‘Pure evil’ – and released by mistake
One of Britain’s worst serial rapists is facing a second life sentence after claiming eleven victims when he was released from jail by mistake.
Depraved gipsy Joseph McCann, 34, was described in court as ‘pure evil’ as jurors heard how he raped children as well as a pensioner and forced his victims to perform sex acts on eachother.
He drove around the country taking ever increasing amounts of cocaine and alcohol until he was caught up a tree after a police car chase interrupted his attempt to rape two 14-year-olds.
McCann has a long list of previous convictions and was given an indeterminate sentence for public protection in 2008 when he burgled the home of an 85-year-old man and threatened to stab him.
After that conviction McCann insisted he wanted to ‘live a crime free life’ to look after his partner and two children.
Judge Frederick Marr-Johnson told him then: ‘I think there is a risk of you causing long term psychological harm in the future.’
But like London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan, McCann was released from an indeterminate sentence for public protection to carry out further crimes.
Khan’s sentence had been replaced by a fixed sentence of 16 years following a Court of Appeal hearing.
McCann broke into a house in Bedfordshire on 22 July 2017 and was jailed for three years, serving only half.
After 18-months inside he should have gone before a parole board hearing before his release, because he was subject to the life sentence.
But he was released without the meeting on 15 February this year because prison staff did not know he had been given a life sentence in 2008.
His series of sex attacks began weeks later.
A jury of six women and six men convicted McCann on all 37 charges after a six week trial at the Old Bailey.
McCann did not appear in court himself but instructed his barrister to make a series of bizarre claims insisting that his victims either consented to sex – or it did not happen.
His spree of sex attacks began in Watford as a 21-year-old mother was walking home from a nightclub on 20 April.
Holding a knife to her throat he ordered her into her car and then raped her on her own bed.
McCann travelled to London and repeatedly raped a 25-year-old in his car before grabbing deeply religious 21-year-old to join them during a 14-hour ordeal in Edgware between 24 and 27 April.
They only escaped when the 25-year-old smashed a bottle of vodka over his head.
John Price, prosecuting, said the incident was one which showed ‘bravery and selflessness, which are as much a part of this case as are wickedness and cowardice.’
McCann travelled north to Greater Manchester and he raped a sister and brother in front of each other after tying up their mother with electrical flex in the early hours of May 5.
The 17-year-old sister jumped out of the window and ran to a relative’s house to save her 11-year-old brother as McCann fled the scene on a child’s bicycle.
On that day alone McCann would claim seven victims – attacking a 71-year-old church goer in her own black Fiat Punto after doing her weekly shop at Morrisons in Bury in the same afternoon.
After punching her across the face he forced her to drive him to an industrial estate where he raped her orally.
He forced her to drive the car he found a 13-year-old girl who he dragged into the back seat of the car and sexually assaulted.
The teenager and the pensioner escaped in a service station in Knutsford, Cheshire but McCann drove off in her car and snared two 14-year-old girls later that evening at 6.30pm.
He was caught on CCTV buying condoms at a Shell garage in Congleton where he bought a three-packet of condoms but the girls escaped when he was chased by police and abandoned the car.
McCann only made one court appearance during his trial and was held in the dock flanked by three security guards in a green and yellow anti-escape prison uniform.
After he was arrested Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot was forced to go to McCann’s cell in his cell in HMP Belmarsh after he refused to attend Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
McCann, of Aylesbury, Bucks, denied seven counts of rape, one count of rape of a child under 13, seven counts of kidnap, one attempted kidnap, 10 counts of false imprisonment, three counts of assault by penetration, three counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, one count of sexual assault and two of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without their consent.
He was convicted on all counts.
McCann’s first victim was a mother of-one was forced into his Ford Mondeo at knifepoint as she walked home from an evening at Pryzm nightclub in Watford.
She had argued with friends and decided to walk rather than go home with them. McCann pounced on her after she dropped her handbag on the pavement.
Threatening to stab and punch her, he called her ‘Hayley’ and said she had done something to his sister.
She told the court: ‘I just felt a knife in my neck first, and he forced me to walk over to his car and made me get in.
‘He kept making me drink this Malibu. He just kept saying that I was in this firm, my whole family would be well looked after, and I would not have to do anything I did not want to because I was his girlfriend.’
They drove to her home and McCann ordered her into her bedroom as her son slept in the adjoining room, telling her she was to take part in a gypsy initiation ritual.
McCann pushed her on to the bed and said: ‘It’s is what they do in the traveller community.’
The woman recalled: ‘That is when he started, he pulled my dress up I was not wearing any underwear. I cannot remember how long it lasted but after that I acted like everything was fine.’
After raping her on the bed McCann took her to her mother’s house in the car and drove off.
A 25-year-old who got off the Tube at Blackhorse Road station after finishing work late at night was dragged into McCann’s Ford S Max car at knifepoint.
Ramming his hand over her mouth, McCann threatened to stab her if she made a sound.
Her boyfriend heard the noise outside and called the police, but McCann was already gone.
It was the start of a 14 hour ordeal in which she would be raped repeatedly and forced to undergo depraved acts involving urine and gross sexual humiliation.
In the midst of her suffering, McCann pulled the third victim into the car to join them.
‘When he said strip I realised what was happening,’ the 25-year-old.
‘I thought he was going to rape me and I thought I need to make sure he does not kill me.
‘He kept saying he had someone in the police and that I would never escape him.
‘He started saying more and more to me and the other girl that he was going to kill us.’
She seized her chance to escape when McCann told her to get him a bottle of vodka from the back of the car.
‘I took the big bottle of vodka out of the bag and hit him on the head with it,’ she said.
‘It smashed and I ran away. I ran to some builders. I said: ”Help help he’s kidnapping us.”
The two sisters were walking yards from their home in Edgware when McCann pulled up next to them with the 25-year-old in the car.
The teenager ran to her mother and phoned the police as the 21-year-old was pulled into the car with the 25-year-old.
She said: ‘I begged him to let me go. I tried to resist everything he told me to do and I wasn’t a willing party to any of it.
‘I was completely terrified this guy has just dragged me into his car threatened to kill me and raped me. I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen and I was in a complete state.
‘He told me he had a knife and he was gonna cut my throat and drown me.’
The two victims were made to perform sex acts on each other as McCann raped them several times.
McCann preyed on a drunken mother and her two children after meeting her at the Live Longue bar in bar in Haslingden, Greater Manchester.
He got into a taxi with her and they went to her home where they took cocaine before the woman went to bed fully clothed.
When she woke up McCann was standing next to her bedside holding her 17-year-old daughter who had already been injured in the face.
McCann tied the mother up with flex from electrical appliances and left her trussed up on the bed.
Armed with a knife from the kitchen, he pinned the daughter and 11-year-old down and forced them to perform sex acts on him.
The 17-year-old said: ‘My life flashed before my eyes. I am just going to be this sex slave.’
She said she ‘looked into McCann’s eyes and saw ‘pure evil.’
‘He had a knife and ordered me to go on my bed with my mum and brother. My mum was like: “What are you doing?” ‘
The teenage girl bravely jumped out of her bedroom window on 5 May and out onto the street below fracturing her right heel as she ran to get help.
McCann tried to catch her but gave up and fled on a child’s bicycle.
The mother now blames herself for allowing McCann into her home and her daughter said: ‘Because it happened to me and my brother it has kind of ruined the family.’
The boy has been so psychologically damaged that he is unable to speak of his ordeal.
A 71-year old pensioner had just finished loading her bags into her Fiat Punto at Morrisons in Ramsbottom when McCann pounced.
‘Getting back into my car about to drive home, a man approached at the side of the car and got in,’ she said.
I shouted: “Get out! Get out!” That is when he punched me across the face.
‘He said: “I need a lift to the motorway,” He said: “I don’t want to hurt you; I’ve have got a knife. I just killed someone”.
‘We got into this carpark and that is when he said: “So, we will have sex now,” or words to that effect and I said no.
McCann tried to rape or vaginally and anally before driving her to an industrial estate and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.
The 71-year-old was driving the Fiat Punto when McCann grabbed a 13 year-old and forced her into the car.
She was with two boys and they were all made to get in, but McCann then threw the schoolboys out of the car.
He swigged from a bottle of sparkling wine as he told the girl he was in love with her.
‘He was saying he was in love with me and all that, then he started sexually abusing me,’ the girl said.
‘When I was in the car he tried to stab me in the leg with a pen. He kept saying that apparently I am going to go out with him, he asked me if I had a boyfriend.
‘I said stop saying that because it is not really true.’
When McCann pulled into Knutsford services on the M6 the pensioner ran from the car, stopping only to open the back door so the girl could escape too.
He swore at them both before driving off in the Punto.
Two 14-year-olds were walking in Congleton, Cheshire when McCann appeared at the end of an alleyway saying: ‘I have been looking for you all day’.
He threatened them with a machete and ordered them into the car.
One of the teenagers told the court: ‘The man said: “You will have no glasses on your face and no teeth, I will chop you up,”.
‘He told us to get into the back of the car or he would kill us basically.’
They drove to a Shell Garage at the Clayton Bypass where McCann filled up the car and bought a packet of three condoms.
But as he drove away he was spotted by a police patrol car and sped off with the two terrified girls screaming in the back seat.
McCann smashed into a Mercedes as he careered the wrong way into a roundabout and then jumped out of the car. leaving the girls frightened but unharmed.
He bolted through the residential streets and was tracked on CCTV riding a child’s bicycle dressed in a woman’s red top and bandana he had ripped from the washing line.
Police cornered him up at tree on a farm outside of Congleton and shortly after 2am on May 6, he was arrested on suspicion of rape, kidnap and child abduction as he calmly sipped a glass of water.
Joseph McCann’s depravity was matched only by his arrogance and cowardice.
The perverted traveller thought only of his own sick desires as he blighted the lives of mothers, daughters, and sons during a two-week rampage across Britain this year.
He fanaticised about his status in the traveller community, telling his victims they he was initiating them into his ‘firm’ and they would be protected but only if they performed sexual acts for him.
Jurors wept as they heard of their ordeals and one was excused from serving on the trial as tears ran down her face when the charges were read out.
Another woman juror was so impressed by the courage of a victim that she could not resist telling her: ‘You did very well’ outside court in an incident which almost saw her removed from the trial too.
While his victims were forced to answer his ridiculous claims in court, McCann could not even bear to face them and he spent most of the trial cowering naked in the corner of padded cell at Belmarsh.
Mr Justice Edis wrote to McCann in his cells in HMP Belmarsh explaining the consequences of not attending his trial.
In his letter he outlined how McCann would not be able to run his defence if he did not attend court to give evidence that the acts had been consensual.
McCann was read the letter by officers recording the meeting on cameras, at the request of the judge.
He covered his ears and banged on the bars of his cell and sang Irish folk songs over the officer’s voices.
In a last ditch attempt to get him to court his barrister Jo Sidhu spoke to him over a video link at the lunch adjournment.
He told Mr Justice Edis that McCann had changed his mind and would now give evidence but only on the condition his complaints about the prison system could be heard in public.
Recalling his conversation with McCann, Mr Sidhu said his client was complaining of ‘severe mistreatment by the authorities at Belmarsh resulting in his health going into decline.
‘He now has a serious injury to his wrist; he had held up his arms to the screen and he has told us that his wrist is broken.
‘He is refusing to drink water save for a small amount in order to take his medication. Since Tuesday of this week he has refused to eat, so he is on hunger strike.
‘He is now in a padded cell. He has been stripped naked and put in a cell and not allowed out. He has been refused to have a shower or brush his teeth for the last five days.
‘He continues to suffer from sleep deprivation because officers are talking outside his door at night and verbally abusing him. He wanted to come to court and told those at Belmarsh that he wanted to come to court but they did not bring him here.
‘He wants the media to know what is going on about his treatment. What he says about his treatment in the prison system, he wants ventilated in the public domain.
‘He fully intends to come to court on Monday. It is his firm intention to give evidence. He will be here subject to his health.’
But McCann could not bring himself to face his accusers – and is unlikely to be in court when he is given another life sentence.
Dr Jo Farrar, Chief Executive of HM Prisons and Probation Service, said ‘These were appalling crimes and our thoughts and sympathies are with the victims and their families.
‘We recognise that there were failings and we apologise unreservedly for our part in this. We are committed to doing everything we possibly can to learn from this terrible case.
‘We have taken strong and immediate action against those involved in the management of McCann’s case and are taking significant steps to improve intelligence sharing between agencies.
‘At the same time, we are developing new mandatory training on recall for all probation officers and we have updated guidance on the threshold for recalling an offender to prison.’
‘We have carried out a full Serious Further Offence (SFO) review to ensure similar failings aren’t repeated and appropriate action is taken.
‘SFO reviews are shared with victims but as they are otherwise for internal purposes and contain sensitive information, they are not intended for publication.
‘It is clear that McCann should have been recalled when he was charged with, remanded and later convicted of further offences and we have taken action to address this as part of our review into the case.
‘As a result of the failures in this case, a disciplinary investigation was launched into the conduct of four staff involved in McCann’s supervision.
‘One member of staff was found to have been guilty of gross misconduct and has since been demoted.
‘In addition, following an earlier investigation, a staff member who was previously involved in McCann’s supervision was dismissed from the Service and the contract of an agency staff member was terminated.
‘Their dismissals were not directly related to this case but were due to consistent poor performance.’
