7 February 2013
Man Jailed For Rape After Twenty Years
A man who pleaded guilty to a rape twenty years after it
happened has been sentenced to seven and a half years in
prison.
Daniel Borgers, 41, of Napier Crescent, Scarborough, raped the
woman in an alleyway in Stotfold in 1992, but thanks to a
combination of persistent detective work and DNA evidence he
admitted the offence at a hearing last month.
He was sentenced at Luton Crown Court on Friday 1st February
2013 and today (Feb 7) reporting restrictions that had prevented
him from being identified were lifted.
At the time, no-one was charged with the offence and it remained
a mystery – albeit one detectives were determined to solve.
The case had been repeatedly reviewed over the intervening years
in an effort to find the attacker, most recently two years ago when
it was picked up again by the Cold Case Team at the Beds, Cambs and
Herts Major Crime Unit.
The rape happened in October 1992 when a woman was on her way
home from a relative’s house, walking along the footpath between
Arlesey Road and The Mixies one evening.
She had been to church and then went back to the relative’s
house for a cup of tea before making her way home on foot. In the
alleyway, the woman who was then in her 40s, was grabbed from
behind and forced to the floor. The man, completely unknown to her,
raped her and then ran off after threatening to slit her
throat.
A sample of semen was found at the time and stored until
eventually science moved on sufficiently for there to be a full DNA
profile extracted from this during one of the reviews held a few
years ago.
However, the profile did not match any existing person on the
nationwide DNA database until August last year, when Bedfordshire
Police suddenly received a call to say a match had been found with
a man who had just been arrested by North Yorkshire Police.
Borgers, now living in Scarborough, had been arrested for a minor
drugs offence and the routine DNA sample taken as he came into
custody had been matched with the unknown Stotfold rapist’s sample
on the database.
Borgers was re-arrested a few days later and brought to
Bedfordshire for questioning, ultimately being charged with the
offence two days later.
“This rape had a profound effect on the woman who was subjected
to it,” said Detective Inspector Liz Mead of the MCU. “She lived,
worked and went to church all within a few hundred yards of where
she was attacked. For twenty years, she had to carry to the weight
of not knowing who had attacked her and all the time wondering if
he was still somewhere near her. At the time this happened she was
only in her 40s and this has had an extremely detrimental effect
upon her personal life.”
“Despite this, this courageous lady has remained strong and has
been very supportive of the police investigation throughout. It has
meant a lot to her and her family, and to the investigation team to
be able to close this case at last.”
“This case is one of a number that over the last three or four
years has been solved with the help of improvements in forensic
science. We’ve been able to conclude some cases going back 25 or 30
years and I hope it gives encouragement to victims of crimes past
and present. It’s also a reminder to those criminals we’ve not yet
found that we never give up
looking.”
If anyone has information about cases from the past, officers
are always interested in hearing about it as the file is never
closed on a serious crime. Contact the Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire
and Cambridgeshire Major Crime Unit directly on 01480 422770 if you
would like to speak to specialist detectives.
