The Island of Jersey, a self-governing and British Crown dependency in the English Channel, is a small island with around 98,000 people.
For the most part, it has been a pretty quiet place, with a possible exception during the 14 years when a beast terrorized it.
This was the story of Edward Paisnel, notoriously known as the Beast of Jersey, who preyed on women and children while hiding his face under a horror-inspired mask.
His unique criminal pattern with a touch of dark occultism brought about fear and trembling fright all across the island. Long before Jersey became known as a tax haven, it was home to Paisnel.
Between 1957 and 1971, Paisnel allegedly attacked more than 100 people and sexually assaulted at least 13 victims on the island.
He nicknamed himself the “Beast of Jersey” in a letter he sent to the police in 1966, bragging about his “perfect crime” and challenging the authorities to capture him.
It would be five more years until he was arrested in an unrelated incident and brought to justice for his crimes.
10 /10 Evolving Method
Four of his first victims were all women attacked at bus stops.
Paisnel stalked them in the middle of the night, slung a rope around their necks, tied them up, then dragged them to remote fields where he beat and raped the victims.
He grew more brazen over the years, especially given the slow-pace investigation around the case.
Instead of targeting his next victims on the streets, he invaded their homes at night before taking them to a secluded area and sexually assaulting them.
9 /10 Robin Hood
Before his reign of terror as the Beast of Jersey began, Paisnel had been imprisoned during World War II by the Germans for theft.
He played his version of Robin Hood back then by stealing food from the rich then giving it to the poor in the community.
Perhaps such criminal history was what made him extremely familiar with the territory as a beast. His hunting ground was pretty small anyway, an island of 45.6 square miles total area with only one town.