Same Time Next Week

Chapter 40

Lancashire Bugle, Tuesday 30 April

‘THERE WERE TWO PENNINE PROWLERS – I KNOW BECAUSE I SURVIVED THEM.’

It is thirty years since Gillian Smith, 62, was walking home from her job as a barmaid in Skelshill Lancashire when she was accosted by a man who asked to escort her home as ‘there are nutters about at this time of night’.

That was Wayne Craven, dubbed the Pennine Prowler, who was caught twenty years ago this week, after Smith recognised his voice in a Yorkshire pub. Craven had taken his new wife out to celebrate her birthday and Smith overheard him talking while she and her mother were eating. Shaking, she rang the police from the toilets. DNA samples taken from the Prowler’s later attacks matched Craven, who surprisingly had never been registered on the police database and so had evaded detection.

‘I don’t remember much about that night because of the damage to my head, but I would never forget his voice or that I was attacked by two men. The other was much bigger but I never saw his face and he never spoke. I have wondered if that’s because he had an obvious accent.’

The second man remained at large and though there was a strong suspect in Edek Urbaniak, a Polish-born toy repairer, who died in 2018, Gillian Smith failed to pick him out of a police line-up.

‘They didn’t really believe me when I told them there were two,’ she said. ‘They might have if the DNA samples taken from me hadn’t been lost by the forensic officer. Then Craven got sick and told the priest there was a second man, at least for some of the attacks, but he wouldn’t give him up. He toyed with the police for five full months and when he was ready to say the name, he died before he could. Is that second prowler still out there? Who is he? Because someone knows who he is. How can I truly rest until I know too?’