How Many Chances Should a Serial Killer Get?
The parole of Colin Pitchfork shows just how hard it is to predict future risk.
In 1983, twenty-seven-year-old Colin Pitchfork raped and murdered fifteen-year-old Lynda Mann in a small village in Leicestershire county, England. It was his first murder but far from his first offense.
Starting at age eleven, Pitchfork engaged in various troublesome sexual behaviors, exposing his private parts first to his friends and then branching out to strangers. Police first nabbed him for indecent exposure at age 14. Shortly before his wedding in 1981, local constables arrested him again.
The courts took the exhibitionism of a twenty-year-old a bit more seriously. He was ordered to get mental health treatment at a local psychiatric hospital, which he did. His treatment team thought Colin was back on track.
The Escalation
In 1983, the 22-year-old became a dad. This was also the year he sexually assaulted and strangled Mann, a lovely local girl whom he ambushed as she walked home from a babysitting job. His four-month-old son was asleep in the back seat of the car.
Three years went by, and it happened again.