Enduring mystery of UK’s ‘most prolific serial killer’: Chilling confessions of Kieran Kelly who threw his victims under trains over a 30-year period are revealed in new docu-drama starring Peaky Blinders actor
- Laois-born Kieran Kelly confessed to several murders in a police interview in 1983
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A new documentary-drama will explore the gruesome crimes of a suspected serial killer believed to have murdered around a dozen people over three decades.
Kieran Patrick Kelly, who died in HMP Durham in 2001 at the age of 71, sensationally confessed to the murder of around 30 people in a police interview in the 1980s after initially being arrested for petty theft and later killing his cellmate.
The Laois-born killer had spent time in the army before moving to Dublin and London, where he started a family in 1960 but suffered with his mental health, did stints in Broadmoor and later became homeless. It was in the capital that Kelly is believed to have carried out a series of murders – many of which were committed by throwing people under tube trains.
Now more than two hours of audio recordings from Kelly’s police interviews have inspired a two-part series on his suspected crimes, The Nobody Zone: Interview with an Irish Serial Killer after first inspiring a podcast of the same name in 2020.
The series stars Peaky Blinders actor Ned Dennehy, 57, as Kelly during his police interviews, in which he confessed the murders – but instead of Dennehy’s voice, viewers will hear the original audio.
Kieran Patrick Kelly, known as Ireland’s most prolific serial killer, calmly confessed to murdering around a dozen people during a police interview in 1983
The Sunday World reports the series will hear from a Met Police officer who investigated the case, Detective Superintendent Ian Brown, who noted how the killer ‘had fun’ with the police during the interview, in which he calmy reeled off a list of his crimes.
Kelly was first picked up by police in 1983 for committing robbery on Clapham Common in south west London.
Not considered a hardened criminal at the time, he was put in a police holding cell with another homeless man, William Boyd. But to the shock of officers, he launched a brutal attack on his cellmate and killed him.
Kelly was then interviewed by police over the killing of Boyd – but officers were further stunned when the killer calmly confessed to more murders dating back to 1953.
Kelly is set to be played by Peaky Blinders actor Ned Dennehy (pictured) in a documentary-drama which will air on RTE tonight
His first victim, he told DS Brown, was his friend Christy Smith. Kelly claimed he had pushed her in front of a London Underground train.
The year after his arrest, Kelly was convicted of the manslaughter of Boyd and the murder of another homeless man, Hector Fisher, in 1975. However, questions have long remained over the other crimes he confessed to.
Kelly’s suspected crimes were not made public until 2015 with the publication of The London Underground Serial Killer by former detective Geoff Platt. The book claimed Kelly had about 31 victims in total, and alleged the Home Office had been complicit in covering up the crimes so as to avoid a national panic.
Following the publication of the book, the then-Chief of the Met Police, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, promised to launch an investigation into Platt’s claims.
However, in 2019, Irish journalist Robert Mulhern began investigating Kieran Kelly, and dismissed many of Platt’s claims. In his book, The Secret Serial Killer: The True Story of Kieran Kelly, and the podcast The Nobody Zone, he suggested that the serial killer more likely had five or six victims in total.
Speaking to The Sun in 2020, Mulhern explained the podcast had been named after the environment that Kelly had been allowed to operate within, as a homeless man who appeared to have slipped under the radar.
He explained how people in London at the time could get away with using fake names and making purchases in cash to move around undetected.
‘It was hard to track people, especially those living in the shadows in London parks and graveyards,’ he explained.
The dramatisation of the podcast, which airs on RTE in Ireland this week, features Peaky Blinders actor Ned Dennehy playing Kelly in a dramatisation of the police interviews in which he confessed to the murders.
In a television first, Kelly’s voice will be played while Dennehy mimes his words to bring them to life onscreen.
In addition to dramatising the sensational police interviews in which Kelly made his confessions, the documentary will also hear from people who had known the serial killer in his life.
One such interviewee is builder Brian Sliman, a builder who employed Kelly as a labourer on a casual basis over the years. Although he didn’t know Kelly was a murderer, he did notice the killer’s explosive temper.
‘He wasn’t a loner as such. He got on well with other people to a degree but all I’d say is when he got drink people tried to avoid him, that was the only problem and it didn’t take him a lot to get drunk by the way, couple of drinks and if you said the wrong thing to him, that was it,’ said Brian, who passed away after giving the interview.
Mulhern is also interviewed in the documentary, where he further speculates about Kelly’s state of mind and motive in confessing to several murders.
He suggests the killer could have been a ‘manipulator’ who wanted to confuse the story so much, police wouldn’t ever be able to convict him – or on the other hand, he could have been ‘simply mad’.
The documentary also hears from Dr Ciara Staunton, who analyses Kelly’s voice on the tapes.
She declares he has a calm demeanour and appears in control of his own narrative, telling the documentary: ‘When you just listen to the tape raw you hear a man who is very composed, in the fullness of his mental faculties in that moment.’
The Nobody Zone: Interview with an Irish Serial Killer airs on Monday November 6 on RTE One in Ireland
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