45 years later, killer rapist kept locked up since 1972 is convicted of another attack

A PENSIONER dubbed the Beast of Wombwell has been found guilty of raping an 18-year-old woman weeks before he raped and killed a 14-year-old girl more than 45 years ago.

Peter Pickering (80) has been locked up in psychiatric hospitals since 1972, when he admitted the manslaughter of schoolgirl Shirley Boldy in the Barnsley area of South Yorkshire.

Leeds Crown Court has heard how Shirley was 14 when she was abducted, raped and killed by Pickering.

A woman who is now in her 60s told a jury how she was raped by Pickering just a few weeks earlier.

Giving evidence last week, she described how she was picked up by the defendant who later took her to a secluded spot where he sexually assaulted her, burned her breasts with cigarettes and told her she was going to be killed.

The woman told the jury: “I remain of the fervent belief that whether he has a mental illness

Monster: Peter Pickering

or not, the man is a monster and wherever he is now that’s the right place for him to be.”

The jury was told that Pickering was made subject to a hospital order without time limit in 1972 for the manslaughter of Shirley Boldy by reason of diminished responsibility.

He has never been released and is currently being held at Thornford Park Hospital, in Berkshire.

He was also jailed between 1966 and early 1972 for a violent sexual assault.

The case was adjourned.