The Whole Truth

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’]