Triple killer Theodore Johnson admits murdering ex-partner

Theodore Johnson
Theodore Johnson beat Angela Best with a claw hammer and throttled her with a dressing gown cord.

A man who already had convictions for killing his wife and a former partner has pleaded guilty to murdering his ex-girlfriend.

Theodore Johnson, 64, beat Angela Best with a claw hammer and throttled her with a dressing gown cord after she met another man, the Old Bailey heard.

Johnson, who pushed his wife over a balcony in 1981 and strangled a partner in 1993, has two previous manslaughter convictions.

He will be sentenced on Friday.

After attacking Ms Best, 51, at his Islington home on 15 December 2016, the garage worker threw himself in front of an express train but survived.

Police only discovered Ms Best’s body when they called at Johnson’s north London flat to find his next of kin after the incident at Cheshunt railway station.

The defendant, who now uses a wheelchair, pleaded guilty to murdering mother-of-four and grandmother Ms Best on the first day of his trial.

Johnson’s long-term relationship with Ms Best ended in 2016 when she met someone else.

A post-mortem examination established her cause of death to be neck compression by strangulation with a ligature and blunt force trauma to the head.

In 1981, Johnson was found guilty of wife Yvonne Johnson’s manslaughter.

He hit her over the head with a vase during a row before pushing her over the balcony of their ninth-floor flat in Wolverhampton.

In 1993, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, after attacking former partner Yvonne Bennett.

The couple, who had a daughter together, had been living in Finsbury Park in north London.

Johnson strangled Ms Bennett with a belt after she had an affair with another man.

He met Ms Best after he was released from a psychiatric unit in the mid 1990s.

She and her children had moved from Manchester to Tottenham, north London.

Ms Best’s two sisters were in court as Johnson entered his guilty plea.

Source: bbc.co.uk

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