From the outside, it looked like the sort of happy family home a child might draw. Red brick, surrounded by rolling countryside, in Curdridge, near Winchester. Here lived the true crime writer Christopher Berry-Dee, with his second wife, Tracey Dee, and their two young daughters, Zoe and Sasha, in the early 1990s. Inside, it was a house of horrors, full of murder memorabilia. In a wardrobe were the clothes a nine-year-old girl had been murdered in. One afternoon, Zoe was playing when she found them. The now 38-year-old council worker from Romsey says she remembers \u201cputting it all on \u2026 going downstairs and everyone being absolutely traumatised\u201d. Later, another gruesome memento was added to the collection: the Austin Metro that convicted murderer Michael Sams had used to transport a body in 1991. Bloodied sections of the seatbelts had been cut out for forensic tests.<\/p>\n
Berry-Dee was the serial killer man. He wrote to convicted murderers in jail and befriended them. They told him everything. Through them he saw the terror in their victims\u2019 eyes, watched their anguished death throes, heard their final screams. He listened to tapes of their confessions in his study. Zoe grew used to hearing them echo through the house. \u201cIt would always be on,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the time, it felt normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/5c9331273ab532b04836a7afe52c5e3afa45587e\/0_1062_3377_2702\/master\/3377.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=69b560640034989eefd04648365e8b26\" "\\"Christopher")
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