How John Warboys plied his victims with spiked champagne

Cruising London’s West End at night, like ‘a shark searching for its prey’, taxi driver John Worboys’ modus operandi was chillingly effective.

The orange light of his licensed black cab inspired trust; his friendly, courteous manner suggested someone completely unthreatening behind its wheel.

‘Don’t worry darling – I will get you home safe,’ he would tell the young women he targeted as they spilled out of pubs, restaurants or clubs in the early hours.

Sometimes, he even offered to waive his fare if a lone female didn’t have enough money to get home safely – like a knight in shining armour.

But Worboys, with a rape ‘tool kit’ hidden in the footwell, was anything but. First came the banter, then a well-rehearsed story. Worboys would say he’d had a great day – winning tens of thousands of pounds at a casino, on the lottery, or at the races.

Look, he’d tell them, turning in his seat to show his passenger a carrier bag literally stuffed with banknotes or fanning them out in his hand for maximum effect.

Then, he’d invite her to celebrate his good luck with him. Reaching for two glasses, he’d produce a miniature bottle of champagne or other alcohol from the footwell of his cab.

Only six out of more than 80 women who came forward to police refused the drink – the others later told detectives they didn’t want to appear rude because Worboys seemed such genial company; a perfect gentleman.

But with their champagne spiked with sedatives from his travelling ‘tool kit’ – which also included condoms, plastic gloves and a sex toy – the women were soon rendered helpless.

One drugged female passenger woke in his cab to find Worboys raping her, another to see him naked from the waist down and another woke at home the next morning fully clothed but without underwear.

Taxi driver John Worboys, who is believed to have carried out more than 100 rapes and sexual assaults on women in London between 2002 and 2008. Pictured: His ‘rape toolkit’

One victim recalled ‘lolling about’ as Worboys tried to kiss her, another had ‘flashbacks’ of him being on top of her and another was violently sick and felt like a ‘rag doll’.

Thirty-minute journeys would take an hour-and-a-half as Worboys took a detour with his drugged passenger. On at least one occasion he followed his victim into her home, on the pretext of helping her.

One 22-year-old who rejected his offer of champagne, only pretending to sip it, was told by a frustrated Worboys, ‘You’ve really wasted my time tonight,’ when he dropped her home.

Jailed indefinitely in 2009 for 19 charges of drugging and sexually assaulting 12 passengers including one charge of rape, with a minimum term of eight years, Worboys was believed to be Britain’s most prolific serial sex attacker.

Johannah Cutts QC, prosecuting, told the jury: ‘His intent was to ensure they were completely at his mercy, and then to sexually molest them’ to ‘render them unconscious and unable to resist his sexual advances.’

Sentencing him, Mr Justice Penry-Davey, QC, said a report on Worboys found the cabbie was a ‘repetitive predatory sexual offender’ who had not accepted his crimes and had shown a ‘significant degree of sexual deviance’. A further report suggested he posed a ‘significant risk of re-offending’.

More than 100 women came forward to say he’d assaulted them and police suspected him of more than 500 attacks. Detectives described him as ‘very articulate and very clever. He knew how to manipulate them.’

If his victims had hoped Worboys, a former stripper and amateur porn star, would be locked away for a long time then this week brought the shocking revelation that he will soon be a free man again.

Warboys outside Croydon Crown Court in London

Yesterday, the Parole Board apologised ‘unreservedly’ to all his victims for failing to inform them of its decision to release Worboys, now aged 60, after just nine years in prison.

One victim, whose case was never brought to court, said she found out while preparing dinner for her children. The woman, who was not named, told Channel 4 News: ‘I cannot get on with my life, there is no parole for me, because this is always hanging over me. Hearing it on the news, everything was brought back like it was yesterday.’

A three-person panel cleared him for release from a top security prison, on the grounds that he no longer presented a threat to the public – triggering a wave of criticism.

Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, described the decision as ‘shocking’ and ‘deeply upsetting’, adding: ‘The Parole Board should publish their reasons immediately so both the decision and process can be scrutinised before this man is released.’

The former director of public prosecutions, Labour MP Sir Keir Starmer, is also facing calls to explain why the Crown Prosecution Service took no further action when more women came forward with allegations after Worboys’ conviction.

Lawyer Harriet Wistrich, who represents two victims, said one of them should not have had to ‘receive the news and see his face everywhere while cooking tea for her children’.

Writer and commentator Harriet Sergeant, who knew one of Worboys’ victims, yesterday said the decision was proof that the legal system had gone ‘stark, staring mad’.

Sergeant says of the shy 17-year-old girl who was a friend of the family: ‘Fortunately for her, the girl came to, vomiting all over his cab – and him. He could not get her out fast enough.’ But others were not so lucky.

The mother of one victim said yesterday of his imminent release: ‘I think it’s disgusting. He’s a serial attacker. And he knows where my daughter lives. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. He could start all over again.

‘There’ll be a lot of people who never came forward who are ashamed and who blame themselves for drinking or who don’t want their husband to know. My daughter never really spoke to me much about it. I think she felt ashamed.’

Another victim, who also wished to remain anonymous, told the Daily Mail: ‘Regardless of his parole conditions I don’t think I would feel safe. It’s a really sickening thought that he will be roaming the streets once again.’

Professor Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Parole Board, responded yesterday: ‘I recognise there is a lack transparency of Parole Board processes and I have recently set out options for change. 

The taxi driven by Warboys in which he would assault his victims after telling them, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you home safe’

‘We currently have a statutory duty under the Parole Board Rules that prevents disclosure of proceedings. We will shortly be launching a public consultation about how we share our decision making with the public.

‘I am very concerned some victims were not told about the decision, this must have been very distressing. There are robust arrangements in place for victims to be informed through the Victim Contact Scheme. We were told that had been done as usual in this case and released the decision on that basis.’

Mr Hardwick acknowledged that the decision must have been ‘horrible’ for the women but the board was ‘confident’ Worboys would not re-offend. However, charity Rape Crisis described Worboys’ time in prison as ‘woefully short’ for such a ‘dangerous and manipulative perpetrator’.

Even Worboys’ ex-wife, Jean Clayton, 60, who was married to him between 1991 and 1995, has claimed he should never be freed, once describing him as a sex addict. Her daughter Carrie-Ann, 40, told The Sun of her former step-father: ‘He made our family’s life a misery. I can’t imagine what these women are feeling. Nine years and out isn’t justice. It’s awful.’

Many of Worboys’ victims were young, attractive, educated or professional women – including a hedge-fund manager, a solicitor, an advertising executive and a financial journalist.

One was a 36-year-old new mother, on her first evening out after the birth of her baby. Worboys, his trial heard, drove her to a quiet road near her West London street where he assaulted her in the back of the cab.

Before she lost consciousness she asked why they were there, to which he replied: ‘Because if your husband knew, he’d punch me.’

The mother was found by her fiance slumped by their toilet in the early hours, unable to move her legs. A police medical examination found traces of condom lubricant in her underwear.

A 26-year-old woman, who thought Worboys was a ‘nice, generous sort of chap with my best interests at heart’, told the court she woke up in the back of his vehicle with his ‘hand up her skirt’.

Warboys seen in a mug shot taken at a London police station

Another victim, a 22-year-old hedge-fund administrator, told the jury: ‘I remember being really groggy, he was leaning over me and kept saying I had made his night. I wasn’t able to communicate other than grunting.’

A 23-year-old Swedish student recalled how Worboys offered her £2,000 for sex after she poured her spiked champagne away because it made her feel dizzy.

A 27-year-old virgin described to the court how she felt woozy after drinking a whisky that Worboys had given her to celebrate his £50,000 ‘casino win’.

The office worker went to police after having flashbacks of him on top of her and tests later found Worboys’ DNA on her underwear. He attacked her after she confided in him that she was gay, but had never been with anyone.

Many of his alleged victims, however, could not recollect accurately what had happened to them because the date-rape drugs had caused dizziness, fatigue and loss of memory.

Worboys, who had a 44-year-old girlfriend until his arrest, wept in court as he denied all the charges, insisting DNA evidence linking him to the victims was the result of consensual sexual activity.

Born and raised in Enfield, North London, he grew up with a younger sister and mother who died from cancer when Worboys was 13, leaving the children to be brought up by their father Alan. He told the court this loss had affected him deeply and he craved women’s company.

He admitted offering alcohol to female passengers and inventing lies about winning the lottery to make himself sound more interesting and attract attention.

But the ‘tool kit’ detectives found in the boot of his Fiat Punto and the notebooks in his bedroom told a different story. They contained addresses of women passengers and handwritten notes explaining away some of the sexual attacks, as if already preparing his defence in the event of arrest.

One note read: ‘If I s/a [sexually assaulted] her, my DNA would be down below so she SA me.’

Then there was Worboys’ history, which unveiled a rather more sordid alter-ego behind the respectable, courteous, cab-driving, everyman veneer.

Leaving school at 16 with four CSEs, Worboys worked as a milkman and a security guard, but aged 30 re-invented himself as ‘Terry the Minder’ – a male stripper and kissogram, much in demand at hen parties and gay venues, performing to the theme tune from the Minder series – I Could Be So Good For You sung by Dennis Waterman.

After 13 years, greying, middle-aged and paunchy, demand for his services as ‘Terry’ was dwindling, so Worboys took the Knowledge to become a black cab driver in 1996, earning £1,000 a week. 

He bought flat in East London and also owned property in Enfield and Poole in Dorset, where he rented out his studio flat to an amateur porn film director. He even starred in some of the movies, going under the names Tony or Paul.

His victims all spoke of how Worboys turned the conversation to sex soon after giving them the alcohol spiked with either over-the-counter sedatives or those prescribed by his doctor for insomnia which – the court heard – he’d stockpiled for use in his tool kit. 

He told one young victim she had what it took to become a glamour model. Another he offered £1,000 for sexual favours.

First arrested in 2007 over the attack on a 19-year-old student, it later emerged that, from 2003, 12 women had told the Metropolitan Police that they’d been drugged, sexually assaulted or propositioned by a black cab driver, but the link was missed – triggering a critical incident review.

Sir David Latham, former chairman of the Parole Board, last night told the Mail: ‘This is one of those cases which was always going to cause difficulty because it started off all wrong. The judge was hamstrung in the sentence, partly because the prosecution may well have decided to restrict themselves to their strongest cases.

‘We were trying to campaign for the government to get rid of these indeterminate sentences around 2009, when I was parole board chairman – the same year Worboys was on trial. I always thought they weren’t an appropriate sentence.

‘At the time it would have been deemed very long sentence and I think the judge deemed that, after Worboys served the minimum of eight years, it would have taken him a long time – maybe another eight years – to prove that he wouldn’t present danger on release.

‘I’m struggling to imagine how he would have persuaded the Parole Board, but it’s not inconceivable. He must have been looked at by very experienced psychologists and psychiatrists because of the danger he apparently presented.

‘While he did assault these women, we don’t know that he was violent – there’s a small chance that was something he was able to prove while in prison.

‘The message that’s coming across was that he was responsible not just for the 19 offences he was charged with, but a very, very large number of others.

‘But the parole board can’t take those into account.

‘They’re stuck because they cannot consider the cases that were brought against Worboys and not proved because they were not investigated by the CPS while he was in prison.

‘The only way the thing can be unpicked at this stage would be if the prosecution recharged him with the other offences. 

‘Whether or not they’d get anywhere because of the delay, I don’t know, and Worboys would be very likely to challenge the decision, but the CPS could still do it.’

Perhaps, but many will feel that it is a case of too little, too late.

The injustice is best summed up by one of Warboys’s victims, who said yesterday: ‘I can’t help but feel that the psychological mind games he used over his victims have won him his freedom here. 

‘He positioned himself as the victim and for him to walk free when the real victims in this case will forever remain chained to his crimes feels a betrayal.’

Additional reporting: Caroline Gammell, Rebecca Camber and Lucy Holden.