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The peeping tom who got his kicks from stripping and having sex on stage
Jack Lefley13.03.09
John Worboys began on the path to becoming Britain's most prolific sex offender long before he was the black-cab rapist.
His soft-spoken charm masked his true nature, a violent and manipulative pervert who relished exercising complete power over women.
Born in Enfield in April 1957, Worboys left school at 16 and worked as a milkman for 11 years before becoming a security guard. He started as a peeping tom in his younger years — using walking his dogs late at night as an excuse to spy on women in their home.
He performed as male stripper and kissagram “Terry the Minder” in the late Eighties and Nineties, taking his clothes off to the television theme tune of the ITV show.
He appeared at hen parties, gay nights and swingers' clubs, performing sex acts live on stage, often having sex with drunk women from the audience.
Booking agents still remember him as the “best endowed” man in the industry. He was featured in a tabloid exposé of the swinging scene in December 1992 when two reporters went undercover at an orgy. In 2006, he appeared in a hardcore pornographic film called F**k The Bride.
But eventually, as he aged and his attractiveness to women waned, drugging and raping passengers in the back of his black cab was the only way he could get his kicks.
It was during that period that Worboys met and lived with hairdresser Jean Marriott and her three children from a previous marriage in Hackney.
They married in October 1991, when they were both 34, but it was an abusive relationship.
Worboys's stepson, Stephen Marriott, recalls coming home from school to see his mother with black eyes. Neighbours saw her running down the street after furious rows.
Mr Marriott, now 29 and a father of two, said: “He used to beat my mum so badly that she once tried to kill him. He went for her while she was sewing and she tried to stab him with a pair of scissors. Then she took an overdose of painkillers to try and commit suicide.”
Mr Marriott told how Worboys was once caught by an off-duty policeman peering through a woman's bedroom window. The officer punched him in the face.
On another occasion one of Mr Marriott's teenage sisters woke at night to find her stepfather looming over her in her bedroom. Worboys laughed it off. Mr Marriott added: “He hated women. He enjoyed getting control over them.”
Jean and Worboys divorced in May 1999. Three years earlier Worboys had stopped stripping and began work as a licensed black cab driver. Worboys made about £1,000 a week in his cab and £20,000 a year from letting properties he owned. By the time he was caught, he owned his £600,000 house on the banks of the Thames in Rotherhithe. He also owned a property in Enfield and a £250,000 flat in Poole, Dorset, where police have linked him to other sex attacks. The property was used as a pornographic film studio.
He had a string of girlfriends before and after Jean, including a barrister who he lived with in a £1 million house in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. Some he met in his cab, and was said to enjoy a “normal sexual relationship” with. When he was caught he was dating 44-year-old Kathy Martin.
