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13/12/01 - Quiet man of routine who
had murderous fantasies
The Killer
By Jason Bennetto and Paul Peachey
The Independent
The man sitting alone at table seven at Oscar's fish-and-chip
restaurant in Pier Road, Littlehampton, was a man of
meticulous routine. Always ordering the same meal, a
burger washed down with two mugs of tea, on Tuesdays,
Roy Whiting would collect £8 from other regulars
to place on the National Lottery.
A dirty, scruffy outsider, he smelt unwashed, lived
alone and had few friends. Despite attempts to build
an outwardly normal life – he has an ex-wife and
an estranged teenage son – inside Roy William Whiting
a murderous fantasy was growing. Whiting was born in
Horsham Hospital, in West Sussex, on 26 February 1959,
the son of a sheet-metal worker and a former cook; he
had an unhappy childhood and is thought to have been
sexually abused.
He grew up in the Langley Green area of Crawley, West
Sussex, with his parents, brother and sister. When Whiting
was 17, his mother, Pamela, left home, leaving the children
in the care of their father, George, although his older
sister, Gillian, and brother, Peter, also moved out.
Since his arrest and during the trial both parents have
stood by him, and his mother visited the court several
times. At the time of his first trial, his barrister
said that Whiting led "something of a Walter Mitty
existence", making fantastic plans that were never
going to be realised. He struggled at school, attending
Jordans School, in Crawley, and then nearby Ifield Community
College.
Christine Blything, a former Jordans pupil, said: "He
was very quiet and had few friends but he never got
up to anything." After leaving school, he had various
manual jobs that led to a career as a mechanic. For
one month in 1983 he worked at Cherry Lane Adventure
Playground, in Crawley, as a temporary play assistant
employed by the council, although there are no suggestions
that he did anything untoward.
He was married in June 1986 to a petrol pump attendant
he had met two years earlier, and they continued to
live in the Crawley area. He left her about four months
before she gave birth to a boy in July 1987. During
their shortlived marriage she had tired of his obsession
with car-racing. Whiting's mechanic's business began
to fail and he was evicted from his workshop because
he did not pay the rent.
His ex-wife said: "His business wasn't bringing
in money. That was the only thing wrong with the marriage,
he did not have the money to support us. I was the only
one bringing in a regular wage and we were always arguing
about it." She continued: "He had a girlfriend
after me, she looked like a gangster's moll. She was
only in her late teens or early 20s, a lot younger than
him."
In 1989 the couple divorced. His ex-wife and child still
live in Crawley. His son is 14. When his ex-wife heard
last year that Whiting was charged with Sarah's murder,
she said: "I'm in shock at this happening. I have
not seen him since Christmas 1995, when he brought a
present round for our son. I have absolutely no feelings
for him now whatsoever."
She said that in 1995 she had thrown out all photographs
of Whiting, including their wedding album. One of Whiting's
few interests was "banger" racing at the Smallfield
raceway, north of Crawley, where he raced while working
in a garage in Crawley. Nicknamed "The Flying Fish"
– a pun on his surname – he raced with the
Gatwick Flyers club and once came third in the club
championship.
Steve Beynon, a commentator at the track, recalls Whiting
as "nondescript, scruffy but polite, not articulate".
He added: "The year he was third, he didn't actually
win a race. He was the invisible man. Roy was scruffy.
He was what I call a street mechanic, the sort of bloke
everyone knows who will service your car at the side
of the road for £25."
A fellow mechanic said: "After a while he got into
the habit of sloping off about 3.30 each afternoon,
getting back at about 4.30. This was later called the
school run by one of us because he was once seen parked
near a school when the kids were coming out." At
the time he carried out the earlier kidnap, in 1995,
he was working at a mechanic's at the back of Hyders
Farm House, in Crawley.
Brian Jefferies, who lives at the house, said that Whiting
worked there for five years, on and off . "You
could not meet a nicer person. He didn't swear, never
went to the pubs." When he got out of prison he
moved to 6 St Augustine Road, Littlehampton, a building
of about eight flats. He kept a low profile. On the
night he abducted Sarah, he was back at Oscar's at 9pm,
ordering the usual. Two hours later he was arrested.
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