Woman breaks 46-year silence to tell jury of her ‘rape by child killer’
A WOMAN remained silent for 46 years about allegedly being raped and assaulted at knifepoint by a man who went on to murder a 14-year-old girl, a court heard.
When police contacted her nearly five decades after her alleged ordeal her first words were: “Is it about Peter?”
Peter Pickering, now 80, is on trial at Leeds Crown Court accused of abducting and raping an 18-year-old woman in 1972 weeks before he killed 14-year-old Shirley Boldy.
He has been held under a hospital order since 1972 when he admitted her manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
Shirley was bundled into a van by Pickering, then 34, as she was returning to school in Barnsley and driven to a quiet area where she was raped, stabbed and strangled.
Yesterday, a woman, who is now in her 60s, told the jury how Pickering picked her up in his van as she made the fourmile walk to work as a waitress from her home in the Stocksbridge area of Sheffield.
After driving to a quiet spot Pickering “tricked her” into putting on handcuffs before he raped her and then burnt her on the breasts with a cigarette.
She said: “He burned me on my breasts about a dozen times. It was very painful. I just thought I was going to die. When he’d finished he said: ‘I suppose I’m going to have to kill you now’.”
But she decided she “was not going down without a fight” and urged him to let her live by insisting she would not tell anybody. She said she never did.
Prosecutor Michelle Colborne QC said police found a garage containing Pickering’s letters, diaries and handcuffs.
Reviews of his medical notes gave them the name of his alleged victim. In diary entries he wrote: “Maybe I will be a sex maniac proper. Rape, torture, kill.” Pickering, who appeared by video-link from Swindon Crown Court, denied rape and false imprisonment.
The trial continues.