A veteran MP has told the Prisons Minister that a "callous" serial rapist should remain behind bars. Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, spoke after outrage that the Parole Board had decided Andrew Barlow, formerly Andrew Longmire, should be released this month.
Barlow, originally from Bolton, was given 13 life sentences after two campaigns of rape in the 1980s in which he targeted women mainly across Greater Manchester, but also in Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, and South Yorkshire.
In October 1988, after being convicted of 11 rapes, three attempted rapes, indecent assault, and using a firearm to resist arrest, his tariff was fixed at 20 years. In the decades that followed he was linked to two more rapes as previously unsolved cases were cracked through advances in DNA technology.
