A child killer released from prison tried to decapitate a pensioner in a row about a garden rake, as it emerged the victims’ families criticised the Parole Board for freeing him.
Stephen Chafer sexually assaulted and then stabbed to death three-year-old Lorraine Holt after finding her playing in the snow in her garden in Derby in 1979.
He was then jailed for the murder and released from prison in 2002 before being again imprisoned in 2013 for arson.
However, he was released on licence in August 2017. In June this year, he went to the Peterborough home of Faye Mills, 60, and attacked her following an argument about a rake.
Chafer, now 57 and who had changed his surname to Leonard, was convicted earlier this month for attempted to murder. He told a court “a switch flicked in his head” and he hit her over the head and launched a “frenzied” knife attack. The pensioner survived but suffered life changing injuries.
Now, Jim Holt, the father of the child Chafer murdered nearly 40 years ago, has said the Parole Board should have heeded warnings the killer never be freed.
Mr Holt told the Telegraph: “The authorities have had him twice and released him twice. Which bit of being a monster do they not understand? He used the same excuse about a red mist descending and it was his parents fault because he says they beat him.
“He has destroyed too many families and lives. The Home Office has about 50 letter from people, including my mother before she died, warning that he will always be a threat.”
Mr Holt added that he would attend Chafer’s sentencing next month and hoped he would be jailed forever, like the Moors murderer Ian Brady.
Sheila Mills, the daughter of the pensioner Chafer attacked, said she was “devastated” to discover the man who had befriended the family had been released for killing a child, adding that no one warned them he was a killer.
Explaining that her mother suffered a brain injury because she was stabbed through the eye, she said: “They should never have let him out in the first place. Probation should have been keeping an eye on him and we should have been informed of his previous convictions.”
The Parole Board came in for fierce criticism in January after they cleared John Worboys, the black cab rapist, for release. That decision was overturned last month following a legal challenge.
It also emerged that David McGreavy, who murdered and mutilated three children, had also been cleared for release. He had served 45 years.
Although the Parole Board ruled he had changed considerably and was no longer a significant risk, the victims’ mother, Elsie Urry, warned that they could end up regretting the decision.
A Parole Board spokesman said it was "rare" for those they release to commit more offences, adding that they take each case “extremely seriously”. Telegraph.
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