Notorious nonce lastly snared by supercomputer after stealing id of dying pal
Justice has finally caught up with a paedophile Richard Burrows, who had spent 27 years on the run, after a computer software programme searched billions of photos to track him down in Thailand
A man thought to be one of UK’s most notorious paedophiles who stole a dying man’s identity as he spent 27 years on the run has finally been convicted after a being snared by a supercomputer. Richard Burrows, 80, vanished without trace in 1997 after skipping bail ahead of a court appearance after being charged with child sexual abuse.
He was on the run for almost three decades despite a huge manhunt, multiple Crimewatch appeals and the digital ‘ageing’ updating of his mugshot.
But British cops were finally able to extradite him after tracking him down “living in paradise” in Thailand using specialist software which searched billions of photos online.
Officers from Cheshire police ran the manipulated mugshot through an AI facial recognition programme and struck gold in 2023 when it unexpectedly came up with a match.
The software flagged Burrows’ mugshot as very similar to photos of ‘Peter Smith’, a British expat living in Thailand, partly thanks to a distinctive mole visible on both his and ‘Peter’s’ jaw.
‘Peter’ had an active interest in sailing and had previously been working at an advertising company in Phuket. And he had even featured in the local news in 2019 when he retired from his job, police said.
Detectives then discovered that Burrows had stolen the name Peter Smith from an acquaintance who was terminally ill. This allowed him to fraudulently obtain a ‘genuine’ passport in 1997 and so leave the country without detection.
Before extradition proceedings could get underway, police received a tip-off that ‘Smith’ had boarded a flight to Heathrow and he was arrested as soon as he landed in the UK.
Police said he sexually abused 26 boys in Cheshire, West Mercia, and the West Midlands from 1968 to 1995.
Allegations against Burrows partly related to his time as a housemaster at Danesford School in Congleton, Cheshire, between 1969 and 1971. The school has since closed.
Police said the abuse would often take place in toilets at night when he would wake boys on the pretence that he wanted to stop them wetting the bed.
One of his victims, James Harvey, who waived his anonymity, told the BBC that Burrows was an “appalling, manipulative abuser”. Jurors at Chester Crown Court found him guilty of 54 child sex offences on Monday after a seven-week trial. He had already admitted 43 offences.
During his trial, Burrows told the court he had fled to Thailand because he wanted to go sailing and had not carried out the offences. He said he wanted to return to the UK after 27 years as he had run out of money. He will be sentenced on April 7.
After the verdicts, DI Eleanor Atkinson said Burrows systematically abused his victims. She said: “Rather than face the consequences of his actions, he acted like a coward and fled the country using a stolen identity taken from an unwell man.
“In emails that we have found since his arrest, Burrows described how he has spent the past three decades ‘living in paradise’, while his victims have all been left to suffer as they struggled to try and rebuild their lives.”
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