WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Mark Brown was convicted of two murders and is serving a life sentence but the body of his first known victim, Leah Ware, has never been found
A depraved murderer who killed at least two women gave himself a chilling nickname before the gruesome murders. Despite 41-year-old builder Mark Brown being found guilty of double murder, the remains of his first known victim, Leah Ware, have never been found.
“It’s incredibly difficult to find a body, if people aren’t prepared to cooperate with police,” explained former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Dal Babu in a new documentary about the case. “Bodies can be mutilated. They can be cut up. They can be burnt. They can be put into acid and and then decompose over time.”
Animal enthusiast Leah was thrilled when she met someone online who lived not too far from her, and owned farmland where she believed she could pursue her passion for horse-riding. However, Brown abducted her and imprisoned her in a squalid shipping container where he sexually attacked her before ending her life.
Leah’s cousin, Alice Barnard, revealed to the Channel 4 documentary Social Media Monsters that she had fallen for the cheerful posts Leah had been sharing on her Instagram account.
She explained: “Everything I saw about Leah living life on the farm may have been true in the beginning but it wasn’t true later.
“She was locked away in a metal cabin inside a shipping container with three locks on the outside.”
At some point, Brown committed the heinous act of murdering Leah and went to great lengths to obliterate any trace of his crime. To this day, he has stubbornly refused to disclose the location of Leah’s remains.
However, he did send a bone-chilling message to a mate. After enticing two victims to his East Sussex farm, Brown ended their lives and incinerated their bodies, chillingly telling a friend: “”It’s a very unpleasant thing to do – an old oil drum, five litres of diesel, and hey presto, there’s not very much left.”
Detectives were able to discover the remains of Leah’s beloved dog, Lady. The little Pomeranian was discovered in a lake on Brown’s property, having been tied to a heavy object and apparently drowned.
While Brown had demonstrated considerable caution in some respects, in others, he had been brazenly flaunting his guilt on the internet. Digital forensics expert Vicky Saunders revealed that Brown’s choice of email address was a massive warning sign.
She said: “Lot of people use usernames that mean something to them and they can be quite telling. So, for example, people might use their football club or a pet name or a date of birth and it’s easier for them to remember and it’s personal to them. And Mark Browns was quite telling.”
The murderer had adopted the name “Fisty McRapist” not only for his Instagram handle, but also as his work email address. Upon his arrest, officers found that he had already started grooming a third woman online.
He had reconnected digitally with a former schoolmate, Beth Howard, messaging her: “[I] only want friendship and don’t judge any of the wrongs in my past please xx” and “You do deserve better than me. You’re amazing. I’d never want to hurt you. “
Beth later commented: “If Mark had wanted to kill me, I would never have seen it coming. When I think about it, it’s chilling. People like him are not obvious monsters. They are hiding in plain sight. “.
Clinical psychologist Dr Roberta Babb described Brown’s attempts to hide evidence of his sick crimes as “a really brutal way to dispose of someone”. She further commented: “He not only took someone’s life, but he also burnt their body. There’s no regard for human life. It’s calculated. It’s brutal. It’s emotionally detached. And it takes a person with very strong antisocial tendencies to behave in such a way.”
Despite the worries of Leah’s family, Brown could have evaded justice. Leah had been reticent about revealing much about her new boyfriend and, according to Alice, they hadn’t even heard his name until the murder investigation commenced.
He was only caught when, six months after Leah’s disappearance, he enticed another woman to the isolated East Sussex farmhouse five miles from where he actually resided with his wife and family.
Once again, he had made contact with the woman online and this time persuaded her to come and see him. Roberta Babb says: “The fact that Mark Brown had a family that was functioning and was also able to keep a girlfriend separate says a lot about him. It really highlights his ability to compartmentalise parts of his life and really reflects a calculated, emotionally detached person.”
The identity of Brown’s second victim has been kept secret to protect her family, but the Channel 4 documentary calls her “Jane. ” Whilst Brown had successfully manipulated and love-bombed Leah to the point where she had moved into his crumbling farmhouse without taking many precautions, Jane had been far more cautious.
Police uncovered phone messages from Brown offering her £100,000 for “filming work” at his farmhouse but before she departed from her home in Kent she left a “box of clues” in case anything happened to her.
Libby Clark of the CPS said: “She left a note addressed to one of her sons. It said ‘Let’s go rollerblading. ‘ That was a clue to go to a box under a TV in his bedroom where his rollerblades were kept.
“In that box there was £2,000 in cash – a significant sum for Alex – and there was a note we’ve called something of a ‘breadcrumb trail’. There was a mobile phone and a PIN number.”
One crucial piece of evidence in that box of clues was a slip of paper on which Jane had jotted down the postcode for Little Bridge Farm. But when quizzed about Jane’s disappearance, Brown remained elusive, responding with “no comment” to even the most basic inquiries.
However, former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Parm Sandhu disclosed the pivotal evidence that broke the case wide open: “During the investigation, police officers spoke to Mark Brown’s co-workers and one of the co-workers remembered that Mark had asked if he could throw something into one of the skips. It was actually an oil drum.
“Something had been burnt inside that oil drum. When they were searching, they found some jewellery, some partial remains, and some teeth.
“When those remains were examined, they were identified as being belonging to the woman that was missing. “
It was only during a second search of Brown’s van that evidence of a previous murder surfaced – a crumpled prescription bearing Leah Ware’s name.
Dal Babu is convinced that after committing the second murder, Brown would have been “looking for his next victim,” and added that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Brown had killed before, but managed to erase any trace of his victims.