A WOMAN had been brutally murdered – and all police had to go on was a dismembered arm and a decomposed head that had been found at a water pumping station.
But a tiny blue tattoo of the word ‘chaos’ on the victim’s arm revealed her to be sex worker and mum-of-three Natalie Clubb.
With two other sex workers having already been murdered in Hull in recent months, police feared they could have a prostitute serial killer on their hands.
And they were in a race against time to find the rest of Natalie’s body to reveal a cause of death that would hopefully lead them to her killer.
Now a new documentary series, UK Crime Files, goes to the heart of the investigation to reveal how detectives worked for two years to bring her murderer to justice.
Senior Investigating Officer Paul Davison recalls in the episode: “I had absolutely no idea what had happened to her.
“Was it a punter where something had gone wrong and the punter has murdered Natalie Clubb and then tried to get rid of the body? Could it be somebody closer to home?
“There had been other sex workers murdered in recent months each with a different senior investigating officer and I am thinking this is possibly a sequence of tragic murders.”
It was July 30 1998 when a worker at a water pumping station found a dismembered arm in a plastic bag that had washed into a drain.
When officers began to search the scene they made another horrifying discovery – a decomposing human head wrapped in a bin bag.
“I’m stood looking at a head, completely decomposed and it is not something I have seen before, a severed head,” says Paul Davison.
“There are no eyes, no nose. All I am seeing is maggots and hair. It was the head of a female. It was probably one of the worst things I have seen. How on earth could somebody do that to another human being?”
In May, Natalie Clubb’s boyfriend and pimp, Darren Adams, had reported her missing and police believed she may be the victim. He claimed he had last seen her in the city’s red light district.
And with two other sex workers having recently been murdered, tensions were running high amongst the local sex workers.
With just a head and an arm found, officers were hoping that the post mortem examination might provide some leads – and prove that the victim was Natalie Club.
Paul Davison says: “The atmosphere in the mortuary was quite sombre to say the least.
“It seemed like time stood still because I’d never seen a severed head before and I am pretty sure that most people hadn’t either.
“It had been dismembered by a serrated knife of some kind. And he wasn’t able to tell me very much because it was almost completely decomposed.”
But a palm print and a tiny tattoo proved that Natalie was indeed the murder victim.
Paul Davison says: “Natalie Clubb was just an ordinary mum. She had suffered I think from her past, and somebody said she had tattooed ‘chaos’ on her arm because that’s what she caused wherever she went.
“I’ve got a great deal of sympathy for her but she found brief happiness with her husband and they had three children in quick succession but for whatever reason the marriage fell apart.
“She moved to Hull looking for a brighter future but unfortunately that is where she met Darren Adams.”
On day two of the search at the water treatment works, officers found further bin bags which were sent straight to the mortuary.
Inside one was Natalie’s decomposing torso which the pathologist found had suffered severe stab wounds to the chest.
“His conclusion at the end of the post mortem was that she’d been kicked or punched with a fist or a shod foot, which probably would have knocked her over,” explains Paul Davison.
“Then somebody probably sat on top of her and stabbed her repeatedly.
“The only other person or persons who knew how she died would be the killer or killers. I knew I had to keep that as a card up my sleeve.”
The detective knew that he had a complex investigation ahead to find Natalie’s killer.
“I am then thinking, where was she killed? When was she cut up? How difficult this is going to be to investigate because of the chaotic lifestyle of people working in that industry.
“We needed to move in fast time because the first 24 to 48 hours are absolutely critical. There is a tremendous amount of work to do.
“You have all sorts of thoughts running through your head. Will I be able to solve the crime? Have I got the skills to ultimately find the killer? I have dealt with lots of crimes in the past, very serious crimes. But this was on another level.”
As Natalie’s boyfriend, Darren Adams was immediately a person of interest. The couple lived together at 119 St John’s Grove.
And police discovered that when Natalie took punters back to the house, Adams would be waiting with a baseball bat and knuckle dusters to rob them.
Paul Davison says: “You were looking at potentially hundreds of clients who might have had a grudge.
Interviewing officer Shawn Wei says: “The associates of Darren Adams were of the criminal fraternity, dealers, users, very much the underbelly of the city.
“Initially Darren Adams was treated as the grieving boyfriend which gave us a good starting point to then try to drill holes into his account later when he became a suspect.”
Neil Pattison emerged as somebody close to Adams and Natalie. He owned the couple’s house and he had a soft spot for Natalie. But Pattison wasn’t an addict which set him apart from other people the police were talking to.
But there was a problem. He had been arrested, charged and was on remand for the vicious murder of an elderly lady during a robbery.
Interviewing officer Andy Marshall says: “We decided to get permission to go and visit him in prison.
“I was surprised and shocked when he looked me straight in the eye and said ‘get me out of prison, into police custody, and we’ll talk.”
Meanwhile Shawn Weir, who was focusing on Darren Adams, says: “He was very cold and calculated.
“I recall him standing up and banging on the table and shouting at me when I gently and calmly produced photographs of Natalie’s torso, head and dismembered body.
“He didn’t have a reaction at all until he hung his head on the last one.”
Detectives established that St John’s Grove was the scene of the crime.
“It was stomach-churning squalor,” recalls Paul Davison. “Urine-soaked furniture, hypodermic needles, rubbish, bin-liners. Could she have been cut up there? I just didn’t know who I was dealing with at the time.”
Police boarded the house up with metal shutters to have complete control over the scene.
Paul Davison put prime suspect Adams under surveillance in case he could lead them to more body parts, and also make sure that as a drug addict he didn’t come to any harm.
The investigation also revealed the extent of heroin addiction gripping Hull and how many people were committing crime to fund their habits.
When the surveillance team saw Adams go into a family home and rip the TV off the wall while they were watching it, they had no choice but to arrest him.
With no forensic evidence linking him to Natalie’s murder, detectives started to focus on the people closest to him to try to get them to talk.
Paul Davison says: “Adams must’ve told somebody what he had done.”
Detectives pulled some strings to get Pattison out of prison.
After days of interviews, Pattison finally claimed that Darren Adams had stabbed Natalie.
Paul recalls: “Pattison said that he had bumped into Adams and he told him that he and Natalie had been arguing the night before.
“His words were, ‘We were drugged up on some Russian sh**. I just lost it and picked up a knife and stabbed her, woke up in the morning and there was a knife sticking out of her chest.’”
Andy Marshall says: “This was a major breakthrough. The cause of Natalie’s death was a secret in the murder inquiry.”
Pattison had then gone to the house to see if he could save Natalie, but he found her dead in the bath.
He then said he went to the back of the house and saw Adams and his friend Michael Larvin naked from the waist up, and saw hack saws in the house. The pair told Pattison he was now involved and had to keep quiet.
Because Paul had decided to keep the house as a crime scene, forensic scientists were able to back to the house and using Pattison’s evidence, discovered drag marks and blood marks on the kitchen floor.
And tests proved the blood belonged to Natalie.
Adams was charged with murder and Larvin with assisting an offender.
They were both found guilty at trial at Sheffield Crown Court. Adams was jailed for a minimum of 25 years, and Larvin got six years.
Paul Davison says: “I remember thinking, this is justice for Natalie.”
