Accused: Convicted murderer Mark Shirley, 42, is alleged to have raped and tortured a woman in a 12-hour attack with echoes of his earlier crimes.
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A convicted murderer out on licence broke into a woman’s home and subjected her to a horrifying 12-hour rape ordeal - in a second chilling copycat of his first attack 18 years earlier, a court heard. Mark Shirley, who is alleged to have targeted the now 39-year-old after she spurned his advances in a bar, was said to have burst into her home wearing a balaclava 'like a scene from a horror film'.
He then tied her to her bed before repeatedly raping her at knife point and stabbing her in the legs over a 12-hour period, Bristol Crown Court was told.
The woman claimed Shirley, 42, even took breaks during the attack to make cups of tea, and sang nursery rhymes as he busied himself in her kitchen.
The jury was told that before Shirley left his victim's home he said: 'If you ever have sex again, you will only think of me.'
His alleged victim was left so traumatized by the 2005 ordeal she did not report it to police for six years. In the meantime Shirley was convicted of a second copycat rape attack while on licence.
The 42-year-old was originally jailed as a 17-year-old in 1987 for the sexually violent and ritualistic murder of Mary Wainwright, 67, at her home in Cardiff.
Shirley was given a life sentence but was released on licence in 2003 after serving 16 years in prison. In 2009 he subjected mum-of-five Helen Stockford, then 40, to a humiliating ordeal lasting three-and-a-half hours at her Bristol home, in an apparent attempt to recreate the brutal murder he had carried out 22 years earlier.
He was convicted of rape and false imprisonment and was given a second life sentence with a minimum tariff of nine years, which he is still currently serving.
After this conviction the victim of the alleged 2005 attack came forward and Shirley is now on trail for 12 charges of assault by penetration, four charges of rape and one of unlawful and malicious wounding.
The victim has said she was too frightened to report the attack earlier as she was 'terrified' Shirley would come back for her, and that she piled on weight in a deliberate attempt to change her appearance.
Victim: Mother-of-five Helen Stockford waived her right to anonymity and spoke out after she was raped by Mark Shirley in 2009.
William Mousley QC, prosecuting, told the court that Shirley and the victim had met on a night out in Bristol three weeks before the attack.
He said that, in passing conversation, the woman told Shirley where she lived and that her flatmate was going away in three weeks time.
The conversation was then said to have turned sour, and the 39-year-old woman swore at Shirley 'to get rid of him'. 'They had not parted on good terms on that occasion,' Mr Mousley said.
'He was a relative stranger to her. When he turned up in her home she was not expecting him.'
On the day of the alleged attack in December 2005 the woman was at home when she saw a white van pull up in her driveway, and then a balaclava-clad man burst into her house.
She told police: 'For a millisecond I thought it was somebody messing about. He pushed me to the floor - I couldn't work out who it was. He said, "You can’t say no now".
'It was like a horror film. All I could hear was my heart in my head going bang, bang, bang.'
The court heard that the attacker took off his balaclava and said: 'You recognise me now, don’t you?' The woman told police in her interview: 'He was almost spitting at me, he was so angry. It was like he was an animal, not a person. He told me if I shut my eyes he’ll slit my throat.'
At this point, she added, she noticed he had a knife.
The court heard that the attacker went outside to get a washing line, which he used to tie the woman to her bed before raping her.
The jury was told that the attack lasted 12 hours, during which time the attacker repeatedly raped the woman, tortured her with a knife, gagged her and stabbed her in the legs.
The court heard that at one point the man left the room to make himself a cup of tea.
The victim told police her attacker had said he wanted to put two pence pieces on the wounds he inflicted - in an echo of Shirley's first two attacks where he left two pence pieces on the bodies of his victims.
Murder scene: This image shows police officers at Cardiff home of widow Mary Wainwright, 67, who was murdered by Mark Shirley in 1987.
The jury was told that, since the 2005 attack, the woman's mental health deteriorated and she was subsequently admitted to a psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression.
She has drastically changed her appearance because of her fears she would be targeted again by her attacker.
When asked by Shirley’s defence barrister, Sally O’Neill QC, why she started self-harming after the incident, the woman said: 'I have tried to make the scars my own so it’s not like he’s made them, because that scares me. It’s about trying to regain some control over my body.'
Shirley was arrested in July last year shortly after the woman reported the crime to police. He was charged in December.
He denies ever having met her, being in her home or being in the pub where they allegedly met.
On trial: Mark Shirley is on trial at Bristol Crown Court for the rape of a now 39-year-old woman in 2005.
Culled from The Daily Mail UK.
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