The tragic final moments of mother-of-six Anita Rose as she walks her dog oblivious to her killer prowling the streets behind her

Daily Mail​

10-07-2025

Chilling footage shows a mother-of-six walking her dog down a quiet country lane oblivious to her killer prowling behind.
Anita Rose, 57, was enjoying a stroll near her home in Brantham, Suffolk when she was randomly attacked by Roy Barclay, 56, an occult-obsessed drifter who had been living off-grid to avoid being recalled to prison.
Video shows Barclay appearing to change direction and follow Ms Rose along a path as she walked her springer spaniel, Bruce, on the morning of July 24 last year.
Moments later he rushed the grandmother before punching, kicking and stamping on her during a 'vicious and brutal assault'.
She was found by passers-by on a footpath beside a sewage works but died four days later.
Barclay will now receive a 'very lengthy' life sentence after a jury at Ipswich Crown Court took just two-and-a-half hours to convict him of murder.
The fiend left Ms Rose with a dog lead wrapped around her neck, a 'calling card' he also used in an earlier 2015 attack where he left an 82-year-old man with serious head injuries.
He had been released from prison in February 2020 but had not been living at a fixed address.
Speaking after yesterday's verdict, Ms Rose's eldest daughter, who gave her name as Jess, fought back tears as she said the probation service urgently needed change.
'We will now look towards changes that need to be made within the probation services and the justice system,' she said.
'We need to make sure that our communities are safe and that people are monitored, that criminals are taken back to prison when they break the terms of their probation.
'Criminals cannot remain at large. There's too much at stake and our communities need protecting.'
It is understood that the Probation Service issued a recall notice for Barclay following a breach of his licence conditions.
When a person's licence has been revoked, the relevant local police force will be notified, and the individual will become wanted by police.
The Mail previously revealed that Barclay was a follower of the late David Farrant, the President of the British Occult and Psychic Society.
Farrant was best known for helping to spark panic in the 1970s about the sightings of alleged vampires in Highgate cemetery, north London.
Barclay was a keen amateur artist who drew cartoons satirising the rivalry between Farrant and self-proclaimed exorcist Sean Manchester, which once made tabloid headlines.
But he apparently broke off links with Farrant's supporters at least 20 years ago, leading to rumours that he had 'disappeared in mysterious circumstances', according to one blogger.
In fact, he had become a homeless drifter as his mental health deteriorated, living in makeshift camps and in temporary bedsits, while surviving largely on food scavenged from bins.
Barclay was living off grid when he viciously attacked Leslie Gunfield, then 82, who had threatened to inform security about him going through rubbish bins at the back of a Co-op supermarket in Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex.
Mr Gunfield was on his way to buy a newspaper just before 7am on February 22, 2015, when he spotted Barclay with an armful of pizzas and made an 'innocuous' remark to him, saying: 'You had a good haul tonight'.
Barclay's response was to punch him repeatedly in the face and head, out of sight of CCTV cameras, leaving Mr Gunfield with multiple fractures to his nose, eye sockets and cheeks, and his jaw detached.
The pensioner nearly died in the attack but survived after having ten titanium plates screwed into his skull in operations at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge.
Barclay, who was known for his love of dogs, left what the prosecution would suggest was a tell-tale calling card by tying the lead of Mr Gunfield's terrier around the foot of his victim to ensure the pet would not run away.
He would later wrap Ms Rose's dog's lead around her leg after the fatal assault.
He denied causing grievous bodily harm with intent against Mr Gunfield but changed his plea to guilty on the day his trial was due to start and he was jailed for ten years at Chelmsford Crown Court in August 2015.
His release from prison on February 24, 2020, was on condition that he stayed in touch with the probation service but he effectively disappeared in 2022 and avoided contact with the police or authorities.
It was his failure to obey the conditions of his licence that meant that he was wanted on recall for prison for two years.
Barclay avoided being reincarcerated by living 'off grid' in a variety of camps, including one hidden in deep undergrowth close to a local beauty spot called Decoy Pond in Brantham, Suffolk, and in a clump of trees underneath the Orwell Bridge in nearby Wherstead.
He attacked Ms Rose early in the morning of July 27 last year while she was walking her springer spaniel, Bruce, on an isolated path between the main Ipswich to London railway line and a sewage works around 200 years from Decoy Pond.
Prosecutors suggested that he may have carried out the 'vicious and brutal' assault after Ms Rose saw him breaking into the sewage works to use its washroom, and possibly confronted him about what he was doing.
The court heard Barclay subjected her to 'numerous kicks, stamps and blows' in a 'vicious and brutal' assault.
Barclay displayed a surprisingly erudite side in a letter he wrote to the Halifax Evening Courier in May 2001, bemoaning the 'national scandal' that the burial place of Robin Hood at Kirklees Priory, near Brighouse, West Yorkshire, was not being promoted more by the local council
She was found by passers-by on a footpath beside a sewage works but died four days later.
Barclay, of no fixed abode, had denied murder. But a jury at Ipswich Crown Court took just two-and-half hours to convict him of Ms Rose's murder.
Prosecutor Christopher Paxton KC said Barclay had kept a 'treasure trove' of Ms Rose's items including her jacket and phone.
Mr Paxton said Barclay's walking boots, which 'amounted to the murder weapon', were found in one of the defendant's camps.
Earlier in the case, jurors were told how 'cunning' convict Barclay tried to trick police into arresting an innocent man by leaving his victim's phone in a public place.
The killer swiped Ms Rose's phone and distinctive pink jacket before then reading media reports on his mobile detailing how both items were 'key' to the police investigation, the court heard.
Mr Paxton told the jury how the report was 'a signal to Roy Barclay that he had to get rid of the phone'.
Barclay attempted to dump the phone to 'set a false trail for the police, throwing them off the scent', he added.
Barclay was arrested by police at Ipswich Library on October 21 last year.
He is due to be sentenced at a later date.