It was just another example of Gavin’s habitual bad luck that he chose May 2nd to make his first foray into the Manchester red-light district. He was driving a white van at the time – another hand-me-down from his younger brother, Bobby. A number of the girls working that stretch remembered seeing it.
This is ‘Lexi’. That’s not her real name. She’s worked Lockhart Avenue for ten years. She knew Paula back then, and remembers what she was like.
[‘LEXI’]
‘She was a nice kid. Really small and skinny. Some of the older girls used to mother her a bit. I guess they were worried that she was attracting the perverts, looking so young and that. She wasn’t as fragile as she looked, though she was deffo a bit dense sometimes. Naive, you know? Which is the last bloody thing you need in this job. You have to get good at spotting the weirdos. The ones who just want to hurt you. She was crap at that.’
[JOCELYN]
Paula may well have been a little naive, but she didn’t become a victim because of it. She didn’t go with the wrong punter, because it wasn’t a punter who assaulted her. The man who attacked her grabbed her from behind, dragged her into the undergrowth and bound her wrists with cable ties, before attempting to rape her.
And if you think some of that sounds familiar, you’re right: all of these came to be hallmarks of the predator the press would later christen the ‘Roadside Rapist’.
But all that was months in the future. In 1997, all the police knew was that Paula had been viciously assaulted. And they faced an uphill battle finding who did it because there was no DNA, and no forensics. But they did have one thing on their side.
Paula saw who did it. Only for a moment, as he scrambled to his feet and ran off into the night. But she saw his face.
So all they had to do was find him. Because they knew that as soon as they got him into an ID parade, they’d have their man. Simple, right?
Wrong.
[DESMOND WHITE]
‘The first time I saw Gavin was in the custody suite at Northampton Road police station.’
[JOCELYN]
That’s Des White. He was Gavin’s solicitor back then. Or rather he was the Legal Aid lawyer who happened to be next on the roster the night Gavin was arrested.
It was just after eleven on May 5th, three days after Paula had been attacked. But a lot had happened in those three days.
[DESMOND]
‘There was a huge police operation in Lockhart Avenue after the assault. And for the most part the girls were very cooperative. After all, they didn’t want a sexual predator on the loose any more than anyone else.’
[JOCELYN]
As it turned out, none of the girls had seen what happened to Paula, though one of them did see a man in a dark hoodie running away about the time the attack took place. But that wasn’t much use on its own. The police needed more. And after a couple of days, they got it.
The CCTV trawl yielded footage of a white van accelerating away from the area. It was Gavin’s van, still registered at the time to his brother, Bobby. Though it didn’t take the police long to trace who’d really been driving it that night.
Armed with the van’s number plate, they started to piece together Gavin’s movements in the hours leading up to the assault. Soon they could not only place him at the scene, they also had footage of him filling up the van earlier that evening, at a petrol station two miles away.
He was wearing a dark hoodie.
[DESMOND]
‘It was all circumstantial, of course. It didn’t prove anything. But it was enough for an arrest, and it was enough to get Gavin into an ID parade.’
[JOCELYN]
Gavin was taken to the Northampton Road station and questioned there for several hours, throughout which he steadfastly refused to answer any questions. But the police weren’t that concerned. They still thought they had their man. All they needed was Paula to identify him and the case would be closed.
Gavin was Number 3 in the identity parade. He remembers it vividly, because he’d always thought 3 was his lucky number. And perhaps he was right. Because when Paula was asked if she recognized anyone in the line-up, she answered immediately, and without hesitation.
No.
[DESMOND]
‘That should have been the end of it. But things don’t always go the way they should, especially when it comes to the criminal justice system. The police didn’t believe that Paula hadn’t recognized him – some of the officers were openly speculating that she’d been intimidated – that Gavin must have got to her somehow and scared her into keeping quiet.
And then the following day the police came up with yet more CCTV, this time showing Gavin in the vicinity of Paula’s flat on the morning of the day he was arrested. They said he must have found out where she lived and followed her there, but luckily we could account for him being in the area, because it was only half a mile from the Job Centre. And throughout the whole debacle Paula’s story never changed – she hadn’t been threatened by anyone, and she didn’t recognize anyone in the line-up for the simple reason that they had the wrong man. So in the end the police had no choice. They had to let Gavin go.’
[JOCELYN]
And that really was the end of it. Or, at least, so Gavin thought.
Within a few months he and Sandra had split up, and Gavin had moved back to Cowley. Both his brothers had gravitated back to Oxford by then, so the move made sense, even if it meant he wouldn’t see as much of his kids as he’d have liked. He got a flat, started seeing a new girlfriend, tried to make a new start. Life seemed better than it had for a long time.
And then, on January 27th 1998, a 23-year-old woman called Erin Pope was dragged off the street in the outskirts of Oxford, on her way home from work. Her hands were bound with cable ties and a plastic bag pulled over her head. She was found, an hour later, badly beaten, her underwear missing and a clump of her hair ripped out.
The Roadside Rapes had begun.
[UNDER BED OF ‘SEX CRIME 1984’ – EURYTHMICS]
I’m Jocelyn Naismith and this is Righting the Wrongs. You can listen to this and other podcasts from The Whole Truth on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[FADE OUT]
* * *
The uniformed PC is on the doorstep when they arrive. One of the new intake at Cowley Road; Quinn vaguely remembers seeing him once or twice before.
‘Acting DS Quinn. What have we got here?’
The PC stands up a little taller. ‘I attended the address at 11.06 hours, sir, at the request of Ms Elizabeth Monroe. She was concerned for the occupant’s welfare, having been unable to reach her this morning after she failed to turn up at work. I found the door open, no evidence of forced entry, and the premises empty. Sir.’
Quinn smiles drily. ‘What’s your name?’
He flushes. ‘Webster, sir.’
‘OK, Webster, there’s no need to talk like a Speak Your Weight machine. Ordinary lingo’s fine, even in the presence of CID.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Quinn heads into the flat and Ev grins at Webster as she passes. ‘And no need to call him “sir”, either.’ She drops her voice to a whisper and winks. ‘It just gives him ideas.’
It’s a small flat on the ground floor of a converted 1930s semi. Kitchen, sitting room, bedroom, a shower room with no windows. Everything is tidied neatly away as if the owner was expecting people – guests, parents, potential buyers. If this place has been burgled someone’s gone to enormous lengths to cover it up. Ev pulls her gloves out of her pocket, then reaches for the handbag lying on the coffee table.