When Jeffery Howe asked Stephen Marshall to pay rent the unimaginable happened.
It was November 2008 when kitchen salesman Howe offered former bouncer Marshall and his girlfriend Sarah Bush a place to stay in his flat in Southgate, north London.
Howe would later tell his friends that Marshall refused to pay him rent, and was eating all of his food.
Months later and Marshall was dead, his neatly-severed body parts scattered in suitcases across two UK counties. The hunt for the so-called ‘jigsaw man’ began.
His severed legs, left arm, torso and head were all discovered in separate locations across Hertfordshire and Leicestershire between 22 March and 11 April 2009.
Howe’s hands have never been discovered, although Bush claimed in court they are buried in Epping Forest.
It was of the most heinous cases of human dismemberment criminologist Dr. Honor Doro Townshend has ever seen.
‘Marshall dismembered Jeffrey’s body into multiple pieces, further brutalised his body as well. With Jeffrey’s head, he’d removed the eyes and the mouth and the nose and the ears. It was done in this professional manner; very calculated, and detached,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
It was so calculated, in fact, that Home Office pathologist Simon Poole told St Albans Crown Court the ‘very skillful’ dismemberment would have taken about 12 hours. It is thought Howe may have been alive for up to an hour before dying, suffering a huge loss of blood.
‘It was quite unusual,’ Dr Honor says (as grisly murders go). ‘Because you’ve got this case of what seems like it might be a minor altercation, leading to not only a murder but then a very calculated and methodical attempt to get away with it, which really isn’t that common to see together.
‘You could see an altercation leading to maybe a fight or even an accidental death or even a murder. But the aftermath of what Marshall did next is so extreme.’
As is the case in all of the episodes of the new discovery+ series, The Suitcase Murders, which looks at the reasons behind what leads a human to such inhumane behaviour.
The fact there are enough real cases for such a series to exist is disturbing. But what’s worst is that each case is totally different, according to Dr Honor, who gives her thoughts in the series.
‘The motivations behind the murders are so different, and the perpetrator and the victim relationships are so different,’ she says. ‘I think that’s what’s so horrifying about all of the cases across the series.’
In the case of Howe’s murder, Honor thinks it was motivated by a number of things. To an extent there was a financial motivation, as in the aftermath of the murder Marshall started splurging Howe’s money, using his car, and ordering takeaways.
‘More deeply than that I think [Howe asking Marshall for rent] was an affront to the way in which Marshall had been living and surviving. He didn’t take kindly to that being challenged.
‘Fundamentally as well, whenever you’ve got suitcase murder, you’ve also got someone who’s clearly desperately trying to get away with it. So that immediately tells you that there is likely a level of narcissism involved.’
Initially, Marshall pleaded not-guilty, blaming Sarah – who changed her name from Sara to Sarah on his insistence – for the murder. Sarah, a prostitute who met Marshall when he hired her as an escort, blamed him.
Eventually, Marshall changed his plea to guilty and in 2010 was jailed for life with a minimum of 36 years. Sarah was jailed for three years and nine months for perverting the cause of justice.
Marshall claimed this was not his first time he’d dismembered a body, and said he’d butchered four other men while working for London’s gangster underworld in the 1990s.
This fits with the pathologists view the person responsible for Howe’s murder had ‘previous experience of such activity’.
But why he did it, we will never truly know.
Dr Honor thinks our society’s fascination with murder is so enduring because it’s inexplicable.
‘It’s an excellent thing that most of us can’t understand it and try to understand it,’ she said.
‘I’m glad that I inherently don’t understand their thought processes, because that would just make me question myself.’
When it comes to murder, you can’t use logic to explain it away – and that’s the ultimate frustration that keeps everyone coming back.
‘I think something across this series which is really well done is that kind of victim centrality,’ adds Honor, who has met many families of murder victims over the years.
Victims are the most harrowing part of Dr Honor’s job – not digging into the motivations of murderers: her biggest lesson from studying the most inhumane acts imaginable is how important it is to be human.
‘My biggest takeaway that I’ve ever learned in criminology is the importance of remaining in contact with the ones that you love, and being active,’ she says.
Most victims are vulnerable people without a big support network; those whose disappearance might go undetected for longer, or even forever.
‘Vulnerability is targeted,’ she says. ‘Often – and tragically – I see cases where victims, due to various circumstances, have ended up alone in the time before their death.
‘I think that’s just one of the saddest things you can imagine.’
“Stream The Suitcase Murders now on discovery+, also airs Saturdays 10pm on Quest Red.”
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