Man who almost got away with murder to be sentenced in Sheffield today

Gary Allen, aged 47, of Bradbury’s Close, Parkgate, killed one victim in Hull in 1997 and another in Rotherham in 2018.

The body of his first victim, Samantha Class, 29, was found on a river bank after she had been strangled and run over with a car.

Allen was stopped by the police on suspicion of drink driving nine months later and a routine DNA sample was taken, which proved a match with samples discovered from Samantha’s body.

Allen admitted to having had sex with Samantha, who was a prostitute, on the night she disappeared, but denied her murder.

He went on trial and was acquitted in 2000 but within six weeks of walking free from court he went on to attack two other sex workers in Plymouth.

In prison he told probation workers that prostitutes were ‘scum’ and ‘the lowest of the low’.

Following his released from prison, Allen relocated to Rotherham, where 38-year-old sex worker Alena Grlakova was reported missing after she was last seen alive on Boxing Day 2018.

Her naked body was found in a stream four months later.

Phone records established that the mum-of-four was an acquaintance of Allen’s and detectives unearthed voice recordings of him threatening Alena with violence on the night she disappeared.

He was angry that Alena, originally from Slovakia, kept calling at his flat when he had asked her not to.

Detectives found similarities with the murder of Samantha Class, unearthed new evidence and were granted permission to charge him with the murder for a second time.

Normally suspects can only be tried for a crime once but due to a change in legislation, suspects can now be tried for a second time if ‘new and compelling evidence’ comes to light.

Because Allen admitted to having regular, violent fantasies involving sex workers, the National Crime Agency is involved in looking for possible links with other unsolved offences involving prostitutes elsewhere in the country.

There are two unsolved prostitute murders in Sheffield but Allen was in prison when one offence was committed.

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