Crazed killer Hobson admits four murders

Today, Hobson, 35, of New Lane, Selby, finally pleaded guilty to four charges of murder.

A packed Leeds Crown Court heard him confess to murdering girlfriend Claire, 27, and her sister Diane Sanderson, along with Strensall pensioners James Britton, 80, and his wife Joan, 82, in York last summer.

As relatives of his victims wept, prosecution barrister Paul Worsley QC told the court that Hobson struck Claire 17 times on the head with a hammer. He also tied a bin bag round her head that would have killed her if the hammer had not.

He then went to the pub and read a book before returning home.

Hobson later told the police that he talked to the body of his girlfriend as if the attack had never happened.

He called her his "little China doll" and put her in a blue and orange sleeping bag. He tried to make her comfortable.

The attack left him and the walls of the living room and an armchair covered with blood.

He washed the walls, cleaned up her body and for about a week slept on the sofa in the room where it had happened while her body was upstairs.

Hobson stood head bowed in the dock and pleaded guilty to murdering Claire between July 10 and 19 last year, her sister Diane between July 16 and 19 and James and Joan Britton on July 18 last year.

Jeremy Richardson, defending said the guilty pleas were "unequivocal."

He indicated that Hobson would be sentenced at the end of next month after a report had been completed.

He accepted that there would be a sentence of life imprisonment. The only issue the defence would seek to raise will be the length of tariff.

Mr Worsley said: "The circumstances surrounding these deaths are horrific and chilling."

He then described how Hobson lured 27-year-old Diane to her death in the flat that her parents had paid for as a home for Hobson and her twin sister Claire in Camblesforth, near Selby.

Mr Worsley said that Hobson lulled the fears of Diane's boyfriend Ian Harrison with a false tale of her father's death.

He sent Mr Harrison the ring that he had given Diane with the words that it showed she was thinking of him. This was not true.

Her mutilated and sexually assaulted body was already lying in the flat's bedroom alongside that of her sister Claire.

Claire's body was already decomposing as she had been dead for some days.

Mr Worsley said: "That the defendant carefully laid his plans to kill and mutilate Diane was apparent from notes he had made earlier and which were found by the police at his home after her death. They are very significant and make chilling reading."

The barrister added that some months earlier Hobson had noted that he had chosen the wrong sister and that he was "going to have" Diane.

"That threat came true" said Mr Worsley.

Diane's partner, Ian Harrison was smitten with love for her and had never seemed so happy as when he was with her. He regularly bought her flowers. The two had met on a blind date arranged by Hobson.

Earlier, Mr Worsley had outlined Hobson's violent past which began in 1990 when he choked his then girlfriend after they had had sex and included threatening Claire with a 12-inch butchers knife in a pub. Although he was convicted of stabbing a man five times he had never served a prison sentence.

Mr Worsley said that the handwritten notes indicated that Hobson planned to lure Diane to the house and to kill her there and may have also planned to kill the twin's parents George and Jackie.

One note said: "Ring Di. Claire poorly. Go Di's. Bring battery charger off George in garage. Jackie in house.

Another note, headed, 2 do list, said: "Use and abuse at will...do Di here...disable all."

Another note appeared to be a shopping list. It said: "big bin liners, tape. Tie wraps. Fly spray."

Mr Worsley said Hobson intended to use the items in dealing with the bodies of Claire and Diane.

He said that Hobson invited his friend, Ian Harrison round to the flat after drinking in a pub in Camblesforth. Harrison had noticed a very unpleasant smell on entering the flat. Mr Worsley said: "Hobson told him he had a problem with the drains."

Later Harrison noticed his trouser leg was soaked with blood and saw blood on the settee. Hobson explained that Claire had been suffering from "women's problems."

When Hobson was interviewed by police "he gave no reason whatsoever or explanation for taking her life in such a violent manner," said Mr Worsley.

Brutal death of York couple

The brutal deaths of defenceless pensioners Joan and James Britton brought shock and revulsion to the quiet neighbourhood where they had lived for almost 30 years.

There was disbelief that anyone could take the lives of the frail, housebound couple who posed no threat to anyone.

Friends and colleagues described them as quiet, decent, peaceful and well-respected in the community around Strensall, north of York.

Mr Britton had been a local Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator and as a keen beekeeper sold honey from the gates of his large detached house on the outskirts of the village.

He was known affectionately as "Mr B, the Bee Man".

His friend and fellow bee enthusiast Robin Coleman said: "Jim was a genuine old guy."

Mr Britton, 80, and his wife, 82, had met more than half a century before their violent death in West Hartlepool, Co. Durham, where they were both born and brought up.

They were introduced by a friend in the town's railway offices and the couple married during the Second World War, in 1943.

Towards the end of the war, Mrs Britton joined the ATS while her husband joined the RAF where he flew Spitfires. After the war the couple moved to York.

:: Scar-faced hardman and alcoholic with convictions for violence - and his neighbours lived in fear

SCAR-faced killer Mark Hobson was an alcoholic thug who beat his girlfriend and revelled in his reputation as a local hardman, according to his former friends and neighbours.

The father-of-three had been barred from a string of pubs and clubs in the tough working-class neighbourhoods of Selby after a succession of alcohol-fuelled brawls.

He had a number of convictions for assault, criminal damage, dishonesty and wounding a man with a knife.

Ian Lazenby, 39, who knew Hobson for over four years, said he was prone to sudden mood swings.

"He was a strange type of person. He would be laughing and joking one moment and then totally different the next."

Neighbours in the terraced street where Hobson once lived with his wife and three children openly admitted they were frightened of the former binman.

One woman on Alma Terrace said: "He caused a lot of trouble in the street. I remember a window being smashed. He is a bit of a nutcase and idiot. He is mainly remembered around here by reputation."

Hobson's notorious reputation was to be further enhanced in 2002, when he stabbed a man five times outside an off-licence in front of horrified shoppers.

William Brace, a father-of-two, suffered a punctured lung in the savage daylight attack in Selby.

But Hobson walked free from court a year later after being sentenced to 100 hours' community work and two years' probation.

Hobson had moved to the town with his family from Wakefield in the 1980s, as his father looked for work at the local pit.

Peter Hobson had been a well-respected figure in the West Yorkshire city, where he had risen through the ranks to become a deputy and over-manager at Parkhill Colliery, until it closed in 1982.

He was a keen sportsman who rarely drank or displayed any violent traits, according to family friends.

Mark Hobson's childhood appeared to have been stable and relatively happy, and he was remembered by his school friends as a shy and polite boy.

He spent much of his teenage years hanging around as part of a small gang on the Flaxley Road in Selby, though locals say they were rarely involved in any trouble.

Hobson soon developed his father's work ethic, taking a string of industrial jobs in the town.

He cleaned and sorted coal at Drax power station and later worked at Rigid Containers, a huge packaging factory, where his girlfriend Claire Sanderson was also later to get a job.

But he was sacked by the company after the attack court case for the "protection" of its staff.

'He should have been jailed for knifing'

THE mother of a man knifed five times by Mark Hobson insisted he should have been jailed for the attack which left her son fighting for his life.

Hobson repeatedly stabbed love rival William Brace with a butterfly knife in front of horrified shoppers - but escaped a prison sentence when the case went to court a year later.

Mr Brace, a father-of-two, suffered a punctured lung in the savage day-time attack in Selby, in March 2002.

The men had clashed outside an off-licence on the town's busy high street after Brace confronted Hobson over rumours he had slept with his 17-year-old girlfriend.

But Hobson walked free from York Crown Court in February 2003 after admitting wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

He was sentenced to 100 hours' community work and two years' probation after claiming he acted in self-defence.

Only 12 months later he would murder his girlfriend Claire Sanderson, her twin sister Diane and bludgeon elderly couple James and Joan Britton to death.

Mr Brace's mother Margaret, of Denilson Road, Selby, said she was angered that Hobson was never jailed for the attack which nearly killed her son.

"William was in intensive care and doctors said he was lucky to be alive.

"There was talk of Mark getting four or five years, but the sentence he got was disgusting and made me very angry," she said.

- See Tuesday's Evening Press for four pages of reports on the Hobson murders

Updated: 14:25 Monday, April 18, 2005