I was snatched at my local pool at 11 by murderous stranger & violently abused

LOOKING at her colleague’s newspaper Kerri Kehoe felt a rush of shock.

Because pictured there in black in black and white was a man she recognised from years ago – for a horrific reason.

He had abducted and sexually assaulted her in the most brutal of ways when she was just 11 in August 1990. And now, a grown up, Kerri was reading how the man – Richard Joyce – had abused another girl. Worst of all, he had also tortured and murdered a gas station worker and mum-of-three, Yvonne Rouleau, 34, before slitting her throat and leaving her to die.

That crime took place after he attacked Kerri. He had only been convicted of the sexual assault of the other little girl because of DNA advancements.

Kerri, recalling the shock, now reveals how it was the image of him which prompted her to go to the police.

“In the break room at work one day, I saw the front-page headline of a colleague’s newspaper,” she says. It was headlined ‘Killer admits to sexual assault on a child’. Instantly, I knew this killer was my attacker.

“I started having flashbacks,” says Kerri. “By the end of the week, in desperation, seriously worried about my mental health, I dragged myself to see the police where I spoke to Detective Melanie Jefferies. I told her everything. She said details of Joyce’s blue car, the scar and buck teeth hadn’t been publicly released. Joyce was charged with my abduction and assault.”

Not the first tragedy

It took Kerri so long to come forward because it was not the first tragedy to strike her family. Her cousin April went missing when she was four. Everytime her name was mentioned her family would cry – something which stuck with Kerri.

“‘A bad man took her’, was all mum ever said,” says Kerri, now 46, and a mum to a daughter, 17, and three sons, 16, 14, and 12.  “In time I understood she’d been abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered. But still I didn’t know what that really meant.”

Recalling the day of her attack, which took place as she went to meet her cousin Colin, April’s brother, at a swimming pool in Kingston, Canada, where she lives, she says: “As I reached the car park a man armed with a knife bundled me into a car so fast nobody noticed.

“As he sped away, he handed me the knife and told me to do something so incredibly violent to myself.

“He was angry I wasn’t doing it right so he pulled into an empty car park. There, he assaulted me more.”

The man then drove Kerri to a nearby forest where he committed further heinous acts on her. “I remember thinking ‘he’s going to kill me like April,’” Kerri says. “He went back to the car and returned with a black bin bag which I thought was for my body.

“He untied me, got on the ground and made me kiss him. It was gross. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe.

“I screamed ‘Please don’t kill me. I think he liked it.”

Amazingly – despite her young age and the awful ordeal – Kerri noticed something prominent about him… his buck teeth, a scar and the type of car he drove.

“He dumped me on the road but didn’t tell anyone,” she says. “I’d seen how April’s murder tore my family apart. Silence seemed the only option. Back home, I put my clothes in a bin bag and didn’t tell anyone, not even mum.”

Realising what happened… but in a horrific way

At 15 – four years after the attack – Kerri left home and rented a tiny flat. She supported herself with jobs in Burger King and an aquatic park.

Then, at 18 and while working in a hospital kitchen, she met Dave. But still, she remained silent about the attack. By 2011 she had two toddlers, was pregnant again and was working.

But seeing the newspaper, prompted her to take action. She learnt his name was Richard Joyce and a year after assaulting Kerri, he and an accomplice had robbed a petrol station. They’d brutally tortured worker and mum-of-three, Yvonne Rouleau, 34, before slitting her throat. In 1992 Joyce was subsequently convicted of murder, jailed for life with a non-parole period of 25 years.

Coincidently, a police officer about to retire, Detective Paul Tohill, had submitted a fragmentary DNA sample for testing.

It was collected from a nine-year-old girl who’d been abducted as she went to buy sweets and raped months before Joyce attacked Kerri but was too small to provide a match.

The officer submitted it hoping science had advanced enough to make me a match. In 2010 it finally had.

But still Kerri didn’t tell anyone – until Dave stumbled across her victim impact statement.

Survivor’s guilt

“My biggest fear was he’d see me differently, but he hugged me and vowed his support,” she says. “I felt horribly guilty too about Yvonne’s murder, which happened after Joyce attacked me. But Dave reassured me I’d been a kid.”

In 2011 Joyce, from Kingston, Canada, was jailed for 12 years for abducting and sexually assaulting Kerri.

“Because of his previous murder life sentence, it applied concurrently, meaning served alongside his current sentence,” says Kerri. “I was disgusted but was told by prosecutors ‘the only way he’ll leave prison is in a body bag.’”

But in March 2023 Joyce applied for escorted day release parole – day release under a guard.

So furious Kerri, from Canada, went public about her ordeal and called the parole board. She was supported by some of the other child victim’s family and Colin.

‘A model prisoner’

“Joyce was called a model prisoner but I think he’s a psychopath,” she says. He blamed his crimes on depression. When his application for parole was denied, I burst into tears.

“In September 2024 the deputy chair of the Parole Board apologised for the way the board had communicated with me and for failing to provide me with support and guidance.”

Now she says she’s glad she’s waived her right to anonymity and spoken out about her ordeal. “My daughter calls me ‘extra’,” she says. “I’ll never stop fighting to make sure that paedophile killer leaves prison in a body bag, just as he deserves and for survivors like me to have a voice.

“He picked the wrong 11-year-old girl. I’m not scared of him, but he should be very scared of me.”