#238 - Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath - Part E (Sarah Ann Rodmell)

Murder Mile UK True Crime

Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast

True Crime, English, Nglish, E, Uk, Crime, London, Society & Culture, Murder, Killer, True-crime, History, Personal Journals, British

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

This is Part E of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath, about the killing of Sarah Rodmell.

On the night of Saturday the 21st of December 1974, 92-year-old Sarah Rodmell, a spinster who had lived in Hackney all her life, went to her local pub (The Temple Bar Tap) at 5:30pm, and having left at 11:15pm, she arrived back at 49 Ash Grove, just shy of midnight. She was brutally beaten to death on her doorstep for the £7 in her handbag. But was this one of the additional eight murders that British serial killer Patrick MacKay was suspected of or confessed to?

This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.

Location: Ground floor, 48 Ash Grove (demolished), Hackney, London, UK, E8
Date: Saturday 21st of December 1974, time of killing between 11:50pm and midnight
Victims: Sarah Ann Rodmell
Culprit: Patrick David MacKay?

For Parts 1 to 4 covering the life of Patrick MacKay, his crimes, his trial and the three murders he was convicted of, check out Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath by True Crime Enthusiast

Five time nominated at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Awards and the British Podcast Awards, Murder Mile is one of the best UK / British true crime podcasts covering only 20 square miles of West London. It is researched, written and performed by Michael of Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein and Jon Boux of Cult With No Name and additional music, as used under the Creative Commons License 4.0. A full listing of tracks used and a full transcript for each episode is listed here and a legal disclaimer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Always True Crime, a podcast network bringing you gripping real-life stories that you
0:06.2	won't be able to stop thinking about. Discover your next true crime obsession at alwaystruecrime.com.
0:20.1	If Patrick Mackay had killed 11 people as he confessed to, he would be one of Britain's most prolific serial killers, after Harold Chipman, Dennis Nielsen, Peter Sutcliffe and Fredham Rose West.
0:32.6	Only he didn't.
0:35.6	Of the 11, three he was convicted of, eight he was suspected of or confessed to, only two of those he was ever charged with, and all eight he later denied, perhaps at his lawyer's insistence.
0:49.5	But why did he confess to 11, and why were the detectives so certain of his guilt in those crimes he denied?
0:59.0	A nameless detective told tabloid newspaper The Sun.
1:02.8	We thought we had a mass murderer.
1:05.1	It looked as if we were going to clear all of our books of almost every outstanding murder in London.
1:14.0	An oddball like Mackay. He's one of the most terrifying killers to be walking around London in a long time. And as a drunk psychopath with
1:20.5	a bad memory and inconsistent methods, it was easy to pin a maniac's murder on Mackay,
1:26.9	as he'd willingly confess to every killing
1:29.3	within reason, even if he was innocent.
1:33.3	By the summer of 1973, it's confirmed that he'd committed one provable murder, Isabella
1:41.3	Griffiths.
1:42.3	But being elderly, infirm, and likely to be a robbery, which, in a short burst of rage, owing to his warped moral code, this killing could easily have been an accident, as there's no hint of murderous premeditation. Of the eight, he may have admitted to hide his killing as being a high-profile case.
2:01.8	It gave him exposure.
2:04.4	Marys fitted his method, with the police coercing him to confess,
2:08.3	but unless he broke out of prison, it's unlikely to be him.
2:12.5	He may have denied Christopher's killing because, being a boy,
2:16.0	he didn't want to be as hated as the Moors
2:17.7	murderous. Or by partially proving his guilt as with Leslie's killing, did he want his crimes
	...

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