The heath where killer picked up men

THE London suburb of Hampstead has an affluent, upbeat air to shame Dublin 4 into submission.

Pretty rows of €1 million terraced homes, thriving shops and celebrities by the dozen, last year the area was found to have Britain’s highest concentration of millionaires.

The suburb’s best-known attraction is a 791-acre park known as Hampstead Heath.

During the day, the heath is much-used by families who come to the top of Parliament Hill — one of London’s highest points — to fly kites.

From here, visitors can peer into the distance and make out landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral, the Old Bailey and St Pancras railway station.

Dog walkers, parents with pushchairs and joggers from areas adjoining the great park come here daily to enjoy what they call the ‘Lungs of London’.

By night, the heath is a popular meeting place for gay men, catering to casual liaisons and voyeurism. By engaging in such acts publicly, men live on the edge of the law (its illicit thrill is part of the buzz) but are tolerated to a certain extent by the police.

Among the men can be found politicians and those in high-powered jobs — the very people who risk professional and personal ruin if they are ever unmasked.

It was here where Mark Papazian met Gerard Hendra — and where he also met a man known only as Jeremy, who he would later plan to kill.

And such a place is where the police had to start their delicate investigations into the murder of Mr Hendra.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Broster, of the Metropolitan Police’s specialist crime directorate, headed the murder probe.

He said: “During our investigation it became evident that Gerard was a gay male. He lived in such close proximity to the heath and the gay community there so we had to liaise with them.”

Mr Hendra sought out casual liaisons on the heath after his long-term partner died in the mid-1990s and a short-term romance fizzled out in 2004.

The killer, Papazian, was homosexual too, and in his diary he planned to use the heath to pick up men whom he would kill.

Chief Inspector Broster said: “Rather chillingly, Papazian had chosen to kill Gerard at home — rather than Hampstead Heath — because he realised it would affect the ‘cruising’ on the heath.

“But he decided that he would kill his second man (Jeremy) on the heath. Papazian was going to be a serial killer without a doubt, had we not got him.”

Such is the secret world of the heath, police never found anyone who admitted to being Papazian’s target Jeremy.

The chief inspector, however, is sure he knows who he is and puts the denials down to the double lives that some of the heath’s men lead.