Killer wrote single word on victim’s forehead in final ‘grotesque act’
One man’s harrowing confession saw him tell police he’d killed his boss after going on a rampage – and left a sinister ‘note’ on her forehead.
Obsessed university worker David Browning calmly told police “in a nutshell” he’d just slayed his boss in her home in Brighton after “standing up to bullies“.
Browning, who admitted to the killing in 2017, aged 52 at the time, left victim Jillian Howell lying covered in blood on the floor of her lounge after attacking her repeatedly with a knife in the chest, neck and abdomen.
It’s believed the brutal killing happened after he became obsessive and attached to his boss. A Killer Makes a Call airs tonight on Channel 5, as it explores the truth behind Browning’s motives, and how he so openly admitted to the killing that took place in the victim’s house after having dinner together.
Ms Howell, who was a Samaritans volunteer, was his superior in the University of Brighton payroll department, but it was believed the married father of two had formed an “intense attachment” towards her and became “possessive, controlling and jealous”. Police then found her body with the word “bully” scrawled across her forehead, as well as graffiti scribbled across the walls, prosecutor Alan Gardner said.
Browning admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility and possession of a knife in a public place, claiming his actions were prompted by depression brought on by the death of his father a year earlier and denied murder. Jurors were told he had stayed in the house for “several hours” before dialling 999 at around 6am on October 26 last year to say he was standing outside a police station and had tried to kill himself.
The court heard that when he was approached by officers, he was found to have a gun and knife but was “calm, coherent and collected”. Browning had worked in the University payroll department since 1989, and Ms Howell joined in 2015 as a manager.
He was her deputy and at times “expressed unhappiness” at her management style but the pair became friends and started seeing each other socially outside of work from 2017, the court heard. Ms Howell told friends she was trying to “cheer up” a colleague by inviting him around for dinner and hoped her experience working with the suicide support charity would help.
However Mr Gardner said Browning started to get attached to his boss, buying her gifts and flowers and in a string of text messages read to the court, Browning described her in one as “stunning” and in another said: “I adore you personally and professionally”. He also told her: “You are more than just my boss and I think you know that.”
But Ms Howell sought professional help for Browning after he demanded she “must never leave the university or get a boyfriend as he needed her support”, Mr Gardner said. He attended three sessions with the university’s occupational health team but “blamed” Ms Howell after describing these as making him realise he was “f*****” and “much worse” than he thought.
Browning, of Willow Drive in Seaford, East Sussex, claimed he suffered an “abnormality of function” during the killing but Mr Gardner branded it a “premeditated, cold blooded murder of a woman in her own home by a colleague she trusted”. The stabbing happened after the pair ate a curry and she urged him to go to hospital when he told her he had posted suicide notes.
He said he attacked her when she bent down to tie the shoelaces on her trainers because he feared she was trying to get him sectioned. But jurors were told he sat in the living room for two hours afterwards and posted a picture on his Facebook profile which said: “Stand up to bullies … then kill them.”
The court heard Browning plotted the murder for at least a month, having applied for a shotgun licence and buying the weapon, allegedly telling shop staff he was taking up clay pigeon shooting.
Mr Gardner called it a “carefully planned murder out of jealously and out of anger” because Browning feared she was about to reject him. He said: “He went to her house with the intention to kill her and also, he says, with the intention to kill himself. At some point during the course of that meeting, he attacked her [and] stabbed her in the back. He didn’t want anyone else to know about his problems. He had grown attached to her.”
Handing the 52-year-old a life sentence at Hove crown court in 2018, the judge, Christine Laing QC, said the way in which Browning murdered Howell was savage. “This was a sustained attack and the terror and trauma for her in the final few minutes of her life is unimaginable. Not content with inflicting those injuries, you then defiled her body by writing the word ‘bully’ on her forehead.”
A Killer Makes a Call airs tonight on Channel 5 at 10pm.
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