The Fox was a nickname given to Malcolm Fairley who, in the summer of 1984 attacked several victims in their homes at night within a small area of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.

His first attack was in Cheddington, Buckinghamshire in early 1984 where a man was sexually assaulted at gunpoint in his home at night. The Fox then broke into the home of a businessman and his wife on 9th June in Leighton Buzzard, but fled into the night after accidentally firing the gun he was carrying.

His other three attacks in the so-called "Rape Triangle" all took place in July 1984. The first was another failed attack in Leighton Buzzard, when the wife's screams caused the attacker to run, closely followed by an attack in the same area of Leighton Buzzard. In that attack, the couple were unable to resist and the wife was sexually assaulted. Finally, he attacked a couple in Edlesborough in Buckinghamshire. however, during the attack he left a footprint in a standard lamp that he had knocked over with his shoe.

After this, he moved north to County Durham, where shortly after a rape in Brampton, Cumbria, he moved on to Peterlee and broke into two houses on the same night, having been scared away by the screams of the woman in the first house.

In September he moved south again and attacked a woman in her bed in Bradwell in Milton Keynes.

Prompted by a lead from a doctor in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, who had been asked to report any unusual new patients to police, Fairley was arrested on 11th September at his home in Kentish Town, London.

He was tried in St Albans on 26th February 1985 and was sentenced to six life sentences for the attacks plus a further 26 years in prison for related offences.

Sentencing Fairley Justice Caulfield told him: "There are degrees of wickedness beyond condemnatory description. Your crimes fall within this category. You desecrated and defiled men and women in their own homes You are a decadent advertisement for evil pornographers."

Fairley has already been released under a new identity, less than 20 years after his 146 year sentence.

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