The Jigsaw Man (29 page)

He began briefing me on the confirmed attacks, beginning with the first on 10 August, 1989. Jenny, a thirty-year-old single mother had been going through her normal morning routine of letting the cat out, getting breakfast for her children and tidying up the bedrooms.

She lived in a detached house which backed onto open land near Winns Common in Plumstead. At 8.30 a.m. she was upstairs in the front bedroom drying her hair when she looked up to see a man standing in the doorway. A piece of cloth covered his mouth and nose and he carried a black-handled Stanley knife.

He ordered her onto the bed, pulled her t-shirt over her head and tied it with a belt or wire over her eyes. Frightened for her children downstairs, Jenny convinced him to close the door and told him to hurry. As she lay face up on the bed he raped her, without a full erection. Afterwards, she saw him disappearing through the broken rear fence into open land.

‘How did he get into the house?’ I asked.

‘She left the back door open when she let the cat out. He walked right past the kids who were playing downstairs, cut the telephone lead and found Jenny.’

‘Was anything stolen?’

‘Nothing.’

Because the rapist’s face had been partially obscured, Jenny couldn’t help with an artist’s impression, but she described her attacker as five foot ten inches, about nineteen years of age, medium build, with mousy hair, wearing cheap faded jeans and a brown jacket.

‘It’s the only attack indoors,’ said Pearse. ‘We wouldn’t have linked it to the later ones if it hadn’t been for the DNA profile.’

The next known attack was separated by nearly three years and a distance of four miles. Susan, a seventeen-year-old living at Lewisham, southwest of Plumstead, boarded a bus near her home at 8.40 p.m. on 10 March, 1992, on her way to visit a friend on a nearby housing estate. She got off on Lee High Road near the junction with Abernathy Road and began walking. As she neared the Cordwell estate she became aware of a white youth on the opposite pavement.

Turning left into the estate, she entered an open courtyard and he ran towards some garages. As Susan entered a second alley she was attacked from behind. He grabbed her right arm and stood in front of her with a knife, saying, ‘If you want to live, don’t make any noise.’

After dragging Susan behind garages, he forced up her jumper and bra, fondling her breasts while he tried to kiss her face and mouth. When she struggled he reminded her of the knife by pressing it against her stomach, saying, ‘Shut up if you want to live.’ Then for some reason which she couldn’t understand he began punching her in the face. Dragging down her jeans and knickers, he pushed her to the ground, pinning her wrists above her head and began pushing his hips against hers, trying unsuccessfully to enter her.

Finally he stood up, pulled his trousers up and kicked Susan in the head six to eight times before calmly walking away.

‘It was fucking mindless violence,’ spat Pearse. ‘He didn’t have to do that.’

Semen stains had been found on Susan’s clothing and the DNA profile matched the first attack.

Eight days later the rapist struck again, in open fields at Eltham, two miles east of Lewisham. Another seventeen-year-old, Leanne, had left her home after a family row and gone for a walk at 7.30 p.m. Her route took her along Eltham Palace Road and onto a footpath leading through open fields and woodland towards Eltham Palace. At about 8.15 p.m. she stopped on high ground to look across at the lights of Canary Wharf and Crystal Palace Tower.

As Leanne moved off she noticed a man nearby who appeared to be walking away from her. But as she set out for home, he suddenly appeared in front of her, holding a knife in his right hand. He discarded a black balaclava, allowing her to see his face, and said, ‘Get down on your knees, I’ve got this and I’ll use it.’

He forced Leanne onto her back and pushed a knife into her left breast making a small cut that bled and stained her bra. Now shielded by the long grass, he lifted her top and bra and began fondling her breasts before taking off her lower clothing and ordering her to hold her knees and pull them upwards. He tried to enter her but his penis was too soft. Then he started moving up and down, simulating sex and saying things like, ‘Does it feel nice?’, ‘Are you a virgin?’, ‘Can you feel me inside you?’

When Leanne accidentally let her legs go, it infuriated him and he threatened to knock her out. Towards the end of the attack he achieved an erection and tried to penetrate her again. Afterwards, he put the knife at the entrance of her vagina and said, ‘You could have got this.’ He moved the knife back and forth from her bust to her chin.

‘Good girl,’ he said as he got up.

‘Should I wait till you’ve gone?’ she asked.

‘Do what you like. You’ll be a good girl and not make any trouble.’

Two schoolboys saw Leanne running from the scene and helped her to nearby shops where she called the police. Semen stains on her clothing produced a DNA profile and she managed to compile an artist’s impression. The likeness amounted to about 75 per cent, according to Pearse, and the importance of such a figure cannot be overlooked. Artists’ impressions have the potential to do great harm. If they don’t have a reasonable resemblance to the perpetrator, it can mean that an important witness doesn’t call.

This third attack featured a public footpath known as King John’s Walk that crossed the open land where Leanne had been walking. It was part of a much larger series of footpaths that linked a string of parks and commons in southeast London and formed what was known as the Green Chain Walk. It began in two places in the London borough of Bromley and Crystal Palace and meandered northwards until it reached the Thames.

The house that featured in the first rape backed on to Winns Common - part of the Green Chain Walk - and it also figured highly in the fourth attack.

On a sunny Bank Holiday Sunday, 24 May, 1992, Cathy, twenty-two, was pushing her two-year-old daughter in a buggy along King John’s Walk just before 2.00 p.m. Cathy noticed a man looking behind some grey corrugated doors beside a derelict set of changing rooms.

Soon afterwards she entered a much narrower section of the footpath bordered by railings and bushes. She heard footsteps behind her and suddenly her head was violently forced back by a ligature. She let go of the buggy and was knocked to the ground by a large number of blows to her head and upper body.

The attacker removed her shorts and knickers; he must also have removed her tampon; and managed to push her top up under her armpits. Then he had forced her knees apart and removed his own shorts revealing an old fashioned pair of y-fronts. He masturbated between her legs, near her vagina and when he entered he had to hold his penis because it was still soft.

From being still inside her, he suddenly jumped up, pulled on his shorts and ran off in the same direction he’d approached from. Cathy, looking like a bloody rag doll, gathered her clothes and managed to push her baby to her motherin-law’s house where she collapsed.

Later she told police, ‘I asked him not to kill me. He didn’t stop hitting me. He put a rope around my neck and kept bashing me on the head.’

Pearse took a sip of coffee and muttered, ‘Brazen bastard. It was broad daylight on a busy footpath; anyone could have come along.’

‘He’s a risk-taker - at least for the moment,’ I said, studying an aerial photograph of the scene.

Cathy had also been able to provide an artist’s impression which other victims described as good or fair, however her description put her attacker at well over six feet which far exceeded the estimates given by the other victims.

Pearse ran through several other attacks which he believed might also be connected, all of them linked to the Green Chain Walk. In particular an incident at Elmstead Woods, only a mile south of the Eltham attacks, which occurred on 30 August. A forty-seven-year-old teacher had been walking her dogs after breakfast when she strayed from the main footpath and turned when her corgi began to bark.

A youth passed her and then blocked the path. He began rubbing his erect penis through his trousers before grabbing a dog chain from around her neck and pulling her towards him. He pinned her to the ground against a nearby tree and then she thought her corgi must have bitten him on the ankle because he scrambled up and ran towards the clearing.

The description she gave was similar to the others and when shown the artist’s impression, she replied, ‘That is the man definitely.’ She also described the man as a ‘D-streamer’, an old fashioned term used by teachers for someone with very mild learning difficulties.

Pearse described two further incidents that had happened since the special operation started. A civilian administration officer working in the Ecclestone incident room had left Eltham station to move her car from a side-street at 7.00 p.m. on 1 September. She noticed a man following her who was gripping a plastic striped carrier bag by the neck which had something long inside. He ran off as she started the car engine but she noted how closely he matched the description of the suspect.

Regarded as a genuine sighting, it prompted fears that the rapist had begun to follow publicity generated by the case and had taken an interest in Eltham police station. This theory strengthened a week later when a fourteen-year-old boy rollerskating with his friends in a nearby park was approached by a man fitting the suspect’s description who opened his black leather jacket and revealed an appeal poster for the rapes. ‘See that. That’s me,’ he said, before walking on.

Pearse had been talking as he took me through the incident room, introducing me to various members of the inquiry team. ‘Now I’d better introduce you to the SIO,’ he said, motioning me through a swing door.

Detective Superintendent Steve Landeryou looked so unlike any policeman I’d ever seen that I did a double-take. He wore an immaculate bespoke three-piece suit with a gold chain looping from his buttoned vest and a dress handkerchief perfectly arranged in the breast pocket.

Landeryou stayed for a brief conversation about the case and then made his excuses to leave. I sensed that he regarded my presence as an exercise in covering all the bases and that he was more comfortable with policing methods that didn’t include consultant psychologists. Pearse, however, had a keen interest in psychology and had been studying aspects of it as a postgraduate student.

After giving me time to read the major statements and medical reports, Pearse and I arranged to tour the crime scenes which took most of the afternoon. The early afternoon heat made the car seem like an oven and it felt nice to stop and walk around.

I was particularly interested in the first known rape. It puzzled me because it was different from the others, so much so, that the inquiry team regarded it as almost an aberration. In his briefing, Pearse had skirted over the details quickly and hurried on to the outdoor attacks which he believed established the rapist’s methodology.

Yet from my point of view the attack on Jenny held more potential clues than any of the others. The other victims were chosen and attacked out of doors, perhaps randomly or opportunistically, but something had led him to Jenny. How did he know that she was in the house? Had he been watching her or stalking her?

Importantly, there must have been dialogue between them and what they said to each other could tell me about his education, motivation and his knowledge of Jenny.

‘Can she be interviewed again?’ I asked.

‘I believe so,’ said Pearse.

‘And also the neighbours. I’d like to know if anyone reported any peeping Toms or strange men hanging around the area in the weeks leading up to the attack.’

‘You’re talking about three years ago,’ said Pearse dubiously.

‘Yes. That’s one of the things that puzzles me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m wondering whether he could have moved away from the area after the first attack. You don’t expect a silence of three years between attacks. Men like this have dips in sexual need and sexual preoccupation which can keep them quiet for a few months but usually not years. Maybe there was a hullabaloo after the first rape and he took himself off for a while.’

‘It had no publicity,’ said Pearse.

Where was he, I wondered, in prison or in hospital? Did his family move or a relationship fail? ‘Somehow we have to account for the time gap,’ I said.

At the various scenes, Pearse took me over the details of where the victims had first seen the man and then where the attack had taken place. In the later attacks he allowed his face to be seen and showed little fear of being disturbed, particularly when he attacked Cathy on a busy footpath used by children, dog walkers, cyclists and joggers. Undeterred by the risk of discovery or the presence of her baby daughter, he increased his level of violence, repeatedly punching and kicking her in the head.

Pearse had shown me photographs of Jenny, Susan, Leanne and Cathy, all of them young and attractive which had suggested to police that they matched some physical picture that the rapist had in his mind. I suggested that instead of looking for physical similarities, they should look at how the victims may have appeared to the rapist. Were they likely to seem vulnerable or nervous to him because they couldn’t return his gaze and looked away,
etc.
…

I also wasn’t entirely happy with the attack in Elmstead Woods, involving the teacher walking her dogs. Aspects of it needed explanation. Apart from being older than the other victims, there was no sign of a knife in the attack and the teacher had described seeing a man rubbing his erect penis under his trousers. We knew from the other attacks that the rapist had trouble maintaining an erection.

She also described a man who she thought was intellectually subnormal, but I didn’t think this likely of the Green Chain rapist; his control and competence were clearly evident in the other attacks. He might not have used elaborate confidence tricks or tried to seduce his victims into places more convivial to him, but he had proved intelligent enough to be perfectly capable of doing what he wanted.

Local newspaper coverage in South London had generated a number of leads on the Green Chain rapes and detectives were tracing the movements of known sex offenders and reports of men acting suspiciously. Two incidents were particularly resonant. On Monday 12 October, a woman reported being followed by a man on Winns Common close to the first rape. She’d been pushing her baby son in a buggy at about 10.00 p.m. when she noticed a man on a park bench. Worried by him, she asked a young courting couple in a parked car to watch her. As she passed the bench, the man stood up and attempted to follow her, changing direction only when the car headlights were turned on him.