EXCLUSIVE Monster who raped and strangled 14-year-old schoolgirl is prime suspect in TWO MORE unsolved murders, says retired detective

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Police are facing fresh calls to investigate whether the killer of a schoolgirl also carried out a notorious double murder amid fears that he could soon be freed on parole.
Tony Jasinskyj, 68, was jailed for life in May 2002 after DNA advances linked him to the sadistic murder and rape of 14-year-old Marion Crofts in 1981 in Aldershot, Hampshire.
MailOnline can reveal that the former Army chef is now making a new bid to win his freedom at a Parole Board hearing which could take place as early as this summer.
But former police office turned crime author Chris Clark is convinced that Jasinskyj also murdered dog walkers Ann Lee, 44 and Margaret 'Peggy' Johnson, 66, who were stabbed to death in Aldershot on May 10, 1982.
The cold case crime expert is now urging detectives to interview Jasinskyj about the unsolved double murders before his parole hearing.
He is pointing to a series of uncanny similarities between the murders of Marion and the two women who were all killed within a year in Aldershot.
All three victims were murdered in broad daylight in the garrison town which has a population of just over 30,000 people.
But the most damning evidence against Jasinskyj is that he had a strong resemblance at the time to an artist's impression of the suspected killer of Mrs Lee and Mrs Johnson.
Mr Clark, the author of seven top selling crime books, has been working on the unsolved murders for ten years, and plans to publish a book about them next year.
The former murder squad detective for Norfolk Police, who once guarded the late Queen at Sandringham, fears that Jasinskyj is a timebomb waiting to explode.
He sent a detailed email outlying his theories to Hampshire Police in November 2022 and its receipt was acknowledged.
Detective Chief Inspector Adam Edwards, the forces Head of Major Crime, replied: 'Thank you for your correspondence in relation to the above. The information and opinion you have passed will be looked at within the context of the case information.'
Mr Clark said he had not heard anything more from Hampshire police, despite what he describes as compelling evidence hidden in plain sight in the force's files
The author said: 'I am convinced that Jasinskyj is a strong candidate for these murders. They fit his modus operandi and he was nearby when they happened.
'I believe they should actively investigate Jasinskyj and interview him in jail. The family of the dead women deserve some closure.'
He added: 'The key point is the resemblance between Jasinskyj and a photofit of a man who was a suspect in the double murder.
'That man has never been traced and I believe him to be Tony Jasinskyj.'
The artist impression was made with the help of Ministry of Defence policeman Brian Hackney who contacted police shortly after the murders of the two women
Mr Hackney told officers how he had been out jogging shortly before the attack when he ran past the two victims on Aldershot Common.
A little bit further along, he came across a suspicious man in a nearby lane who made him feel uneasy.
Mr Hackney said he took a mental note of the man's face and gave a detailed description to a police artist, leading to the sketch being made.
The likeness to Jasinsjyj was confirmed 12 years later when Christine White revealed she believed the same man tried to attack her in Bourley Woods, Aldershot.
She told the Channel 4 series Trial and Error that she was walking her dogs in 1981 when the man began chasing her, and crashed into her boyfriend who was close by.
The suspect ran away and she reported the attack to local police, but heard nothing more.
Christine insisted in the 1993 programme that Mr Hackney's sketch was of the same man who had tried to pounce on her.
Mr Clark said: 'Two sightings of a man these people believe to be the same person. It's circumstantial - but compelling.'
The black-and-white artist sketch - published here for the first time in decades – shows the suspect and Jasinskyj having a similar shaped face, nose, arched eyebrows, hairline and thin lips.
Mr Clark added: 'In the worst case scenario, we might only have months to properly investigate Tony Jasinskyj. He might be an elderly man now, but that doesn't mean he should escape questioning in a jail environment.
'I would also ask anyone out there with any knowledge or information on the murders of Ann Lee and Margaret Johnson to get in contact with the police.
'Time moves on, allegiances change and it only takes one bit of new information to give fresh impetus to the inquiry.
'In the meantime, I hope the Parole Board will not recommend that Jasinskyj be released - or even moved to an open prison, where, potentially, he will have access to weekend visits.
'He is a dangerous man who freely lived amongst us in the knowledge he had raped and murdered a young girl. It defies logic to think that Jasinskyj did not commit more serious crimes during this time.'
Mother-of-two Mrs Lee, the wife of a retired army major, and her friend Mrs Johnson whose husband was a banking director, were exercising their dogs when they were attacked.
The body of Mrs Lee was found on a path at the top of a small hillock with Red Setter dog Monty pining by her side.
Mrs Johnson, a grandmother who had been married for 47 years, was 20 yards away, slumped by a five-bar gate where she had run to escape with her labrador.
Although the murders had been committed in daylight and close to an Army base, there were no witnesses.
A double edged knife was used to kill the women, but the weapon was never found, and there was no DNA evidence to help forensic analysis.
It is believed that police initially discounted Jasinskyj's involvement after setting their sights on former soldier Peter Fell as a prime suspect.
Fell had made 13 anonymous phone calls to police naming himself as the killer of the two women while he was drunk and depressed, with the first call being made the day after the murders.
At first, he was not believed, and shortly after the killings he moved to Bournemouth where he became a school groundsman and married his fiancée Ann.
A year later, he contacted police again and was arrested. He denied the murders and it was suggested that he made the calls to police as he was a 'fantasist'.
But he was found guilty of the murders, described by the judge Mr Justice Nolan as 'dreadful crimes', and was given two life sentences at Winchester Crown Court in August 1984.
Fell from Accrington, Lancashire, became a practising Christian in prison, and claimed his faith in God had helped him to cope with the ordeal of being wrongly jailed.
He served 17 years behind bars before his murder convictions were quashed by three
Appeal Court judges in March, 2001.
His solicitor argued that Fell had only made a partial confession after being held in solitary confinement for 72 hours, denied access to a solicitor, despite repeated requests, and refused food.
The lawyer added that the full extent of Fell's psychological condition had not been fully understood at the time of his conviction
He was said to have come from an exceptionally deprived family background, was known to police as a fantasist and had even confessed in the past to being the Yorkshire Ripper.
Five psychiatrists and psychologists from both the defence and prosecution established that Fell was so vulnerable that no reliance whatsoever could be placed upon his admission to the police, his solicitor added.
The Appeal Court judges branded the police as 'reprehensible' for denying him a solicitor, and ruled that he was 'innocent of these terrible murders'.
While Fell was serving his sentence, Jasinskyj remained a free man with the murder of Marion remained unsolved for more than 20 years.
The teenager was the youngest of three daughters of Trevor and Anne Crofts and was attacked as she cycled four miles from her home in Fleet, Hampshire, to get to a clarinet lesson in near Farnborough on the morning of June 6, 1981
Her father would normally have driven her, but he was playing in a cricket match.
Marion's route took her along Laffans Road in Aldershot beside the Basingstoke Canal where she was beaten unconscious, and left with severe bruising and a bleed on the brain.
She was dragged into a wooded area by the side of the road where she was raped and murdered.
Her attacker left traces of his DNA in and on her body as well as on her jeans and her left sock before hiding her body in undergrowth where it was found later that that day by a police dog handler.
Marion's clarinet case was flung into the nearby Basingstoke Canal where it was later retrieved.
Jasinskyj was a lance corporal at the time in the Army Catering Corps based in Aldershot, and living with his pregnant wife Lynn in Army married quarters about a mile and a half away from the murder scene.
He was among hundreds of men questioned at the time of the murder.
A proper DNA profile could not be extracted from samples found on Marion at the time, and evidence was stored in the hope that scientific advances in the future would enable a match to be made with her killer.
The murder remained a cold case until new techniques allowed a DNA profile to be obtained from the samples in 1999.
The profile was continually checked against the UK National DNA Database for the next two years until it was matched to Jasinskyj, after he was arrested for his assaulting his second wife and given a routine DNA test.
By then, he had been discharged from the Army Catering Corps and was working as a security guard in Leicester.
He was arrested in April 2001 and denied the rape and murder of Marion, but was convicted at Winchester Crown Court after a four week trial due to the 'one in a billion' match of his DNA with samples found on Marion.
Judge Michael Brodrick told Jasinskyj that he had committed a 'cruel and callous murder' and had given Marion's family 21 years of suffering as they thought of 'the final, dreadful, brutal moments of her life'.
Jasinskyj who has never admitted conviction in 2014, arguing that the DNA evidence against him was 'flawed', but judges ruled the said original verdict was 'entirely safe' and dismissed his claim as 'fanciful'.
After Mr Fell was cleared of the double murders in 2002, Hampshire police launched an investigation into Jasinskyj.
They made the highly unusual assertion that it was 'highly probable he is responsible for other serious crimes'.
Mr Fell claimed at the time that police had told him they suspected there was a link between all three murders.
But he claimed they then dropped the line of inquiry after realising he was serving with the Army in Germany when Marion was murdered.
Mr Fell told the Lancashire Telegraph in May 2002 how he believed police should reopen inquiries into the murder of Mrs Lee and Mrs Johnson.
He said: 'The police in my view must reopen the case because who knows if this person has killed before or since.
'Having got away with it for so many years they may feel confident of doing it again.
'I am very much interested in this new development because I am aware from the media coverage prior to my arrest that Hampshire Police believed that there was a connection between the two cases.'
He added: 'Just prior to my release on bail the police came to take a DNA sample from me and they then cleared me from the Marion Crofts inquiry completely.
'Why come and see me if they knew I was out of the country at the time and they don't believe there was a link between the two cases?
'It appears that this Tony Jasinskyj was operating all over the country from what has been said.'
Marion's heartbroken father Trevor, then 84, said in April 2022: 'I hate Jasinskyj. Given the right opportunity and a gun, I would shoot him.
'Or if he was going to be hung, I would pull the trapdoor. I'm old and dilapidated but, while I'm still here, I don't want him free.'
A spokesperson for Hampshire Police said: 'Where an undetected/unresolved Major Crime case is approved for closure, it will become a 'Cold Case'.
'Cold Cases such as this remain open, and all information and evidence available to police is periodically reviewed by the Serious Crime Review Team.'
A spokesperson for the Parole Board said: 'We can confirm the parole review of Tony Jasinskyj has been referred to the Parole Board by the Secretary of State for Justice and is following standard processes.
'Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community.'
Jasinskyj's case is currently undergoing a Member Case Assessment (MCA), the first stage in the parole process that normally leads to a full appeal.
The Parole Board can recommend a move to an open prison or release on licence.
At a previous parole hearing in 2022, Jasinskyj told the board he was no longer a danger to the public. The appeal was rejected.