A killer with a history of violence toward women is facing life in jail after admitting the murder of his former girlfriend.

Theodore Johnson murdered Angela Best, a 51-year-old mother-of-four, by beating her with a claw hammer and strangling her with a dressing gown cord.

They had been in a relationship for more than two decades.

He attacked her on 15 December 2016, after they had broken up and she started a new relationship. They had been together since 1995, after she moved to north London with her children from Islington.

Johnson previously pleaded not guilty to murder, but admitted manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. He changed his plea on the first day of his trial at the Old Bailey.


After he killed her, Johnson threw himself in front of an express train at Cheshunt station, and survived, although was left with horrific injuries.

Ms Best was found by police when they went to his north London home, and discovered her body lying on the floor with a belt wrapped around her neck and a blood-stained hammer nearby.

Johnson has two previous convictions, for manslaughter, both involving the deaths of his partners.

In November 1981, he was convicted by a jury of killing his wife Yvonne Johnson. He hit her over the head with a vase before pushing her over the balcony of their ninth-floor flat in Wolverhampton.

In March 1993, he was convicted of killing his partner Yvonne Bennett, with whom he had a child.

He strangled her with a belt after he discovered she had an affair.

Johnson had been released from a psychiatric unit before he met Ms Best.

Her sisters sat in court as the judge remanded Johnson into custody, to be sentenced on Friday.