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It was Friday, October 18, 1974 in Cambridge and a 20-year-old student sat on her bed watching the Morecombe and Wise Show on TV when the light went out.

As she fumbled for a candle, a man came into her room.

His name was Peter Cook, a local delivery driver later dubbed the Cambridge Rapist, who unleashed terror across the city over 40 years ago and she was his first victim.

The crimes that shook Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire Live is delving into the archive to uncover the stories of some of the most notorious criminals in the county. In the first of a series looking at crimes that shook Cambridgeshire, we recall the terrifying deeds of Cambridge Rapist Peter Cook, who terrorised the city with a spate of attacks on young women.

The woman later told police: “He had a scarf in front of the lower half of his face. I screamed. He told me to be quiet, and if I did exactly what he said, he’d do me no harm.

“He said: ‘I’ve got a very sharp knife and one silly move and there will be a lot of blood.’ Then he asked me: ‘Have you got anything I can tie your hands with?’”

So began a nine month reign of terror by a man also known as "the hooded rapist".

Over the period from October 1974, the rapist carried out ten attacks - all of them on young women.

Cook, who drove a delivery van for the Dolamore wine company, was able to gain access to Cambridge's colleges and broke into the flats and bedsits of single girls, dressed as a woman and wearing a mask he stitched from an old leather shopping bag.

The zipper-mouthed mask had the word "rapist" painted in white across the forehead.

If he could not get into an intended victim's house he would use his lipstick to scrawl "sleep tight - the rapist" on their windows.

Women were warned by police to keep their doors and windows locked at all times.

Many of the victims were students, and Cambridge’s colleges set up a bodyguard service manned by male undergraduates.

The rapist's shocking crimes left a lasting scar on the city, leading to tighter security on college campuses.

What happened on October 18, 1974?

His first attack came on October 18, 1974, when he broke into a house on Springfield Road.

He had intended to burgle the house but when confronted with a 20-year-old woman wearing only a bath towel he raped her.

After his arrest, six months and another eight assaults later, he told police: "I came to rob and stayed to rape."

Three more rapes followed in quick succession in Abbey Road on November 1, at Homerton College on November 13, and in Owlstone Road on December 8.

A timeline of the Cambridge Rapist's attacks October 18, 1974: A 20-year-old student is raped at knifepoint in her bedroom in Springfield Road. November 2, 1974: A second 20-year-old woman is raped in a bedsit in the Elizabeth Way area. Police are convinced the attacker is the same man who struck a fortnight earlier, and warn single women to make sure their doors and windows are locked. November 11, 1974: A man wearing only a wig and a blanket wrapped around his body tries to force his way into the home of a young Australian in Huntingdon Road. She grapples with him, and he runs off. November 13, 1974: The attacks become more savage. An 18-year-old student is in the sound-proofed music room at Homerton College. The lights go out and a man grabs her, then drags her into a shed in the college grounds, where she is beaten up and raped. December 8, 1974: At 2am, the rapist enters a block of flats in Newnham through a back door, awakens a sleeping student, holds a knife to her throat, drags her into the garden, and rapes her. A pair of her tights are used to blindfold her, and the attacker tells her not to go to the police – or he will come back. The News reveals a 20-strong task force of police officers has been assembled, led by Det Insp Jack Cole and Det Supt Bernard Hotson – both of whom have daughters in their 20s. December 15, 1974: The sixth attack. The rapist returns to the same house in Huntingdon Road where he grappled with a woman a month earlier. This time, wearing a false beard and wig, he forces his way into a ground-floor flat, stabs a 20-year-old female telephonist in the face, hands and arms – and then she too is brutally raped. April 13, 1975: After a four-month interval with no incidents, he strikes again. The victim is a 23-year-old receptionist, who lives in a house in Marshall Road with three other girls, but they are away for the weekend, leaving her alone. Hooded, and dressed from head to foot in black leather, a man breaks in through a back window. He tells the terrified young woman: ‘Do you know who I am – I’m the Cambridge Rapist.’ After raping her, he leaves her bound and gagged. It is six hours before she struggles free. May 6, 1975: For the first time, a woman is attacked in broad daylight. The rapist, wearing a brown anorak, enters a house in Pye Terrace, and using a razor-sharp knife, slashes the clothes off the young woman living there. It is lunchtime, and workers from the Pye factory are streaming along the street outside. She is raped, stabbed in the stomach, and like the previous victim, is left bound and gagged.

As the number of attacks increased, a reward of £1,000 – a lot of money at the time – was posted, psychiatrists were used to profile the rapist’s personality, and police set up plans to saliva-test every man in the Cambridge area.

The Cambridge News printed photofit pictures of suspects, and hundreds of posters appealing for the public’s help.

On December 15 he struck at an address in Huntingdon Road, raping a 20-year-old just a month after a previous tenant there had managed to fight him off.

He raped a sixth woman at her home in Marshall Road on February 13, 1975 and then committed his first daylight rape in Pye Terrace on May 6.

As he carried out the attack the victim's housemate was at the police station reporting how Cook had broken into their house the night before.

How was Cook finally brought to justice?

In the end, the rapist – diminutive 46-year-old van driver Peter Cook, from Hardwick – was caught as he fled from a nurses’ home, where he had attempted to rape a young woman in her bedroom.

He was finally caught in Owlstone Croft on June 8, 1975 as he tried to cycle off after stabbing a young woman. He was wearing a blonde wig and carrying women's jumpers, tights and lipstick.

A search of his home revealed more women's clothes and make-up and a supply of ether to subdue his victims.

After being arrested in 1975, Cook’s initial court appearances in Cambridge prompted frenzied scenes. Crowds mobbed the Guildhall, many of them women, and there were taunts of ‘pig’, ‘lynch him’ and ‘hang him’ as he was taken in, his head partly covered by a blanket.

At his trial, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson gave Cook two life sentences and recommended he should spend the rest of his life in jail.

Cook was found to have a criminal record stretching back to his youth. Prior to being a notorious rapist he was a high profile burglar who had been behind bars many times, and was also infamous for escaping.

In his 20s he was dubbed Britain’s most wanted escapee.

On one occasion, after being sentenced to five years in jail, he was being held at Shire Hall in Cambridge awaiting prison transport to Dartmoor – and he managed to escape by squirming through a trapdoor in a ceiling. When he got a job as a scaffolder, workmates nicknamed him the Human Fly because of his agility.

While on the run from Shire Hall, he wrote a letter to the Cambridge News, boasting that he had been back in Cambridge while police were searching for him, and bragging: ‘I am not worried now. Police, people, courts, nothing worries me now.’

What happened to the Cambridge Rapist?

The case hit the headlines again in 1995 when there were moves to have him released on parole or moved to an open prison.

However, after pressure from Cambridge MP Anne Campbell, the Home Office confirmed he would stay behind bars.

The then Home Office Minister Michael Forsyth pledged he would only be freed if he was no longer considered a danger.

The man who kept Cambridge in fear during a nine-month reign of terror was found dead in his single cell at Winchester Prison in January, 2004. He was 75 and died of natural causes.