‘In 30 years of police service, this is the most distressing case I have ever been associated with.’
Detective Chief Superintendent David Cole, former Head of West Mercia CID
Name: Victor Miller
Crime: Rape and murder
Date of Conviction: 3 November 1988
Age at Conviction: 34
‘It was an ideal set-up, really,’ said Victor Miller, explaining to police why he chose paperboys to rape and abuse. ‘It was an ideal time when nobody is about and they are boys of the age I go for.’
For 15 years, Miller – described by doctors as ‘an especially dangerous sadistic sexual psychopath’ – roamed the West Midlands looking for boys to attack. Powerfully-built and wild-eyed, he abused countless terrified youngsters, many of them on paper rounds, who he overpowered with brute strength.
Detective Chief Superintendent Allen Mayo of Mercia Police saw first-hand the effect Miller had on his victims. ‘They were stupefied, like snared rabbits in the grip of a snake,’ he said. ‘He [Miller] says the same about all his victims – they were terrified into immobility.’ Though he subjected the boys to violent, degrading assaults, he stopped short of killing them until 17 January 1988.
At around eight o’clock on that bitterly cold Sunday morning, 14-year-old Stuart Gough walked into Higgins newsagents near his home in the quiet village of Hagley, Worcestershire. He had two rounds of deliveries to make, comprising just 14 houses situated within a few hundred yards of the shop. But after leaving with his first round of papers, Stuart failed to return for his second.
Miller, 33, pounced on the fair-haired asthmatic at knifepoint. He then bundled him into his car and drove him, blindfolded, 50 miles to a country lane known as ‘Cuckoo Pen’ in Bromsberrow, Hertfordshire. There, he brutally raped the boy at the secluded beauty spot and stayed with the shivering, partially-naked youngster while he decided whether to kill him. After his arrest, he told police: ‘I was for 20 to 25 minutes in a lot of turmoil over what I could do. If I had been on my own, I would have taken him back, but in this particular instance I was not on my own. There was Trevor [Miller’s boyfriend] to consider and that is all that was going through my mind. If I was caught for this offence he wouldn’t cope with the mortgage and everything. He’s the one person that I know loves me – he’s the dearest person that I’ve got in my life.’
His mind made up, Miller tried strangling Stuart with a shoelace. Finding this too awkward, he found a 7lb rock and smashed it over his head seven times. After the savage attack, Miller left him lying dead in a ditch and drove off. When Stuart’s body was eventually found, he was so badly disfigured that police had to identify him by matching his fingerprints to those found on his desk at school.
A week before the murder, Miller fell out with his lover and, desperate for sex, went off alone to pursue his deviant interests, spending the following days roaming the countryside, stalking young men and boys. The day before Stuart’s death, a black man in his car approached another Hagley paperboy, 14-year-old Anthony Dingley. The motorist asked for directions to Birmingham and, after chatting for a few minutes, drove away. But he returned four times, forcing the alarmed teen to run and hide behind a bush until he was gone.
However, it was a victim who escaped 48 hours before Stuart’s murder who provided the clues that would nail Miller. Cyclist Richard Holden, 18, was attacked by a man while riding down a country lane near his home in Wellington, near Hereford, four miles from Hagley. At knifepoint, he was forced into Miller’s car and driven to a secluded orchard, where he was partially stripped. But the teenager managed to fight off his attacker by kicking him in the groin.
Police put Richard under hypnosis in a bid to establish more details of the ‘dark-skinned’ man he had described and the distinctive silver car he was driving. The horror he relived was so realistic that despite the heat in the interview room, he was freezing cold and shaking. So vividly did he remember the attack that when he awoke from the trance he was rubbing the backs of his hands as he recalled falling into a ditch of icy water. The information provided by him proved invaluable: he described Miller’s car (a silver Datsun) and also gave police a clear description of his Afro-Caribbean attacker.
Linking Stuart Gough’s case with those of Anthony Dingley and Richard Holden, Detective Chief Superintendent David Cole, Head of West Mercia CID, announced police were looking for a man of Afro-Caribbean mixed-race, aged about 30, 5ft 7in tall, stocky, with short hair and a ‘strong, unusual body odour’. They said he may have been wearing a grey woollen hat and that he was believed to own a silver Datsun.
Hagley, with a population of just over 6,000, became the focus of national media attention as one of the largest manhunts ever conducted by the West Mercia force got underway. Aircraft with thermal imaging cameras joined more than 150 police officers and 600 villagers and other volunteers. Detectives from the Regional Crime Squads of Telford and Birmingham supported the search teams and the surrounding district was combed in a bid to find Stuart, who had by then been missing for five days.
Police conducted house-to-house inquiries throughout the village and surrounding areas, and a reconstruction of Stuart’s last movements was staged – but nothing was forthcoming. Richard Holden was reinterviewed and was able specify to police that the vehicle being driven by his attacker was in fact a silver Colt Sappora. Soon afterwards, it was discovered that local man Miller, a convicted paedophile, owned such a vehicle.
Tyre marks found at the scene where Richard Holden had been attacked matched those on Miller’s car. Also, footprints discovered nearby were identical to those found in dust at the West Bromwich paint factory where Miller was a computer operator. It was also established that his boyfriend, Trevor Peacher, was a convicted sex offender with previous convictions for sex crimes committed against young boys.
Miller and 46-year-old Peacher – who met in prison – had been sharing a maisonette in Pennfields, Wolverhampton, for two years. Visited by detectives, Peacher gave his lover an alibi at the time of Stuart’s disappearance. Police weren’t convinced and on 27 January, 10 days after Stuart’s disappearance, Miller and Peacher were arrested.
Detectives soon realised that Peacher had not been involved in the abduction and he was released, though later jailed for three years for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Then, on 31 January, after four days of questioning, Miller confessed to Stuart’s abduction and murder. The following morning, a convoy of police vehicles left Hereford police station and were directed by Miller to the area where he had killed Stuart. He refused to go near the boy’s body, but pointed to a drainage culvert where, in driving rain, police made the grim discovery beside a tree stump. Half-covered by leaves, Stuart’s battered, broken body was laid on a bed of bracken. The next day, Miller – dressed in red trousers and an open-necked blue shirt – confessed to Hereford’s crowded Magistrates’ Court that he had murdered Stuart. He also admitted four other charges, including those against Richard Holden and Anthony Dingley.
In a statement read out by his solicitor Anthony Davies, Miller said he wanted to avoid further distress to Stuart’s family. ‘I have been charged with the murder of Stuart Gough,’ read Mr Davies. ‘I do not intend to defend the charge. I fully accept what I have done. I have co-operated fully with the police. I can never make up for taking Stuart from his family. I would ask and, indeed, trust that justice will be done and that I will receive the maximum sentence available to the court. I am making this public statement through my solicitor to save speculation and further distress to Stuart’s family and all concerned.’
Hours after the hearing, Stuart’s father Geoffrey, 58, wept as he told of the effect of his son’s murder on the family. He told reporters: ‘It gets worse. Whatever the sentence it is too good for him. I have got no mercy for an adult who kills a child. If I could get my hands on him, I’d break his neck.’ Geoffrey,