Pitchfork WILL kill again. He should NEVER be set free
Mum who lost daughter aged 15 blasts parole bid
A HEARTBROKEN mum has made a last-ditch plea to keep Colin Pitchfork behind bars, warning: “He will kill again.”
The double murderer, 63, launches a fresh bid for freedom tomorrow – two years after a disastrous decision to grant him parole.
Barbara Ashworth urged the Parole Board not to make the same mistake twice.
Barbara, whose 15-year-old daughter Dawn was killed by Pitchfork in 1986, told us: “I just want him locked away for ever – it’s an insult that he’s even been given an option to come out. It’s devastated my life.
“I’ve not only lost my only daughter but he’s also robbed me of having grandchildren.”
Pitchfork got 30 years for killing Dawn and the murder of Lynda Mann, also 15, three years earlier.
He was controversially released on licence in 2021 but was back behind bars just weeks later after he was caught approaching a young woman.
Despite never showing remorse, the fiend has now been granted a two-day hearing where he’ll again argue for his release.
Anguished Barbara, 77, added: “He killed two innocent girls and started stalking the moment he was released last time, so how can he now suddenly be innocent?”
Bragged
Pitchfork raped and strangled Lynda in Narborough, Leics, as she walked home from babysitting in November 1983.
Nearly three years later he raped and strangled Dawn in neighbouring Enderby less than a mile away.
Cops asked 5,000 men to provide a DNA sample but Pitchfork persuaded a pal to give one on his behalf.
He was arrested in 1987 after the friend bragged about the scam.
Pitchfork became the first to be convicted of murder based on DNA evidence and was jailed for 30 years.
Dawn’s mum Barbara, who now lives in Cornwall, said: “I remember it like it was yesterday. It happened in broad daylight – it was four o’clock in the afternoon during the summer holidays. Our lives changed for ever in that moment.
“Dawn had so many ambitions and her death has left a void. I don’t want anyone else to suffer like me.”
Health struggles will stop Barbara from attending tomorrow’s hearing, but she’s determined to focus on happier times. She added: “I bring out the last Mother’s Day card she made me every year.
“She wrote in bold letters across the top, ‘It’s great to have a mum like you’. He’s taken something away that I can never replace, but nobody can take the memories away from me.”
Tory Robert Buckland, who was justice secretary when Pitchfork was freed in 2021, said he should “never have been released in the first place”. The Parole Board was contacted for comment.