Roy Whiting
| Roy Whiting | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
26 January 1959 Horsham,West Sussex, England |
| Occupation | Car mechanic, delivery worker, building labourer |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment (minimum 40 years, not eligible for parole until 2042) |
| Criminal status | Incarcerated |
| Spouse(s) | Linda Booker (1986–1990) |
| Children | 1 |
| Conviction(s) | Indecent assault, theft, dangerous driving, abduction, murder |
Roy William Whiting (born 26 January 1959) is an English convicted child killer, from West Sussex. In December 2001, he was convicted of the abduction and murder of 8-year old school girl Sarah Payne, which occurred in July 2000.
Whiting was born in Crawley, West Sussex, in January 1959 and grew up in the town. His parents were George and Pamela Whiting, who divorced during the 1970s. He had five siblings but three of them died in infancy; an older brother and younger sister survived.
He left Ifield Community College in 1975 with no academic qualifications and over the next few years found employment in several different jobs, including working as a delivery man for the local Co-operative store and later working as a car mechanic and paint sprayer at a local garage.
In 1986, he married Linda Booker. however, they separated the following year just before the birth of their son, and were divorced in 1990.
On 4 March 1995, Whiting abducted and sexually assaulted an eight-year-old girl in the Langley Green district of Crawley. He was arrested a few weeks later after a man who knew Whiting came forward after hearing that the abductor's car had been a red Ford Sierra with a Bart Simpson sticker on one of its windows, identical to the vehicle that Whiting had just sold. Three months later, he admitted the charges of abduction and indecent assault and was sentenced to four years in prison. The maximum sentence for the crime was life imprisonment. However, he received a lesser sentence as credit for admitting to the crime. A psychiatrist who assessed Whiting after his conviction said that he was likely to re-offend once he was released.
Whiting was released from prison in November 1997, having served 2 years and 5 months of his original 4-year sentence, and was one of the first people in Britain to go on the sex offenders' register. Whiting, knowing that he would not be welcomed back in Crawley, moved some 25 miles (40 km) away to Littlehampton on the West Sussex coast, where he rented a flat in St Augustine's Road. Two years later, he moved into another flat in the same road. On 2 July 2000, officers from Sussex Police visited his flat making inquiries into the disappearance of Sarah Payne, who had gone missing in the Kingston Gorse area of Littlehampton the previous evening.
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