A serial paedophile who was jailed three decades after raping at least nine schoolgirls died in prison sitting in his own faeces while watching television.
Jack Keith King began sexually abusing children in the 1970s but fled Sydney for Western Australia in 1986 after being charged and was not arrested again until 2015.
He was sentenced in the New South Wales District Court to 15 years’ jail in March 2017 for raping nine girls in the 1980s, with a non-parole period of seven years and six months.
The father-of-five died alone in his cell aged 77 of bladder cancer and not even his family took part in a subsequent coronial inquiry.
Serial paedophile Jack Keith King, who was jailed three decades after raping at least nine schoolgirls, died in prison sitting in his own faeces while watching television. He was 77
King was questioned over the 1968 disappearance of seven-year-old Linda Stilwell from Melbourne’s Little Luna Park at St Kilda, near where King was living. Linda is pictured right with her siblings Karen and Gary a few months before she vanished
King was born in Fulham West in the United Kingdom, was put into care by his father when he was 11 and came to Australia as a child migrant in 1955 aged 12.
He was educated at the Dr Barnados Farm School at Picton in south-western Sydney then worked at a service station in the city’s north-west at Ryde.
King married in 1971 and fathered a daughter and a son. That marriage would not last but he would have three more children with another woman.
At some point King moved to Victoria and was arrested for a sexual offence against a child in the 1970s but skipped bail.
He was also questioned over the 1968 disappearance of seven-year-old Linda Stilwell from Melbourne’s Little Luna Park because he was living in the area at the time.
Victoria’s deputy state coroner found in 2009 that Linda’s death had been caused by notorious child killer Derek Percy, who died in custody in 2013.
King died alone in his cell at Sydney’s Long Bay Hospital (pictured) after being diagnosed with bladder cancer and dementia. Not even his family showed any interest in a subsequent coronial inquest
Back in Sydney, King ran a fish and chip shop with his wife in Henderson Road, Alexandria in Sydney’s inner west, where raped primary school-aged girls upstairs.
King defiled his first victim, who knew him as Lionel, when she was six and continued the assaults until she was nine. He used that little girl to lure other victims.
King set up a trampoline to attract children into his lair and would ask one child to invite others to a birthday party where he would violate them.
When he was finally charged in 1986 after at least a decade of offending King failed to appear at Redfern Local Court and disappeared.
A warrant was issued for his arrest but he had fled to Western Australia where he lived quietly until a NSW dogged detective tracked him down in retirement.
King apparently thought he was safe in Western Australia. After his fingerprints (pictured) were matched with NSW records he was arrested, extradited and locked up in NSW in 2015.
In December 2013 a woman aged in her late 30s walked into a country NSW police station and reported she had been raped by a man named Lionel in the 1980s.
That woman, King’s first victim, remembered ‘Lionel’ had a slight English accent, pockmarked skin and wore thick spectacles.
She also recalled the name of a boy she would see in King’s company and the name of the boy’s mother. Their names have been suppressed by a court order.
While the woman did not know the relationship between the boy and ‘Lionel’ he turned out to be King’s son, who was located by Detective Senior Constable Ellen Quinn.
The son, who had been relentlessly physically abused during his childhood, was coincidentally contacted on Facebook by another of his father’s victims.
One of King’s relatives had posted a picture of King on Instagram and that photograph matched what Detective Senior Constable Quinn knew of his appearance.
Jack Keith King began sexually abusing children in the 1970s but fled Sydney for Western Australia in 1986 after being charged and was not arrested again until 2015
Jack Keith King did not have a driver’s licence or passport but a man with his name and date of birth had used those details to pay utility bills at an address in Western Australia.
King, who had married again and fathered three more children, apparently thought he had run far enough to escape any reckoning.
After his fingerprints were matched with NSW records King was arrested, extradited and refused bail back in NSW on July 2, 2015.
His son attended the subsequent trial and supported his father’s victims as they gave harrowing statements about the lifelong effects of what King had done to them.
While in custody King was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He was also suffering from dementia and osteoarthritis and was incontinent.
A fellow prisoner who served seven months with King at the South Coast Correctional Centre in Nowra said the degenerate appeared to be losing his mind by 2018.
‘He was not liked in the wing as he consistently told bizarre stories,’ the former inmate said.
‘The story he used to tell me was that he tried for years to sell his special chicken recipe to KFC because it was more tasty.
‘I would hazard a guess that his mental state was declining considerably.’
King was transferred to Long Bay Hospital’s Aged Care and Rehabilitation Ward for palliative care management in August 2020. He died there on September 20 that year
King was transferred to Long Bay Hospital’s Aged Care and Rehabilitation Ward for palliative care management in August 2020.
On the afternoon of September 20 he had refused food and was sitting in a reclining chair in front of his television in the ward’s Cell 11.
About 4pm a passing nurse detected the smell of faeces coming from King’s cell and saw him fidgeting. When she returned with another nurse to change his clothes he was dead.
A coronial inquest conducted by Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame in November last year found King had died of natural causes.
‘The court was informed that at the time of his death Mr King was estranged from his family,’ Ms Grahame reported.
‘No family members wished to take part in the inquest process and no care or treatment issues were raised.’
