At 1.20 local time, Scripps boarded Gulf Air Flight GF 153, destination Muscat

in the Sultanate of Oman. On arrival he proceeded to the transit area of Seeb

International Airport to await his connecting flight to Heathrow, London. He

was travelling on a UK passport issued in the name of Jesse Robert Bolah. This

travel document, #348572V had been stolen.

While killing time, in an airport bar, he met Christopher Davis, and the two

men conversed as they waited for their flight. As Scripps prepared to board

Flight GF 011 to London, he was subjected to a routine security check, which

included a body frisk. Police Corporal Saeed Mubarak of the Royal Oman

Police, found two packages wrapped in red tape in his pockets. Thinking that the

packages might contain explosives, he summoned assistance from Inspector

Saeed Sobait. The two police officers went through Scripps’s hand baggage

where they discovered a larger packet containing white powder. The dilemma

for the authorities was that, the white powder could not be tested without

detaining the passenger. It was therefore decided to give one of the packets,

which, as it later turned out, contained 50g of diamorphine, and the passport to

the captain. Scripps was then allowed to proceed to London, effectively under

detention and the responsibility of the Gulf Air flight crew.

Scripps nervously boarded the Tri-Star aircraft and settled into seat 39H. Mid-

way through the flight, schoolteacher Gareth Russell, sitting in 39K, noticed his

fellow passenger drop something on the floor and kick it under the seat.

As soon as the aircraft entered British airspace, the pilot contacted HM

Customs & Excise and, moments after the plane had taxied to a stop, a rummage

team headed by David Clark boarded the aircraft. The packet, which Scripps had

kicked under seat, was found. After a field test for opiates had proved positive,

he was charged under Section 3(1) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, contrary to

Section 170(2) of the Customs & Excise Management Act 1979.

John Scripps was held in custody that night to allow Customs and police

officers to search 6 Gordon Road, Farnborough, where he stayed, with his uncle,

Ronald White. A folder of documents was found, containing a West German passport, in the name of Robert Alfred Wagner and a Belgian identity card, in

the name of Benjamin George Edmond Stanislas Balthier, with Scripps’s

photograph attached to it. The men named in these documents had been reported

missing, many years previously, and there has been no trace of them since.

Later that day, Scripps was interviewed again, and he was asked how he

earned his money, how he could afford to travel all over the world, and how he

could afford a very expensive Samsonite suitcase. He cockily replied, ‘It may be

very expensive to you, but it isn’t to me. If you can’t afford a suitcase like this,

it’s because you’re working as minor subservients of the State for a standard

wage, and you’re not willing to go out and work all hours.’

At 10.00pm on 31 August, Scripps was released in the name of John Martin,

and instructed to answer bail on 29 October 1990. He failed to report and, on 28

November, he was arrested by Detective Constable Malone at his mother’s home

at 11 Grove Road, Sandown, on the Isle of Wight. Police found more drugs and

he was charged with possession of 50g of diamorphine at 80 per cent purity. The

street value of this amount was estimated at around £9,473, while the remaining

191.5 grams of heroin he had tried to smuggle through the airport was valued at

£38,551. Given the knowledge that Scripps possessed drugs valued at over

£48,000, the police now understood how he could afford his jet-set lifestyle.

Because Scripps had previously absconded from a seven-year custodial

sentence for drugs offences, he was held on remand in Winchester Prison until

his trial. He instructed his solicitors that he would plead ‘not guilty’. His defence

was simple enough. His case would stand or fall by his claim that he had found

the red-taped package containing heroin on the ground at Muscat Airport and

had handed it in to the police. He categorically denied that any drugs were found

on his person at Muscat. Further, he argued that the traces of heroin found in the

pockets of his jeans he was wearing at the time resulted directly in him being

asked to open the package he had found containing drugs. He denied any

knowledge whatsoever of the traces alleged to have been found in the pocket of

a shirt. If he managed to wriggle out of that, he was still not completely out of

the woods, for the police had found heroin on him during his arrest in Sandown

and his wallet had been stuffed with £2,000 in cash. The implication was that he

intended peddling drugs on the Isle of Wight, yet another allegation that Scripps

denied.

Prisoner V48468 Scripps was given legal aid, and case #T910602 was held at

Winchester Crown Court on 6 January 1991. Represented by Bruce Maddick

QC, Scripps suddenly changed his plea to ‘guilty’ in an effort to gain leniency.

Despite this ploy, he was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment. Amazingly, he

spent just three years and ten months in jail before contriving another escape.

Scripps started his prison term at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight and,

during a six-week period, between March and April 1993, he was instructed in

butchery, by Prison Officer James Quigley.

‘He was shown how to bone out forequarters and hindquarters of beef, sides

of bacon, carcasses of pork, and how to portion chicken,’ James Quigley said,

adding, ‘He was a quick learner, and very fast on picking up on how to

slaughter, dismember and debone animals.’

What the authorities could never have guessed was that, while they were

training an inmate in butchery skills, they were also equipping him to slaughter

and dismember humans, the gruesome calling to which he subsequently set his

hand.

Scripps’s ultimate odyssey began on 28 October 1994, when he failed to

return to the Mount Prison in Bovington, Hertfordshire, after four days’ leave.

Throughout the week before he walked out of the open prison gate, he had been

openly selling his possessions to finance his escape. He had even bragged to

fellow inmates that he was going on the run. This was picked up by the prison

staff, who failed to act on it.

When he failed to return, the Governor, Margaret Donnelly, said, ‘He was no

longer considered a risk. He had no history violence. He was quiet and reserved.’

What, it appears, the Governor did not know, was that Scripps had absconded

from every home leave he had ever been granted. And, far from being quiet,

reserved and no longer a risk, the smooth-talking drug-dealer, was about to

become a vicious serial killer.

After absconding, Scripps embarked on a globetrotting, three-nation murder

rampage. His first port of call, before the killing started was Holland, where he

met a former drug-dealer whom he had encountered, while on remand, in

Winchester Prison. He travelled next to Belgium and Spain and reached Mexico

in late November, where he attempted a reconciliation with Maria Arellanos. He

told her that he had been released from prison on a technicality, and that he was

returning to Thailand to buy silk clothes and wanted them both to set up a

boutique in Cancun. He told her that he was now a deeply religious man and, to

convince her, became a devotee of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron

saint.

To finance this venture, Scripps befriended Timothy McDowell, a British

backpacker who was holidaying in Belize and had travelled to Mexico in 1994.

It is believed that he beat the 28-year-old Cambridge graduate and management

consultant to death, dismembered his body and dumped it in an alligator-infested

river. Shortly after the murder, the victim’s bank account was milked dry to the

tune of £21,000; the money being transferred to Scripps’s account in London.

This sum of money was later moved to another account, in the United States,

under the name of Simon Davis, one of Scripps’s many aliases.