22/08/02 - Have we learnt nothing
from these murders?
The Daily Mail
AS THE nation grieves for Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman,
the horrific truth is that almost every year there has
been a similar case in which a child goes missing only
to be found murdered, or whose body is never discovered.
Each time, there are calls for reforms in the way Britain
deals with child killers.
Although polls suggest that the public today is less keen
on the idea of capital punishment, the issues of tougher
jail sentences for child sex offenders and proper monitoring
of those released back into the community are still of
deep concern. Looking back at many of the chilling cases
over the past 30 years, the most disturbing aspect is
the number where the killers had already been found guilty
of sex offences or been suspected of being a danger to
children, yet were allowed back into the community despite
warnings they could strike again.
Sarah Payne's murderer had carried out a carbon copy attack
just a few years earlier, yet was released from jail after
just two and a half years to kill the eight-year-old.
As we reveal here, eight other youngsters have been
murdered by men who had either already been jailed for
sex attacks or been suspected as a threat to children.
Have we learned nothing from these murders?
Susan Blatchford, 11, and Gary Hanlon, 12
CRIME: Known as The Babes In The Wood Case, the pair
went missing in Epping Forest on March 31, 1970. Eleven
weeks later, a man walking his dog came across the bodies
hidden under a pile of twigs and leaves.
KILLER: Paedophile and former Army recruit Ronald Jebson,
61. When he was 15, he indecently assaulted a four-year-old
girl and was sent to Borstal. In 1968 he got a two-year
sentence for indecent assault. Released on March 2,
1970, he killed Gary and Susan less than a month later.
Four days after that, he attacked an 11-year-old boy
and was sentenced to five years.
He was released in August 1973, but he murdered an
eightyearold girl less than a year later for which he
was sentenced to life imprisonment.
While being interviewed in jail in 1996, he told police:
'I'm still a danger.' Jebson was finally charged with
the Babes In The Wood murder in May 2000 after confessing
to raping and strangling the pair.
SENTENCE: Life.
Genette Tate, 13
CRIME: Genette vanished while on her paper round in
the Devon village of Aylesbeare on August 19, 1978.
Police mounted a huge search but her body has never
been recovered.
KILLER: No one has been charged with the crime.
Her father, John, is convinced that child killer Robert
Black - who is serving ten life sentences for the torture
and murder of three little girls - is guilty of her
murder (see Susan Maxwell).
SENTENCE: None.
Marion Croft, 14
CRIME: Marion from Fleet, Hants, was cycling along
a canal towpath when she was raped and beaten to death
on June 6, 1981.
KILLER: Tony Jasinskyj, 45, a former Army chef, was
caught 21 years later.
He was arrested for an alleged assault on his wife
and his DNA matched that found on Marion's clothes and
body.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment in May 2002. Charges going
back to 1982 were left to lie on his file. They included
rape, threats to kill, assault, false imprisonment and
procuring a woman to have sex by threats.
Susan Maxwell, 11
CRIME: Disappeared in Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland,
on July 31, 1982.
Body was found 264 miles away in a lay-by two weeks
later.
KILLER: Van driver Robert Black, 50. In July 1990,
he was found guilty of abduction and assault on a six
year old and detectives realised the similarity with
earlier, unsolved cases. His petrol receipts were used
to show he'd been in the right areas when Susan and
other girls had been killed.
SENTENCE: Ten life sentences in May 1994. Told he will
never be freed.
Caroline Hogg, 5
CRIME: Caroline went missing from a fairground near
her home in Edinburgh on July 8, 1983.
Her naked body was found 12 days later, 308 miles away
near a lay-by at Twycross, Leics.
KILLER: Robert Black had shown paedophile tendencies
since he was a teenager.
At 16, he assaulted a girl; the court merely admonished
him.
Two years later, he indecently assaulted a six-year-old
girl for which he was sent to Borstal for two years.
SENTENCE:Ten life sentences.
Mark Tildesley, 7
CRIME: Mark, from Wokingham, Berks, disappeared from
a fairground on May 31, 1984. He was subjected to multiple
rapes. His body has never been found.
KILLER: In 1992, a member of a paedophile ring, Leslie
'Catweazle' Bailey, then 40, confessed to the manslaughter
of Mark. He had also taken part in the abuse and killing
of Jason Swift (see right) and six yearold Barry Lewis.
SENTENCE: Given two life sentences, but was killed
a year later in prison by fellow inmates.
Jason Swift, 14
CRIME: Went missing from his sister's flat in London
in July 1985.
His body was found five months later at a picnic spot
in Essex.
KILLERS: Sidney Cooke, Leslie Bailey, Robert Oliver
and Steven Barrell.
SENTENCE: Between 13 and 19 years for manslaughter.
Cooke was freed in 1998 but, fearing he would be lynched,
confessed to more crimes and is back in prison. Oliver
was released in 1997; became a voluntary patient at
a special unit in Nottingham jail.
Barrell was released in 1995. Vanished after discovered
living near a Northampton school.
Sarah Harper, 10
CRIME: Sarah was abducted 150 yards from her home in
Morley, Leeds, on March 26, 1986.
She had gone to the corner shop at about 8pm to buy
bread.
She was sexually assaulted and then thrown into the
River Trent. Two weeks later her body was found in the
river 70 miles away from her home.
KILLER: Lorry driver Robert Black who had been making
deliveries in the area when he spotted Sarah. (See Susan
Maxwell).
SENTENCE: Ten life sentences.
Anna Humphries, 15
CRIME: Anna was walking home from school in Penley,
Clwyd, in November 1988 when she was abducted, assaulted,
strangled with her own underwear and dumped in the Severn.
KILLER: David Evans, a 31-year-old farm labourer. Had
been jailed for five years for attempted rape, but released
on parole.
Six months later he raped a teenager and was jailed
for 13 years.
In May 1988, freed after remission for good conduct.
SENTENCE: Life, with recommendation that he serve at
least 30 years.
Karin Griffin, 8
CRIME: Karin was snatched from near her home in Mansfield,
Notts, on February 15, 1991.
She was raped, her throat was cut and her body was
dumped in an oil drum full of water.
KILLER: Terence McCready, a 30-year old psychopath.
He had 11 previous convictions for sex attacks. He abducted
Karin four weeks after he had been released from prison
- doctors had ignored his own warning that he was a
'time bomb waiting to explode'.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment.
Nikki Allen, 7
CRIME: Abducted and battered to death on October 7,
1992. Found in a derelict building yards from her home
in Hendon, Sunderland.
SUSPECT: Jobless George Heron, who lived a few doors
away, was cleared of killing her after the judge refused
to let the jury hear his taped confession because of
the 'oppressive' police interrogation. Nikki's mother
later won a private prosecution against Heron.
SENTENCE: None, but Heron was ordered to pay pound
sterling8,000 compensation for battery leading to Nikki's
death.
Claire Tiltman, 16
CRIME: Claire was stabbed to death as she walked through
an alley on her way to a friend's house in Greenhithe,
Kent, on January 18, 1993.
A stranger leapt out and repeatedly plunged a knife
into her upper body.
Claire managed to stagger out on to the main street
before bleeding to death in the arms of passers-by.
A three-minute film about her murder was shown in local
cinemas, shopping centres, nightclubs and post offices.
KILLER: Never found.
James Bulger, 2
CRIME: James was snatched from outside a Merseyside
butcher's shop on February 12, 1993. His killers led
him two miles to a railway line at Walton, Liverpool,
where they battered, punched, kicked and stamped him
to death.
KILLERS: Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, both ten.
SENTENCE: In 1994 they were found guilty of murder
and detained at a young offenders' institution.
They were eventually released at the end of last year
with new identities because of threats to their lives.
Rosie Palmer, 3
CRIME: On June 30, 1994, Rosie went to buy an ice lolly
from a van in Hartlepool, Cleveland. Her battered, partially
clothed body was found three days later in an airing
cupboard.
KILLER: Jobless Shaun Armstrong, 32. A social worker
had warned the previous year that he was likely to prove
a danger to children - although no allegations had been
proved - yet social services gave him a council flat
in an area populated with young families.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment.
Daniel Handley, 9
CRIME: Daniel was cycling home through East London
in October 1994 when he was abducted, sexually assaulted
and strangled. Body found near Bristol six months later.
KILLERS: Lovers Timothy Morss, 33, and Brett Tyler,
30.
They met in prison where Morss was serving seven years
for raping twin boys and Tyler four years for sexually
abusing a brother and sister.
Tyler later went to the Philippines to abuse more children.
SENTENCE: Three life sentences each in 1996.
Lindsay Rimer, 13
CRIME: Lindsay of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, disappeared
on the night of November 7, 1994, after going to buy
cornflakes from the local corner shop.
Her parents assumed she had returned home, let herself
in by the back door and gone to bed. It was only when
she failed to turn up for her paper round the next morning
that the alarm was raised.
Her body was found in April 1995 in the Rochdale Canal,
weighted down with a two stone boulder.
KILLER: Never found.
SENTENCE: None.
Sophie Hook, 7
CRIME: Sophie was abducted on July 29, 1995, as she
camped out in the garden of her uncle's Llandudno home.
Her body was found on a beach half a mile away the next
day.
KILLER: Howard Hughes, a 30-year-old gardener, who
boasted of his obsession with paedophile sex. After
the trial it emerged that he had been previously accused
of indecently assaulting girls aged three, five and
nine, and had been convicted of trying to strangle a
young boy when he was 16 - for which he was put on probation.
SENTENCE: Given three life sentences.
Caroline Dickinson, 13
CRIME: Caroline's body was found by four horrified
friends who were sharing her room after the teenager,
from Launceston in Cornwall, was raped and murdered
while on a school hostelling trip in Pleine-Fougeres,
Brittany, in July 1996.
SUSPECT: Last year a Spanish waiter, 51-year-old Francisco
Arce Montez, was apprehended in Miami after an American
detective had read about the case.
DNA testing linked Montez to Caroline.
SENTENCE: Awaiting trial after he was charged with
murder.
Zoe Evans, 9
CRIME: Zoe went missing from home in Warminster, Wiltshire,
on January 11, 1997.
Her body was later found half-a-mile away. She had
been dragged from her bed, suffocated then forced down
a badger sett.
KILLER: Her stepfather Miles Evans, a 23-year-old driver
in the Royal Logistic Corps, who had made a public appeal
for Zoe to come home.
Detectives also suspected he had abused the little
girl.
SENTENCE: Life.
Zoe's mother called for the return of the death penalty.
Billie-Jo Jenkins, 13
CRIME: Billie-Jo was beaten to death with a metal tent
peg on February 17, 1997. She had been painting patio
doors at her home in Hastings, East Sussex, when she
was attacked.
KILLER: Her foster father Sion Jenkins, 41, a deputy
headmaster.
After battering her, Jenkins - a serial philanderer
who had had an affair with a 17-year-old girl - had
calmly gone shopping with two of his other daughters
and pretended to discover the body on his return.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment.
Thomas Marshall, 12
CRIME: Strangled with his own necklace in August 1997
in Norfolk, and dumped 50 miles away.
KILLER: Kevan Roberts, a 52-year-old shopkeeper, had
been abusing the boy and killed Thomas to silence him.
Thirteen months later, police found a missing bead from
the necklace in Roberts's kitchen. He had been cautioned
in November 1995 after luring two boys into videoing
themselves naked in his bathroom.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment, with the recommendation
he serve 'well into double figures'.
Claire Hart, 13
CRIME: While walking to school in Eaton, Cheshire,
on June 18, 1998, she was dragged into undergrowth,
beaten, shot with an air rifle and then strangled.
Her body was discovered five days later.
KILLER: Drifter Craig Aaron Smith, 19. At his trial
it was revealed that his mother had shown concern about
his behaviour from an early age and had sought help
from social services. He had been on bail for two arson
attacks when he was arrested.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment.
Sarah Payne, 8
CRIME: On July 1, 2000, Sarah was snatched from a field
at Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, where she was playing
and bundled into a van.
Her naked body was found in a shallow grave 16 days
later.
KILLER: Roy Whiting, a 42-year-old mechanic.
He had been convicted five years earlier of abducting
a nine-year old schoolgirl and attacking her but had
received only a four year-sentence - of which he served
two and a half years.
SENTENCE: Life imprisonment. The judge recommended he
should never be freed. |
