Sidney Cooke

Sidney Charles Cooke (born 18 April 1927) is an English convicted child molester, murderer and suspected serial killer and serial rapist serving two life sentences. He was the leader of a child sex ring suspected of up to twenty child murders of young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooke and other members of the ring were convicted of three killings in total, although he was only convicted of one himself. Cooke is suspected by police of killing the three boys with the ring; he was named by gang member Leslie Bailey as the killer of Mark Tildesley in 1984 when Bailey confessed to the murder, and he is also suspected to have been involved in the murder of 6-year-old Barry Lewis which Bailey was also convicted of. Cooke's gang have also been the subject of several investigations into possible links to the disappearances of two boys, Martin Allen and Vishal Mehrotra, who were abducted from London in 1979 and 1981 respectively. Cooke, a fairground worker, was nicknamed Hissing Sid by colleagues, and was described by The Guardian newspaper in 1999 as "Britain's most notorious paedophile".