HIDDEN LAIR
Chilling moment serial rapist The Fox admits he broke into homes & made secret dens to satisfy his ‘sex drive’
He gave a 5-word reply when cops asked why he carried out the attacks
THIS is the chilling moment the serial rapist known as The Fox admits he broke into homes and made secret dens before launching his attacks.
Malcolm Fairley became known as The Fox due to the way he would create a lair and then lie in wait for his victim before attacking them.
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He was eventually caught in September 1984, having targeted more than a dozen victims earlier that year and becoming one of Britain’s most infamous sex attackers.
The following year he was given six life sentences and remains behind bars.
In an audio recording played as part of a Channel 5 documentary tonight, Fairley can be heard admitting to cops that he felt a “sexy drive” to carry out more attacks.
When police asked why he had carried out the attacks, which included three rapes, he replied: “I cannae think of anything.”
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During his reign of terror Fairley used villages in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire as his hunting ground with the area becoming known as the “Triangle of Terror”.
Fairley will be eligible for parole later this year, having spent nearly 30 years behind bars.
However, the detective who led the investigation which led to Fairley’s capture, and who can be heard on the tapes, has said the rapists should never be released.
Former Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Prickett said: “Malcolm Fairley should never come out of prison after all the fear and harm he put into the community.
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“He never deserves to be released because I think he's still a real risk to the public.”
Fairley’s crimes were carried out in the summer of 1984, as the miners’ strike was ongoing.
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He attacked both men and women, whose ages ranged from teenagers to pensioners.
Fairley would break into the homes of his victims, help himself to any food and drink that was about and then create a lair out of furniture and blankets.
He would also remove all the light bulbs and then lie in wait in the dark waiting for the people to return home.
While he waited he would use a torchlight to flick through photo albums.
In the space of just one week, he attacked three people.
In the Channel 5 documentary called The Intruder: He's Watching You, Fairley is heard being asked by DCS Prickett if he tried to stop.
Fairley replied: “Well I tried to. Many times. Every time I went I tried.”
Another officer then asks him: “Do you still feel you want to do it?”
He said: “Not really, it's... but I still... get a sexy drive type thing.”
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When DCSO Prickett asked about an attack he carried out on an elderly woman, Fairley replied: “Well, I felt disappointed in myself to do it. You know, like it's... it just weren't me.”
During the hunt for The Fox, Bedfordshire Police handled more than 5,000 suspects and terrified residents, fearing they could be next, slept with weapons under their beds, during the four-month spree.
Fairley, also carried out break-ins and sexual crimes in Milton Keynes, South Yorkshire and his native North East.
After forensic evidence linked his car to an attack he was eventually arrested at his home in Kentish Town, North London.
81 OFFENCES
He had committed 81 offences.
Fairley, who had been married twice and was a father of three children had a string of convictions to his name.
During one break-in, he took a shotgun and ammunition which he later used in other attacks, including one where he shot a businessman at point-blank range.
The victim needed to have his finger amputated.
DCS Prickett said: “Psychiatrists said that he was rational and that he was normal.
“Well, I never accepted that. As a police officer, you deal with him professionally, but as a human being to human being, you've got complete disgust, you've got almost hatred.
“I don't think I'll ever understand the motivation he had for the attacks he carried out.”
There are degrees of wickedness beyond condemnatory description.
Mr Justice Caulfield
Fairley was tried at St Albans Crown Court in February 1985 where he was handed sex life sentences.
Mr Justice Caulfield said: “There are degrees of wickedness beyond condemnatory description.
“Your crimes fall within this category. You desecrated and defiled men and women in their own homes.”
At his trial, Fairley admitted 13 offences, including three rapes, an indecent assault on a man and another on a 74-year-old woman, five burglaries and three aggravated burglaries with intent to rape while carrying a firearm.
He also asked for 68 other crimes, mainly burglaries, to be considered.
A 18-year-old girl, who was one of his victims said: “I felt as if there was no one I could turn to and began crying and screaming.
“Memories of that night were always with me, yet no one seemed to realise what was happening inside my head.
“Eventually I could take no more and completely cracked up."
During her three-hour ordeal, Fairley tried to force her, who he had raped, to carry out sex acts with her 21-year-old boyfriend and 17-year-old brother.
Chris Hackett, the series producer and director, said: “This was one of the last big police manhunts before the introduction of DNA analysis.
“Officers were relying on old-fashioned detective work - boots on the ground, human intelligence, witnesses and fingerprints.
“We wanted to tell the story of the police officers desperate to find this man while also fearing for their own families.”
Dan Louw, commissioning editor at Channel 5, said: “There's something primal about our fear that there's someone lurking in our homes - in our place of safety.
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“This film is a real-life horror movie, and a tribute to the brave victims who survived Fairley's terror and the diligent cops who beat the odds to track him down.”
Channel 5’s The Intruder: He's Watching You From Within airs tonight at 10pm.
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