Kim Kaplan, 63, who had the killer as best man at her wedding, said she feared Allan Grimson was responsible for more murders and urged police to keep investigating his hidden reign of terror. She pointed to the unsolved disappearance of Royal Navy radio operator Simon Parkes, 18, who vanished in 1986 and has never been traced.
Grimson, nicknamed the Frankenstein Killer because of his 6ft 2in frame and large forehead, was jailed for life in 2001 for murdering two young men who served on the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. This week he was found guilty of sexually assaulting four men and a 14-year-old boy, with 13 offences in the 1990s. Kim had no idea that Grimson was a predator who preyed on young Royal Navy recruits and lured them to his Portsmouth flat.
'An absolute monster'
Kim, from Gosport, Hampshire, said: "Allan is an absolute monster. What he did to those boys was beyond horrific. Police must continue to investigate, the families deserve justice and they deserve closure." She met Grimson in 1981 through her Royal Navy partner and spent hours drinking with him in pubs and bars around Portsmouth. He became so close to the couple that he was asked to be best man at their wedding.
She said she never saw signs of the predator. "Everyone used to call him 'Frank', after Frankenstein, because of the way he looked. I always thought it was a bit disrespectful so I always called him Allan. When my husband went onto the ship in Portsmouth, Allan used to come and stay with me in Gosport because I didn't know anybody." She added: "He got on with my parents and everything. It's mad because my mum can see through anyone but she was just bowled over by him. He used to pull a chair out for her and everything, honestly, it's crazy."
"I've been asked if there were any signs. There were none whatsoever. I can smell b*******t from a mile away. But nothing about that man worried me, he was our best mate. He was brilliant. When I got divorced after three years I lost contact with him. Then when the story came out, I thought, 'This is crazy'. I still haven't got my head round it."
Kim described his reputation as a killer as starkly at odds with the man she knew. "I only ever saw the funny, nice Allan. People in the Navy say he had a dark side, but honestly I never saw it. It's terrifying. He was exceptionally funny, we used to bounce off each other and spend hours drinking and talking in the pubs late at night. He was funny, articulate, loud, hilarious." She said: "There were no signs he was a killer or a sex offender. He was so charming but maybe that's all part and parcel of it, charming people can be very sinister, can't they?" She also noted that Grimson would regularly be "rebuffed" by women because of his looks.
Two murders, 12 months apart
Grimson murdered Nicholas Wright, 18, from Leicestershire, on December 12 1997 and Sion Jenkins, 20, from Newbury, Berkshire, on December 12 1998 - exactly a year apart. He bludgeoned Nicholas with a baseball bat after Wright rejected his sexual advances, sliced off his ear with a diving knife and slit his throat. The next day he wrapped Nicholas's naked body, later telling police he felt a "tingling" sensation, and dumped it in a ditch.
A year later, Grimson attacked and raped Sion in the same Portsmouth flat. He tied him up and put him in a bathtub as Sion begged to go home. Despite the pleas, he beat Sion to death with a bat and dumped his body by the side of the A32. Sion's body was found four miles from Nicholas's, in country lanes north of Winchester, in December 1999.
Simon Parkes, from Bristol, disappeared in 1986 when HMS Illustrious docked in Gibraltar. He failed to return after a night out with crewmates, leaving his passport, belongings and Christmas presents on board. The ship returned to Portsmouth without him. Grimson was serving on the same carrier at the time. In 2024, British police travelled to Gibraltar to search the Town Range car park for Simon.
'He wants control'
Kim said she believes Grimson, who has had parole denied, will never confess. "I just know Allan's not going to admit to anything. They keep turning down his parole. He thinks he's technically served his time, so he won't admit to anything. And he wants control. When he was arrested for murder he kept control over the detectives by sending them to places where the bodies were." She added: "They'd get in the car and drive for an hour and a half and then when they got there he'd say, 'Oh, I can't remember'. It was all so he could keep gaining control over them."
She wondered whether she ever truly knew him. "Maybe Allan was the person I knew and he became a monster. Maybe I didn't see the changes in him because it happened over time after we lost contact. But maybe he pulled the wool over my eyes for years and he was secretly a paedophile and a killer."
Family pleads for answers
Simon's mother, Margaret, 80, this week made a direct plea to Grimson. Speaking to the Mirror, she urged him to come clean after nearly 40 years despite his denials of any involvement. "How do you get in to the head of a man like that? We want him to tell us what he knows, where Simon's body is, we would want that, but he's in denial now. All these years we've done all we can to find out information and keep the investigation open."
Margaret spoke out after Grimson was found guilty of 13 offences against four other men and boys, including a 14-year-old, in the 1990s. Winchester Crown Court heard he told police one victim was "lucky" to be alive because he would have killed him if his friend had not been sleeping on the sofa. He had brought the teenager to his flat in Portsmouth and sexually assaulted him weeks before his killing spree.
Grimson told police in 1999, after his arrest for the murders: "If you're going to rape some body, to get away with it, kill it. And that's the only way you can do that." When he was sentenced in 2001, the judge branded him a "serial killer in nature if not by number". The judge recommended a minimum of 22 years, increased to 25 years by the then Home Secretary, but reduced by three years in 2008.
Following Grimson's conviction, Hampshire Police reopened the investigation into Simon's disappearance, but closed it last year. A spokesman said that following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, the investigation would be filed unless further information came to light.
