William MacDonald (17 June 1924 – 12 May 2015) was an English serial killer responsible for the murders of five people in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales between 1961 and 1962.
Between 1961 and 1962, MacDonald terrorised Sydney, committing a string of gruesome murders before being apprehended while working as a porter at Melbourne's Spencer Street railway station on 13 May 1963.
[1][2] His modus operandi was to select his male victims at random (mostly derelicts), lure them into a dark place, violently punch and stab them with a long bladed knife dozens of times about the head and neck, and finally sever their genitals.
The Ginsbergs were reportedly wealthy and well-to-do, but MacDonald was considered anti-social from an early age and emotionally neglected by his parents.
Discharged from the army in 1947, he was diagnosed as having schizophrenia and committed for several months to a mental asylum where daily he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy.
[7] He found accommodation in East Sydney, where he became well known in the parks and public toilets that were surreptitious meeting places for homosexual men, due to the criminalisation of same-sex sexual activity.
[5] MacDonald befriended a 63-year-old man named Amos Hugh Hurst[9] outside the Roma Street Railway Station.
MacDonald offered Greenfield a drink and lured him to the nearby Domain Baths on the pretext of providing more alcohol.
[7] MacDonald waited until Greenfield fell asleep, then removed his knife from its sheath and stabbed him approximately 30 times.
MacDonald then pulled down Greenfield's trousers and underwear, severed his genitals, put them in a plastic bag and threw them into Sydney Harbour.
[citation needed] On 31 March 1962, in suburban Darlinghurst, New South Wales, the mortally wounded Frank Gladstone McLean was found by a man walking with his wife and young child.
That night MacDonald left the Oxford Hotel in Darlinghurst and followed McLean down Bourke Street past the local police station.
[16] He then pulled down McLean's trousers, sliced off his genitals and put them into a plastic bag which he took home and disposed of the next day.
[citation needed] After being dismissed from his job at the local post office, where he had been hired as a letter sorter under the assumed name of Alan Edward Brennan, MacDonald went into business for himself.
[1] On the night of Saturday 6 June 1962, MacDonald went to a wine saloon in Pitt Street, Sydney, where he met 37-year-old Patrick Joseph Hackett,[17] a thief and derelict who had just recently been released from prison.
After the first blow, Hackett woke up and tried to shield himself, pushing the knife back into MacDonald's other hand and cutting it severely.
[7] MacDonald then unleashed a renewed attack, eventually striking the knife into Hackett's heart, killing him instantly.
An autopsy determined that the body was of someone in their forties, which tallied with records of the missing shop owner, Brennan (MacDonald's alias).
In late July, the police had still made no connection between the case and the three previous Mutilator killings,[18] and had profiled the killer as operating in Sydney's inner eastern suburbs, which were many miles distant from Concord.
Returning to Sydney, he met former workmate John McCarthy, who said, "I believed you had died," at which MacDonald replied, "Leave me alone," and ran away,[16] travelling to Melbourne soon after.
A man with schizophrenia, MacDonald said that he heard voices in his head telling him that his victims were the corporal who raped him as a teenager.
He told the court of how blood had sprayed over his raincoat as he castrated his victims, put their private parts into plastic bags and took them home.
The jury chose to ignore overwhelming evidence for insanity in handing down a 'guilty' verdict, which amazed expert psychiatrists.
[22] Before passing sentence, Justice McLennan said that this was the most barbaric case of murder and total disregard for human life that had come before him in his many years on the bench.