SIDNEY COOKE

'Sidney Cooke' (also known as 'Hissing Sid'), (born 18 April 1927) is an British convicted paedophile serving two life sentences for a string of rapes against young boys.
Along with three accomplices, Cooke was imprisoned in 1989 for the manslaughter of Jason Swift in 1985. Jason was a fourteen year old boy, one of many the four men had brutalized, sexually tortured, and prostituted over a number of years. Cooke was sentenced to 19 years in prison, but was paroled in 1998 after convincing an appeals court that one of his accomplices was the ringleader of the paedophile ring. That same accomplice had told authorities that Cooke had murdered a 7-year-old boy called Mark Tildesley, in Wokingham, Berkshire in June 1984, but his role in the death was not investigated until years later. The boy's body has never been found. Mark disappeared while visiting a funfair in Wokingham on the evening of Friday 1 June 1984. It was believed he was lured away from the fair by Cooke, who had manned a test your strength machine, on the promise of a 50p bag of sweets. His bicycle was found chained to railings nearby. Three of the gang, Cooke, Lennie Smith and Leslie Bailey were put to trial in 1991 over Mark's murder but only Bailey was charged as they all blamed each other. He was subsequently himself murdered in prison by two fellow inmates in 1993. The Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute Cooke for Mark Tildesley's murder as he was already in prison for the manslaughter of Jason Swift. Cooke still refuses to discuss where they disposed of Mark's body after they killed him.
In 1999, a year after he was paroled, Cooke was arrested again for sexually abusing two brothers over several months in 1972-73, a crime which, among others, had come to public attention after they were reported on in the Channel 4 documentary ''Dispatches''. At trial, Cooke admitted committing a number of sexual offences against children (while denying certain others) and blamed the sexual abuse he said he himself had suffered as a child.

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★ Cooke: The predatory paedophile

★ Protests and riots over Cooke

★ Man in court on 14 sex charges