John Thomas Straffen was born at Borden in Kent on February 27, 1930, to an army family, and grew up in Bath. He had an assessed mental age of about six and a long record of petty theft and strangling attempts on children from the age of eight. He was sent to an institution for the mentally defective at ten and released in 1951.
In July 1951 he strangled Brenda Goddard, five, in a field near Bath, and in August Cicely Batstone, nine, whom he had taken to the cinema in front of witnesses. He made no attempt to conceal either. He was found unfit to plead and committed to Broadmoor.
On April 29, 1952, he climbed a shed roof and got over the wall, and was at liberty for about four hours. In that time he strangled five-year-old Linda Bowyer, who was riding her bicycle in Farley Hill. He was back inside before he was missed.
Because he had escaped rather than been discharged, he was tried in the ordinary courts, and this time was found fit to plead. He was convicted at Winchester in July 1952 and sentenced to death, and reprieved by the Home Secretary six days before the execution, on the ground of his mental state.
He then stayed in prison for the rest of his life, at Wandsworth, Parkhurst, Durham and finally Long Lartin, refused parole every time it came up. He died on November 19, 2007, aged seventy-seven, having served fifty-five years, the longest continuous sentence served in British legal history. The 1952 escape led directly to the installation of the Broadmoor siren, which was tested every Monday morning for decades.