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The Aftermath

Crime Files

The Aftermath

Taylor's life of crime

Police had warned that whilst Taylor had no criminal record before being charged with Tiernan’s abduction and murder, he could feasibly have killed before. In the investigation following Taylor’s arrest, police had embarked on painstaking review of unsolved cases of sexual attacks in the area.By October 2002 Taylor was being questioned in connection with these 1980s assaults. The first occurred on 18 October 1988 when Taylor, armed with a mask and knife, attacked a 32-year-old woman as she walked across some waste ground near Houghley Gill, Leeds. He forced her to commit a sexual act on him and then raped her.The second was on 1 March 1989 when a masked Taylor, armed with a knife, broke into a 21-year-old woman’s Bramley home. It was lunchtime and her baby was in another room at the time. He forced her into her bedroom, undressed her, blindfolded and gagged her, forced her to perform a sexual act on him and then raped her.

On 3 April 2003, Taylor pleaded guilty to the two rapes before the Honourable Norman Jones QC, the Recorder of Leeds, who sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for a minimum of 30 years. The sentence was to be reduced by eight months 26 days, which Taylor had already spent in prison.True North Productions made a television documentary about John Taylor, ‘Killer in the Woods’ (2003) produced and directed by Jess Fowle.