Each of the five men pictured here were caught following advances in forensic science and the creation of a South Yorkshire Police cold case team which led to some cases being re-examined, and to detectives finally tracing the criminals responsible.
In some cases included in this list, the men were snared after committing additional crimes. The progression of DNA testing in the interim meant it was possible to link them to their previous crime upon their arrest, leading to them being prosecuted them for both sets of offences.
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1. Six men who thought they got away with their crimes for years
Each of the six men pictured here were caught following advances in forensic science and the creation of a South Yorkshire Police cold case team which led to some cases being re-examined, and to detectives finally tracing the criminals responsible | Getty/SYP/3rd party
2. David Hill: Savage rapist jailed more than 40 years after attack
In the early hours of the morning on September 7, 1985, David Hill sneaked up behind a woman in her 20s at an underground car park in Barker’s Pool. He put a knife to her neck and proceeded to rape her in her car before fleeing. Hill, now aged 75, managed to evade justice for more than four decades after the wicked attack. The woman he preyed upon sadly did not live to see Hill finally convicted for the wicked attack, and passed away in the 1990s. But the fight for justice continued after her death, with the breakthrough coming in 2021 when a DNA review of evidence kept in storage found a match to Hill’s, who had been swabbed upon his arrest for a public order offence. He was subsequently charged with raping the complainant, and earlier this year (2026) a jury found him guilty of the offence. Hill was sent to begin a 15-year prison sentence on March 20, 2026, when Judge Peter Hampton told the convicted sex offender he is now likely to die behind bars. “Whilst you have gone unpunished for many years, the victim suffered,” Judge Hampton said. | SYP
3. Gary Allen: Double murderer jailed 14 years after first killing
Following a trial last in 2021, Gary Allen, 48, was jailed for life for murdering mother-of-three Samantha Class in Hull in 1997, and mother-of-four Alena Grlakova in Rotherham in 2018. The murders were branded "wicked" acts by a judge, Mr Justice Goose, as he ordered Allen to serve a minimum of 37 years in prison at his sentencing in June 2021. Allen was cleared of the murder of Ms Class in 2000, but this acquittal was overturned in 2019 after "compelling" new evidence was personally presented to Appeal Court judges by Director of Public Prosecutions Max Hill QC. Allen denied killing either of the women but was found guilty of two counts of murder by a jury that heard eight weeks of evidence. At Allen's trial, jurors heard harrowing details of how the body of 29-year-old Ms Class, who was working in the sex industry, was found by children on the banks of the Humber in October 1997. She had 33 different injuries. Ms Class left three children, Sophia, Aiden and Lewis. Ms Grlakova's body was found naked in a stream in Rotherham in April 2019, four months after she was last seen on Boxing Day 2018. The 38-year-old mum had been strangled. She was from Slovakia and moved to the UK in 2008 but, after becoming estranged from her husband and children, she started to work in the sex industry. Sheffield Crown Court heard how Allen attacked two sex workers in 2000 in Plymouth, just weeks after he was acquitted of Ms Class's murder. After he was jailed for those attacks, he told a probation officer about his dislike of sex workers and women in general, saying: "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." Photo: SYP
4. Kevin Shaw: Vile rapist finally brought to justice almost 20 years later
For more than 18 years vile Kevin Shaw thought he had got away with his heinous crime, but in December 2006 he was arrested by police after he was found performing an indecent act in his car outside a Sheffield care home. The incident triggered a sequence of events which saw him jailed for 12 years in May 2008. Shaw's victim was just 19-years-old when she was raped, but by the time Shaw was finally caught for his crimes, she was a grown mum-of-three. Speaking in 2008, the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: "About three years ago I read on Teletext about DNA matching and I knew someone who was capable of doing what he’d done would do something else one day and get caught." "When they asked me if I wanted to carry on through with it I was determined I was going to take it all the way. When you know there’s somebody like that out there you can’t just leave it. "The next time it could have been my daughter he attacked, or someone else who might not have got away." After jurors at Sheffield Crown Court returned their guilty verdict they heard a victim impact statement from the woman about the effect of the attack. She said from the night of September 15, 1989 onwards, her life changed completely. "I changed from a confident, happy, fun-loving young woman into a frightened, pessimistic, shell of a woman, " she said. "The girl I was vanished off the face of the world. I didn’t know what happened to her or where she went." Photo: SYP