He was convicted in 2000 of the murders of two sex workers, 20-year-old Samo Paull and 30-year-old Tracey Turner, whom he killed in December 1993 and March 1994 respectively.
After his conviction, investigators announced their suspicions that Kyte could have been behind a number of other unsolved murders of sex workers across Britain in the 1980s and 1990s.
He was apprehended due to the ground-breaking investigations of a wider police inquiry named Operation Enigma, which was launched in 1996 in response to the murders of Paull, Turner and of a large number of other sex workers.
In February 2023 Kyte was further convicted of historical sexual offences against a 9-year-old boy, which he committed in a violent campaign of rape, indecency and threats which began in the late 1980s and continued for five years.
Kyte is imprisoned at HM Prison Onley as of May 2023 and continues to refuse to accept his guilt for any serious crime of which he has been convicted, except for one murder which was verified with a DNA link to him and which he eventually 'accepted his culpability' in.
[5] Kyte's itinerant lifestyle allowed him to travel the country in order to scout out prostitutes, his chosen victims.
[5] In January 1991, the Staffordshire Newsletter reported that Kyte had been convicted of stealing more than £700 from his father's bank account to feed his gambling addiction.
[6] Kyte, then of Rickerscote Avenue in Stafford, went on the run once his father had discovered the theft, and was reported as a missing person prior to being apprehended by police.
[6] During this time, Kyte was also convicted of deceiving a couple, whose car had broken down, out of £35 claiming he was going to buy them a spare part, and also for driving off without paying for petrol at a garage.
[6] In December 1993, Kyte picked up 20-year-old sex worker Samo Paull from Birmingham's Balsall Heath red light district.
[8] His car's registration was checked; he was traced to Glasgow, but, after speaking with him, investigators found no evidence to link him to the murder, and he was released.
[5] On 22 April 1994, it was reported in the Staffordshire Sentinel that a man had been charged with kidnapping Kyte from his Stafford home and robbing him of £55.
[8] The victims received markedly less sympathy from detectives, their murders were rarely featured prominently in the media, and sex workers were often blamed for making themselves vulnerable.
[8] In the six months after Paull's death, four other sex workers, including Tracey Turner, were murdered across Britain, and Leicestershire Constabulary detectives asked for a cross-force investigation.
[2] Enigma was one of the first steps towards a database for violent crime analysis, and many of its features influence present-day police investigations.
[8][2] At trial, forensic experts stated that the likelihood of the DNA found on Turner belonging to anyone other than Kyte was "one in 33,000 million" (one in 33 billion).
[8][3] In news media coverage of his offences, Kyte was labelled the "Midlands Ripper", in part because he was also suspected of having multiple other victims.
[8] Because Kyte lived an itinerant lifestyle and drove across the country, it was believed he could be responsible for other unsolved murders across Britain.
[8] In prison, Kyte allegedly boasted of killing 12 women in total, which the detective in charge of investigations into his two known murders said "could be true".
[18] Operation Enigma concluded that there were notable similarities between the murders of Whitehouse, Trenholme, Pearman, Clarke and Shields.
[28] In April 2023 a 66-year-old man was arrested and then bailed in the Carol Clark case, following the discovery of "new and significant" information by police.
[29] The murder of Dawn Shields was covered in a 2013 documentary, as part of the Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story series.
[3] In February 2023, Kyte was further found guilty of sexually abusing an underage boy in the years leading up to his two known murders.
[38][39] It was heard that each attack saw increased violence and threats against him and his family if they told anyone and that Kyte would punch, choke, kick and taunt the boy.
[38][1] Kyte accepted he was capable of extreme violence but denied everything, with his justification being that the victim "has got no reason to make these allegations".
[1] During cross-examination Kyte similarly refused to accept that he had killed Samo Paull but admitted murdering Tracey Turner on the grounds that she had "pestered" him to finish a meal in a motorway service station.
[40][41][39] On 11 May 2023, Kyte was given a third life sentence, and additionally ordered to serve a minimum of ten years and eight months' imprisonment, meaning he will ultimately not be eligible for parole until late 2033.