Malcolm Fairley. Nicknamed The Fox

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Malcolm Fairley was born in 1952 in Silksworth, Sunderland, the youngest of nine children. He was a quiet soft-spoken northerner, described as shy and introvert. As a teenager he was often in trouble with the police for theft and burglary. He was married at 19, but his wife left the shy quiet man who turned out to be violent.

He married again, and lived near Peterlee with his wife and three children. Fairley was in and out of jail for ten years. Then in 1983, he moved to the Leighton Buzzard area and took a number of labouring jobs. Burglary, theft and car crime, he was a persistent offender in all of these, but not sexual crime which he turned to, by the chance theft of a shotgun and the power it gave him. Leighton Buzzard, Dunstable and Tring. Three small provincial towns positioned below the Chilterns, along with divers villages forming a triangle straddling three county-boundaries. Bucks, Beds and Herts. In the summer of 1984, terrified residents formed vigilante groups and barred their windows after a series of armed burglaries, rape and indecent assaults by one man who became known as the Fox. He earned the title 'Fox' after his habit of making camps from blankets in victims houses.

In April 1984, a 74-year-old woman who lived alone went to bed in her Linslade, Leighton Buzzard home. She was drifting into sleep when she was startled by a sound, opening her eyes she saw a man in her bedroom. The man pulled back the bed covers and indecently assaulted the woman. She bravely resisted so much he fled. Later in court he admitted committing a series of burglaries..

In May the Fox broke into the home of a 35-year-old single man in nearby Cheddington. He was out visiting his girlfriend the Fox stole a shotgun, cartridges and £300. The Fox decided to wait and see who would turn up. At 11 O'clock when the man returned home he found the Fox waiting, wearing a mask and brandishing the gun. The Fox tied his victim up, then calmly played some pornographic videos before indecently assaulting his victim. He then broke into the home of a businessman and his wife on 9 June in Leighton Buzzard, but fled into the night after accidentally firing the gun he was carrying. When he left, he buried the gun and couldn't find it again.

In July after committing three more burglaries in the "Rape Triangle", the Fox broke into a house in Tring. Finding the house empty he removed clothing and photographs and once again found a shotgun and cartridges. This time he kept the shotgun, which he would use committing further crimes.

During the night he broke into another house in Linslade armed, where a married couple were in bed, asleep. They woke up to find the Fox pointing the gun at them. He ordered them out of bed and tied them up with their own clothes and shoelaces. He indecently assaulted the wife who screamed, and once again the Fox fled. Four days later he broke into a bungalow, occupied by a man and wife and their two children, all asleep in their beds.

The couple woke to find themselves staring at a man wearing a balaclava and pointing a shotgun. He told the wife to tie up her husband, then indecently assaulted her. When her husband protested he struck him with the gun. Then he raped his wife, tied her up and left.

Now the Fox moved his activities to nearby Edlesborough, where he committed more burglaries, and In August he broke into a bungalow in Edlesborough where an 18-year-old girl, her brother, aged 17 and her 21-year-old boyfriend were living. The girl and her boyfriend were sleeping, while her brother played records. When the boyfriend got up to go to the toilet and saw the Fox wearing a balaclava and carrying the shotgun.

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