THE LATEST NEWS AND UPDATES ACROSS BATH STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX SIGN UP Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A retired high ranking police officer who led an investigation into a serial rapist in Bath has said not catching him is one of the "big regrets" of his career.

Detective chief superintendent Paul James, worked at Avon and Somerset Police for 30 years and was handed the task of tracking down the nicknamed "Batman Rapist".

Also known as the "Bath Rapist", he is known to have committed at least 17 sexual assaults in Bath and Kingswood between 1991 and 2000.

Avon and Somerset Police launched several high profile appeals on BBC's Crimewatch, sent 25,000 leaflets to residents in Bath and surrounding areas and even DNA tested up to 2,000 men.

The investigation, codenamed Operation Eagle, has been described as one of the most complicated and protracted investigations the force had ever undertaken and is Britain's longest-running serial rape investigation.

As of 2019, no one has been charged in connection with the crimes.

Avon and Somerset Police continues to investigate a "number of unsolved serious sexual offences" and any "new lines of enquiry or forensic opportunities".

(Image: Arquebus Solutions Ltd)

Paul James, who retired in October 2012 from Avon and Somerset Police, is now director of Arquebus Solutions Ltd, a company that offers support and specialised services for authorities in order to tackle firearm crime or terrorism.

With a masters degree in forensic psychology, the former detective chief superintendent was brought into the investigation with an eye to finally crack the case.

He told Bath.Live how he, and a team with "great desire to solve the crime", built a profile of the serial rapist in order to have a greater understanding of who they were looking for.

"I first became involved when I was detective inspector. It was around 1999 when he started offending again", he said.

"One of the reasons I became involved at that time was due to my training and specialist knowledge of linking of serious crimes.

"At that time, offender profiling was quite high on the agenda.

"Where I used my expertise and with the use of expert profilers, we looked at the behaviour characteristics of the offender.

"We broke down activities before, during and after the crime to try and come up with a picture of the person we were looking for."

(Image: BBC Crimewatch)

This was before Operation Eagle had obtained what it thought was a DNA profile of the Batman Rapist.

The team learned of "distinctive behaviours" and how the "opportunist" serial rapist would target women who would park their vehicles in Bath and outside the city centre.

He added: "The offender knew that at 5pm, predominately during the winter months, those females would come back to their cars in these locations and he used them, if you like, as a stalking type area.

"He would abduct them at knifepoint.

"Very distinctively, he would abduct them in their own cars, drive them to isolated areas on the outskirts of the city where he would carry out the offence.

"On majority of the cases, he would bring them back in their own vehicles which put him in huge jeopardy of potentially being caught.

"That was a very distinctive and unusual modus operandi."

Mr James explained that the previous offences only became linked together after victims recalled how he often used tights and a hairband as a blindfold and travelled to similar locations to carry out his sexual assaults.

Who was the Batman rapist and what does he look like? Also known as the "Bath Rapist", victims described him as wearing black clothing and a baseball cap. He is also slim, about 5ft 9ins tall, clean shaven, with blue eyes and had a scar below his bottom lip. The assailant was nicknamed the "Batman Rapist" due to him wearing a baseball cap bearing the Batman logo. Police believe he has an extremely good knowledge of Bath and has committed offences one after the other on the same night. He was also known to have wielded a knife to threaten his victims as well as carry tights and a blindfold.

This then caused officers within Operation Eagle to question why this man only attacked women at certain points of the year with long gaps between his assaults.

He said: "One of the key things for us was that there were some significant time gaps of two to three years of offences taking place.

"One of the big things we looked at was there a reason why an individual couldn't offend in that period of time.

"Could he have been in prison? Could he have been away? All sorts of reasons.

"We came up with quite a big criteria for eliminating and bringing in suspects."

Mr James spoke of a "significant breakthrough" which was the DNA profile of a man believed was to be linked to the offender.

Up to 2,000 men were requested to submit swap samples for a large DNA test in January 2001.

Despite several high profile leads, no one was caught.

But this did not deter the team of detectives from hunting the serial rapist.

(Image: BBC/Crimewatch)

He said: "The investigation kept going. Right up to the time I moved on from Avon and Somerset Police in 2006, I was the senior investigating officer for it.

"Even when I was seconded to West Midlands Police for the ballistic programme, I still oversaw aspects of the investigation of Operation Eagle.

"This was because I was really heavily involved in it for a long period of time and there was a very committed team that had been working on this case for a number of years.

"The knowledge and expertise within that team still remains."

The former detective inspector said it would be "really unusual" for the prolific rapist to suddenly stop carrying out sexual assaults nearly 20 years after his last offence given the number of crimes he had already committed.

The possibility that the Bath rapist is dead could be among the reasons why he no longer offending, Mr James theorised.

He said: "When you look at the gap of the last offence of almost 20 years, it would be really unusual for somebody who committed that number of crimes in that period of time stopped offending for no reason.

"You have to hypothesise is he dead or is there some other reason why the offending behaviour has stopped.

(Image: SAKhanPhotography / Getty)

"Because we have the DNA profile and got a large amount of evidence from over the years, the Avon and Somerset Police cold case team are still treating this as a live investigation.

"These types of crimes are never written off until they are actively solved.

"Avon and Somerset Police has a really good record over the last few years of solving cold cases. You just have to look at the Melanie Road case."

The retired detective called the team behind Operation Eagle "one of the best committed teams I have ever worked with" who had "a real great desire" to catch the rapist.

Mr James added that never solving the case during his time at Avon and Somerset Police was his "biggest regret" but has not given up hope of the Batman Rapist being locked up.

He said: "For me as a detective, I did 30 years and since then, established a successful business and working all over the world.

"But this for me, is the one crime that really, from my career perspective, I would love to see solved.

"It was a case that became all-consuming as detective and as a team of detectives because I met all of the victims and when you do that, you really want to, for them, give them some closure.

"It is one of my big regrets when I retired from the police.

What to do if you have any information Anyone who can provide information relevant to the investigation has been advised to contact the Major Crime Review Team on 101. Alternatively, you contact them via their website here. Callers with information and wish to stay anonymous and also contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

"People have asked me if I had one regret and it always has been how we never actually got to the bottom of this case.

"But I will never give up on it. There is certainly material there that is available to convict the offender if we can catch him.

"If he's still alive, then I think in the fullness of time, I think that will happen."

Mr James issued a plea to Bath.Live and any readers to recall any memories or suspicions they previously had about a person they knew.

He said: "I would make the appeal to your readership to look back and look at the characteristics and we do feel that there is somebody out there who must know a partner or a friend or somebody or at least have a suspicion may have been responsible for these offences.

"It is never too late to make contact and if anyone who has got any information, even looking back on it and reading about it, please contact the Avon and Somerset Police's cold case team.

"They would be delighted to hear from you."

A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said the Major Crime Review Team are continuing to investigate the serial rapist's attacks and explore new lines of enquiry.

He said: "Our Major Crime Review Team are reviewing a number of unsolved serious sexual offences committed between 1991 and 2000 in and around the Bath area under Operation Eagle.

"The review will establish whether there are any new lines of enquiry or forensic opportunities and will also consider whether any/all of the offences are linked."

Do you have a cold case you want me to investigate?

Get in touch: michael.taylor@reachplc.com, tweet @JournoMikeT or call 01935 709742.

Want more news?

To subscribe to our daily newsletter, enter your email address into the box at the top of this story

To keep up to date with our latest news, follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Find our Bath Facebook page here or Somerset's can be found here

Alternatively, follow us on Twitter - @BathLive and @SomersetLive