Malcolm Fairley

The Fox was the nickname given to Malcolm Fairley who, in the summer of 1984 attacked several victims in their homes at night within a small area of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.

His first attack was in Cheddington, Buckinghamshire early in 1984 where a man was sexually assaulted at gunpoint in his home at night. He then broke into the home of a businessman and his wife on 9 June in Leighton Buzzard, but fled into the night after accidentally firing the gun he was carrying.

His other three attacks in the so-called "Rape Triangle" all took place in July. The first was another failed attack in Leighton Buzzard, when the wife's screams caused their attacker to flee, closely followed by an attack in the same area of Leighton Buzzard. In that attack, the couple were unable to resist and the wife was sexually assaulted. Finally, he attacked a couple in Edlesborough in Buckinghamshire. however, during the attack he left a footprint in a standard lamp that he had knocked over with his shoe.

After this, he moved north to County Durham, where shortly after a rape in Brampton, Cumbria, he moved on to Peterlee and broke into two houses on the same night, having been scared away by the screams of the woman in the first house.

In September he moved south again and attacked a woman in her bed in Bradwell in Milton Keynes.

Prompted by a lead from a doctor in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, who had been asked to report any unusual new patients to police, Fairley was arrested on 11 September at his home in Kentish Town, London. He was tried in St Albans on 26 February 1985 and was sentenced to six life sentences for the attacks plus a further 26 years in prison for related offences.

However, he has already been released under a new identity, less than 20 years after this roughly 146 year sentence.

External links

* [http://www.stalbansobserver.co.uk/nostalgia/casebook/display.var.453104.0.the_hunt_for_the_fox.php Detailed St Alban's Observer article on the hunt for The Fox]