Delroy Grant

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Delroy Easton Grant (born 3 September 1957) is a Jamaican-born British serial rapist responsible for an estimated 36 rapes and sexual assaults in South-East London, although the true total may be close to 100. He was the target of Operation Minstead, the most complex rape investigation in British history, leading to him being nicknamed The Minstead Man or The Minstead Rapist. He has also been nicknamed The Night Stalker.

Biography

Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in September 1957. He moved to the UK when he was fifteen due to a lack of job opportunities in Jamaica, settling down in South-East London. He was imprisoned several times for possession of stolen goods and petty theft. He married Janet Watson in 1975, but their marriage broke down because his severe OCD made him extremely controlling and even occasionally violent. They divorced in 1980. Grant later married another woman, Jennifer Edwards, in 1991, but she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and he was forced to get a job as a taxi driver to support her.

Grant's earliest known rape occurred on 12 October 1992, when he forced his way into the house of an 89-year-old woman, beat her, raped her for two hours and stole her money, watch and jewellery before making his escape. His semen was recovered from the scene of the assault, but as there was no national DNA database at the time it could not be matched to his DNA and the case went cold.

On 5 September 1998, Grant attacked an 81-year-old woman in her home, sexually assaulted her and escaped with her jewellery. Police recovered a semen sample from the scene and discovered that it had the same DNA as the sample recovered from the 1992 attack, meaning they were dealing with a repeat offender.

Grant's third attack occurred on 5 August 1999, his most brutal and sadistic crime. He attacked an elderly woman in her house and raped her violently enough that he perforated her bowels, leaving her in need of a six-hour surgery. He then robbed the house and made his escape. By the end of 1999, Grant had perpetrated two more rapes and four more sexual assaults. Operation Minstead was launched to investigate the crimes, but made no real progress for several years. The Minstead team briefly investigated Delroy Grant in 2001 because they believed his car was used by the attacker, but he was soon eliminated as a suspect because he was younger than the offender's projected age.

On 13 October 2002, Grant carried out his first attack since August 1999 when he sexually assaulted and robbed a 77-year-old women in Croydon. As many of the attacks were committed here, the Operation Minstead team spent £330, 000 on a surveillance operation in the area, only for Grant to begin attacking women in a different area.

Police have speculated that Grant was ashamed of his actions, perhaps explaining the long period that sometimes occurred between offences.

In 2004, new breakthroughs in DNA testing allowed police to determine that the Minstead Rapist was from Jamaica, greatly narrowing down their suspect pool from 40, 000 people to 6, 000. This lead to mass DNA testing of Jamaicans in South-East London, which further narrowed down the suspects. Meanwhile, a series of burglaries by a black man in the South-East London area were linked to the same perpetrator.

Grant carried out his final attack on 23 July 2009, when he sexually assaulted an 88-year-old man in the mistaken belief that a man would be too embarrassed to report a sex attack. This latest attack prompted the Operation Minstead team to set up another surveillance operation in Croydon. This one was more successful, as a car matching the one used by the attacker was seen by undercover police officers, who noticed the occupant was a black man fitting the general description of the attacker. They took the driver in for questioning, identifying him as Delroy Grant. His DNA was taken, and found to be a match for the Minstead Rapist's DNA.

Grant was charged with 22 counts of rape, sexual assault and burglary (although police linked him to 14 additional sex crimes and suspect him to be responsible for up to 100). At trial, he entered a bizarre defence claiming that his ex-wife had taken semen samples from him and payed off a third party to commit the assaults and plant his semen samples at the scene. He was convicted and sentenced to four life sentences, with a minimum term of 27 years.