Anthony Hardy

In the room, the police found the naked dead body of a woman lying on a bed with cuts and bruises on her head.

Patel later came under scrutiny for this and other findings in his career, including the 2009 death of Ian Tomlinson, resulting in a suspension from the government's register of pathologists pending an inquiry.

[11] Hardy pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal damage and claimed he had no knowledge of how White came to be in his flat due to his drinking problem.

[12] On 30 December 2002, a homeless person scavenging in rubbish bins found the dismembered body parts of two women, wrapped in black plastic bin-liners.

A subsequent search of his flat found evidence, including old blood stains, indicating the two women had been killed and dismembered there.

At his trial in November 2003 Hardy, despite his initial lack of cooperation with the police, abruptly changed his plea to guilty to all three counts of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

[16][1] It was originally reported that police believed Hardy was possibly connected to the unsolved cases of two prostitutes found dismembered and dumped in the River Thames, and up to five or six other murders that bore marked similarities to the ones for which he was convicted but where not enough evidence was available directly implicating him.

[18][19] The other Thames sex worker murder that was linked to Hardy was that of Zoe Parker, who had last been seen in Hounslow in December 2000 before her dismembered torso was found in the river.

[18][20] Possible links between Hardy and the Parker case were noted in the press as soon as he was apprehended in January 2003, with detectives saying that "he is a suspect for the unsolved murders of any women whose bodies have been cut up and dumped".

[22] Investigators also asked for a woman named Carmen or Carmel to come forward as they believed she had information on the murder, saying she was apparently a friend of Parker and came from the Hounslow or Isleworth area.

[26] In 2021, police investigated if Fred the Head, an unidentified decedent found in Burton upon Trent in 1971, may have been a victim of Hardy, a theory originating in a Facebook group dedicated to identifying the body.

The 30 December discovery and resulting investigation that led to Hardy's arrest is the subject of "The Camden Ripper" episode of the podcast Scotland Yard Confidential.