Richard Blenkey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Blenkey (born 1959) is a British murderer.
On 14 August 1991, he molested and strangled seven-year-old Paul Pearson in a chicken hut on an allotment in the Cleveland village of Marske. He was arrested two days later, shortly after Paul's body was found in a ravine.
While on remand, Blenkey exchanged letters with a man called Bernard O'Mahoney and one of those letters included a written confession to the murder. Mr O'Mahoney showed the letter to police and it was used as evidence against Blenkey when he went on trial at Teesside Crown Court on 26 October 1992. This influenced him to enter a guilty plea and end the trial on the same day that it had started.
Blenkey was sentenced to life imprisonment and the trial judge recommended that he should serve a minimum of 20 years before being considered for parole.
Blenkey is now entering his 16th year in custody and the earliest date that he could be released is August 2011 - in just over five years' time.
