LAST MAN HUNG FOR RAPE IN BRITAIN

Aniceto Martinez, a young Mexican American soldier was working as a guard at a prisoner of war camp near Rugeley.

On the night of August the 6th 1944 he broke into the house of a 75 year old woman in Rugeley where he raped her. She survived to tell the police of her ordeal and the prisoner of war camp became the focus of their enquiries.

Only Martinez had been out of the camp the previous night and when questioned he confessed to the rape. Fibre samples were taken from his clothing and matched those found in his victims house adding forensic evidence to the confession.

Martinez was tried at nearby Lichfield on the 21st of February 1945 and became the last person to be hanged for rape in the U.K. when he went to the gallows on the 15th of June of that year.