In these latter instances, the victims would typically wake to find Fairley, wearing gloves, and a mask to conceal his face, while brandishing a shotgun.
[3] After committing a series of burglaries in March 1984,[3] Fairley carried out the first sex-related crime for which he would become notorious as The Fox on 11 April,[5] when he broke into the home of a 74-year-old woman in Leighton Buzzard.
He then began to break into a series of houses, where he would look at photographs, before burgling the home of a 35-year-old man in the Buckinghamshire village of Cheddington on the evening of 10 May.
There, he stole a 12 bore shotgun and cartridges, along with £300, but waited for the occupant to return home, at which point Fairley tied the victim up, and after watching pornographic videos, sexually assaulted the man.
Three days after this incident, he broke into a house in Heath and Reach in Bedfordshire, where he constructed a den from blankets and furniture to conceal his presence from passers by and waited for the occupants to return, but fled when they did so.
On the same night he broke into a house at nearby Leighton Buzzard after travelling there on foot, and using a mask made from a trouser leg to conceal his identity.
The house belonged to a couple, the husband of whom tackled Fairley, an act that resulted in the shotgun being discharged, injuring the man's hand.
After this incident he shifted his attention to Edlesborough in Buckinghamshire, where he committed more burglaries, before attacking a 17-year-old girl, breaking into the bungalow she shared with her boyfriend and brother, before tying up the males and sexually assaulting all three.
While driving along the M18, he reversed off the hard shoulder into woodland, then crossed fields to the small village of Brampton-en-le-Morthen near Rotherham, where he broke into the home of a couple and committed another rape.
A computer, which police nicknamed "Metal Micky", was also used to log and cross-reference details, an unusual occurrence for criminal investigations of the time, and a psychological profile of the Fox's possible character traits was constructed.
Officers also discovered two pairs of denim overalls in the vehicle from which one leg was missing, and screwdrivers that would later be found to match those used to break into properties.
[3] He confessed to these offences when questioned by police, but was said to be unrepentant, and claimed he had never loaded the gun again after the incident in Leighton Buzzard that had resulted in the hand injury of one of his victims.
[3] On 14 September 1984, he appeared before Dunstable Magistrates Court, where he faced three charges of rape, two of burglary and one of possession of a firearm, and was remanded in custody.
[9] Fairley's defence argued his poor education had contributed to his actions, and that he was "trying to imitate what he had seen on the video screen", a reference to the violent pornographic films he had viewed.
[12] In April 2024, Channel 5 aired the documentary The Intruder: He's Watching You From Within, which discussed the Fairley case and played recordings of police interviews in which he confessed to his crimes.
[10] The Fairley case was the inspiration for Harriet Cummings' 2017 novel We All Begin As Strangers in which a serial burglar known as The Fox breaks into homes either to steal worthless items or leave behind strange objects.