Cold case rapist caught after urinating in a plant pot 30 years later
Isn’t technology great? For 30 years, rapist Eric McKenna was at liberty. The 59-year-old had never been arrested for two rapes in England. In 1983 he raped a woman as she walked home alone Gateshead. And in 1988, he raped another woman also walking alone Newcastle. Both times he was armed with a knife.
But then he made an error: in 2016 he took a wee in a neighbour’s plant pot as part of a sustained campaign of harassment.
The neighbour called the police. They swabbed McKenna, of Clarewood Court, Newcastle. The DNA left at the crimes scenes all those years ago matched McKenna’s.
At Newcastle Crown Court, McKenna was handed a 23 year sentence.
Det Con Mick Wilson, of Northumbria Police, tells us: “In the 1980s we did not have the same forensic techniques available that we do now and we have secured a conviction thanks to those developments. McKenna thought he had got away with his crimes, but a neighbourly dispute and a moment of stupidity has landed him in prison for 23 years.”
Isn’t technology great. The police that failed to link two similar rapes, less so…
Posted: 16th, March 2018 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
