[6] Stephen Shaun Griffiths (born 24 December 1969 in Dewsbury, West Riding of Yorkshire), at the time a semi-professional postgraduate student in criminology,[7] was arrested and in May 2010 he appeared in the magistrates' court, giving his name as "the Crossbow Cannibal.
[10] He made a second appearance at the Crown Court on 7 June via a video link from Wakefield Prison where a trial date of 16 November 2010 was set.
[16][17] Griffiths' criminal history included a three-year sentence, when aged 17, for an unprovoked knife attack on a supermarket manager.
[18] In 1991, he was diagnosed as a "schizoid psychopath" and the following year received a two-year prison sentence for holding a knife to the throat of a girl.
[20] The police contacted the housing association which owns the flat in which Griffiths lived after he was observed reading books on dismemberment.
Later, aides close to Cameron strongly insisted he was concerned with addressing the social problems surrounding it such as encouraging agencies to work together to help women off the streets or to combat drug addiction.
[23] When he was arrested and interviewed by police in 2010, Griffiths claimed to officers to have killed a total of five sex workers in Bradford, suggesting there were two additional victims unaccounted for.
[24] When Griffiths was first arrested for the murders in May 2010, detectives immediately investigated possible links to the 2001 murder of 19-year-old Bradford prostitute Rebecca Hall, who had been found dead in a car park 870 yards (800 m) from Griffiths' Holmfield Court flat (the same address which he was living at during his killing spree in 2009 and 2010).
[27] His former partner at the time revealed that Griffiths had excitedly taken her to the place where her body had been found, and also said that the car park was next to his doctor's surgery and pharmacy.