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Purple Aki

"BIG and open and polished to a Salford shine"


It's what he would have wanted.


Can't wait to see the video! :?
 
Now maybe I have lived in San Francisco for too long, but why doesn't he just find a nice muscular boyfriend whom he can touch all he wants?
Perhaps I'm being naive, as the same could be said for a lot of criminal fetishists.
 
What I don't understand is how he became a bogey man at my school in the west country.
It is so interesting to see how these myths come about but have a basis in reality.
 
According to this Lancashire Evening Post story from 2007,it is possible to download Purple Aki from the internet!

Discussion of the article on this page gives the curious information that the Candyman story of Liverpool-born Clive Barker, may well have been inspired by tales of Aki.

Barker's original story, The Forbidden dates from 1978, however, at which date Aki would have been just 17 himself. The manslaughter case which brought Aki to public notice was eight years later.

It is the very early years of the Aki legend which interest me most. A boy was certainly electrocuted while fleeing something. To what extent was this Akinwale, though? To what extent might it already have been a legend? :?:
 
Aki has had his Prevention Orders lifted, having found a sympathetic beak:

"Judge Richard Mansell QC, sitting at Manchester Crown Court, said while Arobieke’s breaches of the order were a ‘serious matter’ - the restrictions it placed on his ‘freedoms’ could ‘no longer be justified’.

"Lifting the order would allow him to pursue his interest in an ‘appropriate venue’, the judge said, like a gym or a bodybuilding event.

“The ban on touching muscles is just not on”, the judge said. “I’m not into bodybuilding myself, but I’d have thought men who have muscles in their arms the diameter of my leg are the sort of men who will admire each other’s bodies.

"They don’t build the body up to hide it under loose-fitting sweatshirts. They are men likely to talk to and weigh and measure each other.”

Like giving an alcoholic the keys to the brewery, one would think! :oops:

. . . though Aki's preferred type is teenage lads who show no interest in measuring him!
 
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Aki_zpsuyfgjctj.jpg


:rofl:
 
min_bannister said:
it looks pretty comprehensive
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Yes, Min, despite its annoying format, there is some information there which is otherwise difficult or impossible to find. The full, tragic story of the electrocuted lad was new to me; though only sixteen, he had already fathered a child.

We also learn of Arobieke’s careful stalking of his victims.

His quiet manner and much-attested intelligence won over his most recent judge. Could this mark the end of the cartoon Aki? We shall see. :confused:
 
It's quite a long article and fills in a lot of gaps.
Somebody did their research.
 
I wonder where the 'purple' bit of his nickname comes from .. it can't be his skin because that's brown .. does purple translate as 'dodgy' in Liverpool ?.. I expect he was an alcoholic because of the strange sweating at a strange time mentioned, he could have also been homosexual .. big men would find it harder to come out of the closet because they're supposed to be tough so he'd creep'd about asking men if he could touch them .. no reports of him actually attacking anyone though .. interesting. The police are clearly already aware of him, I think the presenter is correct in wondering if a bit of racism is also involved in this man becoming an urban legend ..
 
A few years ago someone showed me a letter their child had brought home from school warning that Purple Aki was expected to be visiting the area and that children must be met from school. I tried to get the letter off her or at least let me photograph it with my new phone but she wasn't having any.

I've wondered since if it was a hoax and nothing to do with the school as we live 50-odd miles from Aki's area.
 
Swifty said:
it can't be his skin
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It is his skin tone which got him the name. The earliest images we have of him seemed to exaggerate this effect, perhaps to justify the name but more likely because they were scanned from crappy images in the tabloids.

I have heard the phrase "so black he's purple" used a few times in Liverpool about other black people.

escargot1 said:
I've wondered since if it was a hoax and nothing to do with the school
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Schools do sometimes help to spread social panics this way. Rumours of mass fights or "smiley-gangs" do sometimes get passed on from local authorities and other schools in the area. Safeguarding and accountability make it more likely that people will pass on warnings rather than be accused of suppressing them. I'm not sure why the woman was shy about sharing the letter, though. :confused: (appropriately purple emoticon).
 
Other than the name allusion to his skin tone I don't think race has ever been mentioned when speaking of him. His bogeyman status is the combination of being physically imposing, in terms of his height and build..any young man, especially a teenager, would be instintively wary of rejecting his attentions...and having such an insistently peculiar, and sexually charged obsession.

His mental "illness", which is safe to assume he has in some form is probably far more akin to that of that of the bloke who spends his life being arrested because of his utter stubborn refusal to wear clothes...That's to say its not - i imagine - mental incapactity or break down, but an unusual single mindedness which is impervious to any kind of legal or social censure.

Quick edit.. I just facebook searched his name to see whats on there and a fb friend of mine reported an encounter with him 3 years ago...

14344852_10155191244628572_1369362246903684086_n.jpg
 
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It may have been him - he is drawn to gyms, like a magnet. Mind you, once young people get started on the subject of their stalkers, it can seem like a bragging-game.

Pinning down the early stuff is the hardest part of the saga. I think he only reached newspaper reports after the 1986 death and his 1987 trial. The name Purple Aki does not appear, so far as I can make out in the 1986 story.

He was, however, already a folk-demon in the early eighties and it is clear that Gary Kelly was terrified of the myth.

The lurid rumours that Arobieke would anally rape his victims and/or carve P. A. on their buttocks were real enough to the panic-stricken youth to cause his fatal escape. The man himself has always denied a sexual motive underlies his obsession and no explicit activities are mentioned in witness statements, so far as I know. :confused:
 
I'd think saying its not sexual in motive is kind of academic to his victims. I'm imagining a large man approaching young women, following them, and either grabbing their breast or demanding they let him. Insisting - or others speculating - his motive wasn't strictly sexual would not make it any less a sexual assault to them or others.
 
Spudrick68 said:
Is there not some kind of club he could have gone to
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The thought of a club full of them is a bit surreal! :eek:

I don't think he can be very clubbable - except in the way seals are. He seems to have spent most of his life loitering outside gyms. He could probably have indulged his fetish on the sly, working as a trainer or coach inside them! I'm not saying that would have been a good thing but he may have escaped the attention of the law. :oops:
 
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