Have You Come Across Any Killers Recently? A Grim Tribute to Halloween.
Shôn Ellerton, October 31, 2025
The shocking realisation when one finds out that someone they know just so happens to be a killer.
The parents tucked their baby to sleep in the cot and went downstairs to the living room to read books and relax.
In the quiet of the night, they could hear their baby breathe and snore using the electronic baby monitor.
An hour later, the baby monitor came alive. There was a flurry of sound as if there were footsteps.
They could hear through the monitor as the baby cried out. “Mama!”
Both parents, who were downstairs in the living room looked at each other in abject horror.
Who and what was upstairs portraying itself to be Mama?
This creepy little story for Halloween is a variant of a fairly well-known one in which the supernatural plays havoc with the senses.
I’m not sure why we celebrate Halloween in the infantile way we do it today. All that trick or treating and candy and costumes. Seems that the Americans, as always, have a lot to answer for in making it the way that it is. Rather, I thought Halloween, or O’Hallow’s Eve was the solemn festival and dinner the night before All Hallow’s Day, the one day of the year where the spirits come out in force and all of us mere mortals are safely behind the doors of our houses.
Now that the atmosphere’s been set, on this Halloween, I’d like to reveal two occasions in which I met real-life killers. In fact, I worked with one of them for over a year only to find out later that he had been convicted of murder.
Statistically, there is a significant chance that many of us, unknowingly, may have met actual killers. That’s a sobering thought. It just so happens that the two I met have been found out and convicted, so, in reality, have I come across more than I know?
I’ll start with the guy I worked with for over a year. He worked as part of our design and innovations team at T-Mobile, a company I used to work for in the UK during the early 2000s.
His name is Derek Symmons, an electrical engineer. He killed his wife during 2005 after, allegedly, he lost his temper and strangled her stating that he was doing it as an act of self-defence when she tried to attack him. And to make this even morbid, he wrapped her dead body in polythene and drove to catch a ferry to France after putting her in the boot of his car.
Prior to this happening, we often had our early morning breakfast at the cafeteria along with a few other members of the team. Along with the usual chit-chat, we enjoyed guzzling down endless cups of coffee and gorging on grease-ridden full English breakfasts.
Derek seemed to be the most gracious of the lot being soft-spoken, polite, but guardedly quiet. He was an older person nearing retirement age and lived in the more affluent areas of northwest London and, as we knew it, had quite a large house somewhere in Rickmansworth. We were quite sure he didn’t really need to work but rather did so, out of just doing something to keep him busy.
Everything seemed totally normal with him.
Until one Monday morning, we got to our desks and found out that his desk was completely empty. As if it was to be occupied by a newcomer to the team. Perhaps he’d moved to another desk but surely that wouldn’t have happened since Friday afternoon where he was working diligently away on some electronics-related problem.
Moreover, there was not one sign of him in the email directory book when we logged in to our computers. Not a trace. Usually, when someone leaves the business, the name is preceded by a little ‘x’ for a couple of weeks to indicate that they’ve left and to leave time to transition any emails over to the business and so forth.
He just vanished without a trace.
It was only later we were ushered in by our manager who explained what had happened. Naturally, we were all very much in shock.
As for the second killer, it was only during a brief moment that I met him. I was a little uncertain if I should write about him, because I knew his son during my time at university in London, but it’s been many years that have passed since then.
It was during 1989 if my memory serves me well and it was my first year at university in which I stayed at a halls of residence in Islington, a borough of London. Getting to know each other, we sort of helped each other out getting belongings in and so on to our individual rooms. Many parents helped out, and there was one distinguished looking gentleman who didn’t look out of place with the Captain Birdseye look.
He was helping his son move in and looked like the sort of kindly and gentle person one would feel comfortable around. He was softly spoken and some of us had a brief chat with him.
We were all students of civil engineering at the time, and we got to know his son quite well. He was equally soft spoken and had an air of sophistication about his mannerisms. His passion was running the student union bar and bringing in all varieties of real ale.
We had survived university and we all went out into the real world. Many of us had made lifelong friends with each other and we kept in contact, even to this day.
But sometime during 2000 or thereabouts, we got the most shocking news.
His father was none other than Harold Shipman, possibly Britain’s most prolific serial killer, dubbed the ‘Angel of Death’ who managed to kill around 250 patients. And still to this day, his motives are not entirely known. Shortly after he was convicted, he hanged himself in prison.
Our old group of university friends who knew him were in collective shock when we found out. We could not imagine the distress this must have played out on his son, who changed his name later, and whose name I’d rather not reveal out of respect. Albeit, we had lost contact with him for quite some time after the news only to reconnect during later years.
How does one reconcile with something of this enormity?
I guess we’re never quite sure what goes on within the minds of such people, but alas, they are around us, perhaps, in larger numbers than we may wish to realise.
Whether you’re walking down a deserted alleyway. Sitting on a near-empty train in an underground metro. Or simply working with someone for many months thinking there’s no way that that person could be an actual killer.
