John Taylor and Leanne Tiernan (Image: PA)
A serial sex beast killer thought to be the prime suspect in the 36-year hunt for the killer of 13-year-old schoolgirl Lindsay Jo Rimer, is not the prisoner arrested on suspicion of murder by cold case detectives. John Taylor, 69, is currently serving a whole life sentence for the murder of Leeds’ schoolgirl Leanne Tiernan and a sickening series of violent sex attacks on women and children.
But a source close to the original investigation has told the Daily Express that Taylor is not the man arrested by West Yorkshire Police on Monday. The force is remaining tight-lipped about the prisoner’s identity for “operational reasons” though it is understood he is currently serving a significant sentence for another crime but is not a high-profile inmate. Lindsay Jo Rimer’s murder remains one of Britain’s highest profile unsolved child murders and the new arrest comes just weeks before the 36th anniversary of her death.
Lindsay Rimer (Image: West Yorkshire Police )
Lindsay from the Happy Valley town of Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, disappeared on the evening of November 7, 1994, after going out to buy a box of cornflakes. A huge search operation was launched but she remained missing for five months until her body was found dumped in a canal five months later.
Despite numerous investigations, police have been unable to snare her killer, and a number of potential suspects have died.
But West Yorkshire Police has now revealed that cold case detectives arrested a man at an undisclosed UK prison on Monday, where he is currently serving a sentence for other offences.
The force said he would be interviewed over the course of Monday and Tuesday.
Officers said they were also making fresh approaches to potential witnesses, mainly in the Hebden Bridge and Halifax areas, who had been identified by the investigation.
Det Ch Insp James Entwistle, the senior investigating officer, said: “We remain very firmly committed to doing everything we can to get justice for Lindsay, and to give her family the answers they still so desperately need after all these years.
“The arrest we have made comes as a result of our continued focus on progressing the investigation. We are keeping Lindsay’s family updated and, while we appreciate the understandable public interest that the arrest will bring, we do not anticipate any immediate developments at this stage.
“Although it is now more than 30 years since Lindsay was murdered, we remain convinced there is someone out there who has vital information that could finally help to ease her family’s pain, and we urge them to do the right thing and tell us what they know.”
Lindsay, who lived with her parents and two sisters in the small town made famous by Sally Wainwright drama’s Happy Valley and Riot Women, was last seen at around 10.22pm on November 7, 1994, after visiting a branch of Spar close to her home.
CCTV still issued by West Yorkshire Police of Lindsay Jo Rimer (Image: PA)
After leaving the shop with a box of cornflakes, she set off for home but never arrived.
An extensive search took place but it was not until five months later, in April 1995, that her fully-clothed body was recovered from the Rochdale Canal at Rawden Mill Lock, around a mile upstream from the centre of Hebden Bridge.
It had been weighed down with a concrete block, and a post-mortem examination confirmed she had died as a result of strangulation. The pathologist also said there was no indication that she had been a victim of sexual assault.
During the lengthy murder probe, police spoke to over 5,000 people, including a number of known criminals.
Nine years ago, West Yorkshire Police said it had obtained a potential DNA profile of the suspected killer, which officers hoped would help unlock the case.
John Taylor, who is serving a whole life sentence (Image: PA)
Two men in their 60s, from the Bradford area, were arrested on suspicion of murder but later released without charge.
Detectives also repeatedly probed whether twisted child killer John Taylor is responsible.
In 2001, Taylor was jailed for life for the abduction and murder of 16-year-old Leanne Tiernan, who disappeared near her home in Leeds in November 2000, after she had been Christmas shopping. Her body was found the following August buried in dense woodland just 50 yards from a busy car park at Lindley Woods Reservoir near Otley, on the border of North and West Yorkshire.
Taylor, now 69, was subsequently convicted of a string of sadistic sex attacks on women and children across West Yorkshire.
The monster was told he would spend the rest of his life in prison for 16 offences against five victims between 1977 and 1996, including an indecent assault on a seven-year-old girl after she was tied to the drainpipe of a church in Bramley, Leeds, in 1984. The girl had been sent by her parents to a corner shop when Taylor pounced.
Taylor also confessed to holding a knife to the throat of a 27-year-old woman while she was walking with her three children and forcing her to perform a sex act on him.
The offences came to light after a cold case review and advances in DNA sciences.
Murdered Lindsay Jo Rimer (Image: PA)
Sentencing Judge Mairs said Taylor was responsible for a “20-year campaign of rape and sexual assaults against children and women, fuelled by a sadistic desire to inflict pain for sexual gratification”.
Taylor was given two further life sentences in 2003 after admitting the rape of two women in the 1980s.
A whole-life term means there is no chance of parole or conditional release during the prisoner’s lifetime.