Documentary to air about double killer Gary Allen who "hated sex workers" and is "danger to women"
A double killer who is the subject of a new documentary this weekend “hated sex workers” and is a “danger to women”.
In 2021 Gary Allen was convicted of the murders of two women 21 years apart and was branded “wicked” and “extremely dangerous” by the judge who jailed him at Sheffield Crown Court.
After a historic trial he was found guilty of the murder of 29-year-old Samantha Class in Hull, having been found not guilty in a previous trial years earlier.
He was also found guilty of the murder of 38-year-old Alena Grlakova.
In a historic move, Allen was tried for a second time over Samantha’s murder, having been acquitted following a trial in 2000.
New evidence allowed him to be tried again and the result of his first trial was quashed.
Samantha was killed in Hull in October 1997 and Alena Grlakova was fatally attacked in Rotherham in 2018.
Following his convictions, the Crown Prosecution Service branded him a “dangerous individual who presents an obvious and immediate danger to women”.
During his trial it emerged that while in prison on remand, ahead of his court case for the two murders, he told probation workers that sex workers were “scum” and “the lowest of the low’”.
He also admitted to having regular, violent fantasies involving sex workers, stating: “I like to frighten them, I like to cause pain, I like to make them cry, I like blood, I like to hurt them, I enjoy it, it makes me feel good.”
Allen came to the attention of the police in July 1998 when he was stopped by police officers on suspicion of drink driving, and a routine DNA sample was taken, which proved a match with DNA recovered from the body and clothing of Samantha nine months earlier.
In his police interview, he admitted to having sex with Samantha on the night she disappeared, but denied murder.
He was tried and acquitted of her murder two years later and within six weeks of walking free from court attacked two other women in Plymouth.
In April 2019 the naked body of his second victim, Alena, was discovered in a stream in the Parkgate area of Rotherham, where Allen was living.
Mum-of-four, Alena, met her killer at a bus stop in October 2018 and began to call at his flat.
Allen said they sometimes had sex and he gave her money and cigarettes.
As part of the police investigation into Alena’s disappearance, analysis of her telephone records revealed that she and Allen had been in touch with each other.
Allen was arrested in January 2019 on suspicion of breaking a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, which prohibited him from having contact with sex workers.
Further police investigations revealed CCTV evidence of Alena visiting Allen on Boxing Day 2018 – the day she vanished.
Electronic voice recordings made by Allen were found in which he threatened Alena with serious harm.
Analysis of his computer revealed that he had conducted searches for digging tools.
He also bought disposable gloves and a trowel, and was found to have searched news sites for reports of Alena’s disappearance.
Jailing him, Judge Justice Goose branded Allen ‘wicked’, ‘extremely dangerous’ and said he held a ‘warped view of women’.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Oughton, who ran the case for South Yorkshire Police, started working on it when Alena was first reported missing and after the killer was convicted he described how it was a difficult investigation from the outset, with officers not knowing if the mum-of-four was dead or alive, or even if she was in the UK or back in Slovakia, where she was originally from.
He said another theory was that she may have been trafficked.
The detective said there were also 125 possible sightings of Alena, which all needed followed up.
In total, 232 police officers worked on the investigation, 880 witnesses were spoken to, 1,096 exhibits were seized and 37,624 hours of CCTV were retrieved.
It became a murder probe when DC Richard Stump unearthed voice recordings made by Allen in which he could be heard threatening to harm Alena on the night she vanished.
Following the discovery of Alena’s body, two police officers travelled to Slovakia to break the news to her loved ones and DCI Oughton personally accompanied some family members, including her children, to lay flowers and light candles at the stream where her body was found.
“It was an incredibly emotional moment and one which will stay with me forever,” the detective recalled.
“It made me more determined than ever to make sure Gary Allen would face the consequences of his despicable actions. Over the coming months, following a tremendous amount of work by the team, everything started to come together.”