http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... women.html
By Caroline Gammell
Last Updated: 10:43PM GMT 13 Mar 2009
At the age of 19, Carrie Symonds was one of John Worboys' youngest victims.
At his most alert between 1am and 3am, he would single his victims out, armed with a story and beguiling face.
Time and time again, he spun a lie about how he had won thousands of pounds on the lottery or at the casino and invited them to toast his success with a glass of champagne. Most accepted, unaware that Worboys had spiked their drinks with a powerful sedative that would render them unconscious within minutes. As they lay slumped in the back of his taxi, he seized his opportunity, jumping into the back of the cab to molest them.
Most of his targets were young professionals – lawyers, insurance brokers, office workers or journalists. During his trial, one woman told Croydon Crown Court: "It seems ridiculous but you have to understand that your guard drops when you are in a black cab. "Almost when you get into a black cab, in your mind, you are home, so your guard is not up as usual."
He was also so successful because many of those he attacked had initially felt sorry for this rather lonely character who had no one with whom to share his good fortune. For Worboys was the archetypal Jekyll and Hyde character who manage to elicit sympathy – and even pity – from the women he approached.
Ostensibly, he lived a quiet life in Rotherhithe, south east London, working as a registered black cab driver by night, earning £1,000 a week and taking care of his beloved snow white Westie dogs during the day. He kept his £520,000 house by the river immaculate, with his V-reg taxi parked in the street and his black Audi TT stored in the garage.
But cabbie driving was not his only source of income and Rotherhithe not his only address. Worboys was obsessed with sex, having worked as a stripper and made pornographic films from a flat he owned in Dorset. Using the aliases "Paul" and "Tony", he directed and starred in one seedy porn film involving a newly wed "bride" and several members of the wedding party. His alter ego as a stripper - Terry the Minder – was also captured on camera.
Detectives said he used the different names and identities to play out his sexual fantasies.
"He is a very strange character," said one police source. "It is like he is two different people. In court we saw John Worboys, but we have investigated Tony."
Born and raised in Enfield, Middlesex, in June 1957, Worboys grew up with his younger sister Barbara, father Alan and Welsh mother Kezia. His mother died from cancer when he was just 13, an event from which he claimed never to recover. Writing to a friend from HMP Belmarsh last summer, he said: "She died 38 years ago, but I never got over her and I am still having a terrible time when I think about her. Sometimes I find it hard to cope." During his trial he tried to draw sympathy from the jury, telling them he craved attention: "All my friends were getting the attention and cuddles and I don't think I was getting the attention."
His father got remarried in 1978 to a woman called Joyce, but died in 1990. The couple lived in Hemel Hempstead, where Worboys' step-mother still resides. Far from academic, Worboys left school at 16 with just four CSEs and worked at a number of odd jobs, including milkman, junior dairy manager and security guard. At the age of 30, he opted for male stripping and spent the next 13 years performing at hen parties, gay venues and acting as a kissogram.
Much of his act would be performed gyrating to the tune of the hit tv show Minder, to match his alter ego. "I used to enjoy women's company. I found it very enjoyable," he said. But eventually, his greying hair and slack physique forced him to hang up his stripper life at the age of 42. He had also grown tired of being mocked for his feminine voice and being asked if he was he was gay.
He married Jean Marriott in October 1991 and became step-father to her three children Stephen, Clare and Carrie-Ann. The couple tried for their own children without success. Their tumultuous marriage was far from happy and within eight years she had married again to a man called James Clayton and moved to Bulgaria. His ex-wife Jean described her former partner as a sex addict and described their disastrous relationship. "John Worboys was the worst husband a woman could ever ask for," she said. "I realised already during our honeymoon that I had made a mistake marrying him."
Despite his failed marriage, Worboys was a charmer whoe enjoyed liaisons with numerous women who he met through taxi driving. The mother of one of them, Jean Syed, said her daughter had been involved with Worboys for a couple of years and the pair had shared a house in Hertfordshire. "When he met my daughter, taking a taxi home late after her work, John was concerned and protective towards her."
Worboys called a number of ex-girlfriends and friends to the witness box to try and convince the jury of his good character but they soon saw through his façade.
