It was about 3am and PC Sarah Lutkevitch was working the graveyard shift. It was cold and dark when she was accosted by a topless man. She was about six hours into that morning's tour of duty, and had been been posted outside a house in Rochdale with a colleague after a man's body had been discovered.
Liam Richardson, 21, had suffered horrendous injuries at the hands of a raging axeman. Blood was splattered across the walls and carpet near where his body was discovered, on the first floor landing of a mid-terrace house.
Liam had been murdered during a frenzied attack. He'd been hit over the head with his killer landing 18 blows.
READ MORE: 'Evil' killer who bludgeoned housemate 18 times with an axe in horror attack jailed for life
"S***, he's f****** dead," one of the first officers on the scene said after making their way inside, initially being called to reports of a domestic incident.
The scene they encountered was unthinkable.
After contending with two dangerous dogs in the house, and using riot shields to protect themselves while trying to get to Liam, sadly nothing more could be done to save him. At that stage, as PC Lutkevitch guarded the scene, the killer was still at large.
It was a couple of hours after Liam's body was discovered when the bizarre encounter with the topless man took place. At first glance, he appeared to be a nosey neighbour.
"The male said something to me like, 'what's happened'," the officer recalled. "I replied to him saying something like ‘there's been an incident’, he then continued to say something like ‘but what's happened?’.
"I replied ‘I can't tell you any more than that, unfortunately'. The male then replied ‘why?’, to which I replied ‘because I can't’."
The irritating questioning continued. He wouldn't take no for an answer.
The PC continued: "The male then repeatedly asked me why around three or four times, to which he got the same answer. On the last occasion, I told him 'you can keep asking me, but you're still going to get the same answer'."
He then gave up. It was unclear to PC Lutkevitch at that time why he was so curious about what had gone on inside the house. Unknown to her, he knew exactly what had happened. Because later the officer discovered that she'd been speaking with the killer himself.
Kieran Oldham's murderous attack was the reason the police were there. But he did not want to confess there and then - or hang around to face the consequences of his actions.
His rampage did not end when he walked away from PC Lutkevitch, who at that time had no idea of Oldham's true identity. At around 4am, he barged into the homes of Daniel Tighe and Elizabeth Pots, a couple who he'd previously been friends with.
They had been in bed watching TV when Oldham knocked at their door. He would often come round for a cigarette, but this was a visit that the couple would not forget in a hurry.
"He just started going on saying 'you know what you have done, I put a hex on you and your family'," Mr Tighe recalled.
He told Oldham: "Kieran, I haven't got a clue what you are on about. I have never upset you, I have never done anything wrong to you."
For two hours, Oldham would not leave the house, nor would he let the couple leave. Not knowing he'd just murdered someone, they also became victims of his rampage. They became his captors, before he took nine tablets he found in the house and left.
It was only at about 6.30am, about six hours after the murder, when Oldham was arrested in a nearby street. A brave member of the public, who came across Oldham smashing up his car with an iron bar, stopped him in his tracks.
Following a scuffle, in which Oldham went for him with the bar, the 17-year-old man restrained Oldham until the police arrived. It was then that Oldham held on suspicion of the murder of Liam, who by that point had been dead for four-and-a-half hours.
Liam, from Middleton, was a 'vulnerable' young man who had grown close to the Oldham family. He was friends with Kieran Oldham's son, who described Liam as a 'loyal friend', who would 'do anything for anyone'.
Despite allowing Liam to move into his home, Oldham clearly didn't look as kindly upon him as his son did. He 'bullied' and 'used' Liam. Oldham would become paranoid while taking cocaine, and had previous convictions for violence.
But he took things to a whole new level in the early hours of October 3 last year. A chilling insight into Oldham's bullying nature was gleaned from a two voicemail messages, which were accidentally captured after he mistakenly called a friend.
In the recordings, Liam made it clear from beyond the grave just how scared he was of Oldham. He begged Oldham to leave him alone and allow him to leave, after Richardson became angry and accusatory.
"You took everything from me," told Liam. "I took nothing from you, you're just switching up on me," Liam pleaded, trying to placate him. "I'm not ruining anything, you're just switching up on me. I just want to go home. Can I just get my s*** and go?"
But Liam would never leave the house alive. Armed with an axe, Oldham launched an unimaginably brutal attack.
Liam lived long enough to realise exactly what he was being subjected to. He raised his hands as he desperately tried to defend himself from the raging, cocaine-fuelled killer.
There would be no respite. Oldham launched blow after blow, 18 in all.
He carried on even after Liam was clearly dead. "This is the behaviour of a monster," Liam's mother later said. Then he left left the house, leaving Liam in a horrendous state.
Susan Hartley, his mother later went to the mortuary to see her son for the last time. She almost didn't recognise him, he was that badly injured.
Sadly, it is a memory which she will carry with her to the grave. "He was so badly injured, and his skin was so badly bruised that I felt scared to touch him," Ms Hartley said.
"How is it fair that I felt scared to touch my own son who lay there so lifeless and still? Our other children asked if they could see Liam at the mortuary before the funeral, but there was no chance that I would allow them to see their brother in that horrific state."
Listening to those voicemails was also particularly troubling for Ms Hartley. She said: "Hearing voicemails of our son begging Kieran to leave him alone was just unbearable. I could not believe what I was hearing, and I could hear the evil in his (Oldham's) voice."
At first, Oldham claimed a 'gang' had killed Liam. Later, he confessed to being the killer but denied he was a murderer. He was affected by mental difficulties at the time and was suffering from schizophrenia, he argued in pleading guilty to manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
But a jury saw through this after hearing how his cocaine use was the cause of his crazed behaviour that night, providing just another example of the pernicious effect drugs can have in our communities, at every level from cocaine kingpins to street level. After showing Liam some initial kindness during a difficult time in his life, Oldham turned on him in the most dreadful of circumstances.
He will have at least 22 years to consider why.
On Friday, Kieran Oldham, 37, was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of murder. He was ordered to serve at least 22 years.
Oldham, of Industry Road, Rochdale, had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of false imprisonment and affray.
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