Police 'covered up 1970s Tube serial killer', former detective claims

A former detective claims that the Metropolitan Police "covered up" a killing spree of a serial killer who told officers he had murdered 18 people in the 1970s by pushing them under trains on the London Underground.

Retired detective Geoff Platt claims in his book, The London Underground Serial Killer, that a man named Kiernan Kelly was arrested for drunk and disorderly behaviour in 1984 before he murdered his cellmate, William Boyd in a frenzied attack.

During questioning about the murder of Boyd, Mr Platt alleges that Kelly admitted to a string of slayings on the London Underground. He claims that the deaths were labelled suicides by police at the time because Scotland Yard wanted to avoid sparking a panic.

Platt also alleges that officers were eager to keep the apparent killings quiet because they didn't want it widely known that 18 murders on the tube had gone unnoticed.

Over the next two days police uncovered a number of reported suicides on the Underground which mirrored Kelly’s grim claims, the former detective writes in his book.

Kelly went to jail for the killing of Boyd and another man, Hector Fisher, who he stabbed repeatedly years earlier in a south London graveyard.

Mr Platt claims the force completely disregarded Kelly’s Tube killings confession.

"Think about it – the police don't want it getting out; there would be mass panic," he told the Daily Star. "They didn't want people knowing a serial killer got away with pushing innocent people onto the tracks – they'd be afraid it could happen again."

A British Transport Police spokesperson told the newspaper: