London Underground Serial Killer: The Life of Kieran Kelly

by Geoff Platt

The full story of the life and times of Kieran Patrick Kelly, the London Underground Serial Killer, who wandered up and down the Northern Line of the London Underground between 1960 and 1983, pushing innocent people that he had never met under trains, and who finished up killing over thirty people. The book provides a full biography of Kelly, discussing the details of his crimes, his victims and his ability to evade justice; he managed to secure mistrials or acquittals in twenty-five trials before being eventually convicted and sentenced to die to prison, which he did in Durham, in 2001. It could be argued that Kelly is the most investigated serial killer in the history of the world. His murders were investigated as they occurred between 1953 and 1983; they were reinvestigated in 1983 and again in 2015. The author of this book played major roles in the two latter inquiries, conducting the entire inquiry in 1983 and acting as a consultant to the 2015 inquiry. More is known about Kelly than any other serial killer in history. He was arrested before he had finished killing, then murdered his cellmate in the police station and was interviewed by the author ten minutes after this final murder, before spending the next two years discussing his crimes and his motivations with the author. The end result is a truly unique insight into the mind of a serial killer!

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, History

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2015

About the author

Geoff Platt is a freelance journalist who has written extensively for national newspapers on matters of crime and defense. As a former Police detective, he has unique access to records not usually available to authors and a huge network of contacts. His findings make for fascinating reading.

Reviews

[Em · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a rambling mess. Among the pages and pages of information about suburbs in London, train stations and parks in those suburbs, a long list of people who aren't classified as serial killers and why, the history of the London Underground, and a description of major incidents on the Underground are half a dozen mentions of the same few facts related to Kieran Patrick Kelly's case. The book was written by a detective involved, but there is no insight or analysis.

[Anna Bishop · Rating 1 out of 5]

See the podcast The Nobody Zone for the truth behind this book

[Kieran · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the worst book I have ever read in my whole entire life.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kieran Kelly was a prolific serial killer who murdered at least 31 people in London over a 30-year period. He was a vagrant and often in prison on charges of drunkenness or theft. His career as a murderer began in 1953, with the murder of his best friend, and continued until 1983 when he was charged with the murder of a cell-mate. Kelly was more than willing to tell the police about his murders, after all they were a source of pride for him and he liked to brag. Geoff Platt spent months with Kelly, starting in 1983, investigating his claims. In the end, he was sentenced to life in prison and that is where he died.

Geoff Platt has carefully recounted the life of Kieran Kelly, from his boyhood in Dublin to his final arrest in London, and the intensive police investigation into his murders. He details for readers Kelly’s methods and his motives. I found this account to be well researched and a very thorough presentation of the facts concerning this man’s heinous crimes.

[Paul Sutherland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing. I was encouraged when i picked up the book to read about a British serial killer that it is surprisingly difficult to obtain information upon. However, it is an extremely short book at 137pp, and a good percentage (more than half) of it bizarrely focuses upon the history of the London Underground, various London parks and even a meandering list of UK murderers and why they can't be classed as serial killers?! Overall, this section reads like the Wikipedia articles on many London tube stations and parks have been cut, pasted and bastardised to make an essay. Considering it is written by an ex detective, one who admittedly spent much time with Kieran Kelly, i found it very poor. It shows precious little "painstaking" research that the rear cover claims the author has undertaken.


Do not buy, especially at £12.99!! Read Wikipedia instead - the author clearly has.

[Elleigh Cockroft · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unnecessary detail surrounding the London Underground and the history of the stations where the murders took place. The author changed the occupation of shooting victim Jean Charles de Menezes, as well as the grammar of his name. The majority of the information surrounding Kieran Kelly and his crimes is split in the book making it disjointing to read.

There are positives to this book, it is interesting to see the police procedures and the journey from crime to conviction from the prospective of a police officer.

[Xanthi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't bother.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readers of this book like myself who read this book without reading the first book of the author on this subject are at a bit of a disadvantage. Sometimes, as is the case here, an author finds himself such a profitable subject to write about and to establish himself as an expert in that he writes first one book to general success and then expands this work in further and later works. What one has in this book is an expansion of the previous book that the author had written about the life of Kieran Kelly that does not include what the author had written before (at least he so claims) but rather seeks to expand upon that material. The result is a work that is somewhat scattered and that contains some notable assumptions and struggles with what in fact is true and what is not relating to his subject of Kieran Kelly as well as the issue of who counts as a British serial killer at all. The reader is quite possibly not going to agree with the assumptions of the author that it requires conviction for five or more murders in order for someone to count as a serial killer. For me, at least, it is only necessary that someone be responsible for a certain number of deaths spaced by a certain amount of time, even if that is only known by God.

This book is a short one at about 150 pages or so. It begins with an introduction. After that come a variety of short chapters that appear to skip around about various aspects of the life and bad behavior of its subject. For example, the first two chapters cover the subject's early years in and around Dublin from 1930 to 1960 where the subject was born into a laboring family with history in serving in the British army and married unsuccessfully as well as the middle portion of the subject's life between 1960 and 1983 where the subject married again unsuccessfully and spent a great deal of time moving in and out of prison. This is followed by chapters on Kelly's first murder, last murder, and some of the other murders in between. After this set of chapters comes another set of chapters that are related, including the police response, the trial, as well as prison life, which was not easy for the murderer. The main part of the book then ends with a look at the victims and consequences of Kelly's murders as well as the re-investigation of the murders and what we can learn from the book's subject. There re then two appendices that discuss the court of appeals case (i) as well as a list of alleged British serial killers and the author's discussion of their lives and behavior (ii), after which there are references and an epilogue.

This book in many ways is a sobering and unpleasant book that discusses how it is that a particular serial killer operated. The author speculates on matters of the influence of the author's sexuality on his killings as well as the way that he apparently targeted several different groups of people and went about killing them in different ways, proving himself to be a serial killer of vagrant homosexuals whom he killed in humiliating and painful ways, killing other vagrants through poisoning and killing still other people through pushing them under trains, all of which amounts to a complicated picture of a complicated man whose ability to escape justice for so many years reflects badly on those responsible for investigating crimes relating to the vagrant community as well as the London Underground. If the subject found himself in jail for most of his adult life, he appears to have killed at a rather enormous rate in those few times when he was out of jail as a member of the homeless criminal class engaged in frequent acts of thievery and violence. If this is not a community that I find myself very familiar with, it is certainly a community that finds itself rather vulnerable to serial killers given the peripheral nature of the vagrant with the attention and focus of authorities. It is all too easy for people to get away, at least for a while, while focusing on those who are on the outskirts of humanity and civilization.

[Bill reilly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Geoff Platt was on the police force at the time of Kieran Patrick Kelly's conviction for the murder of a cellmate. Platt claims that the Irish born alcoholic admitted to sixteen murders, mostly of fellow homeless drunks. Kelly pushed the men onto the subway train tracks.
At least half of the book is a detailed history of the London Underground Rail system, or Tube, as Platt calls it. The Brits completed the first subway one year before our American tunnel in New York City.
Having completed The Secret Serial Killer by Robert Mulhern earlier today, I am still unsure of the number of murders committed by Patrick. The most amusing tidbit is his March 17 date of birth.
Unless you are interested in a comprehensive background; with maps, of Britain's railway, do not bother with Geoff's plodding account of Mr. Kelly.

[Lindsay · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most boring book I’ve ever read. It spiked my interest that it stated Kelly is the most investigated serial killer in history. I thought this book would be packed with analysis and facts about his crimes whereas it’s just rambling nonsense and I’m not even convinced of the fact he murdered 30+ people that seems to be more of an opinion of the author. He was only convicted of 2 killings although I do agree it probably was more. Although confessed to 16 and even crimes he could not have committed due to being incarcerated. My take away is the author as well as Kelly are/were both fantasists and unfortunately we’ll never know the real truth. I wish I looked this book up on good reads before I read it and I wouldn’t have bothered. I wasn’t surprised to find it had low ratings.

[Charlie Medcalf · Rating 1 out of 5]

The London Underground Serial Killer by Geoff Platt tells the story of the murderer Kieran Patrick Kelly who began his murdering career by pushing one of his friends off a London Underground platform in front of a train killing this friend. This was after his friend supposedly figured out Kelly's secret regarding his sexuality. Kelly went on to murder other individuals in the same manner, but it was now people he did not know and had no connection to. Kelly's career of murder ended when he strangled a cellmate to death.

For my full review please visit: https://cembookportal.blogspot.com/20...

[Minou Jolie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the fact that this book didn’t deliver much on the promise of the title, I found the information about the different areas of London quite interesting and that really is the main subject of the book.

It was a bit rambling and really could have used some editing as I found many sentences clumsy and in need of rereading to be able to understand what the author was trying to say.

However, I am glad I spent the time reading this for the information about London.

[Kerry Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The case of Kieran Kelly a virtually unknown serial killer who committed many of his crimes on the London Underground. This was an interesting story but I found it focussed more on the details of locations rather than the actual cases.

I did like the guide to the various serial killers at the beginning of the book.

[Sinead · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really poorly written. Repetitive, with nothing about victims, very little profiling or analysis. Great potential for an interesting story, but I don’t know much more about the case now than when I started it.. other than what some tube stations on the northern line look like 🤦‍♀️ Very disappointing.

[Dean · Rating 2 out of 5]

what a fucking story geoff has spun. so little of this isn't narrative. if you're looking for a factual account of this story i wouldn't recommend this! so many unproven conjectures are made - the queerness and abuse in childhood being two massive ones.

geoff needs to get a life outside of this case

[Simona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

[Alexandria Blaelock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible, stranger than fiction, true story of a serial killer in the London Underground, detected and apprehended almost by accident.

[Mark]

Could not get past the second chapter total unreadable trash

[Simon Zohhadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most people, myself included, will look at the claims (both before and after reading this book) that Kieran Kelly maybe the second worst serial killer in British history after Harold Shipman, difficult to believe. London Underground Serial Killer is short on detail and only runs to 129 pages (159 including the Epilogue). There are good reasons for this: the murders occurred before 1983 and the murderer was a vagrant. Many witnesses (reliable or unreliable) are either dead or cannot be contacted. To give the claims more weight, it must be stated that Kieran Kelly was convicted of one murder and another of manslaughter. He was also acquitted of other "murders". Kieran Kelly (now dead) also spent years in prison for many other crimes. It has always struck me (sorry about the unintended pun) that some of the so-called suicides on the London Underground could well have been murders and not suicides or accidents. One victim who survived being pushed onto the tube line claimed Kelly was responsible. The police are taking, the author, Geoff Platt's claims seriously and are investigating so his book could be the first instalment leading to a more detailed and substantiated later version. One final comment, the photographs of tube stations, Clapham Common and other buildings are silly and are clearly only inserted because the author does not have anything better. Nevertheless, despite the shortcomings of this book, I would still recommend it as it could be the beginning of something a lot more important.

My rating: 3/5.

[Donna Maguire · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://donnasbookblog.wordpress.com/...

I was intrigued by this book and when I saw that it had been reduced in an eBook sale by the publisher I downloaded a copy as I love my true crime and historical non-fiction.

The beginning was good and I did like the overview of the serial killers and I did enjoy this book in the sections that discussed the crimes that had been committed by Kelly but I think that the title of the book is a little misleading - London Underground Serial Killer: The Life of Kieran Kelly as I found in places that the main focus was more on the areas where the crimes took places, rather than the crimes themselves.

The book is fairly short and it was easy to read but the number of crimes that Kelly committed is unknown to it was always going to be a book that had to had other details added to it – the book does read at times like it is a guide to the London Underground as it gives an overview of this and also some details and photos of some of the stations that Kelly visited.

It is 3 stars from me for this one, it was not really as detailed as I would have liked regarding the case and the life of Kieran Kelly but the amount of detail on Kelly is limited so the author has made a good attempt with the detail available but it was a little disappointing.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely bone chilling.. but an interesting read!