‘It was a scary time to be a woman in Cambridge’

An atmosphere of menace spread across the university city of Cambridge as students prepared for a new semester fifty years ago. Young women were attacked in beds, flats and hostels by a serial rapist who evaded arrest for months – until a patrolling police officer had a chance encounter with a cyclist in a red jacket.

Many decades have passed, but Anne Campbell vividly remembers the growing fear among women in Cambridge when it became clear in the autumn of 1974 that a serial rapist was on the loose.

After studying mathematics at Newnham College in the early 1960s, she was then a 34-year-old mother living on Eltisley Avenue with her husband and three children.

“We lived in the center where the rapist was active and we were all terrified,” she recalls.

“I still remember the terror he caused in the area, without knowing where he would strike next.”

Ms Campbell, who would later become the city’s MP and ensure the man responsible was never released from prison, says memories of that time are “still so fresh”.

The known attacks (ten in total) escalated and became more brutal, with some victims being cut or stabbed by the knife-wielding attacker.

Dubbed the Beast of Bedsit-Land by the Cambridge Evening News, the attacker sometimes began to horrify his victims by wearing a black mask with the word “rapist” scrawled on it.

Young women lived in numerous homes around Cambridge in the 1970s – as in any city – and the first reported attack did not make the headlines.

A twenty-year-old secretary found herself in a shared house on October 18, 1974. She was alone and had just taken a bath when the lights went out.

She was raped by an intruder – and this set a pattern that would soon lead police to believe a serial rapist was on the loose.

Student Paul Bahn began following the reports in the local newspaper and later wrote a book about the events.

“It was a scary time to be a woman in Cambridge – my girlfriend was terrified,” says Dr Bahn, a 21-year-old PhD student in 1974.

“The second attack made some people sit up and take notice. By the third attack it was clear there was a pattern.”

Reports gradually emerged with more details about the suspect.

According to his victims, he was in his mid-twenties and small in stature.

“Young women in Cambridge were the most concerned – and it was the smaller men,” says Dr Bahn.

“Everyone was watching it on the street, so it wasn’t a good time to be small either.

“And in the city, sales of locks, alarms and pepper spray were sky high.”

As the attacks continued, students from Dr. Bahn – Gonville and Caius – a much-discussed ‘bodyguard service’ op.

Male student couples offered to accompany women home or stay overnight in their lodgings in an effort to make them feel safe and ward off a potential attacker.

“I was involved from the beginning,” says Dr. Bahn, now 71 years old.

“There was huge publicity, but we only got three calls.

‘No student has called, ever. They didn’t want to feel like they had to be protected by men, I think.’

Peter Samuel Cook, 46, was eventually exposed as the man whose fear gripped Cambridge for eight months.

Det Con Terry Edwards was patrolling Selwyn Road in the early morning hours of June 8, 1975.

He was about a mile from Owlstone Road, where a woman had been attacked with a knife.

He saw a woman in a red jacket cycling, but because the police had been told to stop everyone, he ordered the rider to stop – and a struggle ensued.

A wig came off and the man tried to get away.

A local resident rushed outside to help the officer and together they found a knife and stopped him.

When he was caught, Cook had an abundance of evidence that would incriminate him, including disguises, his mask and the chemical ether, to drug his victims.

Cook was convicted in 1975 of raping six women, injuring another two and committing an act of gross indecency against a ninth female victim.

At his trial, Judge Melford Stevenson gave him two life sentences and recommended he spend the rest of his life in prison.

‘Feeling of enormous relief’

Despite the verdict, there were attempts in 1995 to have Cook released on parole or moved to an open prison.

Ms Campbell was the Labor MP for Cambridge from 1992 to 2005, and pressure from her ensured Cook remained behind bars.

The then Home Secretary, Michael Forsyth, promised that Cook would only be released if he was no longer considered a danger.

Speaking about what it was like during those few months in the 1970s, 84-year-old Mrs Campbell recalls that “everyone was on high alert and very worried”.

She says her husband brought the babysitters to their own home, “just to make sure there wasn’t a Peter Cook hiding in their wardrobes.”

When Cook was finally arrested, she said it took a while for the news to sink in.

“The communication wasn’t as direct – there was no internet, no emails – I think I found out because someone told my husband while he was walking the dog,” she says.

“But there was a sense of enormous relief throughout the city.”

Ms Campbell’s campaign to stop Cook moving to an open prison was sparked when women came to her as an MP and expressed their fears.

She said: “A woman said her best friend was victimized, attacked and mutilated by Cook.

“They were all shocked that he was going to be released, so I expressed those concerns to the minister. And these memories are still so fresh.”

Cook died in January 2004 at the age of 75 from natural causes in Winchester prison.

Cook’s famous attacks

• October 18, 1974 – Cook raped a 20-year-old woman living in a shared house on Springfield Road after she turned off the power

• November 1, 1974 – He raped a girl, 20, and tried to strangle her in Abbey Road – again after switching off the power

• November 11, 1974 – Cook showed up on the doorstep of an Australian woman, 29, at her Huntingdon Road flat. He tried to strangle her but fled after she fought back

• November 13, 1974 – An 18-year-old student at Homerton College on Hills Road was dragged from a soundproof music room, beaten and raped in a remote shed

• December 8, 1974 – A 21-year-old student was sleeping in a bed in a Newnham apartment building when she was awakened by Cook, who cut off her nightgown with a knife and raped her on the premises

• December 15, 1974 – Returning to the same flats on Huntingdon Road, Cook raped a woman aged 20 and cut off her face, arms and hands with a knife

• April 13, 1975 – Cook raped a 23-year-old woman in her home on Marshall Road. It was the first time that a victim reported her attacker wearing a mask

• May 4, 1975 – At a hostel at New Hall College on Madingley Road, Cook attempted to break into the rooms of female students, but was thwarted because locks had been installed on the internal doors and a girl’s boyfriend was there.

• May 6, 1975 – On Pye Terrace, Cook committed his first known daylight rape on a woman in her twenties

• June 8, 1975 – A Canadian woman, 27, was attacked at Owlstone Croft, a hostel used by staff and students at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Her screams were heard and Cook fled the scene, but he was captured while escaping

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