Philip John Smith (born 10 July 1965) is an English spree killer serving a life sentence for the murders of three women in Birmingham in November 2000.

Smith's first victim was Jodie Hyde, a recovering butane gas addict whom he met at the Rainbow before killing her hours later.

The murder inquiry, named Operation Green, uncovered a large quantity of strong evidence incriminating Smith, but at first he denied responsibility.

He maintained his innocence as his trial began in July 2001, but later in the proceedings changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The motive for his crimes was unclear, but police who arrested him believed that a "lack of permanent sexual relations" was a contributing factor.

He left school at age 14 to join his father's new employer, Billy Danter's Funfair, which toured extensively throughout the UK.

[4] At 6 ft 4 in and weighing 22 stone, with a dishevelled appearance and a soft West Country accent, Smith was considered gentle by those he met.

"[1] On 8 November 2000, Smith met 21-year-old Jodie Hyde, a recovering butane gas addict from Alum Rock, at the Rainbow pub, and they were seen leaving together.

Prosecutors believed that he strangled her at his flat[6] and dumped her body near a recreation ground near Golden Hillock Road in Sparkbrook, where he set it alight.

[1][5][7] Smith's third victim was Carol Jordan, a 39-year-old care home worker and mother of six from Balsall Heath,[5] who was killed as she walked to work.

When staff at the Rainbow pub told Smith of Corcoran's disappearance on 13 November, he telephoned the police station at Castle Vale saying that he wished to give a statement.

Significantly, his call came at 4:00 pm, before the body found in Worcestershire had been positively identified as Corcoran's, and within an hour Smith had presented himself at Castle Vale.

Detective Constable Ruth Wilkins later recalled Smith's phone call: "He said he would like to come to the police station to help with the inquiry and that he had seen [Corcoran] on Saturday night leave the pub with an unknown man.

[5] On the opening day of the trial, Raggatt told the Court there was "powerful and compelling" scientific evidence linking Smith to the killings.

[5] On 17 July, Smith complained of feeling unwell with chest and eye pain while under cross-examination,[11] and proceedings were briefly halted while he was treated for the symptoms of a panic attack.

[12][13] In January 2005, Birmingham's Sunday Mercury newspaper reported that Smith had decided to change his plea after police agreed to return £400 confiscated from him during a raid on his flat after his arrest, and that he wanted the money to buy Mars bars in prison.

You should clearly have faced up like a man at the overwhelming nature of the Crown's case against you but you chose to put the victims' families through misery which you compounded by this trial."

The motive for Smith's actions remained unclear after the trial, but police believed a "lack of permanent sexual relations" had been a contributing factor.

[12] As a result of their inquiries into Smith's background, police launched an investigation into the death of a fourth woman who was discovered to have had links to him.

[15] On 23 October 2000, while she was employed at the Rainbow pub as a cleaner and to look after the licensee's children,[16] she was found dead in the bedroom of her flat on Maxstoke Street, Bordesley Green.

In early 2001, investigators asked the Irish authorities for a new post mortem, and on 8 March Lynott's body was exhumed by Gardai from a cemetery in Athlone and taken to the city morgue in Dublin for further examination by Ireland's State Pathologist, Dr John Harbison.

The hearing was told that marks found on her back and an arm may have been bruising, but the pathologist who conducted the original post mortem could not be sure how she had died, because her body had lain undiscovered for up to seven days.

[16] Police also conducted a routine re-examination of other unsolved murder cases dating back 20 years in areas where Smith had lived.