How a terrifying discovery on a farm led police to the ‘Jigsaw Killer’

‘Is the killer playing a game?’ asked the front page of the Hertfordshire Mercury newspaper on April 10, 2009. It had been an unsettling month for locals, to say the least.

First, there was the leg. The limb, severed at the thigh, was discovered wrapped in blue plastic a few weeks earlier in the small Hertfordshire village of Cottered. Stuffed into a green Gullivers holdall, it was found by Roger Kingsley, of the nearby Lodge Farm. The 52-year-old had told the Mercury: ‘It was all wrapped up in plastic. I didn’t open the plastic but it was then I realised it was either a joint of meat or something a lot worse.’

Next, on March 29, an arm, severed at the wrist, was discovered by dog walkers on Drovers Lane in Wheathampstead, also in Hertfordshire. Two days later, police were called to a field near Ashfordby in Leicestershire after a farmer found a human head. Its eyes, ears and nose had been removed.

A week after that, another leg was unearthed by terrified East Herts Council pest control officer Kevin Richardson as he worked at a layby on the A10, between Buntingford and Puckeridge. 

Finally, on April 11, a farmer rang the police after spotting a ‘suspicious suitcase’ in a ditch in Colliers End, Hertfordshire. It contained a decomposing torso with a clear stab wound to the back.

The newspapers branded the unknown male victim as ‘the Jigsaw Man’ and his mysterious murderer ‘The Jigsaw Killer.’ 

There was no DNA match to be found; whoever had been slaughtered was not previously known to police. But detectives could deduce some things, such as the fact the victim was white, suffered from eczema and had a fungal infection on his toe. They held a police conference to detail their findings. A man got in touch to say that his brother, who was not answering calls, matched the description given by officers.

Kitchen salesman Jeffrey Howe hadn’t been seen by friends or family since early March. Bank statements showed he had purchased gin, tonic water and washing up liquid on March 8 from a Sainsbury’s near his home. Jeffrey had made no further transactions since then.

The 49-year Manchester United fan lived at Fernwood Court, on Pickard Close, in Southgate, London where personal trainer Stephen Marshall, 38, and sex worker Sarah Bush, 21, also stayed. When police came knocking, the couple claimed Jeffrey had ‘packed up and left.’

Detectives thought otherwise and suspected that Howe, originally from Reading, had been killed for monetary gain, as Marshall and Bush had used his bank card to make several purchases – such as takeaway pizzas and Indian takeout – since he ‘vanished’. 

One the body was identified Jeffrey’s brother, who was not named by police, issued a tribute to his sibling which read: ‘Jeffrey was an extremely caring son. He was a jovial, charming character who had a heart of gold and would get on with anyone. He could be a little selfish sometimes but did what he thought was best.’

Police arrested Marshall and Bush on April 23, 2009. Soon, jigsaw pieces began to form together and tell the horrific story of what had led Jeffrey Howe’s body parts to be scattered across Hertfordshire and its neighbouring counties. 

The trial against Marshall and Bush began on January 12, 2010. Prosecutor Stuart Trimmer, who at the time lived in Surrey, remembers the case like it was yesterday.

‘I’ve done a series of body parts murders and this was one of them,’ he tells Metro from his home in Canterbury, Kent. ‘Stephan Marshall was a big, bulky man. He was difficult, I know his counsel had a great deal of trouble with him. Sarah Bush meanwhile was a sad character who associated herself with the wrong people. 

Jeffrey Howe was an undocumented individual who was a salesman who had unfortunately encountered Stephen Marshall. He [Marshall] had an eye for “weak” people and managed to find his way into the Southgate flat and take over.’ 

Marshall had met Jeffrey through work and the kitchen salesman offered him and Bush a place to stay in November 2008. But 29-year-old Jeffrey later confessed to friends that the pair were not paying rent and were stealing his food. 

Marshall had stabbed Jeffrey twice and Bush had helped him clean up the scene and dispose of the body parts. Together, the pair then planned to live in his flat for free and plunder their victim’s bank account. The motive was simply greed, the jury was told. 

On March 9, the morning after Howe was killed, Marshall texted his boss to say: ‘Jus Letting u no I need 2day off c u 2moro’. Receipts at nearby shops proved Marshall and Bush had bought a mop and cleaning supplies that day.

In the days after he was killed, Jeffrey’s Saab car had been sold on eBay, while both defendants had emptied his bank account by forging cheques. Marshall ordered food, while Bush set up a Cineworld and a Littlewoods account with Howe’s card.

Witnesses’ testimonies, such as neighbours and friends of Jeffrey Howe, helped pinpoint the date he went missing. Friends of Bush then claimed she drunkenly told them she had been there when Howe was killed and saw Marshall put a pillow over his face to stop the noise.

Stuart continues: ‘This was a very unpleasant murder. A striking thing was the way Stephen Marshall dismembered Jeffrey Howe. He didn’t cut any bones, he cut around the joints if he could manage it. None of the bones were damaged. We had a very senior expert come down from Edinburgh and, in response to how Jeffrey Howe’s body had been cut up, he said “if my students had done it [this way] in a dissection, I would have given them a merit.”

‘When it came to the trial, Marshall had claimed Jeffrey Howe had raped Bush and that’s how the violence had come about. But Bush said something completely different. She said she happened upon Marshall killing Jeffrey. After his death, they took his home and sold his car and phone. These transactions proved to be important evidence.’

Traces of Jeffrey’s blood had been discovered in the Southgate flat. Marshall and Bush had made an effort to clean the murder scene with bleach, but officers had sprayed luminol on the tiles and discovered flecks of blood on the bath and sink.

Once evidence mounted up against him, Marshall admitted having butchered the bodies of four other men while working as a doorman for a London nightclub run by the notorious Adams family in the 1990s. This was how he’d become so well versed with human anatomy.

The court heard that Marshall had run a gym in Hertfordshire  where he was said to have made several high-up connections with London’s criminal underworld. The killer claimed to have ‘dealt with’ people and hid their corpses in the Epping Forest in Essex. It is somewhere within the vast green space, where trees tower over quiet paths and smaller trails wind into darkness, that Jeffrey Howe’s missing hands are thought to be buried. 

Stuart, 70, adds: ‘A policeman who was working on me with me on the trial said they knew people did this sort of thing in Epping Forest because it’s the right kind of place to dispose of bodies. It’s dense and boggy. But the police weren’t going to turn the whole place over.’

On February 1, 2010 – after changing his plea from not guilty to guilty – Marshall was jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 36 years for the murder of Jeffrey Howe. Bush meanwhile was jailed for three years and three months for her role in disposing of Mr Howe’s body and perverting the course of justice.  

For Stuart, who was first called to the bar in 1977 after studying law at the Polytechnic of North London, he was proud to have articulated his evidence well enough to convince the court of Marshall and Bush’s guilt. The case left such an impression on the barrister that he bought a court sketch [cameras aren’t allowed inside] from the proceedings which now hangs in his hallway. He admits it’s quite the conversation starter.

Chillingly, the Jigsaw Murders were not Stuart’s only case which involved a dismembered body. Two months after Jeffrey Howe’s remains were discovered in Hertfordshire and its surrounding counties, a body had been found in a lake in Arsley, Bedfordshire which had no head, hands or right arm. It later emerged to be that of Michael Gilbert, a 26-year-old who was kept as a slave by his cruel family who stole his benefits and made him sleep handcuffed to a bed. The case became known as the ‘Blue Lagoon murder’ and Stuart secured the prosecution of four of Michael’s family members who had had a hand in his tragic death.

With his legal career now coming to a close, 70-year-old Stuart has taken countless juries through shocking trials, such as the prosecution of a man who murdered his wife, children’s author Helen Bailey, then burnt and buried her body.

Now in the process of retiring, he admits that, ultimately, he learned to switch off from the tragic and grisly details of the cases he presided over. He focused on building his case and seeking justice.

‘You get entirely detached from that,’ says Stuart. ‘All you focus on is finding the next piece of evidence. The wider horrific picture doesn’t affect you. You just look for a good outcome – a successful prosecution.’

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

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