October 1999 Paedophile was and still is a danger to children, especially young boys TWO schoolboys who stabbed a 13-year-old friend 18 times and left him for dead after watching the horror film Scream were ordered yesterday to be detained for six years. Daniel Gill, 14, and Robert Fuller, 15, dumped Ashley Murray in undergrowth at Birk Crag, a wooded beauty spot on the outskirts of the North Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate. Blue with cold after 40 hours in freezing temperatures last January, and lying face down at the foot of a 30ft cliff, Ashley was barely alive when he was found. Miraculously, he survived. Gill and Fuller, both of Harrogate, had earlier been found guilty of attempted murder by a jury who heard about an underworld of black magic, drugtaking and homosexuality behind Harrogate’s genteel image. The jury was told that the two boys attacked their friend hours after watching part of Scream, an 18-certificate Hollywood film featuring a series of brutal stabbings. Drawings of the masks worn by the film’s killers – based on Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream – and pictures of knives were found in one of the boys’ school books. Sentencing the pair yesterday at Hull Crown Court, Judge Arthur Myerson QC took the unusual step of allowing them to be named. He said their exposure to the horror film, to drugs, knives and black magic, combined to ‘blur the line between fantasy and reality’ and between ‘right and wrong’. Many of the malign influences which drove Gill and Fuller to stab their friend can arguably have been found in Wellfield Court in the otherwise exclusive Pannal Ash Road, Harrogate. The £49 a-week flat was rented from a housing association by drug dealer and paedophile Paul Aurens, 39. There, all three boys were introduced to drugs, drink, gay sex and the occult. Aurens, a bisexual loner who has not worked full-time for years since the breakup of his marriage and was well-known to police, befriended the boys, all pupils at Rossett High School, two summers ago. Inside his darkened lair, candles illuminated an eerie black and white decor and the paraphernalia of the black arts. A gruesome ox’s skull adorned the wall, a ouija board and tarot cards were always available, as were cannabis, amphetamines and cocaine. The seedy first-floor flat quickly became an oasis of anarchy for bored children who could pop in on the way to school just 200 yards away and listen to Aurens’ palm reading and warped advice on how to interpret the Bible – all to a soundtrack of relentless dance music. Fuller was arguably the most vulnerable of the three. The son of a 37-year-old Royal Engineer, also called Robert, and 34-year-old shopworker, Vanessa, Fuller and his younger sister spent their early years at British Army bases in Germany. Seven years ago, his father suddenly walked out. Since his son’s arrest he has phoned only once. His mother returned to Yorkshire and moved to a three-bedroom council house where she endured a stormy two-year relationship with a man named Mick Strong. It was through Strong that Fuller met Aurens. ‘Robert had a harsh childhood,’ said his 73-year-old grandmother, Joan Murthick. ‘His father was brutal and treated him like he was in the Army. ‘I knew Aurens was trouble. I told my daughter he was gay but she wouldn’t believe me. Robert is easily led.’ Mrs Murthick is convinced her grandson was used by Aurens as a drugs courier. By his early teens, Fuller and his quick temper were known to police. He was convicted of breaking into a pub in an attempt to steal alcohol and of vandalising a car. Unruly at school, he was twice suspended. He began seeing a psychiatrist and admitted he suffered from violent fits or ‘eppies’. ‘When I throw an eppy, I start punching and fighting,’ he said. ‘I can’t stop. It builds up inside of me and I’ve just got to get it out.’ A hundred yards from Fuller’s house is the smart semidetached home of Daniel Gill. Gill, the son of a 47-year-old car sales executive, Jonathan, and 46-year-old housewife Alyson, has two brothers and until he began secondary school was a bright, undemonstrative child, who had been earmarked for A-levels. ‘He was always reading books and was very quiet – he was one of the swots,’ recalled a former school friend. ‘But when he moved to senior school he changed. He began hanging around with Robert Fuller and getting into fights in the playground.’ Another friend added: ‘He always wore this vacant look. I think his mother and father began to despair of him. He never seemed able to concentrate.’ The boys soon became part what was known as the ‘Youth club gang’. Children agreed to tell their parents they were going to the local youth club but pooled their money to pay for cigarettes and strong cider – usually bought by Aurens. One of the former friends said: ‘They would sit around drinking and it was obvious that both Fuller and Gill were taking drugs. ‘They would burn out bins, knock roadworks signs over and set pieces of paper on fire.’ Gill began telling friends he could hear voices and see ‘little green and red men’. He was also seeing a child psychiatrist. Although he was never convicted of anything, police sources hinted he was well known to officers. By the time the pair encountered Ashley Murray at Rossett, their descent into delinquency was in full swing. Aided, inevitably, by Aurens, they began making trips to a Harrogate shop called Way of the Warrior – an Aladdin’s cave of knives, air rifles and martial arts equipment. One schoolgirl told how the pair began regularly carrying lethal lock knives. They would regularly brandish the blades to impress watching friends and chased girls with them. After the stabbing, police recovered three knives from Gill’s house alone. The couple’s victim is also the son of a motor trade executive, Alan Murray, and his wife, Joanne, a marketing director. Ashley had a nomadic start to life. An only child, by the age of 11 he had moved several times and ended up in a large [pounds sterling]100,000 detached house in Harro-gate only for his parents to split in 1997. Emotionally battered and coming from a broken home, Ashley fell in with Fuller and Gill who ruthlessly exploited him for money and cigarettes. At the age of 14, both had been barred from their local off-licence. Brian Barrett, a neighbour of Aurens, recalled: ‘The boys would arrive at 8am and would leave very late at night. ‘They were cheeky, cocky lads. Robert and Danny were the worst. Ashley was the nicest. He was very polite. ‘But what was going on up there I dread to think. On a hot day they would sit on the roof, smoking. ‘Once I came home to find a lad and girl lying on top of each other in the bushes. Another boy had just been sick. ‘They would cadge cigarettes and Robert would ask for cans of Special Brew.’ The jury was shown a book of obscene and Satanist drawings by Aurens. Later, exercise books, filled with the boys’ sketches of knives and masks from the film Scream, were produced. Aurens looked sheepish as he mumbled the depraved obscenities that littered his copy of the ‘Unholy ex-Bible’. He recited four alternative ‘commandments’ which included exhortations to steal, kill, cherish adulterers and not respect parents. Aurens’s defence was simple. ‘I was off my head on drugs,’ he muttered. He conceded he had given all three of the boys cannabis, amphetamines and what he thought were hallucinatory ‘magic’ mushrooms. One boy he befriended committed suicide by throwing himself off a viaduct. In June, Aurens was sentenced to five years in prison for supplying drugs. His brother, Mark, from Ripon, said last night: ‘Drugs ruined him. But those boys knew what they were doing. Paul was good to children and would never have got them involved in any stabbing.’ A police source appeared to agree: ‘Those boys were prepared to take the witness stand and lie about each other. Had Aurens really been influencing them, surely they would have mentioned his name.’ But last night the mother of a local 12-year-old gave an insight into Aurens’ methods of ensnaring young boys. He would even buy them Christmas presents. ‘He was polite but persistent and was always asking if my boy wanted to come round to the flat,’ she said. ‘Once he told us play a scary film on the video and let my son watch it,’ she recalled. ‘At 10.30pm there was a knock at the door and there was Paul, dressed in a Scream mask and black cape and holding a dagger. ‘My lad screamed and was chased back up the stairs by Paul. After that I wouldn’t let my boy play with them. I think he had a lucky escape.’ Another middle-class mother, who on a handful of occasions let her young son go to Wellfield Court, said, however: ‘Paul was a nice, polite man with a good sense of humour. ‘He had a dog that the children loved. I went to the flat a couple of times and never saw any evidence of any wrongdoing or witchcraft. This has come as a complete shock.’