Paul Michael Pearson was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by Richard Blenkey. The investigation became a high profile murder case in the United Kingdom. Following his conviction, Blenkey was imprisoned for life, serving a minimum of twenty years.

R.I.P   Paul Pearson

On August 14th 1991 seven year old Paul Pearson vanished as he cycled home after playing with a friend in saltburn – North Yorkshire. A local man, Richard Blenkey, lured Paul into his chicken hut on his allotment and stripped and sexually assaulted him. He then beat Paul about the face and strangled him with chicken thread. The bike and Paul’s naked body were found the next day in an overgrown 50ft ravine and two days later Blenkey was arrested.

Richard Blenkey

Blenkey insisted he was innocent, however after exchanging letters whilst on remand with Bernard O’Mahoney, Blenkey confessed to the murder. On 26th October 1992 Richard Blenkey was forced to plead guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge recommended that he should serve a minimum of 20 years before being considered for parole. As of, 2010 Blenkey is now entering his 19th year in custody and has applied to be transferred to an open prison, were he will be permitted to work within the community and granted the rights to extra visits and the opportunity to prepare for parole.

From sources within the police our family learnt that, in the first eight years of his sentence, Blenkey displayed no remorse or even any indication that he would progress through the prison category system. It is therefore evident; Richard Blenkey over the course of recent years has learnt to manipulate the system to his advantage to work through the system to be granted open prison status and eventually his hope for release..

It should also be brought to public’s attention that Richard Blenkey has a history of abusing children prior to Paul’s murder. A concern of our family is that Blenkey was never charged with a sexual offence and therefore is not obliged to sign the sex offenders register. The sex offenders register came into force in 1997, and contains details of individuals who have been cautioned, convicted or released from prison for sexual crimes against children or adults. Infuriatingly, the law does not require people convicted of sexual offences before 1997 to register on it, which ultimately fails to protect children. The family are seeking to amend the law to register all individuals details who were convicted prior 1997 in order to protect children..

Our family are campaigning for Richard Blenkey to be charged for the sex offence he inflicted upon Paul and for the offender to receive a longer incarceration for the first several years of his prison sentence in which he showed no remorse for his actions. The family strongly believes that if the offender is permitted to live freely in society again there will be another young victim and another family shattered