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How many more children did Castree kill?
DETECTIVES are to trawl the past of child killer Ronald Castree to see if he could have claimed more victims.
Castree, who is today beginning a life sentence for the murder and sexual assault of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975, escaped justice for more than three decades.
Detectives say they cannot rule out the possibility that in those years of liberty Castree could have murdered or sexually assaulted other children and women and will now revisit a number of child murder and rape cases.
Today, the full extent of Castree's despicable catalogue of crimes can be revealed for the first time.
The jury in his murder trial was told that nine months after Lesley's body was found Castree pleaded guilty to abducting and sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl, who – just like Lesley – had learning difficulties.
But they never heard details of an attack on a different child two years later, in 1978, when Castree was before the courts again, this time for attacking a seven-year-old boy.
On July 17 of that year Castree was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm after he was found in a disused garage about to hit the boy. The Yorkshire Post understands a sexual element of the original charge was never proved.
Castree then escaped police attention for nearly three decades, until 2005, when a woman made an allegation that he raped her.
The woman was not thought to be a credible witness and Castree was never charged, but officers who arrested him took a routine swab and his DNA was entered into a national database. It was a perfect match for Lesley Molseed's killer.
The jury at Bradford Crown Court took more than 11 hours to find Castree guilty of the schoolgirl's murder, by a majority of 10-2, but finally the right man is behind bars for a crime which led to one of the most notorious and prolonged miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
Castree was living alone when he snatched Lesley from the streets near her home in Rochdale as she ran an errand for her mother in October 1975.
He took her up to a lonely moorland spot near Ripponden, where he subjected her to a sickening sexual assault and stabbed her 12 times before leaving her for dead and casually going back to his life.
Weeks later, when innocent tax clerk Stefan Kiszko was arrested and charged with Lesley's murder, Castree never said a word.
Instead, he chose the beginning of Mr Kiszko's trial the following July as the perfect time to attack his second victim.
Mr Kiszko served 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and died of a massive heart attack less than two years after his release.
He was only freed because of a tireless campaign mounted by his mother Charlotte who gained the support of solicitor Campbell Malone.
He discovered semen found on Lesley's body contained sperm heads – something the infertile Mr Kiszko could not have produced.
The evidence was available at the time of the 1976 trial, but was never disclosed to Mr Kiszko's defence.
It was only years later, after advances in DNA profiling, that the technology became available to identify the person who left the semen, samples of which had been carefully stored by scientists.
Last night Castree's ex-wife Beverley, 52, branded her ex-husband a "vile monster" and said she never suspected a thing.
"He just carried on as normal. He was cruel. He was cruel with his mouth and cruel with his fist," she said.
"He liked to rule everything, liked people to be under the thumb.
"We will never forget Lesley, and never get over what he's done."
Castree abducted and murdered Lesley while his wife was in hospital days after giving birth to son Jason.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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