A convicted double-killer who strangled two sex workers in the 1990s and dumped their bodies in remote areas probably murdered several other women, a top detective has claimed.
Alun Kyte, dubbed the ‘Midlands Ripper’, is currently in jail for killing prostitutes Samo Paull and Tracey Turner.
He will be sentenced next month after he was convicted of raping a primary school-age boy in the 1980s.
Mike Creedon, the retired police officer who helped bring Kyte to justice in 2000, has now claimed that Kyte bragged to inmates that he was a serial killer who had murdered more women.
Alun Kyte (pictured above) was convicted of two murders in 2000, and of raping a child in February his year
A retired police officer who worked on Kyte’s case believes he killed more women (Pictured above: Samo Paull, murdered by Kyte in 1993)
Mr Creedon, who later became Chief Constable of the Derbyshire Constabulary, said there were other murders with similarities to those Kyte committed, and that he had a ‘very distinctive’ method. He added that it was extremely likely Kyte had targeted other women, and that there were a number of cold cases that could be reviewed.
He said: ‘I’m absolutely convinced there are more victims out there. He did not suddenly do this and then stop. It doesn’t work that way with people who are wired like him.
‘There might be cold cases out there with evidence that could be reviewed.
‘Twenty years ago, we said he’s dangerous. Now, after the latest conviction, there is even more proof about how dangerous he is.’
Kyte, who travelled routinely for work, is feared to have committed crimes in several police force areas. He was caught in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset in December 1997 for the rape of a woman who escaped, running naked into the street, after he threatened her with a knife.
She had been staying at the same hostel as Kyte and was attacked by him one night.
He was later found guilty of this attack and sentenced to eight years imprisonment.
After being picked up by police, they found his DNA matched samples recovered from the body of Ms Turner, who was strangled after meeting Kyte at a service station on the M6 in March 1994.
Her body was found about 50 miles away in Leicestershire.
The brutal killer was also found guilty of the murder of 20-year-old Ms Paull, a single mother who met him in Birmingham’s Balsall heath red light district in December 1993.
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Her body was found almost 40 miles away in a water-filled ditch in Swinford, Leicestershire.
Detectives believed that Kyte roamed the motorway network looking for victims.
After his conviction in 2000, investigators announced their suspicions that Kyte could have been behind a number of other unsolved murders of sex workers across Britain in the 1980s and 1990s.
Kyte was caught after his DNA was matched with that found on Tracey Turner’s body (Pictured: Ms Turner, murdered by Kyte in March 1994)
Unsolved murders he could be in the frame for include Julie Finlay, 23, whose body was found in a lay-by near Skelmersdale, Lancashire, in August 1994, and Dawn Shields, 19, whose body was found at the Mam Tor landmark in the Peak District that same year.
Kyte was said to have detailed knowledge of the area where Ms Finlay had been found, and he had recently moved to a residence near to where Ms Shields was abducted – and her murder was said to have all the hallmarks of a Kyte killing.
A review concluded that there were up to 10 potential victims, but could not find enough evidence to charge him for them.
Mr Creedon explained that Kyte’s method was ‘very distinctive’ in that he targeted sex workers, abducted them, strangled and then stripped them, before dumping them in rural locations.
He said that the convicted killer was a fantasist who enjoyed his notoriety, but there is good reason to believe his in-prison serial killer boast.
Kyte will be sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court in May for the sexual abuse of a young boy years years before the murders were carried out.
The victim was lured to his house with the promise of toys, and was raped on at least two occasions.
He said he was at times strangled until he became unconscious and that Kyte threatened to make his family suffer if he told anyone what happened.
Creedon said the case showed the depth of Kyte’s depravity, saying: ‘We knew he was violent to women, a rapist and a murderer.
‘To be in the category of child sex abuser is a little bit unusual but it paints a wider picture.’
He said it was possible that other abuse victims were out there and that further examination of unsolved murder cases could bring up new links to Kyte.
Kyte was first apprehended due to the ground-breaking investigations of a wider police enquiry called Operation Enigma, launched in 1996 in response to the unsolved murders of more than 200 sex workers and vulnerable women across Britain since 1986.
The influential investigations is believed to be the first step towards the creation of a violent crime database.
