Convicted child killer Peter Pickering, 80, died before he could be charged with 1965 murder of Elsie Frost, 14

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A child killer known as the Beast of Wombwell died of a heart attack at a secure psychiatric unit, an inquest has heard.



Peter Pickering, 80, had been locked up for more than 45 years after killing 14-year-old Shirley Boldy in the Barnsley area of South Yorkshire in 1972.

Announcing his death, West Yorkshire police confirmed he was expected to be charged with the murder of another 14-year-old, Elsie Frost, whose body was found in Wakefield in 1965.

Her brother, Colin, said the family felt they had been cheated out of getting justice and believed Pickering could be responsible for other murders.

Pickering was also awaiting sentence for raping an 18-year-old woman, who is now in her 60s, weeks before Shirley’s abduction.

An inquest at Reading town hall heard Pickering died at Thornford Park hospital in Berkshire on 25 March.

The senior coroner for Berkshire, Peter Bedford, said a postmortem found Pickering had died from a retroperitoneal haemorrhage caused by a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. It also showed he had heart disease.

Bedford said: “Though that is a natural cause of death, because Mr Pickering is a detained patient I am obliged to have an inquest.” He adjourned the full inquest to 18 June.

Pickering had been held under a hospital order made by a judge in 1972 after he admitted Shirley’s manslaughter by diminished responsibility. She was bundled into his van as she was returning to Wombwell high school.

Pickering drove her to a secluded location where he tied her up and raped her. He tried to strangle her before stabbing her to death, a crime witnessed by walkers who were too far away to intervene.

Pickering killed Shirley about four weeks after he abducted and raped an 18-year-old woman in the Barnsley area.

Last month, she described to a jury how Pickering had told her she was going to die. She called him a monster.

Pickering was convicted at Leeds crown court of rape and false imprisonment over the attack, which only came to light through the reinvestigation of the murder of Elsie Frost.

Elsie was stabbed in the back and head as she walked through a railway tunnel in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in October 1965.

As part of the inquiry detectives looked at Pickering’s conversations with psychiatrists and also found a storage garage he rented in the Owlerton area of Sheffield containing possessions including handcuffs and exercise books filled with his writing.

One note written in 1970 said: “Sex is predominant in my mind – eclipsing all else. Maybe I will be a sex maniac proper. Rape, torture, kill.”

Speaking after Pickering’s death, Elsie’s brother, who pushed for the reinvestigation of the case three years ago along with his sister, Anne Cleave, said: “It’s just an incredible feeling of frustration now.”

He said the police had done a fantastic job but criticised the length of time prosecutors had taken to decide on a charge after detectives handed over the file to the Crown Prosecution Service a year ago.

Frost said: “They uncovered a monster. The man was such a nasty, nasty piece of work.”

Asked if he believed Pickering could have killed others, he said: “I think there’s every likelihood.”

Pickering had convictions for sex offences dating back to the early 1960s and was in prison from 1966 to 1972 for a violent sex attack on a teenager.