Murder of Leanne Tiernan

Taylor has denied involvement in any other crimes. However, on 26 October 2018, he was sentenced to a whole life order for a series of other rapes and sexual assaults.

Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 Taylor's sentence for the murder of Tiernan was reviewed by the High Court of Justice with regard to the minimum term served before consideration for parole. On 19 December 2006 Mr. Justice Openshaw set the minimum term at 30 years. In his judgement he stated:

On 3 April 2003, following a police review of unsolved sexual attacks in the area, Taylor pleaded guilty to two separate rapes committed before the schoolgirl's murder and received a further sentence of life imprisonment with a recommended minimum of 30 years. As a result of the Tiernan murder inquiry, police re-opened at least ten further cold case murder investigations.

On 15 February 2002, Taylor appeared before Mr. Justice Poole at Leeds Crown Court and entered a plea of guilty with respect to the abduction of Leanne Tiernan. He was not asked to enter a plea on the charge of murder, pending a separate Newton hearing, and was remanded into custody awaiting the trial. On 8 July 2002, the first day of the trial, he entered a plea of guilty with respect to the murder of Leanne Tiernan. He was sentenced the same day, and Mr. Justice Astill, sentencing, said: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}

Taylor was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment. However, his sentence was later set as a minimum of 20 years by The Lord Woolf, then presiding as the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, meaning that Taylor is not among the prisoners who have been issued with a whole life tariff and who are unlikely ever to be released. Until November 2002, the Home Secretary had been responsible for deciding when or if a life sentence prisoner could be considered for parole, but a legal challenge by another convicted murderer resulted in the judiciary being given full responsibility for making these decisions.

Leanne's body was discovered on 20 August 2001 in dense woodland just 50 yards from a busy car park at Lindley Woods near Otley, on the border of North and West Yorkshire. Following the discovery of her body, DNA samples were taken from 200 people, including family, friends and known sex offenders living in the area. Forensic evidence led police to her killer, John Taylor, who lived only 1,300 yards from Tiernan's home. On 8 July 2002 Taylor pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court to her kidnap and murder and received two life sentences, with the trial judge telling him that he should expect to spend the rest of his life in prison. At the end of his trial, the police officers who brought him to justice spoke of their belief that he may have been responsible for other unsolved murders, including the 1992 murder of Yvonne Fitt, a Bradford sex worker.

On 20 August 2001, Tiernan's body was found by Mark Bisson, who was walking his two dogs in Lindley Woods, North Yorkshire, 100 yards from where another murder victim, Yvonne Fitt, had been discovered buried in 1992. Tiernan was identified from her fingerprints on 22 August 2001, and Det. Supt. Gregg announced that the inquiry had now become a murder investigation, codenamed Operation Conifer. Tiernan's body had been wrapped inside nine green plastic bin bags secured with twine, with a black bin bag secured around her head with a leather dog collar, then placed inside a floral-patterned duvet cover.

Taylor, who lived alone after his wife had divorced him in 1996, was arrested on suspicion of murder on 16 October 2001. Police immediately sealed off his house and gardens and a patch of wasteland to the rear of the property. The gardens were then excavated and the property, including three large chest freezers, subjected to a rigorous examination over a period of ten days.

The murder of Leanne Tiernan was a high-profile English child murder involving a 16-year-old schoolgirl who was abducted less than one mile from her home on 26 November 2000 while returning from a Christmas shopping trip in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and subsequently murdered. The missing person inquiry which followed was one of the largest in the history of West Yorkshire Police, involving the search of around 1,750 buildings, underwater searches of thirty-two drainage wells, the draining of a two-mile section of a canal and the halting of household waste collections.

Collections of household waste were halted temporarily to allow police to search all bins in the area for evidence. The inquiry also received assistance from British Waterways, British Transport Police, the Ministry of Defence’s aerial reconnaissance department, Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team, Interpol and the Police National Search Centre, a joint police and military training facility. On 3 December 2000 police staged a reconstruction of the girls' last movements, reenacted by Sarah Whitehouse and Tiernan's older sister Michelle, in the hope of jogging the memory of potential witnesses about Leanne's movements. Detectives also sent text messages to Tiernan's mobile phone, which was now switched off, but had briefly been activated on 27 November 2000. A local businessman offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to her safe return, and supermarket chain Iceland printed her picture and details on milk cartons sold at its stores nationwide.

There were unconfirmed reports of sightings as far away as Doncaster and Blackpool, but after nine months, there had been no positive sightings. Leanne's boyfriend, care assistant Wayne Keeley, 19, pleaded with her to get in touch. On 4 December 2000 police released an E-FIT facial composite of a man who had been seen walking a dog in the Houghley Gill area shortly before Tiernan disappeared. He was described as being "5 feet 8 inches tall and of stocky build with a round, reddish face that may possibly be scarred... wearing a black woollen hat, a three-quarter-length waterproof jacket and dirty jeans."

Police also identified Taylor as a suspect in the attempted murder of 27-year-old Glasgow prostitute Alison Wallace in July 2000.

As the police now had Taylor's DNA profile they were able to review other unsolved sex attacks in the locality where forensic evidence was still available for DNA extraction. Two rapes in particular stood out as they had both been committed on the estate where Taylor lived. The first took place on 18 October 1988 when a 32-year-old woman was attacked as she walked across Houghley Gill to collect her children from school. Taylor, who was wearing a mask and armed with a knife, forced her to carry out oral sex and then raped her. The second rape took place on 1 March 1989 when Taylor, again masked and wielding a knife, broke into the home of a 21-year-old woman in the middle of the day. He forced her into the bedroom, where he undressed her, blindfolded and gagged her, and then forced her to commit oral sex before raping her. Her small child was present in the house at the time. Taylor was formally rearrested in October 2002 and charged with the rapes. Although Taylor initially refused to cooperate with the police, the DNA evidence was overwhelming, and he eventually pleaded guilty to both rapes on 4 February 2003 at Leeds Crown Court. Judge Norman Jones QC, the Recorder of Leeds, sentenced him to two terms of life imprisonment and "expressly dis-applied early release provisions". Det. Supt. Gregg said: "We are still concerned that there may be other victims and families who have been affected by Taylor's actions" and revealed that a diamante necklace found in his car at the time of his 2001 arrest may have belonged to another victim as they were still unable to find out where it came from or who it belonged to. Taylor is known to have travelled across the country to meet women he had contacted through personal ads and also in his parcel delivery work, and with the solving of the two rape cases police discounted his insistence that Tiernan's murder was an isolated case and that he had taken his dog for a walk and "just snapped". They maintained that Taylor could have been a serial sex attacker for twenty years.

Leanne Tiernan (27 September 1984  – 26 November 2000), a pupil at West Leeds High School, was last seen alive at 4.50 pm on 26 November 2000 when she and her friend, 15-year-old Sarah Whitehouse, returned to Bramley by bus after a shopping trip to Leeds city centre. The girls parted company at Houghley Lane, and Whitehouse last saw her setting off along an unlit path through an area of wooded wasteland known as Houghley Gill. When Whitehouse arrived home, she telephoned Tiernan's home and was surprised to find she was not there. At 5.20 pm, Tiernan's mother rang her mobile phone to find out where she was, but the phone rang out for some time and then cut off. When she rang it again, it was cut off after four rings. At 7.00 pm, she rang the police and reported her daughter as a missing person.

John Taylor (b. (1956-08-27)27 August 1956, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire) was a parcel delivery worker for Parcelforce, and lived on the same housing estate as Tiernan, within a mile of where she was last seen alive. He was known locally as "the pet man," as he kept a number of dogs and ferrets and sold pet food, and was also known to be a poacher. His only previous conviction was for theft of a suit when he was 15 years old and he was considered by his neighbours to be trustworthy and "ordinary." Following their appeal for information, Taylor's name was given to the police separately by two former girlfriends of Taylor who had met him through lonely hearts columns, both saying that he had driven past the woods in their company and boasted of poaching there regularly.