Anita Rose murder: Could Roy Barclay have been caught before killing?

BBC News

9 hours ago

The sun was rising over the village of Brantham in Suffolk when Anita Rose set off for an early morning dog walk. She was a mother of six, and a grandmother of 13. Within an hour, she had been assaulted so brutally that her injuries were akin to those of someone in a head-on car crash. She died four days later.The man responsible, Roy Barclay, was on a list of Suffolk Police's most wanted criminals but he had managed to avoid being recalled to prison for the past two years by sleeping in makeshift camps.But despite this, Barclay had left a sizeable digital footprint - using his bank card to order items online and leaving hundreds of reviews on Google Maps.With all this online activity, how did he manage to evade police and remain free to murder Anita?
Anita was an "early bird", her partner Richard Jones said. She loved to walk her springer spaniel Bruce around Brantham, a village where she'd lived for six years and always said she felt safe. The 57-year-old loved watching the sun come up before other people were awake.On the morning of 24 July last year, Mr Jones and Anita chatted on the phone while she walked. He worked as a lorry driver and would spend time away from home during the week, so the couple would catch up while Anita took Bruce on the first of his three daily walks.The couple had known each other since they were teenagers and had started dating in 2011 after a chance meeting at a petrol station in Copdock where Anita worked.The pair's final conversation ended with Anita telling the 59-year-old to "drive safe, I love you".Within an hour of hanging up, she was found unconscious and severely injured on a track road near a railway line by a cyclist, Jerome Tassel, and dog walker Rachel Island.
During the trial, Ms Island told the court Anita had "laboured breathing" and patches of blood on her face, and was only wearing leggings and a black sports bra, despite leaving the house wearing her pink Regatta jacket.Mr Tassel described how her dog Bruce was lying "patiently" next to her body with his lead wrapped twice around her leg - this turned out to be something Barclay had also done after the 2015 attack for which he was jailed.Neuropathologist Dr Kieran Allinson, who treated Anita at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, likened her injuries to those seen in high speed car crashes and said they were consistent with kicking, stamping and repeated impacts to the head.
In the weeks that followed, Barclay was described during his Ipswich Crown Court trial as having lived in carefully-hidden camps and shaving his head to change his appearance.He had been wanted by police since 2022, when he breached the terms of his licence by making himself homeless. Barclay had been jailed in 2015 for a violent, unprovoked assault on an elderly man in an Essex seaside town, and was released on parole in 2020.After killing Anita, his internet search history showed he had looked up news articles about the attack. He also looked up Anita's partner on social media.Barclay is also said to have kept some of her belongings - including a pink Regatta jacket - at his makeshift camps.
In the weeks after Anita's murder, Suffolk Police entered into one of its biggest-ever investigations to find the culprit.A number of people were arrested and bailed.Barclay, meanwhile, continued to be a prolific reviewer on Google Maps for hundreds of locations around Suffolk and Essex.Between 2022 and October 2024, he posted thousands of photos of churches, Amazon lockers, libraries, beaches, council buildings, statues and more - earning himself a 'Level 8' contributor status (the highest being level 10).One review was of Decoy Pond in Brantham, with photos posted between April and July - the month he murdered Anita a short distance away.
Three months after the murder, his final few Google reviews were about Flatford, a historic area on the Essex-Suffolk border famed for inspiring iconic paintings."It's a beautiful, unspoilt rural idyll that somehow exists in its own timelessness, as if awaiting the return of John Constable," wrote Barclay in a review posted in October 2024.By then he was camping out a mile from where he'd killed Anita - but a chance meeting with a Suffolk Police officer near White Bridge, between Brantham and Manningtree, led to his arrest.Barclay gave the officer, Det Con Simpson, a fake name, coming across as "quite nervous and quite anxious", the detective said.Six days later on 21 October, at Ipswich County Library, Barclay was arrested and was subsequently charged with Anita's murder, which he denied.
After his conviction, the Crown Prosecution Service described Barclay as "an individual that… has a history for acting violently so we knew that this was somebody that could act unprovoked in a very violent manner".The 2015 attack in Walton-on-the-Naze left the victim, 82-year-old Leslie Gunfield, with serious injuries to his head, neck, face and jaw.Barclay was jailed for 10 years for the assault, but was released on licence after five.The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), which is responsible for probation services, told the BBC that a recall notice for Barclay was issued quickly following the breach of his licence conditions.In doing this, finding Barclay became the responsibility of Suffolk Police.
The force began looking for him in 2022, issuing a press release in January 2024 asking for members of the public to get in touch if they saw him, saying he had "links across Suffolk and Essex".Just over a month before he murdered Anita, on 10 June, Barclay had left a comment on an online article called 'Fixing Fixed Term Recalls'. He accused the MoJ of "deliberately" setting up prison leavers "to fail" and "return like a boomerang"."Is it really any surprise that so many of those on license are on recall within the first year of release?" he wrote. The MoJ has refuted these claims.
Hamish Brown, a former detective inspector who worked for the Specialist Crime Directorate at New Scotland Yard, said his own experience taught him that officers were often not given "huge amounts of time" to investigate wanted suspects.But in this case, he said, the force would have serious questions to answer."Suffolk Police failed in tracking him down, despite him using his bank card and reviewing places on Google."I'm surprised Suffolk Police missed this and didn't find him, despite the trail he was leaving."The bottom line is it could have been prevented if the police had done their job and gone looking for the person."So the police will have to brace themselves and be answerable."But Paul Bernal, professor of information technology law at the University of East Anglia, believes there would have been a limit to how useful the Google reviews could have been in tracking Barclay down."There is absolutely no way a social media or search provider would know that those things are in any way needed in a police investigation," he told the BBC."How could you tell if somebody named Roy Barclay is saying this cafe is rather nice... that might be something useful in an investigation? It would be really difficult."
Speaking after the jury found Barclay guilty, Anita's family stood on the court steps and spoke of the changes they said "need to be made within the probation service and justice system"."We need make sure our communities are safe and criminals are taken back to prison when they break the terms of their probations," her eldest daughter Jess said."They cannot remain at large - there's too much at stake."
'Definitive answers'
Suffolk Police confirmed it would conduct a voluntary partnership review which would look at how the force and the probation service handled the search for Barclay. "It will look closely at the information sharing processes and how the organisations collaborated," said assistant chief constable Alice Scott."This review will be a thorough assessment and scrutiny of the processes concerning Barclay. "It will be expedited as soon as possible so we can provide clear and definitive answers for Anita's family."
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