The rapist’s second victim, 19-year-old biology student Jodie Hewitt, had been so badly beaten she had to spend ten days in hospital. Jodie was in her second year at Wykeham College at the time, and in the weeks after her rape, rumours had begun to circulate that a serial sex assailant was operating in the city. People started to panic, there were calls for more police on the streets at night.
But then – nothing. The days started to get longer, the students went down for the long summer vacation, and even if the police hadn’t made any obvious progress investigating the first two attacks, at least there hadn’t been any more.
Not, that is, until September 4th. It was a Friday, and after a drink in town that night with friends, a 24-year-old trainee solicitor was on her way home. She was on a quiet Oxford side street, only a few hundred yards from her flat, when her attacker struck. She wasn’t raped, but only because another man saw what was happening and came to her rescue just in time.
[ROSEY MABIN]
‘His name was Gerald Butler, and he was a former soldier, and a bouncer at one of the city’s nightclubs.’
[JOCELYN]
That’s Rosey Mabin. She reported on the Roadside Rapist for the Oxford Mail, and attended Gavin Parrie’s trial at the Old Bailey.
[ROSEY]
‘Butler told the jury that he spotted the young woman face down at the side of the road. She had a plastic carrier bag over her head, and there was a man straddling her, trying to tie her hands with cable ties. The attacker was thin, about five foot eight, and wearing a dark hoodie.’
[JOCELYN]
There was no social media back then, needless to say, so it took days rather than minutes for the news of the third attack to spread, but Thames Valley Police knew their worst fears had come to pass: their bête noire was back. They called that press conference we heard at the start of this episode because they knew they had to do something to allay local fears.
There was another reason too, of course.
Women needed to be warned.
[ROSEY]
‘It was actually me that came up with the Roadside Rapist nickname. A couple of the nationals had been referring to him as the Oxford Ripper, but after that press conference I wrote a front-pager calling him the Roadside Rapist and it just stuck.’
[JOCELYN]
And you can see why. It’s a name that captures all the terror of a predator who targeted his victims out in the open, on streets they walked every day, only yards from other passers-by. Those victims were normal girls, going about their normal business. But it was that very normality that was so terrifying. Because if it happened to them, it could happen to anyone. No wonder people were scared, no wonder young women in Oxford were avoiding going out alone, especially after dark.
As for the investigation, the police were scarcely any further forward. Of course, DNA science wasn’t as sophisticated back then as it is now – so-called ‘touch DNA’ was a long way in the future, for a start. But that didn’t matter anyway, because – as the trial would later confirm – the Roadside Rapist never left any DNA at all. No hair, no skin, no semen – there were basically no forensics (a fact which has also hampered subsequent attempts to have the case re-opened, including our own).
The other challenge for the police was that, unlike Paula in Manchester, none of the Oxford victims ever saw their attacker’s face. The police speculated – with some justification – that the rapist was using plastic bags for precisely that reason: to make doubly sure he couldn’t be identified. There was no CCTV either. In the late 90s, very few buildings had their own cameras, so perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that there was never any footage in the area of the crimes. Of course, this could just have been bad luck, or a coincidence, but some of the officers on the case started to wonder whether there might be rather more to it than that.
[‘MR X’]
‘As time went on you could definitely see a pattern emerging.’
[JOCELYN]
Those are the words of one of the detectives who worked on the case. We’ve disguised his voice, to protect his identity.
[‘MR X’]
‘It wasn’t just the MO that was the same each time. The plastic bag, the cable ties, the hair, the taking of trophies like jewellery or underwear. Over time, we became convinced that this man was also choosing the locations of the attacks very carefully. They all took place on stretches of road that had no speed cameras or CCTV, where there was dense undergrowth adjacent to the pavement, and no overlooking houses or buildings. That suggested to us that this perpetrator was recce-ing the sites in detail beforehand.’
[JOCELYN]
Thames Valley officers did question people who lived or worked nearby, but it never yielded anything useful. They had no evidence, no leads. But in due course they did have a new theory.
[‘MR X’]
‘It was one of the Detective Sergeants on the team who first suggested that the rapist wasn’t just casing out the sites of the crimes in advance: he was stalking his victims too.’
[JOCELYN]
The name of that Detective Sergeant was Adam Fawley. And this wasn’t the only significant contribution he would make to this investigation. In fact, his work on the case would eventually earn him a commendation from the Chief Constable, and accelerate his rise to Detective Inspector. Because it was Adam Fawley who helped secure the evidence that convicted Gavin Parrie.
So you could say, with some justification, that this case changed Adam Fawley’s life. And not just professionally, either.
In September 2000, not quite a year after Gavin Parrie was pronounced guilty and sentenced to life at the Old Bailey, Adam Fawley married a woman called Alexandra Sheldon.
She was a lawyer, and had lived in the Oxford area all her life. She was also the Roadside Rapist’s third victim.
[UNDER BED OF ‘EMOTIONAL RESCUE’ – THE ROLLING STONES]
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]
* * *
Alex Fawley presses stop and pushes her tablet away. Her hands are trembling.
She knew this would happen – she’d steeled herself against what they’d say, but knowing it and hearing it are not the same thing.
She folds her hands about her belly to still them; the skin that shields her child is warm, but her fingers are freezing.
She needs to talk to Adam.
She’d prayed she wouldn’t have to – she didn’t want him to know she was listening to this thing. But now – now she has no choice.
* * *
Back at St Aldate’s, Somer is feeling the worst kind of sidelined. Because she can’t blame anyone else; she’s managing to do it all by herself. Ever since the news came in from Boddie, the team has been hectic with adrenaline, but she feels muffled, quarantined. Like those adverts where there’s someone sitting in the middle of a busy office, barely moving, while people buzz around them in fast-forward. Those marooned people always have something wrong with them – a cold, a headache, flu – but it’s never anything serious. It’s always easily fixed. She sighs. It’s not that she doesn’t care about what happened to the woman on the railway line; she just can’t find the energy to do anything about it. She’s achieved precisely nothing all morning, and is now rapidly running out of thankless tasks that will stop her thinking and require no thought.