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| Theodore Johnson: Triple killer pleads guilty to murder after beating former partner with claw hammer and throttling with dressing gown cord | Theodore Johnson: Triple killer pleads guilty to murder after beating former partner with claw hammer and throttling with dressing gown cord |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A triple killer has pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to the murder of his former partner by beating her with a claw hammer and throttling her with a dressing gown cord. | |
| Theodore Johnson, 64, admitted killing mother-of-four and grandmother Angela Best, 51, at her north London home. | |
| The garage worker was previously convicted of killing his wife by throwing her off a balcony in 1981, and strangling another former partner in 1993. | |
| After the attack Johnson threw himself in front of an express train, but survived. | |
| The defendant, who is now in a wheelchair, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Ms Best and admitted her murder on the first day of his trial. | |
| Ms Best met Johnson around 1995 after the victim moved to London from Manchester with her children. | |
| It can now be reported that the defendant had a history of violence towards women, having been twice convicted of manslaughter before. | |
| In November 1981, he was convicted by a jury at Sheffield Crown Court of the manslaughter of his wife Yvonne Johnson. | |
| Following an argument, he hit the mother-of-two with a vase before pushing her over the balcony of their ninth floor flat in Wolverhampton. | |
| Then in March 1993, he was convicted at the Old Bailey of killing his partner Yvonne Bennett, by diminished responsibility. | |
| The couple, who had a daughter together, had moved from Wolverhampton to Finsbury Park in north London where Johnson strangled Ms Bennett with a belt after she had an affair with another man. | |
| Ms Best's two sisters sat in court as Johnson entered his guilty plea as his murder trial was about to be opened to a jury by prosecutor Mark Heywood QC. | |
| Judge Richard Marks QC remanded him into custody to be sentenced on Friday. | |
| Additional reporting by PA | |