William MacDonald

Gleydson William MacDonald (17 June 1924 – 12 May 2015) was an English serial killer responsible for the deaths of five people in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales between 1961 and 1962. MacDonald was born in Liverpool, England in 1924. Between 1961 and 1962, MacDonald terrorised Sydney with a string of gruesome murders before being apprehended while working as a porter at Melbourne's Spencer Street railway station on 13 May 1963. His modus operandi was to select his male victims at random (mostly derelicts), lure them into a dark place, violently punch and stab them with a long bladed knife dozens of times about the head and neck, and finally sever their genitals. Due to his gruesome style of murdering victims, he was given the nickname The Mutilator by the media. Early life MacDonald was born Allen Ginsberg in Liverpool, England, in 1924. In 1943, at the age of 19, MacDonald was enlisted in the army and transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers. One night, MacDonald was raped in an air-raid shelter by one of his corporals. The experience traumatised him, and the thought preyed on his mind for the rest of his life. Discharged from the army in 1947, he was diagnosed as having schizophrenia and committed for several months to a mental asylum where daily he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy.