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13/12/01 - The sad, sick and lonely
world of boy who turned into a child sex monster
By MARTIN WALLACE
The Sun
GRINNING playfully and with his arms crossed angelically
in his lap, the tousle-haired eight-year-old looks a
picture of innocence in his school photo. Yet this was
Roy Whiting, the sick sex beast who grew up to abduct
and murder Tittle Sarah Payne to satisfy his paedophile
lust. The black and white snap, taken in 1967 at Jordans
County Primary in Crawley, West Sussex, offered no clue
to the monster he would later become.
Yet the oddball schoolboy was ALREADY recognised as
a loner who struggled to make friends and was bullied
even by the girls in his class. One former classmate
said: "We all began school together aged five and,
even though I went all the way through it with Roy,
I never really knew him. "He never had any close
friends.
He was always a bit jumpy and nervous. "We all
thought he wasn't quite the full shilling because he
was slow - slow at sums and slow at writing. Today he
would maybe be classed as dyslexic. "Roy was always
coming to school dressed in scruffy clothes and with
his hair all messed up. "He also had a bit of a
stutter and maybe that's why he wasn't popular."
A woman who went to school with Whiting said: "Me
and two of my girlfriends used to bully Roy every day.
"We picked on him because he was scruffy, smelly,
and no one liked him. "I feel guilty about it now
and wonder if the treatment we gave him turned him into
the animal he became."
Whiting - born Roy William Whiting in Horsham Hospital
on January 26, 1959 - was separated from his classmates
when they left Jordans and moved to nearby Ifield Comprehensive.
He was sent alone to a remedial class in a separate
building. After leaving school at 15 he worked as a
Co-op delivery boy before struggling to hold down a
string of jobs.
At home, life with his family in Martyrs Avenue, Crawley,
was unhappy. Mum Pamela suffered a series of break-downs
at the hands of her bullying first husband George -
now 80 and ALSO a convicted child sex pervert. She finally
walked out on the sheet metal worker and their three
children in 1976 after constant rows.
Later in life, Whiting would claim he had himself fallen
victim to a paedophile. After his arrest for kidnapping
and sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl in 1995,
he told a Probation Service officer that he was nine
when he was pounced on by a stranger in a park. He claimed
he was fondled by the man for two minutes before escaping
but said he had never told anyone about the attack in
Crawley.
At that time Whiting played regularly at an adventure
playground in Cherry Lane, just yards from his home.
There is no record of any complaint being made then.
But locals revealed that when he was older Whiting and
his father would sit on an old sofa dumped nearby and
watch the children play.
They became known locally as "The Pervs".
Again, nothing was ever reported to the police and there
is no suggestion that either committed any wrongdoing.
Whiting's brother Peter, 45, and sister Gillian. 36,
washed their hands of him years ago. His mum Pamela
Green, however, always remained loyal.
But even she called him a "Walter Mitty" character
in a letter to the Probation Service before his 1995
conviction. And she chillingly revealed how he had a
deep-seated dislike of women. Mrs Green said: "Roy
does not like women. He seems to resent them."
Whiting went on to work as an MoT inspector at Kirkham
Motors in Crawley for four years until he failed part
of the inspector's test and walked out.
He set up his own car repair business from a unit at
Hayders Farm on the outskirts of the town. But his business
struggled and he ran up a pile of debts. Kicked out
of his flat over rent arrears, he lived rough in his
workshop. Yet after a string of failed relationships,
he met Linda Booker through friends and married her
in June 1986.
The marriage soon hit the rocks and they divorced less
than three years later. Whiting moved out of their flat
and back in with his father after Linda fell pregnant
with their son Terry, now 13. In a letter to the Probation
Service before he was sentenced in 1995, Whiting claimed
Linda, 35, had tricked him into fatherhood by quitting
the Pill.
He wrote: "I was angry over the way she planned
it. It hurt me. I felt cheated." In the next few
months Whiting had short-lived relationships with two
teenage girls. He walked out on the first after she
fell pregnant with his daughter. And he split with the
second after she started secretly seeing another man.
In 1995, Whiting was arrested for the abduction and
assault on the girl of nine. He served only two years
and, on his release in November 1997, moved to Littlehampton
because he was a known paedophile in his home town.
Incredibly he was allowed to move into a bedsit overlooking
a kids' playground.
There, depraved Whiting fuelled his warped desires with
his bird's-eye view as youngsters played innocently
at the seafront park less than 100 yards away. Meanwhile,
he wormed his way in with his new neighbours by claiming
he only served time for stealing high-performance cars
and selling them on.
One of the senior officers on the Sarah Payne case,
Det Insp Martyn Underhill, once said of Whiting: "He
is your classic Billy-no-mates." It was a description
which had applied throughout his life. As a teenager,
the sad loner joined a cycle racing club in a desperate
bid to find a friend. But even though he was one of
their top riders, unimpressed team mates dubbed him
"the wet fish".
After two years tearing round the ash circuit near his
Crawley home, Whiting and others formed a team named
The Crawley Greyhounds. They began competing in Southern
Counties League cycle speedway races, visiting venues
across Sussex, Kent, Essex and London. Yet despite his
efforts on the track, Whiting remained the scruffy lad
with no friends who was constantly covered in dirt and
oil.
One former team-mate said: "Long hair was fashionable
in those days, but Roy's was more untidy and greasier
than anyone else's. "He was always the mucky one
with oil on his hands and shirts. "We used to rib
him about his surname and the fact he'd no real pals
by calling him the wet fish." At 14, Whiting came
second overall in the Greyhounds' first ever annual
club championship. The boys later renamed their team
The Crawley Tigers and went on to scoop a huge haul
of trophies.
Yet in 1977, Whiting began skipping races after passing
his L-test and buying a battered Transit van. Even so,
he still helped out by acting as the race starter during
competitions. Once, aged 18, he replaced the traditional
starter's jacket with a new white SUIT he'd bought with
the cash he earned from working in a local garage.
Another former team-mate said: "Roy was big and
strong for his age. I'll never forget how, when we were
16, he lost his rag and went for a bloke from another
team who crashed into him during a race. "He was
spitting mad and it took three of us to pull him off
the guy. "After that we were a bit wary of him
as we knew there was a lot of anger bubbling under the
surface.
"I never thought for one second he was a danger
to young children. "But when a girl was snatched
in Crawley in 1995 we knew right away Roy was the culprit.
"The police revealed the suspect was scruffy and
covered in oil and everyone in the town knew that was
the exact description of Roy."
As his interest in cars grew, Whiting had set up his
own banger racing team and named it The Outlaws. He
nicknamed himself The Flying Fish a play on his own
surname and became a regular at races in Crawley for
more than ten years. Over the years the skilled mechanic
bought several clapped-out wrecks and fixed them up
for races.
He would buy only old Jaguars, usually for just £200
each and fitted each with a souped-up engine. At some
race meets he would drive a battered white Hillman to
advertise his services as a mechanic and qualified MoT
tester. He even painted his name on the side in huge
red letters. But Whiting's track career ended in shame
when he was kicked out by his own team over the 1995
attack.
Eddie Drabble, secretary of the Smallfield Banger Racing
Club where the killer drove, recalls him as a "below
average" driver who won only a handful of events.
Eddie, 60, said: "Whiting was a real loner who
always stood out because he looked like a real scruff.
"During races you always end up really filthy from
the track or from lying under your car doing repairs.
"But Roy looked like that when he walked through
the gates at the start of the day. He was dirty, scruffy
and his teeth were all rotting. "I always used
to think I'd hate to see the state of his house because
he looked so messy. "I was racing at the same time
as him but I didn't really know him because he was a
weird loner.
His appearance was very off-putting. "After he
was convicted of the first abduction, everyone decided
that he wasn't welcome back here. "No one wanted
anything to do with him after that and we feel sad he's
even associated with our club." Whiting's elderly
dad George got HIS paedophile conviction for touching
up a little girl in a swimming pool in 1965.
He struck after taking Roy, then six, and brother Peter
for a Sunday morning dip at Crawley baths. He grabbed
hold of the girl, who was swimming with a school friend,
pulled her towards him and committed the offence under
the water. His distraught victim told her parents and
later identified the pervert.
At first the dad-of-three pretended he had merely tried
to stop the girl swimming towards him. But he later
admitted the attack at Crawley Magistrates Court. The
former sheet metal worker, who was then 44, pleaded
guilty, saying: "I am ashamed of myself."
After putting him on probation for a year, the chairman
of the court told him: "If the probation officer
advises medical treatment we trust you will have it."
The Sarah Payne murder jury was told that Whiting made
a telephone call to his father's Crawley home at lunchtime
on the day after he abducted and murdered the schoolgirl.
Only two people know what was said in that call made,
according to records, at 12.52pm on July 2, 2000. Meanwhile,
a friend revealed Whiting's dad now thought to be living
in Essex PAID for the van used to abduct tragic Sarah.
Pervert Whiting had begged for cash to buy the white
Fiat Ducato from a furniture remover. The friend said:
"Even though it was going to cost £400, Roy
told his dad he needed to borrow £500. He said
it was going to cost £800." |
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