Hair fetish man 'scalped woman'

Leonard Bowie admitted the attack

A man with a sexual fetish for hair has admitted scalping a woman in his bedsit.

At the High Court in Perth, Leonard Bowie, 62, pleaded guilty to assaulting Mary Mullady to her severe injury and permanent disfigurement.

The 51-year-old lost her long hair and most of the flesh on top of her head in the attack in a terraced house in Devonshire Road, in the west end of Aberdeen.

The court heard that Bowie had been jailed in Glasgow in 1983 for scalping another woman in Bishopbriggs the previous year.

The attacks took place at Bowie's bedsit

Bowie - who was once a trainee hairdresser - also admitted sexually assaulting a woman with Down's syndrome after promising to cut her hair in Aberdeen last year.

Lord Wheatley deferred sentence for three weeks.

He called for psychiatric and psychologists reports and medical scans.

The judge told Bowie he would be placed on the sex offenders register.

Advocate Depute Mark Stewart told the court that Bowie had ignored his victim's pleas for him to stop during the 20-minute assault.

Severe injuries

Ms Mullady, who passed out after the attack, escaped after saying she was going to use a toilet in the hallway.

She was later spotted by a police officer who noticed her severe injuries while she was trying to get on a bus.

The victim later underwent a skin graft to repair the injuries inflicted on her.

Defence advocate Frances McMenamin described Bowie as a reserved loner who thought a lot about hair and featured it in his sexual fantasies.

There's no doubt that this is a man with an abnormal interest in hair

Defence advocate Frances McMenamin

She said a psychiatrist had assessed Bowie as having "a dull to average IQ" and very low self esteem.

Ms McMenamin said her client had been on a downward spiral of depression since his divorce in the early 1980s.

And she said he had remained obsessed with hairdressing ever since he undertook a traineeship at the age of 19.

Bowie admitted to psychiatrists who spoke to him after the attacks that he regularly fantasised about women's hair.

"There's no doubt that this is a man with an abnormal interest in hair," she said.

Serious incident

"He's admitted he thought a lot about women's hair and how it featured in his sexual fantasies."

PC Neil Montgomery told BBC Scotland that it was one of the most serious incidents he had seen.

He said: "Flaps of skin had been cut on the top of her head, which would have hung loose were it not for the fact that coagulated blood was holding the skin together."

Police said they could not rule out the possibility that other people had been attacked by Bowie but have not yet come forward.