Broadmoor patient admits killing two women in Hastings

A patient at a high-security psychiatric hospital has admitted the manslaughter of two women in East Sussex 12 years ago.

The bodies of Clare Letchford and Beryl O'Connor were found eight days apart in their Hastings homes in January 1998.

Graham Fisher, 36, now in Broadmoor, Berkshire, admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at Reading Crown Court.

Fisher, from Bromley, south-east London, will be sentenced in July.

Ms Letchford, 40, was found in her rented basement home in Cornwallis Gardens on 18 January.

Mrs O'Connor, 75, known as Dornie, was discovered in her flat 100 yards (91m) away in Holmesdale Gardens on 26 January.

They had been strangled before being set on fire.

Sussex Police's major crime branch announced in April last year that they were re-investigating the women's deaths.

A force spokesman said he had previously pleaded guilty to the attempted murder and attempted rape of a Czech student, now aged 30, in the same month of the killings.

He also admitted two counts of rape of a woman in her 40s at a property in Bromley, south-east London, in 1991.

The student was attacked on a Hastings to London Charing Cross train just three months after arriving in East Sussex as an English language student.

The victim, who has since returned to her homeland, was found by a train guard, covered in blood and with severe head injuries.

Fisher is due to appear at Maidstone Crown Court to be sentenced for all the offences on 22 July.