Post by ttk on Dec 12, 2020 12:58:13 GMT
What am I talking about?
Well, as it happens, I suspect that the person we are looking for is *not* the ‘Batman’ rapist
He’s a serial rapist all right, and probably a murderer too, but I’m not convinced that the guy who committed the rapes and abductions left a Batman baseball cap in a victim’s car in a failed abduction attempt
Let’s have a look at the timeline:
On the 26th January 1999, a man attempted to carjack a woman in a car in the Bathwick area of Bath. She managed to escape and he ran off, but not before leaving his Batman baseball cap in her car. That cap gave him his nickname, and may be the source of the police DNA profile
15 minutes later, another woman was abducted in another suburb of Bath, this time ‘successfully’. She was blindfolded and taken to Monckton Coombe in the countryside and raped at knifepoint.
The police have always linked the attacks, with the cap giving him his nickname, but I suspect that the 2 attacks that night might not be connected. This may have thrown the entire investigation, by implying that the second attack was opportunistic, and given the wrong DNA profile to compare against.
After all, why would he randomly attempt the first attack - on a passing motorist at a junction - if he had another one carefully planned elsewhere ?
I looked into the second attack on that evening. You can see the events of that evening in this part of the Crimewatch reconstruction
youtu.be/X9SZs3aKwGo. 6 mins 18 seconds
The second woman was abducted at her home in Prior Park, Bath as she was parking her car in her garden, on a deserted track at the rear of her property. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to be on that track, unless you live in that row of houses and are parking there and using the back door. He can’t have been passing through.
There is no way, in my view, that my suspect could have gone from the first attempted abduction, and opportunistically attacked the second victim that he came across randomly; he just can’t have been just passing through a deserted path at the back of houses when an opportunity presented itself
I think that he attacked her immediately she arrived home as he had planned it & he was waiting for her in the garden. (She says herself that she is meticulous in timekeeping).
True, there is only about a mile between the two locations, so theoretically possible logistically, but - believe me - try getting across Bath centre in 15 minutes in some of the worst traffic in Britain at 6.15pm.
Bath really wasn’t built for cars. I don’t think that the Romans had SUVs in mind.
And he had to get across town, park up sufficiently far away to not be linked, and get in position. I can’t see that. And the descriptions of the attackers are quite different too.
I think that he had a connection with the victim; not a close connection so that she would recognise his voice, but someone he had already singled out, and planned. And he had reason to be in Bath that night , as he had something on there later that night (he had to look at the victim’s watch...I think that he had to be somewhere later that evening)
How do I explain the earlier attack in Bathwick...I really can’t explain it satisfactorily. A bizarre coincidence of a copy cat attack or robbery attempt, or (my most insane batshit theory) an accomplice, all seen in the context of a town living in understandable paranoia with a serial rapist on the loose that the police appear to be powerless to stop.
If I’m right, the Batman name is a misnomer, and the police may be comparing against the wrong DNA profile.
And that might be why, up to now, he is getting away with it.
