Family of murdered nurse Lisa Skidmore launch legal fight for answers
The family of a nurse who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex attacker have launched a legal battle for an inquiry into blunders which they claim cost her life.
Leroy Campbell was handed a whole life sentence for the murder of devoted nurse Lisa Skidmore at her Bilston home – but her family say others should also be held responsible for the 37-year-old’s brutal death.
Her mother Margaret Skidmore, 81, who was herself attacked by Campbell and left for dead, said: “We want the truth to come out. The system failed Lisa and we won’t stop fighting until we get justice for her.”
Express & Star comment: Why was he out on the streets?
The family have applied to the Black Country Coroner to resume the inquest into her death because Campbell’s guilty plea at last year’s crown court hearing meant all the issues surrounding Lisa’s death were not publicly aired.
They say West Midlands Police, the probation service, parole board and the prison service all have questions to answer, claiming warning signs were not heeded.
They also challenge whether Campbell should ever have been freed.
In 1983 the paranoid schizophrenic broke into the home of another nurse and tried to strangle her with intent to rape or sexually assault her and was jailed for seven years.
He was sentenced to 10 years in 1992 after breaking into a house, disguised, and repeatedly raping a woman while her five-year-old son was in the property.
Eight years later he terrorised a young French au pair at a house in Wolverhampton, indecently assaulting her at knifepoint and then forcing her into a cold bath to wash herself in order to remove DNA evidence.
Campbell, 57, was previously jailed for public protection to serve a minimum eight-year term.
He was released from that sentence in July 2016 after serving 16 years.
Six weeks before murdering Lisa he had warned a probation officer that he felt like raping someone.
She reported his comments to Wolverhampton Police who visited Campbell and he repeated his comments to them. But after several visits he insisted he was feeling better.
On November 24, four months after his release, he used a step ladder to climb through Ms Skidmore’s first-floor bedroom in Mill Croft, where she was off work sick, and raped and strangled her. When her mother called at the house two hours later, he tried to strangle her with the vacuum cleaner lead and set fire to the house.
At a hearing in Oldbury yesterday, barristers for the Skidmore family, West Midlands Police, the National Probation Service and the Ministry of Justice made representations to Black Country Coroner Zafar Siddique.
The hearing was adjourned until June 14 for the coroner’s decision.
