[2] His second victim was Janet Cockett, 67, who died on 9 June 1986 after being strangled in her flat on the Wandsworth housing estate on which she was chairwoman of the tenants' association.
He later broke into the residence of an elderly man, but Erskine abandoned this burglary when a noise disturbed him enough to make him flee.
[2] On 28 June 1986, Erskine killed his third and fourth victims at a residential home in Stockwell,[2] one of them a World War II veteran:[4] Valentine Gleim, 84, and Zbigniew Strabawa, 94.
He claimed his sixth victim on 21 July 1986, when he similarly attacked 74-year-old William Downes in a Stockwell bedsit.
Erskine's burglary convictions before and during this killing spree meant that his fingerprints and photographs were on police records.
In 1988 he was transferred from prison under sections 47/49 of the Mental Health Act 1983 to the maximum security Broadmoor Hospital and has been held there since then.
[citation needed] A report by Horne dated 17 March 2006 refers to an assessment of Erskine in September 2004.
Horne concludes that, at the time of the assessment, Erskine had chronic schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder and that this had probably been the case since March 1980.
[9] In July 2009, following an appeal, Erskine's murder convictions were reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Sutcliffe was attacked in his room in Broadmoor Hospital's Henley Ward by Paul Wilson, a convicted robber, who asked to borrow a videotape before attempting to strangle him with the cable from a pair of stereo headphones.