On January 3, 2002, police investigating the murders of two women whose body parts were found in garbage containers in Camden, North London, arrested Anthony Hardy. The 53-year-old suspect was caught on closed-circuit television at University College Hospital on Wednesday asking for medicine for a diabetes-related condition called peripheral neuropathy but left when staff began to query where he lived. Detectives believed that his quest for medication was their main chance of catching him.
Earlier in the week a tramp foraging for food in a dumpster in the back of a pub found body parts wrapoped in plastic bags. Investigators then found a torso of one woman and seven or eight bags with body parts in neighboring trash containers. A second female torso Hardy's apartment. Police believe both women were prostitutes. The heads, hands and some limbs of both victims are still missing.
Police also identified one of the prostitutes as 34-year-old Brigitte Cathy MacClennan. She is believed to have lived in Camden but originally came from New Zealand. The other dismembered prostitute was identified as 29-year-old Elizabeth Selina Valad, originally from Nottingham. Though her head and arms are still missing, Valad was identified by her breast implants.
Commander Andy Baker said there remained a "number of unsolved murders we must have an open mind to". Among them is that of Paula Fields, 31, a prostitute found in Camden canal in February 2001. She had been cut into six pieces and her head has not been found. Hardy, a former mechanical engineer, was first questioned by police in January last year after 38-year-old Sally Rose White was found dead in his apartment, but post-mortem tests showed she had died from natural causes. In light of the recent discoveries, the White case was reopened and Hardy was formally charged with her murder.