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Man Sentenced For Babysitter Rape

11-Sep-07

Eight years for the man who raped a babysitter 16 years ago following review funding by the Home Office...

A man has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the rape of a babysitter 16-years ago.

Andrew Christopher Watkins (born 26/01/66) of Glovers Way in Shawbirch, Shropshire pleaded guilty to the offence at Manchester Crown Court on 16 May 2007.

This conviction comes after GMP began reviewing the case in 2006 with funding from the Home Office under 'Operation Advance'.

Watkins was sentenced to six years for one count of rape today and two years each for two counts of indecent assault, to run concurrently. He has also been placed on the sex offender's register indefinitely.

The 25-year-old victim had been babysitting for a relative on the evening of Sunday 17 March 1991. She left the house in the early hours of Monday and was walking along Church Road in Astley when she became aware of someone behind her.

Watkins ran up behind the woman and grabbed her, dragging her into a nearby driveway and onto a grass verge. The 25-year-old tried to scream but Watkins put his arm around her neck and told her to shut up. He then removed some of her clothing and pulled her upper clothing over her head, before indecently assaulting and raping her.

After he had raped the 25-year-old, Watkins sat down and had a chat with her, apologising and telling her that his behaviour was 'out of character'. The victim remembered him saying that he 'had worked with missiles'.

Watkins then offered the woman a lift home, which she declined. She waited until Watkins had left and ran to a nearby house to raise the alarm.

Evidence recovered from the victim's clothing in 1991 was re-analysed and a partial DNA profile was obtained. When it was loaded onto the National DNA database, it found a match in Andrew Watkins. Further research revealed that Watkins had been living within one mile of the scene of the attack in 1991.

On 6 December 2006 officers from the Cold Case Review Unit travelled to Shropshire where Watkins was arrested on a street in Telford. A blood sample was taken from him and officers travelled to Denmark, where work was done to allow the sample to be compared to the crime scene stain. The samples were found to match, with the probability of the DNA belonging to anyone else estimated at one in 12 million.

On interview, Watkins admitted that he had attacked someone in 1991 in Astley but claimed it was because they were walking too slowly in front of him. He said he couldn't remember what had happened and robustly denied that there was any sexual element to the attack.

He confirmed that he had worked in the RAF regiment for six years, more specifically with surface-to-air missiles, accounting for his comments to the victim about working with missiles 16 years earlier.

The court heard that Watkins had attacked a 15-year-old girl on a dimly lit road in Risca, Gwent in 1993. He attempted to strangle his victim on this occasion, only to be disturbed by the headlights of a passing car. He was later convicted of s18 assault and sentenced to seven years in prison for this offence.

Detective Inspector Andy Meeks from the Cold Case Review Unit said:

""When the Cold Case Review Unit begins to look at a case we do so in the hope of convicting a criminal of the past, but these people often have the potential to commit crimes in the future as well.

"This is the second time Watkins has committed an offence of this type. He is clearly a violent, dangerous individual who still poses a potential danger to women.

"I'd like to take this opportunity to praise the courage of the victim in this case for revisiting what is obviously a very traumatic time in her past. It is only thanks to her co-operation that we have been able to pursue this conviction.

"I feel confident that the streets are a safer a place with Watkins behind bars."

A spokesperson for the Forensic Science Service said:

"We are delighted that in partnership with GMP we have helped to bring Andrew Watkins to justice.

"Huge advances in DNA technology by the FSS in the 17 years since he committed this offence have made it possible to reopen cold cases and catch people who really must have thought they had got away with their crimes.

"It is always very satisfying when forensic science and good policing come together to help take dangerous men like Watkins off the streets."

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said:

"Operation Advance is producing impressive results, putting the heat on criminals by maximising forensic technological advances to hunt down and punish criminals while giving victims the justice they deserve.

"This highly successful project was pioneered by the Home Office and the Forensic Science Service. We have now invested 1.8million in the investigation of cold cases and remain fully committed to the use of advances in technology to solve crimes and convict offenders.

"This latest police success means that in the last three years Operation Advance has resulted in 30 individuals convicted of over 30 serious sexual offences committed between 1988 and 1999. This gives a clear message that criminals who commit such horrific acts need to know - their cases are never closed and they will be brought to justice by this and through other new technologies."

Timeline: Lesley Molseed murder

Timeline of events surrounding Lesley Molseed's murder since she went missing 32 years ago

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Haroon Siddique

guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 November 2007 15.36 GMT

Article historyOctober 5 1975: Eleven-year-old Lesley Molseed is reported missing from her home in Rochdale while running an errand for her mother.

October 8 1975: Lesley's body is found by a motorist eight miles from her home on moorland near the A627 Oldham to Halifax road, just over the West Yorkshire border at Windy Hill, near Ripponden. She had been stabbed 12 times and her killer had masturbated over her.

December 1975: Stefan Kiszko, a former Inland Revenue clerk, is arrested for Lesley's murder. Mr Kiszko confesses to police after two days of questioning without a solicitor present. He later retracts his confession.

July 3 1976: A nine-year-old girl is abducted and sexually assaulted by a taxi driver in a derelict house in Rochdale.

July 12 1976: Ronald Castree pleads guilty at Rochdale magistrates court to indecent assault and incitement to commit an act of gross indecency in relation to the nine-year-old girl.

July 21 1976: Jurors in Mr Kiszko's trial at Leeds crown court return a majority verdict following five hours of deliberation, and Mr Kiszko is jailed for life for Lesley's murder. He later launches an appeal.

May 1978: Mr Kiszko's appeal fails.

1985: The clothing Lesley was wearing when she was murdered is destroyed, as is routine.

October 1991: Lesley's stepfather, Daniel Molseed, is arrested and questioned in connection with Lesley's murder before being released without charge.

February 18 1992: Mr Kiszko's conviction is finally quashed by three appeal judges who ruled it was "unsafe and unsatisfactory" after hearing scientific evidence that positively ruled him out as the killer. Mr Kiszko, now 40 and having developed schizophrenia, remains in hospital for the next nine months.

1992: Raymond Hewlett, a convicted paedophile, is questioned about Lesley's murder. A file is sent to the director of public prosecutions who decides there is not enough evidence to charge Hewlett. West Yorkshire police close their incident room.

December 23 1993: Mr Kiszko is found collapsed at his home by his mother and dies from a heart condition a year after returning home.

May 11 1994: The former detective superintendent Dick Holland and Ronald Outteridge, a retired forensic scientist, are "summoned with charges of doing acts tending to pervert the course of justice", following an inquiry by Lancashire police into the apparent failure to disclose crucial evidence during Mr Kiszko's prosecution.

May 1 1995: A stipendiary magistrate rules that the case against Mr Holland and Mr Outteridge should not proceed because it amounts to an "abuse of process", but the reasons for the ruling are not given.

October 1997: A book written by a trio of authors, including a local journalist, a lawyer and a former police officer, is published and serialised in the Daily Mail, naming Hewlett as the murderer.

October 17 1997: Lesley's mother, April Garrett, speaks out for the first time in 22 years and calls on the then home secretary, Jack Straw, to open a new inquiry into her daughter's death.

March 1999: Lesley's family say they intend to bring a private prosecution against Hewlett.

1999-2000: A new forensic examination of the evidence that had been retained from the 1975 crime scene begins, resulting in a DNA profile of the man who ejaculated into Lesley's pants. The DNA profile rules out a large number of suspects, including Stefan Kiszko and Raymond Hewlett.

May 8 2001: West Yorkshire police officially relaunch the murder investigation into Lesley's death.

December 17 2001: Fresh pictures of Raymond Hewlett are issued by West Yorkshire police in an attempt to trace him for questioning in connection with Lesley's murder.

February 5 2003: A fresh appeal to catch the killer is made on the BBC's Crimewatch UK.

April 8 2003: Police reveal they have compiled a list of 90 new suspects as a result of the television appeal earlier in the year.

March 2005: Lesley's brother, Freddie, commits suicide. An inquest hears he was deeply affected by his sister's death.

October 1 2005: Castree is arrested in Oldham in relation to an incident "unrelated and irrelevant" to Lesley's murder and a routine swab is taken for DNA analysis. This swab is later found to be a complete match with the profile obtained from the sperm heads found in Lesley's pants.

November 5 2006: Castree is arrested on suspicion of Lesley's murder and is charged the next day.

October 23 2007: Trial of Ronald Castree for killing Lesley begins at Bradford crown court. He denies murder.

November 12 2007: Castree found guilty of Lesley's murder.

'I'm just relieved justice has been done for Lesley but I'll never get over her death'

By NATALIE CLARKE

Last updated at 01:26 17 November 2007

Comments (7) Add to My Stories Sometimes a sunny memory of her daughter Lesley Molseed flashes into April's mind and casts a little light over her black, unending grief. Mother and daughter loved baking together and one of Lesley's favourite puddings was coconut cake.

"One of the ingredients was desiccated coconut and Lesley would call it dedicated coconut, and pronounce the words seriously, which always made me smile," says April.

"She had lots of little sayings like that, another was calling sterilised milk 'stabilised milk'. She was so funny and charming and bubbly, a real little gem."

Scroll down for more ...

Lesley Molseed: Sexually assaulted and stabbed 12 times

One day, April was preparing the Sunday roast when she realised she didn't have any bread so she asked Lesley to run to the shops to fetch a loaf. The 11-year-old never returned.

Three days later her body was discovered on Rishworth Moor in West Yorkshire, eight miles from the family home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 12 times.

This week, some 32 years later, justice finally caught up with her killer, Ronald Castree, 54, when a jury at Bradford Crown Court found him guilty of Lesley's murder.

"When the guilty verdict was read, I felt like a giant skyscraper had been lifted from my shoulders," says April, "this giant weight that I have carried with me for 32 years. It was such an incredible feeling of relief.

"Now I can go to Lesley's grave to tell her the news, and at last she can rest in peace."

After murdering Lesley, Castree drove home and, in the words of the trial judge, carried on with his life "as if nothing had happened".

Lesley's family, on the other hand, began a life sentence of torment and anguish.

Castree, some might say, is guilty of two murders. Two years ago, the pain at losing his sister in such horrific circumstances finally became too much for Lesley's older brother Freddie, and he committed suicide.

"We have justice for Lesley but we are struggling to come to terms with Freddie's death," says April Garrett (she was divorced some years after Lesley's death).

"We now visit two graves, side-by-side, instead of one."

And there was another victim, Stefan Kiszko, the innocent man wrongly convicted of Lesley's killing.

Mr Kiszko, a tax clerk, served 16 years in jail before being released on appeal in 1992. He died a broken man a year later, aged just 41.

This week, too, Castree's wife Beverley and their children were facing up to the horrific reality that they had lived with a monster.

Tragic ripples emanating from that senseless, evil act committed by the pug-faced Castree one Sunday afternoon in October 1975.

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Innocent: Stefan Kiszko served 16 years in jail

Back then the Molseeds were just an ordinary family. Danny Molseed, an electrical engineer, and his wife April lived in Rochdale with their four children, Julie, then 16, Laura, 13, Freddie, 12, and the youngest Lesley, 11.

Lesley, known as "Lel", had a cheeky, quirky personality, and was quite a little talker,' recalls April, now 70, the daughter of a shoemaker and his wife.

"She knew all the gossip, she used to chat away to everybody and was nicknamed Little Miss Chatterbox."

Her bubbly, engaging manner belied her physical frailty. Born with a hole in the heart, she spent the first year of her life in hospital. At the age of three, she had open heart surgery.

"We had some very anxious times after Lesley came along and we didn't get her home for a year. Even then, she was so tiny, so frail.

"When she went in for the operation we were aware she could die and it was incredibly frightening for all of us, but she made it through. She was a real fighter."

But she remained a tiny little thing and by the age of 11 she was just 4ft tall and weighed only 3st.

Lesley's illness and time in hospital had left her behind in her school work and it was decided she should go to a school for children with special needs.

But she was bright, cheeky and full of life and instantly adored by all who met her.

A few days before she died, April had a conversation with Lesley that has stuck in her mind. "She had a bit of a cold one night, so I got into bed with her.

"She was talking away and suddenly said: 'When I was in hospital having my operation I died and I met Jesus and his gown was so white, Mum. He asked me if I was happy to be here and I said no, I want to go back home to my mum.'

"Lesley was always very religious even though my husband and I hadn't tried to influence her in any way. I don't know if this near-death experience - her heart stopped twice on the operating table - had anything to do with it.

"I look back now and think that if Lesley had died on the operating table I could have understood it and accepted it. But not the way it did happen."

On Sunday, October 5, 1975, she was abducted by Castree, a mill office worker and part-time taxi driver, driven to the moor and stabbed to death.

Castree's wife had just given birth to a son, Jason, but he was not the father. That weekend mother and baby were in Oldham Hospital after Beverley developed a deep vein thrombosis. Castree the cuckold was full of fury and their absence gave him the opportunity to indulge it.

It was around 12.30pm when April asked Lesley, who was playing outside on the street, to buy the bread and some air freshener. "We had a bit of banter about whether Lesley would get threepence for running the errand and then off she went.

She'd put on her sister's Bay City Rollers' socks and was carrying her navy bag with a chicken motif.

"I just got on with the dinner and some washing and wasn't really thinking too much about where Lesley was when Laura said: 'Don't you think Lel's taken too long getting the bread?' I felt a bit worried at this point and told Laura and Freddie to go out looking for her.

"When they came back and said there was no sign of her I began to panic. I had this feeling of apprehension, that something terrible had happened, all through my body - a mother's intuition."

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Killer: Ronald Castree carried on with his life 'as if nothing had happened'

When Lesley's dad, Danny, came home from his Sunday lunchtime pint at the pub they called the police, who were reluctant to do anything initially because she hadn't been missing for 24 hours, but began a search when Danny called again later that evening.

For three days the family waited. "I spent those three days praying to the powers that be to send my little girl back to me," says April.

"Not knowing was torture. Sleep was impossible, eating was impossible."

Then came the knock on the door from the police telling them a body had been found. "They didn't say it was her, they didn't say it wasn't her. They just asked us to come to Halifax Hospital and look at the body.

"Danny, Laura and I went and when we arrived Danny was in a terrible state. When they asked which one of us was going to go in, I said, all right, I'll do it.

"When I first saw her she looked like she was asleep. Then it hit me that she was dead. I tried to hug her but they wouldn't let me because they were still doing forensic examinations.

"I cannot begin to describe my sorrow, I was truly heartbroken. I would never again feel her hugs and kisses, never see her bouncing through the front door, never listen to all her excited chatter.

"She would never grow up and get married and have children of her own. Lesley had always talked about how she wanted babies when she grew up."

The shock was so profound that ten days after Lesley's murder April's auburn hair turned white overnight. She lost 2st in weight. Lesley's father and the other children were utterly distraught.

A month later, Lesley's body was released and they were able to hold a funeral. "I got through that day simply by shutting down," is all April can say now.

"We were touched that so many people came to the funeral and lined the streets on the way to the church.

"There was one old man at the side of the road who took his cap off and bowed his head. It was very moving and that memory has stayed with me."

After the funeral, April became fretful about the fact that Lesley was not baptised. "This was a little girl who had been solemnly practising the words to Morning Has Broken and I hadn't had her baptised.

"I went to see the vicar and asked if it would be possible to baptise Lesley in the grave, and he said it was. So we went to the graveside, just the vicar and I, and performed the ceremony, which gave me a great deal of comfort."

In December, police brought in Stefan Kiszko for questioning. Mr Kiszko was regarded as a bit odd and "simple" and, in the months before the murder, he'd been diagnosed as being sexually under-developed and prescribed testosterone. In the eyes of the investigating team, his was the archetypal sex offender profile.

After two days of intense questioning, he signed a confession but later retracted it, saying he had been scared and confused at the time.

Although he continued to deny the murder from that time on, his defence team pleaded a defence of manslaughter through diminished responsibility.

The jury at his trial in the summer of 1976 found him guilty of murder.

"We accepted and believed that Stefan Kiszko was guilty. You believe the police have done their job properly, don't you?" says April. "Although, strangely, I did not feel the sense of peace with his conviction that I have done this time around with the conviction of Castree."

Lesley's killer was, of course, still free. Days before Mr Kiszko's trial, Castree abducted another girl and took her to a derelict house and sexually molested her, but she managed to escape. Castree was quickly arrested and brought to trial, where he pleaded guilty, but claimed to have no memory of what he had done.

After the trial, each member of the Molseed family was locked in their own world of grief. For a couple of years, April drank heavily in the evenings to try to blot out the pain. She began taking sleeping pills, which she uses to this day to try to help prevent her "night terrors" - furious, violent nightmares.

"There is one I have a lot where I am frantically trying to escape a maze. I'm always in a state of high anxiety."

She would endlessly re-live her daughter's murder. "The thought that my daughter's last moments were spent looking into the eyes of a murderer, that really fells me. You actually feel a physical pain."

Irrational guilt that it was her fault because she had sent her daughter on that errand consumed her. "I thought God had taken her from me because I wasn't a good enough mummy."

As the years went on, April found some escape in books. "I'd go to the library and just read and read, but as soon as I put down the book it was instantly there again."

The whole family was torn asunder. Lesley's sisters, Laura, a 45-year-old mother of two, and Julie, a 48-year-old mother of three, have spent many years in and out of therapy and on anti-depressants.

Stefan Kiszko was suffering, too, in prison for a murder he did not commit.

In 1992, he finally won his second appeal after the High Court heard that sperm samples taken from him did not match those found on Lesley's clothing. Shockingly, it emerged that the forensic results had been available at his trial, but were not disclosed to the defence.

"We accepted that he was innocent and felt bad for him," says April, "but we just thought, oh no, the nightmare starts all over again."

Julie met Mr Kiszko once as well as his mother, Charlotte. He died a year after his release, and Charlotte died six months later.

After Mr Kiszko's appeal, Julie became so depressed that Lesley's killer was still free that she took an overdose of pills, but was found in time by her then husband. Around this time April divorced Lesley's father, though she says the split had nothing to do with their daughter's death.

It was ten years before there was a breakthrough. In February 2003, officers from West Yorkshire police revealed they had built up a DNA profile of the killer from semen found at the murder scene, after approaching the Forensic Science Service.

By then, the family were giving up hope that the killer would ever be found and April feared she would die before the case was solved.

She has been seriously ill over the years, undergoing two brain operations for an aneurism and suffering breast cancer.

Then, in 2005, a second tragedy befell the Molseed children when Lesley's brother Freddie, a 42-year-old shower screen maker and married father of three, killed himself.

The brutally violent manner in which he chose to end his life, cutting his throat fron one side to the other with a knife, was an all too vivid indicator of the demons inside him.

"We knew he was depressed, but he didn't let on just how deep it went," says April. "There was only a year between him and Lesley and they were incredibly close.

"He was such a lovely boy, always considerate, a real gentleman. He would visit me with flowers and chocolates and we'd sit and watch a video together. He used to run marathons, we were very proud of him."

Freddie's death, and the manner of it, left his two sisters "hysterical", says April. "I haven't yet been able to grieve properly for Freddie because I've been so worried about Laura and Julie." Both were so distraught they began to self-harm after Freddie's death.

Later that year, there was at last some positive news when police told April that they had a suspect.

Castree, by now a father-of-three, who had remarried and made a living trading in comic books, had been made to provide a swab for DNA analysis after being arrested for another offence.

The precise details have not been revealed, but it is understood he was arrested on suspicion of rape and that the case did not come to court because the victim was not mentally fit to testify.

But this month Castree was finally convicted of Lesley's murder. He will serve a minimum of 30 years and will probably die in jail, which is surely no less than he deserves.

"I don't think about him," says April. "I'm not going to waste the time I've got left on negative emotions."

And she refuses to succumb to bitterness. "What would be the point? It's destiny, isn't it? I'm just so relieved justice has been done for Lesley.

"I'll never get over her death, but I think I can begin to accept it a little more. She is at peace now."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-494614/Im-just-relieved-justice-Lesley-Ill-death.html#ixzz0X7QljxIU