Could Lady in the Lake get justice at last?
Rapist on trial for murder 35 years after bound and gagged woman’s drowning was treated as a suicide
A SERIAL rapist who allegedly terrorised girls as young as 14 went on trial yesterday accused of the ‘Lady in the Lake’ murder 35 years ago.
Donald Robertson is said to have preyed on women and girls, threatening to knife, strangle or hit them with bottles as he carried out a series of sex attacks during the 1980s using the ‘gravest violence’.
Now the 66-year-old convicted sex offender is accused of strangling and drowning Shani Warren, whose notorious murder became known as the ‘Lady in the Lake’ case after her bound body was found in Taplow Lake, Buckinghamshire on April 18, 1987.
The 26-year-old disappeared on Good Friday when she set off to dispose of grass cuttings after mowing her lawn in the Buckinghamshire village of Stoke Poges.
She is thought to have stopped in a layby due to a fault in her car’s gearbox. The next day a dog walker found her body lying face down in a lake. Miss Warren had been gagged with a cloth, her hands were tied behind her back with jump leads and her legs were bound with a tow rope.
She was strangled until unconscious and then dumped in the water to drown, yet the pathologist treated the case as a suicide and failed to take a mouth swab to check for her attacker’s DNA, Reading Crown Court heard.
The murder remained unsolved until the gag was re-examined in 2020 and 2021, revealing Robertson’s DNA, jurors were told.
Yesterday he went on trial accused of her murder and the rape of a 16-year-old girl six years earlier, just four miles away. Robertson is accused of kidnapping the teenager on July 16, 1981. He allegedly grabbed her, threatening: ‘Don’t scream, I’ve got a knife and I’ll kill you.’
The teenager immediately went to the police but was too afraid to pick him out in an identification parade after Robertson is alleged to have warned her: ‘If you say a word to anyone, the police or your mum, or if I see anything in the papers that someone’s been assaulted, I’ll get you.’
The victim later indicated to police that she had seen him in the parade. Just 17 days later, Robertson jumped out of a hedge on to a 14-year-old girl cycling in Farnham Royal 1½ miles away.
Wielding a broken bottle, he pushed her into bushes, bound her with her shoelaces and tried to gag her. Robertson was arrested that day and later pleaded guilty to the rape in October 1981.
On June 5, 1987 – 50 days after Miss Warren’s killing – he kidnapped a 17-year-old girl.
Jurors heard he forced her into his car and drove her past the murder scene at Taplow Lake, before raping her.
Robertson was convicted of kidnap and rape in 2010 when the case was re-investigated. In the meantime, he had claimed a fifth victim, forcing his way into a bed and breakfast in Slough to assault a woman on April 14, 1990.
He was later convicted of burglary with intent to commit rape and kidnap in December 1990.
Prosecutor John Price, QC, said there were common features in the attacks in which he used the ‘gravest violence’. Yesterday Robertson failed to attend court.
He denies the false imprisonment, indecent assault and murder of Miss Warren. He also denies the kidnap and rape of the 16year-old girl. The trial continues.
‘He used the gravest violence’