The Skull

Dr. David Birkett was a fifty-six-year-old consultant dermatologist in Middlesbrough, England, a father of three who kept a medieval skull as a study specimen. A handwritten note reached his door on February 3, 1990, about a parcel, supposedly from a courier firm called Demon Despatch. No such firm existed, and the number on it led to a man waiting by a phone booth.

When Birkett came to his door he was beaten with a hammer wrapped in plastic, dragged by a rope into his study and struck about seventeen times in the head. His sixteen-year-old daughter found him. The killer was Reginald Wilson, twenty-five, who had picked a man living alone in the hope that a murder would draw police toward him. He was stockpiling weapons and collecting officers’ names and addresses for a campaign against them. He took the skull from the house and later sent detectives stenciled taunts.

A thumbprint on a shopping bag dropped at the scene identified him. Wilson was convicted of murder at Durham Crown Court in 1991 and jailed for life with a whole life order, later replaced on appeal by a thirty year minimum. He changed his surname to Zenshen. The Parole Board directed his release and he left prison in early 2026; on June 9, 2026 the High Court threw out the government’s challenge to that decision.