Neighbour tells of campaign of harassment
AFTER months of harassment at the hands of creepy Eric McKenna, his neighbour decided she’d had enough.
But the woman who first brought the vile pervert to the attention of police could never have imagined her report would set off a chain of events, which has today ended with him being jailed for 23 years.
Police took a sample of the 58-yearold’s DNA after arresting him for a campaign of harassment against his neighbour, during which he urinated in her plant pot.
And today, after learning the man who made her life hell had been exposed as the pervert she always knew he was, the woman has told The Chronicle of her relief.
She said: “I felt physically sick when I found out what he’d done. My heart was in my mouth. But I’m so glad I reported him and these women have got justice and I’m so pleased he’s been caught, because I know what a nasty, controlling man he is. He’s a woman hater.”
The woman lived in the same block of flats as McKenna in the Arthur’s Hill area of Newcastle for more than 20 years. She says she instantly thought there was something strange about him when they met, and she began to feel uncomfortable around him.
“He was not an ordinary unassuming person like he’s tried to make out he was,” she said. “He was always strange. He always had this mad look in his eyes, and he was always causing trouble. He made me feel uncomfortable. He was also very racist. He was always ranting and raving about the West End being taken over. I decided to just keep away from him because he was scary.”
The woman did her best to avoid McKenna, but in recent years his behaviour took a sinister turn.
McKenna made remarks towards her one day when she ran into him outside her home. And after she complained to the landlord about his behaviour he began a sustained campaign of harassment against her.
Over many years the woman had attempted to brighten up the block with flowers and plants, and had bought a number of large plant pots for the landing.
These became McKenna’s focus, and the twisted dad would repeatedly move them or throw them off the balcony, and even urinated in them.
The neighbour said: “He would stand on the landing in his shorts all the time. I was terrified. This went on and on and
on.” By 2015 the woman was at the end of her tether. She reported McKenna to police and officers began to build a harassment case against him.
“It had gone on for a full year,” she said. “I was a nervous wreck. I don’t scare easily, but I was scared.”
“The police were brilliant. They took it seriously. It wasn’t about the plants, it was about him targeting me.”
McKenna was arrested in 2016 and accepted a caution for harassment.
A DNA sample was taken as a matter of routine, and when this was loaded onto the national database detectives discovered he was the man they had been looking for in connection with two unsolved violent rapes from 1983 and 1988.
The scaffolder was arrested in April 2017 and charged with two counts of rape.
Newcastle Crown Court heard how McKenna pounced on two strangers in similar terrifying attacks, five years apart.
The first victim was raped after being pushed down a grassy bank on the Gateshead side of the High Level Bridge in 1983. Her attacker pulled her jacket over her head so that she could not see his face before forcing himself on her.
Then in 1988 an 18-year-old student was attacked in a secluded yard off Newcastle’s New Bridge Street as she walked home from a party. Again the victim’s face was covered with her own jacket.
Despite similarities between the two cases, detectives did not link the attacks until new DNA evidence was discovered during a cold case review in 2005.
McKenna denied any involvement in either attack.
However, a jury found him guilty and he was yesterday locked up for 23 years.
McKenna’s former neighbour, who had since moved away from the flats, had no idea about his convictions until this week when she ran into another neighbour who told her.
She said. “I was absolutely gobsmacked. I was really shaken up.”
“But it made absolute sense when I read it. I’m so glad he’s going to be locked up for a long time.”
Det Con Mick Wilson of Northumbria Police, who led the investigation into McKenna’s crimes, said: “The neighbourhood officers who responded to the harassment were brilliant and recognised that the victims were vulnerable. The professionalism and compassion they showed ultimately led to McKenna being arrested and his DNA taken. The efforts of everyone involved shows just how determined we are to offer the best possible service to every victim of crime.”