Husbands tied up and forced to watch sick sex attacker rape their wives

For several months, people living in the charming towns and villages of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire were too terrified to step outside their front doors.

A serial sex attacker was stalking the region. The depraved rapist, who became notorious under the nickname The Fox, concealed himself within people’s homes before launching vicious sexual assaults upon his defenceless victims.

Malcolm Fairley was an exceptionally unusual offender. He targeted both men and women, repeatedly violating wives while their husbands lay bound and powerless to intervene.

During some deeply disturbing incidents, couples were restrained together as he carried out his revolting crimes.

The detective who led the investigation was so profoundly troubled by what he encountered that he firmly maintained Fairley should never have been released from prison before his death behind bars in May 2024.

Detective Chief Superintendent Brian Prickett described Fairley’s behaviour as “shocking and degrading”, according to the BBC, reports the Daily Star.

He said: “He would break into people’s homes when they were in bed at two or three o’clock in the morning carrying a sawn-off shotgun, and wake the couple up at the side of the bed.”

Fairley would establish hiding places within his victims’ properties while awaiting their return, preparing meals in their kitchens, watching television and collecting souvenirs ahead of his attacks.

“The Fox” would then commit “horrendous sexual acts and rape” on the woman. Det Ch Supt Pickett stated: “The amount of fear in the area was incredible. That summer was particularly hot and people were having to bolt their windows, in some cases screw them down, because of the fear.

“We did everything we could to alleviate the fear by making sure people knew that we were working flat out.”

Police required six months to identify Fairley and locate him. Det Ch Supt remarked: “There was no CCTV and no mobile phones and messages were being passed from force to force because it was a major inquiry that linked seven forces.

“Every time he carried out an offence we were able to establish a bit more information about him, and eventually we worked out he had an accent from a very narrow area of the north-east of England.

“I went to see the professor who was discovering DNA at Leicester University and he told me that we are about nine months to a year away from being able to use it, so we had to gather all the forensic evidence we could from the scenes.”

Det Ch Supt Pickett revealed residents in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire were living in a “triangle of fear”. During a single week in 1984 there were three separate attacks.

Roughly 200 officers were mobilised to attempt to capture Fairley between Dunstable in Bedfordshire, and Tring in Hertfordshire.

Fairley received six life sentences in 1985 following a series of sexual assaults across Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. On 28 May 2024, the 71-year-old was found dead at HMP Hull, having suffered a fatal heart attack.

Fairley was arrested in September 1984 at his home in Kentish Town, north London, after forensic evidence linked his vehicle to an attack. At the point of his arrest, Fairley had committed 81 offences.

He was handed six life sentences at St Albans Crown Court in 1985. He was considered for release in 2023, but the Parole Board rejected the application.

Prickett maintains that the impact of the attacks endured long afterwards.

He said: “I’ve always been concerned in my career that a lot of emphasis is placed on the offender and not on the victim. We had teams whose sole duty was to support the victims, some of who never recovered.

“People say ‘we’ve got justice’, but it doesn’t compensate for what happened to them.

“At no time did he show any remorse whatsoever. He was an insignificant fellow who you would probably walk by on the street and take no notice of.

“In Malcolm Fairley’s case I was always of the view that he would be one of the people who never came out of prison… because he was still considered a danger.

“Whatever the result of the inquest I don’t think people take joy in the fact he died, but I think they take relief from the fact he was convicted.”