Bruce George Peter Lee

Peter Tredget (born Peter George Dinsdale; 31 July 1960), formerly Bruce George Peter Lee, is a British serial killer and arsonist.

He confessed to a total of 11 acts of arson, pleading guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter.

Fourteen of these were overturned in two separate appeals.

In 1979, his mother remarried a man surnamed Lee.

That same year, Dinsdale changed his name by deed poll to Bruce, partly in homage to the actor Bruce Lee.

Following a further name change he now goes by Peter Tredget.

On 4 December 1979, a fire broke out at the front of a house on Selby Street, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire.

Inside were Edith Hastie and her sons Thomas, Charles (both 15), Paul (12), and Peter (8).

The family was asleep at the time.

Charles rescued his mother by pushing her out of an upstairs window.

He could not help his brothers, Paul and Peter, who were in the same bedroom.

Opening the bedroom window had caused a draft which fed the fire.

All three were trapped and burned severely, and were taken to the specialist burns unit in Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

Charles died overnight; Peter died two days later and Paul died after surviving for 12 days.

Thomas, who had muscular dystrophy, survived, escaping through a window in the back bedroom, where the flames were less severe.

Edith Hastie had three daughters, who were staying with relatives elsewhere in the area that particular night.

Her husband, Tommy Hastie, was in prison.

The police set up a makeshift incident room in a former police station on Gordon Street and began talking to local people about the fire and the family.

They were surprised and shocked by a rather casual response from the neighbourhood regarding the brothers, despite the severity of the fire which led to their deaths.

The indifference of the neighbourhood came to a climax at the joint funeral for the boys in January 1980 when a grief-stricken Edith Hastie issued an outburst to the gathering crowd over their lack of sympathy for the loss of her sons.

The two boys were buried together in one grave at the Northern Cemetery in Hull.

Once the police had established that the Hasties were known as a "problem" family, responsible for petty crime and vendettas, they began looking for an arsonist who may have been seeking a form of revenge.

Lee was one of many teenagers who volunteered to be questioned routinely about the fire.

Six months after the inquiry began, he confessed in great detail to pouring paraffin through the letterbox and setting it alight in revenge against Charles Hastie, with whom he had had some sexual contact.

Lee said the 15-year-old boy had threatened to go to the police (as he was a minor) unless Lee gave him money.

Lee had also become infatuated with Charles' sister Angeleena Hastie but she had rejected his repeated advances.

Lee was sentenced to indefinite secure hospital detention in 1981, and remains detained as of February 2022.

Lee was born as Peter George Dinsdale in Manchester, the son of a prostitute.

Lee was brought up in children's homes and suffered from epilepsy and congenital spastic hemiplegia in his right limbs, which left him with a limp in his right leg and a compulsion to hold his right arm across his chest.

As an adult, he worked as a labourer and was known locally as "daft Peter".

On the night the fire at the Hasties' home was started, police received an anonymous telephone call, reporting three people driving away from the direction of the house in a Rover 2000 car.

Detective Superintendent Ron Sagar and his investigators traced this car and decided to interview a number of suspects.

Sagar accused each of them of starting the fire, hoping that the real killer would then confess.

Lee confessed to the Selby Street fire, saying "I didn't mean to kill them," and told the police how Charlie Hastie had demanded money from him for sexual activities.

Moreover, Lee had been ridiculed by members of the Hastie family for falling in love with their daughter, Angeleena Hastie.

This was the reason Lee had set the fire at the Hastie's house.

During further questioning Lee unexpectedly confessed to starting nine more fatal fires in Hull over the previous seven years.

None of the fires were treated with suspicion at the time; inquests recorded misadventure verdicts and arson was never considered.

A total of 26 people had died in the blazes, ranging from a six-month-old baby, a young mother and her three small sons, to 11 elderly men in a residential home, Wensley Lodge.

Dozens more were burned or suffered from smoke inhalation, or received injuries while escaping.