Two brothers, 57-year-old Michael Stewart and 60-year-old Anthony Stewart, are currently on trial in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales for allegedly bashing in the skull of 45-year-old gay man Anthony Littler in London on May 1, 1984, when the brothers were just 15 and 18 years old. The brothers have pleaded not guilty.

The investigation into Littler’s murder went cold over the decades after police found his body in an alley, dead from blunt weapon impacts that left him with two skull fractures and a “catastrophic brain injury,” PinkNews reported. Littler was a civil servant and real ale enthusiast who, at the time of his murder, was walking home from a local pub event.

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When originally questioned by police, the brothers claimed they had stayed at home on the night of the attack and had never visited the alley where Littler was killed. However, police resumed their investigation after the brother’s youngest sibling, Daniel, came forward and claimed that his brothers had admitted to killing Littler and boasted about “queer bashing” when he was just 10 years old.

Michael Stewart also allegedly told a girlfriend about the murder and brought her to the alley where the slaying occurred. The two brothers’ sister Gaynor reportedly told police in 2025, that police that they were also racist and had taken part in attacks on “queers” and people of Pakistani or South Asian descent.

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Upon reopening the case, police reportedly bugged the brother’s cars and Michael Stewart’s home with listening devices. Police charged the brothers with murder in March 2025. Prosecutors now suspect that the brothers were part of a violent group who attacked unsuspecting victims.

Prosecutor John Price told jurors in the brothers’ trial this month that their alleged attack on Littler “was not the only time” that they and their associates “used violence on a solitary man they did not know, in a public place.”

“By the spring of 1984, it is alleged by the prosecution that for quite a while this had been a habit or hobby of theirs,” Price added. “It was something they enjoyed doing. They had begun by targeting men whom they thought might be homosexual men.”

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