To fellow students on his journalism course at the University of Worcester, Benjamin Day seemed entirely ordinary.
“He was pleasant enough, if a bit aloof,” one student who began the course with him in September 2024 told the Daily Mail.
“He was polite and attentive in lectures, but generally he just didn’t stand out at all.”
Aside from his habit of wearing his coat indoors, even on warm days, Day’s only notable decision was to change courses last September, moving from journalism to applied biology and forensics.
“Going from a creative subject to a science-based course isn’t that common,” another student said.
When the new term began in January this year, however, Day, then 19, had disappeared from the university. His former classmates had no idea that he was behind bars, arrested the previous month over a horrifying murder.
The disturbing details revealed in court this week have stunned those who knew him.
On the night of December 20, the middle-class teenager from a leafy area of Redditch, Worcestershire, stabbed a young woman 78 times before attempting to dismember her body.
One contemporary of Benjamin Day at the University of Worcester said he was “polite and attentive in lectures, but generally he just didn’t stand out at all”
Day had carefully prepared for his attack on Maria Saceanu, a 24-year-old mother of a young daughter, in a bedroom at an Airbnb property he had rented for the night.
He turned the room into what was described as a “kill room”, covering the floor, walls and bed with plastic sheeting stapled to the walls to limit forensic evidence. Police also found several knives, a staple gun, duct tape, an apron, a plastic visor and cleaning products at the scene.
But prosecutors said there was an even more disturbing element to the crime. At Wolverhampton Crown Court, barrister Rachel Brand KC told the jury that Day had drawn inspiration from the popular television drama Dexter.
The American series, which first aired from 2006 to 2013 before returning in later spin-offs, centres on Dexter Morgan. By day he works as a blood-spatter analyst for police; by night he becomes a vigilante serial killer who carefully conceals his crimes.
Dexter follows a strict code, targeting people he believes are murderers who have escaped justice. That premise allows viewers to see him as a killer who operates according to a conscience.
The distinction has helped establish Dexter as one of television’s most compelling anti-heroes.
However, the fictional character appeared to give Day a blueprint for actions that prosecutors said had no justification. On the opening day of his trial, Ms Brand told jurors they were “those of a copycat, imitating the things he had seen in that programme”.
Day pleaded guilty to murder on the second day of his trial and is due to be sentenced in December. The case has left one central question: how could a young man raised in an apparently comfortable, loving middle-class family commit such a brutal crime?
Maria Saceanu, the 24-year-old mother of a young daughter, was stabbed 78 times
The murder has devastated Maria Saceanu’s family and shattered Day’s own. Speaking outside the family’s comfortable home in a quiet cul-de-sac in an affluent part of Redditch, his father told the Daily Mail they were “devastated” by what had happened. “Obviously, as a family we are devastated and that’s all I’m prepared to say,” he said. He also said neither he nor his wife had known about Dexter’s influence on their son. “No, we didn’t know anything,” he added.
Day’s father, who was born in South Africa, is 53 and runs his own business. His 55-year-old mother works as a social worker, and Day has an older sister.
In an extraordinary coincidence, the landlords who rented Maria Saceanu her home in the West Midlands town of Tividale also live in the same road as her killer.
Hermanpreet Pal, who shares her home with husband Savinder, told the Daily Mail of her shock at discovering the connection.
‘It’s so weird. To think that someone from Redditch, let alone the close, did this,’ she said. ‘It’s a total coincidence.’
Unbeknown to all of them was the student’s fascination with Dexter – an obsession, as detectives investigating Saceanu’s murder put it.
‘Day had an obsessive personality and had become obsessed with the character Dexter,’ Detective Inspector Matt Marston, of West Midlands Police’s Major Crime Team, who led the investigation, said this week. ‘He planned this murder in meticulous detail.’
And that detail, as Rachel Brand KC told jurors, seemed designed to emulate his fictional forensic-worker anti-hero.
A particularly unsettling feature of Day’s crime was that he had drawn inspiration from the popular television drama Dexter
‘As you know, the defendant changed his university course to study applied biology and forensics,’ she told them. Day lured Miss Saceanu, a sex worker, to the house with the excuse of booking her for a liaison.
‘He had changed into “Dexter” clothing [a khaki long-sleeved top worn by the character] before Maria Saceanu arrived at the house,’ Ms Brand told the court.
‘In the TV series Dexter prepares a “kill room” when carrying out his attacks, lined with plastic sheeting which he fixes using a staple gun or duct/gaffer tape. ‘And this is exactly how the defendant had prepared the room.
‘Dexter wears an apron, a plastic visor and gloves when killing his victims – all such items were found in the bedroom.’
Disturbing as these parallels are, moreover, Day is far from the first murderer whose crimes have been linked to the television series.
Indeed, just three months ago, another British court heard how a man with a disturbing interest in Dexter’s dismemberment scenes had murdered and mutilated two men in Cornish woodland.
James Desborough, 40, was convicted at Winchester Crown Court in July of murdering two vulnerable men whose remains were discovered near his cabin.
One of them – Claudio Aquilino, 57 – had contacted police the night before his disappearance in April 2025, fearful of what Desborough might do to him.
James Desborough told a forensic biologist that he ‘particularly enjoyed the dismemberment scenes’ in Dexter
Investigators subsequently recovered more than 1,900 of his burnt bone fragments from a nearby stream. Two months later, Desborough murdered Daniel Coleman, 43, whose dismembered remains were found in a shallow grave. Police later discovered disturbing writings in Desborough’s cabin, including a map marked ‘Kill Zone’ and a note declaring: ‘I know I am a killer and ready to execute any predators.’
Chillingly, Desborough told a forensic biologist searching the woods for Mr Coleman’s body that he ‘particularly enjoyed the dismemberment scenes’ in Dexter.
Meanwhile, in January of 2014, 17-year-old Elizabeth Thomas, from Oxted, Surrey, was murdered by her boyfriend Steven Miles, who had become obsessed with violence generally – and with Dexter in particular.
Miles, then 16, had met Elizabeth in sixth form, but after they started dating she revealed to friends that during one argument he had tried to throttle her.
He had also told her: ‘You will see a lot of similarities in the personalities of Dexter and myself.’
Yet when friends questioned why she stayed with him, she replied: ‘I’m different from other females, I’m fighting for him.’ Her loyalty would end tragically when Miles took Elizabeth back to his family home and stabbed her in the neck, back and head.
He then used saws and knives belonging to his tree-surgeon father to dismember her body, found wrapped in tarpaulin beneath his bedroom desk.
Police found a Dexter boxset on the desk above Elizabeth’s body.
Steven Miles stabbed his girlfriend Elizabeth Thomas in the neck, back and head. Police found a Dexter boxset on the desk above Elizabeth’s body
Miles later pleaded guilty to murder at Guildford Crown Court, where his barrister described it as ‘a truly gruesome killing ripped from the pages of a TV script’. He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 25 years by Judge Christopher Critchlow, who told the court that had Miles been over 18, he would have imposed a whole-life term.
Six months earlier, in July 2013, 21-year-old Mark Howe had inflicted a similarly devastating loss on his family when he murdered his mother, Katrina Wardle, 48, at their Leicester home, stabbing and slashing her 53 times with a 12in kitchen knife.
Howe, whose Facebook profile picture was Dexter’s blood-spattered face and who told a friend he wished he was the character, had previously searched the internet for ‘Dexter’s kill knife’. In January 2014, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Leicester Crown Court with a minimum term of 21- and-a-half years.
Perhaps one of the most notorious Dexter-linked murders, however, took place in Edmonton, Canada, when, in October 2008, amateur filmmaker Mark Twitchell, who had adopted the persona ‘Dexter Morgan’ on his Facebook page, lured 38-year-old John Altinger to his death.
Twitchell had posed as a woman on a dating site to entice Altinger to a rented garage, which he had transformed into a plastic-lined ‘kill room’ resembling the one used by his fictional hero. Instead of the romantic encounter he was expecting, Altinger was bludgeoned and stabbed to death, his body subsequently dismembered.
Investigators later discovered a document on Twitchell’s laptop detailing the murder in graphic detail and describing his desire to become a serial killer like Dexter.
Twitchell, who was married with a young daughter, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2011 and sentenced to life in jail, with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
A year after Twitchell’s horrific crime, Andrew Conley, 17, killed his ten-year-old brother Conner at their home in Indiana, USA, before dumping his body. He had previously told his girlfriend he wanted to be like Dexter and told investigators that the programme had ‘inspired’ him.
Mark Howe murdered his mother, stabbing and slashing her 53 times with a 12in kitchen knife
One of the most memorable cases, meanwhile, emerged in Norway in 2010 after the murder of 26-year-old Faiza Ashraf, who was abducted from a bus stop and later found dead.
Bizarrely her killer, petrol station attendant Havard Nyflot, also 26, used his obsession with Dexter as an elaborate defence.
Nyflot had been offered money by taxi driver Shamrez Khan to kidnap Ashraf, who had rejected Khan’s romantic advances.
But Nyflot claimed that after watching episode after episode of Dexter, he decided Khan was ‘vermin’ who ‘fit the code like in the series’ and deserved to die.
He claimed that while he had kidnapped Ashraf, in fact he planned to bludgeon Khan to death, dismember his body and bury him in woodland, even digging a grave in preparation.
However, it was Ashraf who died after Nyflot bundled her into his car boot, bound her head with duct tape and put a rope around her neck. Investigators found no evidence supporting his extraordinary account of a planned vigilante killing.
Instead, prosecutors believed he had kidnapped Ashraf on Khan’s request to pay off gambling debts, so he was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to 18 years behind bars. Khan was also convicted of his part in the death.
Taken together, these cases present a deeply unsettling picture, with the parallels between Dexter’s fictional violence and the real life equivalents often striking. So how does Dexter influence these killers? Is it, as has been said, ‘the most dangerous TV series’?
Behavioural criminologist Alex Iszatt tells the Daily Mail: ‘What makes Dexter particularly useful to a violent personality is that he provides a justification for killing.
‘You’re not a monster with uncontrollable urges; you’re a vigilante, with standards, and the people you kill deserve it. It doesn’t matter if they happen to be your mother, brother or girlfriend.’
The appeal also includes the precise protocol surrounding his crimes. ‘Dexter gives them a ritual,’ Iszatt says.
‘They can fully become him: follow the same code and principles, wear the same clothes, and use the same methods of killing and disposing of bodies.’
Intriguingly Michael C. Hall, the actor who played Dexter, once suggested that it was not so much the character’s actions but the reasons behind them that appealed to audiences.
‘I think we live in a world where maybe we feel an increasing sense of a lack of control and this character, who in his own unique way, has taken responsibility for his darker impulses and is taking some sort of control in his corner of the world that appeals to people,’ he told CNN in July 2013. ‘They identify with that somehow.’
For Jacqueline Helfgott, a professor at Seattle University and author of Copycat Crime: How Media, Technology and Digital Culture Inspire Criminal Behaviour and Violence, the relationship between fictional violence and real-life murder is far from straightforward.
She identifies a small subset of individuals she calls ‘edge-sitters’ – often isolated people who may have fantasised about killing for years, and for whom fictional characters can provide both validation and a blueprint for violence.
She says such individuals may already be contemplating violence and looking for something to propel them towards acting on their fantasies.
Like Iszatt, she also believes that the character’s moral code is significant. ‘It can be a very powerful message for people who are looking for reasons to commit a crime,’ she says.
But she also warns against labelling every murderer with an interest in Dexter ‘a copycat’, pointing out that multiple factors play their part in pushing vulnerable individuals towards violence.
‘We do have to ask questions about digital culture in general though,’ she says. ‘Is it making a difference between somebody who would not have committed a crime and somebody who did commit the crime?’
It is a question to which there may never be a definitive answer.
What is certain though, is that while for millions Dexter has remained safely confined to the television screen, for a disturbing few, the fantasy has spilled over into real life – with devastating consequences.
