VICTIMS of the so-called Shoe Rapist sobbed in court yesterday as the man who dragged them from the street, tied them up with stockings and raped or sexually assaulted them was jailed for life.
James Lloyd, a 50-year-old father of two, hung his head in the dock at Sheffield Crown Court as he was told that he would spend at least 15 years in jail for crimes that had terrorised South Yorkshire.
Justine Armstrong, one of the rapist’s youngest victims, waited 20 years to see Lloyd brought to justice.
Now a 38-year-old care assistant, she has waived her right to anonymity to tell how Lloyd raped her before stealing her high-heeled shoes as a bizarre trophy.
She was one of four women aged between 18 and 53 that he admitted raping between 1983 and 1986, in the Rotherham and Barnsley area. He also admitted four attempted rapes.
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Lloyd, a Freemason, was finally traced when DNA from his sister — taken in relation to a drink-driving offence — was matched to semen samples taken from his victims.
Detectives now believe that he may have attacked at least ten women. When officers raided his home and the offices of the printing firm he managed, they found more than 100 pairs of stilettos, jewellery and stockings, possible trophies from other sex attacks.
Mrs Armstrong was 18 when he grabbed her from behind in Swinton, near Rotherham, in August 1986, and held a knife to her throat.
She said: “I was desperate to get away and fought like a tiger. I was covered in cuts and strangulation marks as he attacked me. There was no one else around. I’m only 5ft 5in and slim and I was wearing three-inch heels.
“Although he was only a few inches taller he was very strong. He tied my hands behind my back with some stockings, put something woolly in my mouth and put a rope around my neck. He made me put my head between my knees and then roped it around my neck and knees.
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“Struggling all the while, I managed to get my left hand free and pulled the rope from my neck and we both fell down. Then he sat on top of me and held my hands across my chest, put my coat over my face so that I couldn’t see him, then pulled my knickers down.
“Then he asked my name but I gave him a false one. He also asked where I had been and I told him I’d been for a drink.
“Chillingly he told me, ‘I’m going to have sexual intercourse with you’. He used those exact words. And with that he raped me.
“Afterwards he took my black patent high-heel shoes. I had been doing some modelling work, and he rifled through my handbag and took the photos from the shoot of me modelling underwear. He also took my perfume and knickers. Then he told me to count to 2,000 before I left. Suddenly he was gone.”
She fled to her boyfriend’s home, and police were called. Swabs were taken and she helped to compile a photofit of her attacker. Mrs Armstrong said that the rape and the fact that Lloyd remained at large for so long wrecked her life.
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When she saw him in Sheffield Crown Court she said that he appeared a pathetic creature. “I could not get my head round him being the same guy that had ruined so many years of my life,” she said. “He looked like a small, frail old man. I stared at him but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.”
Sentencing Lloyd, Judge Alan Goldsack, QC, lifted an order that banned identifying the rapist’s second wife, Patricia.
The court had been told details of the couple’s bizarre sex life, in which Mrs Lloyd was filmed in a comatose state and tied up while her husband performed sexual acts with stilettos.
In a statement read to the court, Mrs Lloyd said that she had consented to all the acts shown in the videos and denied that her husband had ever drugged her. She said: “He has always been a good husband, good father and hardworking. I had never had any indication he had the capacity for anything like that.”
It appeared that Lloyd’s attacks stopped in 1986 when he married Patricia.
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Lloyd had hidden behind his image as a pillar of the community. The father of a 17-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, he lived in a £300,000 four-bedroom detached house in Thurnscoe, near Rotherham. He was a workaholic who often worked weekends at Dearne Valley Printers, at Wath-on-Dearne, near Rotherham.
When police asked him for a DNA sample, he telephoned his father and told him that he had been responsible for serious crimes. He then tried to hang himself. He was saved by his son.
One of the most disturbing items found in his possession was a pamphlet called The Perfect Victim, a rapist’s charter that described trussing up victims. It remained unclear whether Lloyd wrote it himself or downloaded it from the internet. When he was arrested he told police that he had been “a bastard” 20 years ago.
REIGN OF TERROR
February 13, 1983: Lloyd, working as a taxi driver, attempts to rape a 53-year-old woman, who is now dead, at Kimberworth, Rotherham
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December 3, 1983: Rapes a 21-year-old woman at Goldthorpe, near Barnsley
October 13, 1984: Attempts to rape a 21-year-old at Dalton, Rotherham
October 27, 1984: Rapes 25-year-old woman in Rotherham
December 22, 1984: An 18-year-old woman is raped at Hoyland, near Barnsley
August 1, 1986: Justine Armstrong, then 18, is attacked at knifepoint in Swinton
Lloyd denied robbing a woman of her stilettos in October, 1982 and attempting to rape a disabled 21-year-old in June, 1984. These matters were allowed to lie on file