Aron Traynor faces jail after being found guilty
A predator who dragged a pensioner down an embankment before indecently assaulting and attempting to rape her was only caught 32 years later after being stopped over an alleged driving offence.
Cold case cops were able to link Aron Traynor to the horrific crime after his DNA was taken as he was stopped for allegedly being drunk and in charge of a vehicle in August 2023. It was more than 30 years earlier, in October 1992, when Traynor attacked 74-year-old church-going widow Annie Davenport as she walked home in Stockport.
“Oh God please help me,” she pleaded as Traynor let go of her mouth during the attack “Don’t hurt me. I’m an old lady.” Ms Davenport has since died.
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Traynor, then 22, and now 56, was unanimously found guilty of indecent assault and attempted rape following a trial at Minshull Street Crown Court. Having previously been on bail, he was remanded in custody ahead of his sentencing hearing in May.
The judge told him to expect a ‘lengthy custodial sentence’. Ms Davenport was attacked at about 6.20pm as she made her way to her home on the Bridgehall estate in Stockport on Sunday, October 18, 1992, prosecutor David Bruce told the trial.
She had been to church that morning and then visited friends. She was walking home over a railway bridge when Mr Traynor ‘attacked her from behind’, Mr Bruce said. The defendant used a ‘very strong arm’ to hold the pensioner around her chest while the other hand held her across her mouth and nose, said Mr Bruce.
The defendant then dragged Ms Davenport ‘sideways’ through a gap in a fence and down an embankment where she was told not to scream. The defendant lay on top of her, pulled down her clothing and then attempted three times to rape her, prosecutors said. Ms Davenport resisted as the defendant tried to kiss her and force his tongue into her mouth.
Traynor then fled and Ms Davenport clambered back up the embankment and was seen by a passer-by ‘in distress’ and wearing only one shoe. Police were called and Ms Davenport was taken to St Marys Sexual Assault Referral Centre where she was examined and found to have abrasions on her knee. Samples were taken for DNA analysis.
Years later, in June 2004, Ms Davenport died after suffering a chest complaint. Traynor was arrested for an unconnected matter on August 13, 2023, for allegedly being drunk and in charge of a vehicle, and as part of the arrest he provided a DNA sample which matched the sample taken from an item of Ms Davenport’s clothing, the court heard.
The ‘cold case’ unit of Greater Manchester Police was informed of the match and Mr Traynor was arrested on February 1, 2024. He answered ‘no comment’ to all questions put to him.
Mr Bruce told the court that the original police file on the case ‘had been lost’ but that Ms Davenport’s statement was eventually found from forensics services. In his ‘defence case statement’ prepared ahead of the trial, Traynor accepted being at the scene but claimed he had a ‘consensual’ encounter with Ms Davenport. The jury rejected his account.
A five-page statement which Ms Davenport signed on the night of the crime was read out. In the document she confirmed she was 74, lived alone and had been a widow for the previous eight years. That Sunday morning she had visited her local Methodist church, as she did every Sunday, before visiting friends, she said in her statement.
It was ‘dark out’ as she walked home over the railway bridge when she felt ‘two very strong arms grab me from behind’, Ms Davenport said.
Ms Davenport shouted ‘don’t hurt me’ but the man who was grabbing her from behind then dragged her ‘sideways’ through a gap in the fence. She said she shouted ‘help, help’ and tried to scream but her attacker put his hand across her mouth and nose and ‘held me tightly’.
“I was very frightened. I could not breathe. I thought I was going to suffocate,” she said, adding that the man then ‘dragged me down the embankment’. She said: “I was struggling a lot to get a breath and tell him to let go of me. He said to me ‘don’t scream’.”
She went on that her attacker sounded ‘well spoken but not posh’ and ‘didn’t sound as if he was from Bridgehall’. He was said to have told her: “I won’t hurt you. If you scream I will.”
She said after the man let go of her mouth she said: “Oh God please help me. Don’t hurt me. I’m an old lady.” She said the man pulled her tights around her ankles, pulled her knickers down and then tried and failed to pull her top up to expose her chest. She described intimate details of what the man did to her and how he tried to force his tongue into her mouth.
“I was very frightened but did not dare to scream in case he tried to stop me breathing again,” she said. She described how the man ‘walked back up the embankment’ and fled, and how she had lost her shoes and her handbag during the incident. “I managed to struggle up the embankment to the main road,” she said.
Traynor, formerly of Stockport but now of London Road in Poynton, Cheshire, is due to be sentenced in May.
