Peter Pickering, 80, was found guilty of the violent rape of an 18-year-old woman in Sheffield more than four decades ago just last week. The attack in June 1972 was thought to have been carried out around four weeks before he raped and stabbed 14-year-old Shirley Boldy to death in Barnsley. His recent convictions for the South Yorkshire rape came about as a result of a renewed investigation by West Yorkshire Police into the murder of Wakefield schoolgirl Elsie Frost who was killed in 1965. It is the first time police have confirmed Pickering’s identity in relation to Elsie Frost’s murder - and say they expected him to be charged “in due course”. “We strongly suspected that Peter Pickering was responsible for her murder. We had been liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service and it was our expectation that Pickering would be charged in due course. “His unexpected death clearly means that will no longer happen. We have informed all those involved in the case of this development and we will be liaising with the West Yorkshire Coroner as to what proceedings are now necessary in relation to Elsie Frost’s death.” The teenager was attacked from behind and stabbed in the back and head as she walked through a railway tunnel just off a canal towpath in Wakefield in October 1965, but her killer has never been traced.