Manhunt lasting 21 years comes to end as attacker admits kidnapping teenagers in 2002
A man has admitted kidnapping and assaulting teenage girls in two separate attacks, bringing to an end a 21-year search.
Alec Housden, 59, admitted kidnapping and indecently assaulting a 16-year-old girl in Harpenden in Hertfordshire on Sunday, 7 April 2002.
He also admitted kidnapping and indecently assaulting a 17-year-old girl at the same location on Wednesday, 19 June 2002.
Both attacks took place in fields off Piggottshill Lane, a quiet road near the town.
Detectives had made repeated appeals over the years, and launched a fresh appeal in spring 2023 when they made a plea for information on Crimewatch.
On 24 April, Housden, of Kingsbury Gardens in Dunstable in Bedfordshire, had pleaded not guilty to two charges each of kidnap and indecent assault, but changed his pleas at St Albans Crown Court on Wednesday, answering to each charge: “Guilty, your honour.”
Earlier this year the charity Crimestoppers had put up a £10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction, and released an e-fit of a man police wanted to speak to.
Scientific evidence from the two assaults, which happened in Harpenden, showed that the same man was responsible.
When they appealed in March, police said the 16-year-old victim of the first attack was walking along Piggottshill Lane when she was grabbed by a man, who dragged her into a nearby field where he sexually assaulted her and forced her to perform sexual acts.
In the second attack, a man forced a 17-year-old girl walking along Wheathampstead Road into a small red car. He then drove down Piggottshill Lane and took her to a wood where he forced her to perform sexual acts and sexually assaulted her.
Det Insp Justine Jenkins, of the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire major crime unit, had appealed for the public's help, saying the victim's "deserved justice".
“The victims, now aged in their 30s, endured a harrowing ordeal and until the attacker is found, they are without closure," she added.
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