“How are you getting on? Haven’t I met you before?” asked the 35-year-old chauffeur who approached Stanley Wrenn, 19, on the concourse of London’s Piccadilly Circus underground station.
The older man was Colin George Saunders, who had convictions for importuning and gross indecency. He asked Wrenn where he was living, and when told “Nowhere” he took Wrenn to his room in College Road, Bromley, where they shared the double bed.
Wrenn was later to say that for the next six weeks Saunders had sex with him every night, “But I did nothing.” After three weeks he found he had been infected with gonorrhoea, and he decided to kill his host.
He bought a knife, took a gas-ring from another room in the house, and concealed them until he was ready to strike. Then, in the early hours of NOVEMBER 26th, 1969, satisfied that Saunders was asleep, he struck him on the head with the gas-ring and stabbed him repeatedly.
Taking some of Saunders’ possessions, he left in the chauffeur’s Humber which was parked outside. But he had problems with the automatic gears, shot backwards into another car, and had to exchange names and addresses with its angry driver who said they should phone the police. Wrenn said he would do this from his home in nearby College Road, went back there, and then returned to the scene saying he had made the call. He then abandoned the Humber and took a train into London. Meanwhile police investigated the car accident and went to Saunders’ home, where they found his body.
After spending the night in the West End, Wrenn bought a newspaper in the morning, saw his name linked with Saunders’ death and went to the police to give himself up.
Charged with murder, he pleaded guilty at his trial at the Old Bailey and was jailed for life. He was released 10 years later, in 1980.