Minicab driver on trial for ‘Night Stalker’ rapes

Delroy Grant, 53, burgled and sexually assaulted vulnerable women and men in their 80s for a gratification it was “impossible to understand”, a jury was told.

Opening the prosecution case at the start of a three-week trial at Woolwich Crown Court, Jonathan Laidlaw QC said: “The defendant was targeting the elderly and vulnerable in their homes and during the night.

“That is why he was to become known as the Night Stalker.”

Grant, who appeared in the dock with close-cropped hair, glasses and wearing a pinstriped blue suit, is charged with 29 offences committed between October 1992 and November 2009 on pensioners across south London.

Mr Laidlaw told the jury: “What it was that motivated him to carry out sexual offences on the very elderly and what sort of gratification he could possibly have achieved is obviously difficult, if not impossible, to understand.

“Neither was his sexual interest only confined to women, although it was single women living on their own which he was focused on.”

Two of the offences involved elderly men, who were “both subjected to humiliating and degrading attacks”, the prosecutor said.

The 53-year-old denies the offences in Warlingham, Shirley, Beckenham, Bromley, Addiscombe, Orpington and West Dulwich, all in south London.

Grant, a former minicab driver of Brockley Mews, Honor Oak, south London, was arrested after his car was stopped by police in November 2009.

Mr Laidlaw said some of Grant’s defence was “quite extraordinary”, adding: “I am sorry to say, it is a further indication of what little regard this defendant has for his victims and what he has done.”

The accused is linked through DNA evidence to 12 of his 18 victims, giving a “one in one billion” chance of another suspect matching the profile, Mr Laidlaw said.

‘Set up’

Grant says one of his ex-wives, whom he divorced in 1979, set him up, the lawyer added.

“The defendant is going to say that his ex-wife, a lady called Mrs Janet Watson, collected and saved samples of body fluids, both semen and saliva, during their relationship and then, motivated by malice and in order to satisfy a grudge she holds against him, has set about this plot to falsely implicate him.

“How she would know back in 1979 that in due course that scientist, who had not then invented the technique, would be able to recover DNA from semen and saliva is a question you might well ask.”

Despite the violence of his attacks, Grant was said to be calm and careful, with some victims saying he was “respectful”.

During the last 10 years of his campaign of attacks Grant did not carry out any more rapes, possibly because Grant thought advances in forensic science and the use of DNA evidence would make him vulnerable to capture, Mr Laidlaw said.

In the early days of his offending, Mr Laidlaw said: “If he was careful, the police would have to get lucky or he would have to be careless.

“It was also in 1999 that the media stepped up its campaign to catch the Night Stalker, the barrister added.

Mr Laidlaw added: “There was another burglary in 2003 during which the defendant was to wash the elderly victim’s hand in an obvious attempt to remove any of his DNA and, during the latter stages of his offending, he was to display a greater regard to the importance from his perspective of being careful, of not leaving clues as to his identity.”

What the prosecution described as Grant’s “good fortune to evade arrest for so long” ran out on the night of November 15 2009 during a robbery of an 86-year-old’s home in Shirley.

Mr Laidlaw said: “Before he could gain entry, he was disturbed and made off running back to his car, which was parked nearby.”

Police officers were on covert surveillance duties and, some distance away in Croydon, the defendant was arrested.

Delroy Grant denies the charges against him. The trial continues.