Vampire-obsessed teen killed 91-year-old woman in 'macabre ritual'

This article contains graphic details of murder that some readers may find distressing

On a Saturday night in November 2001, 91-year-old Mabel Leyshon was watching TV in her favourite armchair.

Mabel, who was hard of hearing, had turned up the volume of her television set, drowning out the sounds of the passing traffic, the tapping of the rain against the roof - but also her teenage killer breaking in through a back window.

What happened next shook the close-knit village of Llanfairpwll, Anglesey, to its core.

Now 25 years on, the case has been described by a retired detective as one of the most "horrific" he had seen in his 30-year policing career.

Mabel, described as active and independent, had lived alone in her bungalow overlooking the Menai Strait since becoming a widow in the 1960s.

"Everyone knows everybody, so there's huge community to that.

"We didn't have a key to our house growing up, because we never locked it."

But what happened to Mabel changed that.

As she relaxed in her chair on 24 November 2001, 17-year-old Mathew Hardman - an art student from the village - broke in through a lower window in Mabel's back door.

He stabbed the pensioner 22 times, then moved her body to another chair and placed two pokers in the shape of a cross at her feet.

Hardman also removed her heart and drank her blood from a saucepan in what was described as a "macabre ritual".

Mabel's body was discovered the following day when a meals-on-wheels volunteer visited her home.

"It just looked like a shrine, that's how I remember it," John Clayton, a former North Wales Police detective, told the podcast.

"To everyone's horror, a forensic scientist who was [examining] the saucepan said, 'I believe that there are lip marks on the rim of the saucepan and I can only conclude from seeing those lip marks in blood that someone is likely to have drunk the blood of the victim'."

With no clear motive, everyone became a suspect, with police knocking on every door in the village.

"Treat every single visit to every house as if it's the most important visit, that was the message," Clayton said.

Det Sgt Iestyn Davies, who himself lived in Llanfairpwll, said the case was "one of the most gruesome and horrific cases I worked on during my 30-year career".

"I remember myself being visited [by police] and my wife being spoken to, and we had to complete a questionnaire ourselves about where we were on the weekend in question," he added.

"I was working late nights, so a lot of the time my wife and children had gone to bed.

"I would say to her, 'just make sure that you lock the doors at night'."

Rumours ran wild, but the answer was close to home.

As Mabel's former paper boy, Hardman used to visit her home almost daily and would have known she lived alone.

After his arrest he protested his innocence, but during his two-week trial it emerged that he was obsessed with vampires and wanted to become one in a quest for immortality.

Two months before Mabel's murder, Hardman had begged a German exchange student to bite his neck in the belief she was a vampire and could transform him.

Hardman was found guilty of murder after the jury was told DNA found at the scene matched blood found on a knife at his home.

His shoes also matched footprints found at Mabel's home.

Hardman was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 12 years for the crime.

Nearly 25 years have passed since the horrific murder, but the disturbing details of Mabel's killing have left their mark on her tight-knit community.

Ben Roberts, Mabel's former neighbour who was 10 years old at the time of her killing, described the impact it had on his childhood.

"As a 10-year-old, I think I was still getting over being scared of the dark, being scared of ghosts and monsters and things like that," he said.

"I used to kind of daydream about what am I going to do if I encounter the murderer.

"I remember being very conscious of the fact every time I would then be in the garden and kick the ball into the hedge, that I could find the murderer lurking."

He recalled how one of his teachers made him stand up to update his entire class on the case only days after the murder.

Ben, now 35, said this was "a consequence" of a village that did not know how to talk about what was going on.

"This investigation has really affected my life in a major way," he added.

In 2003, Hardman applied for permission to appeal his conviction, but this was refused.

An application for him to be released on parole in 2014 was also turned down.