HIS nickname was La-La, after a character in the children’s TV series Teletubbies, but there was nothing cuddly or cute about the 22 stone, 6ft 4ins tall hulk Philip Smith. Because he was a killer of women.

Smith murdered three women in four days from November 9-12 in 2000, beating one girl so viciously her face was blood-soaked and barely visible.

 He had worked on a fairground and as an unlicensed taxi driver before starting as an odd job man at a pub in Digbeth, Birmingham, which was where he met two of his victims. Smith had already killed one woman and set fire to her body behind an activity centre before he met 25-year-old Rosemary Cocoran at the pub four days later.

The evening ended with Smith offering her a lift home, but Rosemary never got there. Ironically, a police patrol car stopped to talk to a couple arguing at 4.40am in the street in Handsworth, but Smith managed to convince the officers everything was all right and so they went on their way. That was the last time Rosemary Cocoran was seen alive.

 Later that morning, just after 8am, pub landlord Paul Ryder decided to take his black Labrador for a walk behind the Robin Hood pub in Rashwood, Droitwich. As the dog meandered along the lane, Mr Ryder spotted something ahead of him.

 “At first I thought it was a Guy Fawkes or other mannequin,” he said in a statement to police, which was read out at Smith’s trial. “I got right up close and realised it was a body. She was looking over her right shoulder. Her forearms were raised and her head was covered in blood. I could hardly see her face.”

He spotted a pair of black shoes and white top near the naked body and ran back

to the pub to call the police. She’d been beaten so hard, her teeth had come out and she had tyre marks on her body.

At around the same time, a woman walking her dog in Bell Barn Road, Lea Bank, Birmingham, found the body of 39-year-old care worker, Carol Jordan. The mother-of-six, who was just 5ft tall, had been struck down by a car before being battered to death. She had been punched, kicked and stamped on so hard, her liver had split. Pathologist Dr Edmund Tapp estimated her killer had rained at least 12 blows down on her head, cracking her skull and shattering her jaw.

 Two days later, Smith was arrested on suspicion of murdering Miss Corcoran. He’d been the last person to see her alive.

West Mercia and West Midlands Police pooled resources and set about finding out whether there was a link with the murders of Carol Jordan and 21-year-old Jodie Hyde. She had also last been seen alive leaving The Rainbow pub, Digbeth with Smith before her naked body was found by a passing police patrol car near the Ackers Trust, in Birmingham. She had been trussed in a blanket and doused in petrol before being set alight.

 By now, the net was closing in. Detectives, searching his home for clues, were confronted by a grisly bath of blood. Smith had dumped his victims’ blood-stained clothes in his bath and filled it with water. When quizzed by police, Smith said he had stolen the clothes from charity shops. Describing himself as “smelly”, he told police he scoured Birmingham’s streets for bags of second-hand clothing to steal. Among the bloody haul were Rosemary Corcoran’s trousers.

 During the first set of interviews he admitted meeting the 25-year-old mum at the Rainbow pub on the night she died, driving her to another pub and then on to a club in Handsworth. But he claimed she had been drunk, refused to go home with him and he had left her outside at around 4.40am. He said two “black men” she had been “dirty dancing” with had been hanging around as he had driven away. Worn out from a night on the town, he claimed he went home at around 5am and did not rise until 3.30pm later that day.

 Detectives, questioning him at Worcester police station, countered his claim: they had CCTV footage showing him being violent to Miss Corcoran. In addition, Smith – who lived in Birmingham – had been spotted at the Jet Service Station in Bromsgrove, covered in blood, filling up a red patrol can. When challenged by staff,  Smith replied: “I’ve been in a fight.” A security camera had also captured his blue Volvo winding its way through the streets of Bromsgrove. Apparently as he drove home after killing Rosemary, he hit Carol Jordan with his car and, fearing capture, beat her to death. Blood from his victims was found in his car.

 Philip Smith was charged with the three murders and although he initially pleaded not guilty, during the trial he changed his plea and was jailed for life in July, 2001.