Night stalker strikes again
Britain's worst serial sex attacker has returned to haunt London, police reveal today.
Today police said they were on the brink of a breakthrough in the case after using revolutionary DNA techniques.
Detectives have flown to the Caribbean to collect DNA samples, which they hope will help
them to trace the man, who has terrorised elderly women across London and the Home Counties.
They are also concerned about the three new attacks, two of which were outside the areas the offender has been associated with until now. The new cases being studied are:
- 8 September: an 84-year-old woman in Grove Park, Bromley, had her home broken into and ?1,000 stolen.
- 8 October: an 81-year-old suffered a sexually motivated attack at her home in Welling, Kent.
The attacks followed the stalker's pattern of behaviour, which sometimes includes committing sexual assault against his victims.
The new lead in the hunt, codenamed Operation Minstead, involves a technique known as "ancestral DNA".
Analysts in the United States have broken down the suspect's DNA to indicate a combination of strands found only in the Caribbean. Now detectives are carrying out voluntary DNA tests there in an attempt to establish the offender's ancestry.
The samples have been sent to specialists in Florida for analysis. It is hoped they will be able to pinpoint where the attacker was
born. The technique will help to cut a list of about 200 suspects.
The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Superintendent Simon Morgan, said: "There may be links down the generations between our suspect and the countries of the Caribbean," he said. "We believe the offender needs help to deal with his unnatural interest in elderly women and we would appeal to him to come forward."
Police are also using "familial" DNA searching to determine if any of the attacker's relatives are on the national DNA database.
The victims have described the suspect as a light skinned black man with a south London accent and about 5'10" tall with an athletic build. The intruder enters the homes of elderly women in the early hours, cutting the electricity and telephone wires and removing light bulbs. He wears a balaclava and an all-in-one nylon black catsuit, which police think may be a motorcycle outfit.
The Night Stalker has struck in Forest Hill and Dulwich, Croydon, in particular the Shirley area, and Sidcup and Orpington in Kent. He has also attacked a woman in Warlingham, Surrey. He is known to have struck over the holiday period.
The hunt is the Yard's biggest ever linked inquiry with a possible ?40,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
