Former Leicestershire Police officer jailed again for 'rape and murder fantasies'
Brian Darby has previously said he wanted to be "as evil as possible"
Last updated 3rd Jul 2026
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A former Leicestershire Police officer who once plotted to become a serial killer has been locked up again for sharing fantasies online about raping and murdering women and girls.
Brian Darby, 80, was jailed for life in 2002 after putting his murderous plans into action, stalking potential victims and breaking into one woman’s home before putting a wire around her neck.
Darby, who admitted at the time he wanted to be “as evil as possible”, was eventually set free from prison on licence in 2017.
But Wood Green Crown Court heard he started looking at indecent pictures of children online almost as soon as he was freed.
When he was arrested in February this year, after creating and distributing indecent images of children that he had created using AI, police also found a series of online chats where he had shared horrifying rape and murder fantasies.
Prosecutor Bartholomew O’Toole told the hearing Darby had posted a sexual fantasy involving killing children on Reddit, and online chats featured his ambitions to strangle, smother and drown women.
He said one post spelled out the “strangulation of his wife with family gathering around to voice encouragement and advice”.
In another post, Darby said schools should “train girls to be sex slaves and dominatrices”, while women should be killed at the age of 30.
Judge John Law sentenced Darby on Friday to four years in prison, with an extra two years on licence once released.
But he told the octogenarian, who has been recalled to prison to continue serving his life licence behind bars, that he may now die in jail without ever being released again.
He said Darby was “emotionally detached and indifferent” when quizzed about his latest set of offending, and “did not appear to be embarrassed or ashamed”.
He said the online rape and murder fantasies “echo” Darby’s 2002 convictions for attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and aggravated burglary.
Assessing Darby as a dangerous offender, the judge pointed to his “entrenched interest in violent sexual material involving children and adults, your online dissemination of that material and fantasies, and a pattern of offending”.
Originally convicted of indecent assault against boys
Darby was sacked as a PC at Leicestershire Police in the 1970s when he was convicted of indecently assaulting boys.
He went on to work as a health and safety officer for the BBC in the 1980s, the court heard.
In 2001, Darby admitted attempted murder and was convicted at trial of conspiracy to murder alongside his lover Jeanette White.
The Old Bailey heard White was “under the spell” of Darby as they exchanged around 450 pages of letters about serial killing, rape, cannibalism, and necrophilia.
By 2000, the fantasies had been turned into reality as the couple plotted to murder a woman and her children in their home in Westminster, while Darby answered adverts from women looking for a room to let so that he could stalk them.
A 45-year-old mother narrowly escaped death when Darby called at her home in Ealing, west London, posing as a BBC researcher.
He placed a wire noose around her neck intending to rape and kill her, but she managed to escape into the street, the 2002 sentencing hearing was told.
The court heard on Friday that Darby used encryption technology to try to hide his identity when he used AI online to create the indecent images of children.
Olivia Beach, representing Darby, said he accepts his actions were “wrong”, and he blames it on “addiction which is something out of his control and there is nothing he can do about it”.
The court also heard Darby volunteers in prison to listen to the problems and issues of other inmates.
Darby, from Enfield, north London, will serve around two and a half years of his prison term before being considered for release, but he must now also convince the Parole Board that he is safe to be freed again from his life sentence.
He pleaded guilty to nine obscene communications charges, three counts of making indecent photographs of a child, and two counts of distributing indecent photographs of a child.