A paedophile who murdered a 14-year-old boy in 1968 and was linked to several other unsolved cases has died in prison. Brian Field, 87, from Solihull, who was jailed for life in 2001 for the murder of Roy Tutill in 1968, died in February at HMP Full Sutton in Yorkshire, the Ministry of Justice said.
The department said the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will carry out an investigation as is procedure with all deaths in custody. Roy, 14, was sexually assaulted and killed after accepting a lift from Field.
The Kingston Grammar School pupil, who lived in Brockham Green, Dorking, Surrey, was abducted as he hitchhiked between home and school to save money to buy a bicycle. His body was found in a woodland in Mickleham three days later.
More than 30 years after Roy was murdered, police linked Field to the murder when a sample of his DNA was fed into a national police computer system after he was stopped during a routine drink-driving test. Field was jailed for life at the Old Bailey in November 2001.
At his sentencing, Judge Gerald Gordon said the evidence against Field was “overwhelming” and that the forensic evidence used to link him to Roy’s murder “should stand as a warning that there is no hiding place for sexual and violent criminals”.
After his imprisonment, Field was questioned by police regarding several other unsolved cases including that of David Spencer, 13, and Patrick Warren, 11, who went missing from the Chelmsley Wood area of Birmingham on Boxing Day 1996, and Mark Billington, who was found dead in a woodland a few miles from where Field lived in Solihull in 1984.
