Colin Sutton - Manhunt: The Night Stalker: How I brought the serial predator Delroy Grant to justice

First published in the UK by John Blake Publishing
an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

Fourth Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London WC1B 4DA

Owned by Bonnier Books

Sveavgen 56, Stockholm, Sweden

www.facebook.com/johnblakebooks

twitter.com/jblakebooks

First published in paperback in 2021

Paperback: 978-1-78946-225-8

eBook: 978-1-78946-420-7

Audio: 978-1-78946-254-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Design by www.envydesign.co.uk

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Text copyright Colin Sutton 2021

The right of Colin Sutton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright-holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.

John Blake Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

AUTHORS NOTE

I will not use the true name for any of the victims in this account; although almost all have now passed on I believe that to respect their memories I should maintain their anonymity.

CONTENTS

D elroy Grant dubbed the Night Stalker was one of the nations most wanted men, a shocking sex predator. During his seventeen-year reign of fear, he established a clear MO. Target an elderly woman, living alone. Visit them at night. Remove a window pane and slide in. Unscrew the lightbulbs. Cut the power at the electricity meter. Rip out the telephone wires. Tiptoe to the bedroom. Wake the victim by shining a torch in their eyes while ensuring their silence with a gloved hand across their mouth. What followed for his terrified victims was an unspeakable ordeal, often lasting hours heavy with the threat of sexual violence even in the cases where he controlled himself.

His crimes had dreadful consequences of which his victims spoke with courage and heart-rending simplicity:

This has ruined the winter years of my mothers life, said one victims son.

I dont have nightmares now, but I make sure I take certain measures. I have to leave a light on, I make sure all the doors and windows are locked, even in the summer. I cannot sleep if they are open because I think he will be able to get back in, said another victim, aged 84.

I cannot emphasise enough my feelings of embarrassment and humiliation during the attack and after. I feared for my life. I believed I was going to be murdered, remembered one more victim, aged 88.

On a crisp, dry November night in 2009 the surveillance sergeant was controlling his team from the back of the convoy, not that anybody looking on would have realised it was a convoy. Or at least that was the plan, despite the fact that, unusually, one of the police cars had deliberately been piloted by an alert officer to a position in front of the target vehicle. He was remaining unseen but effectively slowing everything down so that those desperately trying to catch up behind had a better chance. They had closed in on the grey Vauxhall Zafira despite it being enthusiastically driven at more than 60 mph at times, except, of course, for when it passed the speed cameras. Its driver was far too smart to attract unnecessary attention that way.

The Zafira was now about three miles from the observation area, far enough away from where it had first been spotted for the driver not to connect the coming police request to stop with where he had been. And more importantly, with what he had been doing just fifteen minutes previously. If it turned out he was not the right man, then there was still a good chance that the huge observation going on in a vast swathe of south-east London would remain a secret. And that was vital to the operation, the one thing which the team simply could not risk was their surveillance leaking out.

As the Zafira signalled to turn into Witham Road, a residential street off Elmers End Road by Birkbeck railway station, it was time to move in. Following him unnoticed would be quite difficult in the maze of quiet side streets. And, if the driver was who they suspected who they hoped then he might even be seeking another target. After all, suburban streets at the dead of night? That was his hunting ground.

Go, go, go, take him now, spat the team leader into the covert microphone mounted on his sun-visor, the words causing his heart to race a little as they always did, no matter how many times hed said them. Its highly trained driver responded instantly and the anonymous dark-green Ford Mondeo came alive, overtaking two carloads of colleagues and moving to within inches of its quarry. The wail of the siren and the flood of blue LEDs bullied the Zafira driver into braking sharply as he pulled to the kerb.

That driver was Delroy Grant, a 52-year-old Jamaican who had lived for almost all his life in England. He was no stranger to the police in his youth but had apparently kept out of trouble for almost twenty years. Nevertheless, he knew he had plenty to hide and so, albeit unconvincingly, he said his name was Kelvin Grant. But sorry, officers, I dont have any ID with me.

The Zafira being registered to the Motability scheme was no help in instantly verifying his identity, so the officers began to search through the car. When, in the centre console, they found some bank cards in the name of Delroy Grant and his wife Jennifer, he knew that he had to tell the truth that if he maintained the lie, he faced arrest anyway, on suspicion of stealing the cards. So he decided to come clean. But naturally, those who give false names to police often have something to hide; knowing the score he had probably imagined what was going to happen.

When the officers told him he was being arrested he reacted in a quietly compliant manner, despite knowing deep down that, at last, his game was very probably up. The clothing, crowbar and balaclava in the car, his strange attire with multiple layers on top and bottom, and the telling discovery of a small, powerful torch in his trouser pocket would see to that. At that point he would have had no idea that he had been tailed all the way from Shirley where, the officers had been told by their invisible colleagues, he had been trying to break into a bungalow.

All of which of course was really of incidental evidential consequence. He was intelligent enough to know that this was it, the day he had long feared but which he had always tried his utmost to postpone, had arrived. He had had a good run, only one close-call in seventeen years, but once he gave his DNA that would be it. A cotton wool bud dragged across his cheek through his gaping mouth by a rubber-gloved hand. That was all that would be needed to prove that his time was up: that he was indeed the Night Stalker.

CAN YOU JUST TAKE A LOOK?