Police chief jailed for historic sexual abuse dies just weeks into sentence
A paedophile police chief who escaped justice for 30 years has died less than two months into his 12-year jail term for sex crimes against two boys.
Former Superintendent Gordon Anglesea, 79, used his position and “connections with authority” to molest his two victims, while running a “naughty boy school” in North Wales in the 1980s.
He escaped justice for three decades and sued for libel in 1991 when the press linked him to paedophiles, winning £375,000 in damages.
But Anglesea, of Colwyn Bay, was jailed on November 4, after being convicted of four counts of indecent assault between 1982 and 1987, against two boys, both aged 14 or 15 at the time, following a six-week trial at Mold Crown Court.
The father-of-five served 41 days before his death on Thursday.
A Prison Service spokesman said: “HMP Rye Hill prisoner Gordon Anglesea died in hospital today at around 9.30am.
“As with all deaths in custody, the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.”
His lawyer Mike Mackey, from Manchester firm Burton Copeland, told the North Wales Daily Post: “I understand he died this morning. However, he died in a hospital bed having been admitted some days ago.”
During his trial Anglesea was accused of having “a connection” to notorious North Wales paedophile John Allen and others who were part of a paedophile ring operating in the region using children’s homes as cover for their abuse.
Anglesea was convicted of three counts of indecently assaulting a boy while on duty as a police inspector and one against a second boy at a private address while he was off duty.
He had dodged the abuse claims for years and suggested he was a victim of a post-Jimmy Savile “witch hunt” by alleged victims conspiring to make compensation claims.
The defendant started his police career in 1957 in Cheshire after serving in the Royal Air Force.
A Freemason, he transferred to Wrexham in 1976, was promoted to the rank of inspector and ran the attendance centre between 1979 and 1987, before retiring as a superintendent in 1991.
Anglesea enjoyed retirement for more than 20 years before being arrested in 2013 by officers from Operation Pallial, launched by the National Crime Agency (NCA) in response to claims on BBC’s Newsnight that prominent figures had preyed on boys as part of a paedophile ring.
The NCA is now to conduct another investigation into an alleged cover-up over the child sex abuse scandal at North Wales care homes.
Anglesea protested his innocence and had reportedly instructed solicitors to launch an appeal against his convictions.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2016, All Rights Reserved. Picture (c) Joe Giddens / PA Wire.
