A man accused of murdering three pensioners in Blackpool has been charged with a a fourth murder.Stephen Akinmurele, 21, was charged on Monday evening with murder of Dorothy Harris at Glashen Terrace in Ballasalla on the Isle of Man in February 1996.
Mr Akinmurele, who lived on the island between 1988 and 1995, is also accused of murdering an elderly couple, Eric and Joan Boardman, and 75-year-old Jemmimah Cargill in Blackpool.
Strangled
The bodies of Mr and Mrs Boardman, married for 27 years, were discovered by one of their daughters.
Lancashire Police have now re-opened files on fatal arson attacks in north-west England over the last two years.
Mr Akinmurele, a former barman, was arrested on 1 November for the murder of Mr and Mrs Boardman at their home in Blackpool on 31 October. They had been strangled.
On 6 November he was charged with the murder of Ms Cargill, his former landlady, who died in a fire at her home in October.
Unsolved case re-opened
Mr Akinmurele was charged in connection with the fourth death following the setting up of a joint incident room between detectives in Lancashire and on the Isle of Man.
Officers are also looking into the unsolved murder of Majorie Ashton, who was found strangled at her home in Ballsalla in May 1995.
Police are contacting relatives of a number of individuals whose deaths are being reassessed as potentially suspicious in light of new evidence.
They are also appealing for any information about Mr Akinmurele, who lived in the Castletown and Douglas areas before moving to Blackpool.
Update
A suspected serial killer tormented by his obsession with murder hanged himself in prison, an inquest has heard.
A jury at an inquest in Manchester recorded a verdict of suicide on Stephen Akinmurele, 21, who died in August last year.
He was discovered hanging by a ligature from a window in his cell in Manchester prison, formerly known as Strangeways, weeks before he was due to stand trial for murdering three Blackpool pensioners.
The inquest in Manchester heard Nigerian-born Akinmurele left a note to his mother saying: "I couldn't take any more of feeling like how I do now, always wanting to kill."
Akinmurele, a former barman, had been charged with killing his former landlady, 75-year-old Jemima Cargill, who died in a house fire in Blackpool in October 1998.
Manx murders
He was also accused of the murders of a nearby couple, Joan Boardman, 74, and her husband Eric, 76. They were discovered battered to death in the town a month later.
Akinmurele was further charged with the murder of 68-year-old Dorothy Harris, who died in a house fire in Ballasalla on the Isle of Man in February 1996, and 72-year-old Marjorie Ashton, who died in a house fire in the same town in 1995.
Those charges had been dropped due to a technicality.
The inquest was told of two previous suicide attempts and a warning given to prison authorities by his girlfriend, Amanda Fitch, that he was a danger to himself.
"He told me he wished the police had never found him and he didn't want to go to trial," said Miss Fitch in a statement.
A consultant forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Akinmurele and decided he was fit to stand trial said he was "haunted by the images of his victims".
'It's always on my mind'
Prison hospital doctor Andrzej Rozyki said Akinmurele told him he would lie in bed at night thinking about murder.
In the note found in his pocket after his death Akinmurele said: "I know it's not right always thinking like this but it's always on my mind."
"I can't help the way I feel, what I did was wrong - I know that and I feel for them - but it doesn't mean I won't do it again.
"I'll keep on having this feeling I'm going mad because I can't take any more of this and that's why I'm saying goodbye."
After his arrest Akinmurele was placed in a segregated unit and, in August 1999, tried to kill himself by overdosing on medication.
He was put in the prison's health care ward on self harm watch but staff then found he had a sharpened toothbrush and fantasised about taking a female member of staff hostage.
Akinmurele was moved back to the segregated wing, still on self harm watch, where he killed himself two days later.
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