Sex fiend who fled bail hostel murdered woman, 95, in Bradford care home

Scott Sorby, 21, had been freed from prison for the attempted rape of a lone student and was on licence when he went missing from the hostel in Cleckheaton in January last year.

By the time police found him five days later, he had committed burglaries, robberies and thefts and had broken into the Rosewood Court care home in Barkerend, Bradford, where he forced himself on vulnerable resident Elizabetta Pecka.

Ms Pecka suffered severe head injuries in the attack and died in hospital two months later.

Sorby, who once admitted smashing up a young offenders’ institution because he was in a “silly mood”, was told to expect a life sentence yesterday after he pleaded guilty at Bradford Crown Court to offences including murder and attempted rape.

His barrister, Paul Greaney QC, told the court he pleaded guilty on the basis that, when he entered Ms Pecka’s room, he had no intention of attacking anyone.

“His purpose was to commit a burglary,” Mr Greaney said.

Sorby, formerly of Binns Lane, Lidget Green, Bradford, was put on the sex offenders’ register for life in June 2008 after he was locked up for four and a half years for the attempted rape of a 20-year-old student in Leeds.

A trial was told he sneaked up on the woman after spotting her alone in a portable building while he was out looking for places to burgle. In an attack described by police as sustained and terrifying, he punched her in the face until she fell backwards and then pulled down her trousers.

At the sentencing hearing which followed that case, Sorby’s barrister said: “He talks of rapists as being the lowest of the low... the dregs of society, and he is quite clear that he will never behave in this way again.”

But a psychiatrist’s report told a different story, suggesting Sorby posed a risk of aggressive and violent behaviour in the future, and, outside court, detectives branded him a dangerous sexual predator.

In December 2007, while serving an 18-month sentence for burglary, Sorby armed himself with a steel bed-frame and smashed a window, a toilet, a sink, water pipes, furniture and electronic monitoring equipment.

The rampage was one of several acts of vandalism he committed at Castington young offenders’ institution in Northumberland, where he caused damage costing more than £18,000 to repair.

The Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, David Ward, described Ms Pecka’s ordeal as “horrific”.

“We can only hope that lessons will be learned so that this never happens again,” he said. “But we have to recognise that, sadly, there will always be exceptions to the rule, however carefully the hostels seek to control and manage the people they are dealing with.”

West Yorkshire Probation Trust said bail hostels enforced curfews from 11pm to 6am but they were unable to monitor offenders 24 hours a day.

Expressing the trust’s sympathies to Ms Pecka’s family, operations director Mark Siddall, said: “It is extremely rare for an offender under our supervision to commit a serious crime, but every case is one too many. Supervision can minimise the risk presented by an offender, but it can never be entirely eliminated.”

Mr Siddall added that risk management and offender supervision at bail hostels was reviewed regularly and lessons learned from serious incidents were immediately implemented.