‘Midlands Ripper’ given third life sentence for sex attacks on young boy
The Midlands Ripper has been handed a third life sentence after he was found guilty of raping a young boy during a five-year ‘campaign of attacks’.
Alun Kyte, 58, who remains in prison for the murders of two women in 1993 and 1994, first attacked the boy, then aged 9, in the late 1980s.
The abuse, committed in Staffordshire, included Kyte beating the boy and raping him twice.
Kyte’s victim said he still suffers from depression and anxiety and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
He said: ‘I grew up feeling scared and vulnerable. Growing up, I was never able to be open and honest with anyone.
‘I could not form friendships. I did not trust anyone. I would live in constant fear of when I was going to be abused next.
‘I never had the chance to be the person I wanted to be or could have been.’
The court heard Kyte repeatedly punched, kicked, choked, taunted and dragged the boy up a flight of stairs.
He gave the boy 50p after the first assault and threatened his family after each attack.
The victim was strangled so severely he often fell unconscious, and was so scared Kyte would harm his family he decided to ‘get it over and done with’.
Ben Lawrence, prosecuting, said in an interview with police in 2012, Kyte ‘described himself as a sexual predator and everything he did was in the pursuit of sex’.
The convicted killer argued the attacks were ‘made-up’ and ‘never happened’.
But he was unanimously found guilty of four counts of indecency with a child, three of attempting to choke, two of indecent assault on a male, and two of buggery after a trial in February.
Handing down the sentence at Nottingham Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said: ‘This was a brutal attack on a young boy.
‘On several occasions during this behaviour, you told him you would kill him, you would kill members of his family, and you would kill him last if he told anybody about what you had done.
‘The trauma still lives with him. The violence you inflicted was extreme. This was a campaign of attacks on a young, defenceless boy.’
In January 1999, Kyte was found guilty of a rape committed in Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, in 1997 and given a seven-year sentence.
He was then convicted in March 2000 of the murders of 20-year-old Samo Paull in 1993 and 30-year-old Tracy Turner in 1994.
Ms Paull, a single mother, met Kyte in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, and her body was found near the M1 in Leicestershire, almost 40 miles away.
Ms Turner met Kyte at an M6 service station and her body was found about 50 miles away, near Lutterworth, Leicestershire.
He was due for parole in 2025, but the new life sentence – in which he must serve a minimum of 10 years and eight months – has prevented this.
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