A serial rape suspect bound a mother with electrical cable and forced her to listen to the screams of her children as he raped them both, a court heard today.
Hours later Joseph McCann allegedly held a 71-year-old and a girl aged just 13 prisoners in the pensioner’s car while he sexually assaulted them.
McCann, from Harrow in north London, went on to goad police, telling them: ‘If you caught me for the first two, the rest would not have happened.’
The 34-year-old was arrested hiding up a tree after a two-week reign of terror during which victims aged 11 to 71 were kidnapped, raped, and sexually assaulted, the Old Bailey was told.
Over 15 days between April 20 and May 5, he is said to have carried out attacks across London, Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire.
On the second day of his trial, prosecutor John Price QC gave an account of the dramatic events leading to McCann’s arrest on May 6.
Jurors heard he kidnapped his first victim, a 21-year-old woman, as she walked home from Pryzm nightclub in Watford in the early hours of April 21.
After kidnapping her with a knife to her throat, he told her: ‘I don’t agree with hitting women’, before raping her in her own bed.
On April 25, he abducted a 21-year-old woman in broad daylight in north-west London. Already inside the car was another woman, 25, who had been abducted in east London and held captive for 14 hours.
Both were repeatedly raped but escaped after smashing a vodka bottle over McCann’s head.
McCann then allegedly traveled north where he held a family of three prisoners.
McCann met a woman in a bar in Haslingden, Greater Manchester in the early hours of Sunday, 5 May and took advantage of her drunken state to take her home, jurors heard today.
When they arrived at her house, he tied to her bed using electrical wiring.
He then woke her 17-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son as he raped them both in the next room and forced the other to watch, jurors heard.
The family only escaped when the daughter jumped from a window naked and ran to a neighbor’s house to call the police.
Jurors were shown distressing footage of the moment the girl jumped out of the window after being raped, to run for help.
The teenager then made a harrowing 999 call, part of which was played to the court.
Sobbing, the girl told the operator: ‘He’s been keeping us hostage.’
Later that day he forced a pensioner to drive him around as he snatched children from the street, it is alleged.
He punched the 71-year-old woman in the face before forcing her to drive around over five hours as he inflicted ‘gross sexual indignity and violence upon her’.
He then snatched a 13-year-old girl and forced the pensioner to take the wheel as he sexually assaulted the teenage girl, the court heard.
On the final day of his spree, he is accused of stopping at a petrol station to buy condoms with two teenage girls held hostage in her car.
After passing a marked police car on a roundabout McCann ‘crashed the car into a Mercedes before he ran away, leaving the two teenage girls behind’.
They were ‘shocked, very frightened, and distressed. But mercifully unharmed,’ said Mr. Price QC.
McCann was then said to have taken a mountain bike to escape, which was later found outside a restaurant in Scholar Green, south of Stoke-on-Trent where staff told police a man came into to ask to borrow a phone.
The court heard how the man, said to be McCann, was overheard ordering a taxi which arrived shortly afterward to take him away.
Mr. Price QC said: ‘The police had put up roadblocks. PC David Reed was manning one on the A34 just to the south of Congleton.
‘At 20.40 pm he caused a taxi to stop. By that time the police had the name and a very good description of the man, they were searching for.
‘They also knew he had a distinctive tattoo on his stomach. Looking into the back of the taxi PC Reed suspected the passenger was the man they were looking for.
‘The man had a pint glass in his hand and stated to the officer he had been drinking in pubs with his mates all day long and was on his way home. Asked if he had a tattoo on his tummy, he said, ‘No, you’re not f*****g seeing.”
He fled from the taxi and police pursued him into a field where he was later found in a tree. After a several hour stand-off, he was arrested and taken to London.
Today, prosecutor John Price QC told the jury: ‘Though he refused to be interviewed after he arrived in London, Joseph McCann did say something of relevance to an officer-involved in accompanying him on that journey.
‘This was perhaps a little closer to the truth. He told DC Foxwell: ‘If you had caught me for the first two, the rest of this wouldn’t have happened.’
