How a Behind The Crimes film helped catch a killer - AND feature on 'Crime Analyst'
The latest survivor of Britain's longest-serving prisoner has thanked the film and book which helped catch her attacker
Tabitha was lonely. It was just her and her cat at home. The 52-year-old didn’t work and she only socialised at her nearby community centre.
She had lived in this London neighbourhood for 25 years. But someone new was volunteering at the centre.
He was a tall, wrinkly 80-year-old who had a deep voice. His name was Ronald Evans.
He made inappropriate jokes and described himself as: ‘touchy-feely.’
Months later, Evans persuaded Tabitha back to his flat where he sexually assaulted her.
Tabitha was shocked and called the Metropolitan Police. They couldn’t find him on their computer systems. They made a loose arrangement to interview Evans in a week’s time on a voluntary basis. They told Tabitha they didn’t want to give the old man a heart attack.
A few days later, Tabitha was watching TV and a film I had directed and presented burst onto the screen.
It was called Decoy and was about a groundbreaking covert operation in the 1970s which caught one of Britain’s most wanted men: a murderer and sexual predator.
His name was Ronald Evans.
'I thought 'Oh, my God, It's him.' I phoned the police straight away. I said to them, 'the man I reported for sexually assaulting me - he's in my living room right now on my TV screen.' And the operator sounded shocked,' said Tabitha.
I have since written a book about the case, published by HarperCollins earlier this year.
How Evans had persuaded a Parole Board to release him still mystifies Tabitha, who has suffered from PTSD following he assault.
'If it wasn't for the documentary or the news story about it, and if I hadn't watched it, I don't think the police would have bothered,' she said.
Evans had murdered a young woman, Kathleen Heathcote, in November 1963. He was released to Bristol in 1974 and he became ‘The Clifton Rapist’ in 1977 when he started his series of seven stranger sex attacks on lone women at night.
The brave decoy operation culminated in a moment of pure drama in the early hours of March 23rd 1979 when a young WPC, Michelle Tighe, realised she was being followed by the man police had been hunting for months.
Watch-teams had checked his numberplate and realised she was being pursued by a murderer released on life licence.
‘There’s a killer on your track’ was the message she received in her earpiece.
Michelle then had a dreadful choice to make: put her own safety first and stay on the main road? Or turn into the dark side-streets and put her life in the hands of the operation.
What happened next was absolutely chilling as the young officer came face-to-face with a true monster.
Evans was caught.
But when I released the film in 2022, I had no idea Evans was STILL offending as an 81-year-old man.
Police arrested Evans the day after my film was broadcast.
As she jailed Evans for four years last November, the judge said: "The risk you pose to women is significant. The combination of your history and continuing sexual interest underlies my concern you are a risk of serious sexual harm to women."
But would Tabitha have even have been taken seriously had it not been for the documentary?
In Podcasts:
For the last two weeks I’ve been interviewed about the Decoy case in Laura Richards’s award-winning Crime Analyst podcast.
Laura has a phenomenal way of bringing out strands, patterns and analyses about cases - about which I’ve never thought.
She won a True Crime Award in the Listeners’ Choice category earlier this year - and rightly so. I love Laura’s presentation style, her intelligence and victim-focus. She has hundreds of episodes in her back catalogue so please do check out her podcast series.