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Milly Dowler killer who hated women with blond hair may be to blame for 20 unsolved attacks say police Levi Bellfield refused to leave his prison cell to hear Mr Justice Wilkie sentence him to life without parole and condemn him as a “cruel and pitiless killer”. His refusal marked him out as a man who lacked the “courage to come into court to face his victims and receive his sentence”, said Wilkie, who told the Old Bailey that the former club doorman would never leave prison. He had robbed Milly Dowler, 13, “of her promising life” and taken her from her family and friends. “He treated her in death with total disrespect, depositing her naked body without even a semblance of a burial, in a wood, far away from her home, vulnerable to all the forces of nature thereby, as he clearly intended, causing her family the appalling anguish for many months of not knowing what had become of her.” Milly had become his victim “for no reason other than she was in the wrong place at the wrong time … a target of the unreasoning hatred which seem to have driven him”, said the judge. The “unreasoning hatred” evident from Bellfield’s previous convictions appeared to be directed at women, and young blonde women in particular. His explosive and random attacks on lone women at night earned him the nickname the “bus stop stalker” and made him one of the UK’s most dangerous serial killers. It also earned him a whole life sentence in 2008, when he was convicted of the murders of Amelie Delagrange, 22, Marsha McDonnell, 19, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, 18. It is thought Bellfield is the first person to have received two whole life sentences. But, what the jury were never told was that he also harboured an unhealthy obsession with young schoolgirls and school uniforms. While under police surveillance, before his arrest for the Delagrange murder in 2004, he approached and made “highly sexually provocative” comments to two girls, cousins aged 14 and 16, at a bus stop. This was judged too prejudicial for the jury to hear. Three former girlfriends – he has fathered 11 children with five women, some of them pregnant at the same time – told police he would ask them to dress up in school uniform, which they declined. He would think nothing of driving around in his van, leering at girls in school uniforms and shouting abuse after them, said one former partner. “It’s an attraction which obviously has particular resonance when you consider the offences relating to Amanda [Milly] Dowler,” prosecutor Brian Altman said at a pre-trial hearing. Detectives believe he may have been responsible for around 20 attacks on women which were never solved, including rape. Bellfield particularly hated blondes. Acquaintances spoke of his loathing of women who dyed their hair blond, calling them “impure” and “sluts” who “deserved to be messed around with”. One girlfriend found a magazine in which all the faces of the blond women were scratched out with a knife. Bellfield told her he used to go into alleyways, wait for blond women to walk past, and feel the urge to “hurt then, stab them”. Despite lacking obvious physical charm, he thought himself a “ladies’ man”, with the gift of the gab. His job as a club doorman offered him plenty of opportunities to pick up girls, and ply them with drink and drugs before sexually abusing them. Inside his van there was a mattress, blankets and baseball bat, according to one former employee, who called Bellfield “an animal” and a “caveman”. Bellfield is said to have offered his friend the opportunity to buy sex with his then girlfriend, just 16, as well as her 14-year-old sister. The offer was refused. Born in Isleworth, west London, one of three boys and a girl. His father, a motor mechanic, died when he was eight. He was very close to his mother, described as a “strong-willed matriach”, and visited her regularly, including in the hours after he killed Milly. Perhaps his violent obsession with blondes had its roots in an incident at the age of 12, when his blonde girlfriend Patsy Morris, 14, was found strangled on Hounslow Heath. Nothing suggests he was responsible. There were convictions for burglary stretching back to when he was 13, and for possessing an offensive weapon in public. He had wild mood swings, took drugs, and admitted he was clinically depressed.. He was keen to brag to schoolfriends on the Friends Reunited website where he described himself as a “bit flash”, and asked for “any single girls out there to email me”. Milly Dowler Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk