murders be linked and had the police just made the breakthrough they so desperately needed? In this in-depth and chilling book, acclaimed true crime writer Michael Litchfield investigates the full story of Danilo Restivo, the killer behind the murder of Heather Barnett.
Michael Litchfield is the author of several true-crime and current-affairs books. His background is rooted in investigative journalism. He worked as a crime correspondent for several national newspapers and was contracted to Time/Life magazine to investigate the Mafia's infiltration of the Bahamas government. At one stage, a contract was taken out on his life and he was smuggled out of Nassau on a cruise ship to the US, where he was kept for a time in a safe house before being repatriated. Back in the UK, his books on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and the biography of the controversial Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir James Anderton, coupled with the Northern Ireland terrorist issue, were highly acclaimed, staying for several weeks in the top ten non-fiction bestsellers' lists. His last staff newspaper appointment was as political editor in London with Northcliffe Newspapers. His most recent book for John Blake Publishing is The Murder of Lord Shaftesbury, published in 2016.