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Dawson was slow to react and had taken only a couple of steps by the time she was falling over. Watts shouted to Dawson he should just leave her alone and not touch anything.
We then stood outside the unconsecrated chapel near to the steps leading to the bottom footpath. It must have been about 10 to 15 minutes before a police officer, PC Ball, arrived on the scene and came over to where we were standing. He asked a few questions as to who had found her, what we were doing there, then asked where she was. We indicated, and he went over to her and had a look and then walked part of the way back before calling me over to where he waited. He asked if I had been the one who found her, and I said I was. He then went on to ask me to say where, and I told him, and even pointed out the place from where we stood.
Finally, he asked if I had touched anything. I said I hadn’t except for turning her over, and I showed him my bloodstained hands. I asked if I could wash the blood off my hands, but he said no, it would be needed for forensics. We then went over to where the rest of the group stood. I seem to recall him asking a couple of questions – if any of them had seen or touched anything. They all answered no.
I think it was Dawson who asked if it was all right for me to help them load the Land Rover and the policeman said it was. The policeman then went back and placed his tunic over the body before going to his car and making a call on the radio.
It would be a good 15 to 20 minutes, at a guess, before anyone else arrived and maybe as much as another 5 to 10 minutes before a Detective Inspector Younger came to ask me the same questions that PC Ball had just asked. I gave him the same answers.
He went back to the others for a brief moment and then came back with someone else in a suit. I was asked if I would be willing to go with them to the station for further questioning, which I agreed to do. I was led over to a blue and white police car where I sat in the back with one of the policemen, while the other got in the front with the driver. As we were about to go through the cemetery gates the ambulance arrived.
I already had many queries and misgivings about the case. This latest account from Stephen threw me into even greater turmoil.
The thing that immediately stood out was his description of someone assaulting him and threatening his sister, as he knelt by the injured woman. If this were true, and this unidentified person had a companion as suggested, then who were these people? And why was no mention of them made at the trial? Could one of them be the man who trial witnesses Louisa Hadfield and George Paling saw running away from the direction of the cemetery? I also wondered why so little effort was made on the part of the police to establish who this running man was.
Of course, this latest account was at serious odds with Stephen’s original confession, which he had retracted after 13 days. However, apart from the omission of someone in the cemetery threatening him, it was same story he had told the police during the first nine hours in the police station, and in subsequent years in prison. I needed to know why Stephen had briefly deviated from this version and admitted in his confession to attacking and sexually assaulting Wendy Sewell.
When I re-read Stephen’s alleged confession statement, there were various bits and pieces that simply did not and could not match the facts. Stephen said he hit Wendy twice on the back of the head to knock her out. The Home Office’s own summary confirmed that Wendy had been hit ‘seven or eight times’ with repeated, savage blows to the head.
I also questioned how, after such an attack, any jury could have imagined Stephen Downing walking out of the cemetery appearing ‘calm’ and ‘perfectly normal’, with no apparent bloodstaining after such a frenzied attack. There was also no mention in his ‘confession’ of Wendy having moved from the path to the graves. In fact, he said, ‘She was lying on the ground the same way I had left her.’
One of the workmen, Hawksworth, said he had picked up the murder weapon earlier in the day. In which case his fingerprints would have been on it as well as those of the murderer. Were any fingerprints or blood samples taken from the murder weapon? Or from the workmen, who were also allowed to carry on working in and around the chapel even though the supposed murderer had gone back there after committing such a violent attack? If the pickaxe handle had come from the council store, any of the workmen’s fingerprints could have appeared on it quite innocently, even Stephen’s.
Another important factor taken from Stephen’s account of the day was that, on his way home from the cemetery at 1.08 pm, he spoke words of greeting to one of the prosecution witnesses, Charlie Carman. He said he saw him between the shop and the cemetery, walking in the direction of town on his way to work. Unfortunately, Carman was now dead, but I found out that at the time he had been employed, like Stephen, as a gardener with the council.
That day, Carman was working in Bath Gardens in the town centre. I checked his evidence. It confirmed he was heading back into town that lunchtime, but made no mention of seeing Stephen Downing.
Carman said he looked over the hedge of the cemetery somewhere near the phone box and saw Wendy walking along a path. At this point on his route he would have already passed Stephen, who was heading to the shop. So, Wendy must have been uninjured after Stephen had left the cemetery. Why then had Carman not been quizzed over this anomaly? Had Stephen ever queried this with the police or his defence team?
I also noticed a major time discrepancy. Carman said he had spotted Wendy at 12.50, but everyone agreed that Stephen did not leave the cemetery until around 1.08. If Stephen saw Carman, and vice versa, then Charlie’s timing was well out.
There were many parts of this puzzle that didn’t make sense. But I also needed some more answers from Stephen. Why did he change his story at the police station? Why admit attacking and, moreover, sexually assaulting Wendy? Why did he wait 13 days before retracting his confession?
I was also interested in knowing more about Nita’s assertion that he changed his boots when he came home at lunchtime.
She claimed it was because he had put on the wrong boots in the morning. And I also needed to clear up the allegation concerning this mystery man in the cemetery who had poked Stephen in the back and threatened him. Why on earth had that allegation not formed part of his defence? I knew I would still need to ask some difficult questions, which many people, the Downings included, might not like.
I wrote to Stephen again and asked him if he could answer some additional queries. In particular, I wanted to hear his version of the interrogation at the police station. Ray told me the confession was forced out of him, but I needed to hear it all directly from Stephen.
CHAPTER 7
Believing the Beebes (#litres_trial_promo)
I realised my presence and my nosey-parker attitude was making an impact around Bakewell. Perhaps I was beginning to upset some locals who thought their secrets had been buried with Wendy Sewell.
I noticed it far more on the council estate near the Downings’ home, where quite often people would stop and point at me as I drove past, no doubt muttering something about me under their breath.
I was apprehensive about becoming involved in such a delicate and controversial case. I knew my involvement was likely to make enemies in this small rural community, and was bound to reawaken many thoughts and emotions that had been suppressed for decades.
One morning as I breezed into work, Elsie, the receptionist, who was on the telephone, began frantically beckoning to me with her free arm. I was about to ask her what the matter was when she put a finger to her lips.
I hurried through the door and round the back of the counter to where she was sitting.
‘Really, young man,’ she was saying in her best telephone manner, ‘now do go away and stop being so silly!’ With that she slammed the receiver down.
‘Who was it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, Don. But he said he wanted to kick your head in,’ she replied, raising her eyebrows. Elsie had been with the Mercury for donkey’s years and was used to dealing with irate callers. She was not easily fazed.
‘Did he say why?’
‘He just said you would know why.’
‘Well, I might.’
She peered at me over her glasses. She was a tall, thin woman with a quick temper who was in her late forties and was always impeccably dressed. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and had a real bee in her bonnet about ‘time wasters’ interrupting her regimented routine.
Elsie then added casually, ‘To be quite honest, it’s the second time he’s rung.’
‘When was the last?’ I enquired.
‘A couple of days ago. I wasn’t going to mention it. He was more abusive the first time, rather than threatening. But if he’s starting to talk about beating you up, well, you should know. It was definitely the same chap. He didn’t sound particularly old.’ She paused, obviously waiting for me to explain.
‘I’m sorry, Elsie. If you get any more, don’t talk to him. Just put him straight through to me. Or if I’m out, hang up.’
I walked through to my office, leaving Elsie burning with curiosity. I was angry that someone was upsetting my staff, but if they thought they could put me off that easily, they had another thing coming.
Even at that early stage, I had a gut feeling about the case. Lots of people kept singing the same tune – Downing was serving time for someone else. I had an overwhelming desire to seek out the truth once and for all. If Stephen Downing was guilty and I could prove it, then it would at least end the mystery.
But what if he was innocent?
Certain prominent local characters and traders began to show a peculiar interest in my preliminary enquiries, displaying a curious nervousness about the victim’s past. Calls came in to me from a publican and several shop owners in Bakewell, asking me why I was suddenly ‘digging up dirt’ about this old case.
Feedback about my investigation also came from my advertising reps. They felt that pressure was mounting for me to drop the case. Advertisers were becoming nervous that it could have an adverse effect both on advertising revenues and the tourism trade, as Bakewell was not that sort of town.
More interesting to me, however, was the reps also confirming that the town was buzzing with gossip about the victim’s love life. It was being said that she had had several boyfriends, echoing what Ray and Sam Fay, my deputy editor, had told me the first time the Downings came to my office, and there was even mention of a love child, despite it being said at the trial and in the Home Office report that the Sewells had no children. I would have to look more closely at the life and times of Mrs Wendy Sewell.
My reporters also added that the local ‘plods and pips’ weren’t happy about me kicking up dust over an old case like this, which was already long gone and forgotten.
Reputations were on the line. I asked Jackie to make an approach to the duty inspector, but he seemed to be advising us to leave well alone. I asked her if he gave a precise reason. She shook her head and replied, ‘All he said was that Downing was guilty. A right little pervert.’ This claim was something I would come to hear a few times – but why?
‘It’s strange,’ I said. ‘But that’s what some other contacts have said. All very interesting, but I can’t find anything to substantiate their claims.’
All this was happening despite the fact that I had not yet published one word in the Mercury about the case. I did, however, start to gain a lot of support from many people who were starting to express their doubts and opinions about the case. The residents of some houses that overlooked the cemetery had lived there for years and confirmed that no routine house-to-house enquiries were carried out at the time.
Marie Bright, an elderly lady, asked to see me urgently. When I visited her home, she told me she was still worried – even now – about possible repercussions. She explained she’d seen a ‘pasty-faced’ man with a bright orange T-shirt hanging around the main entrance gates about an hour before the attack.
She claimed the man got off the bus from Bakewell at about noon. Mrs Bright said, ‘This man was aged about 40 to 45 and was acting rather queer. I hadn’t seen him around before and I think he was a stranger because he kept looking around, and at his watch. He looked suspicious, as though he was waiting for someone. I saw this man coming over the top of the wall, out of the cemetery, about an hour later.’
She said she had also seen another man parked up in a dark-coloured van near the phone box by the cemetery gates some time that lunchtime. She described him as a fat, bulky figure.
Margaret Richards, another elderly woman who lived close by, told me she too had seen a man standing close to the beech hedge by the cemetery gates. Her description of him was almost identical to that given by Marie Bright of the man in the orange T-shirt. She claimed he appeared to be acting suspiciously, looking at his watch, and was very nervous.
Both Bright and Richards said they had been to Bakewell police station to report their sightings. They had seen PC Ernie Charlesworth, who hadn’t seemed interested and told them they already had someone in custody charged with the murder. I knew Charlesworth and believed him to be an arrogant and lazy beat bobby. He was considered something of a bully by junior colleagues.
I wondered why he had not referred these witnesses to a more senior investigating officer. What I wasn’t aware of at that time was the fact that he had been the one who got the confession out of Downing, which he had boasted about for years.
I wondered, too, whether the noon bus driver had been questioned, or whether he had seen any suspicious characters running around. In those days everyone knew everyone, and a stranger would be noticed.
I was then contacted by another witness, a Mrs Gibson from a neighbouring road, who said the police did call at her home on the Saturday night after the attack and actually took a statement. She claimed she was told not to tell anyone or say anything to anyone else. But she too confirmed the police didn’t make general house-to-house calls.
This was agreed by housewife Pat Shimwell, who explained she had been chatting with a friend at the door of her house on Burton Edge, overlooking the cemetery, and noticed Stephen Downing leaving by the main gate at about 1.10 p.m. with his pop bottle.
She was standing at her garden gate with her arms folded as we spoke, relating her story in a matter-of-fact manner. Like many of the women who were eager to talk to me, Pat Shimwell was in her mid-fifties and had been at her home near the cemetery all day on 12 September.
I believed the police would have had a ready-made set of witnesses with any one of these plain-speaking women who apparently noticed everything – if only they had bothered to talk to them. Pat Shimwell later told me that she was in her bedroom tidying up when she heard a ‘commotion in the cemetery’, with several workmen yelling at each other.
She remembered someone shouting out something like ‘leave her!’ At about 1.30 she saw the policeman in the cemetery. She told me that a bobby asked if she had seen anything. And then claimed that she was quite remarkably told, ‘If anyone asks, I haven’t been here.’
I asked her if she could be sure that Stephen had left the cemetery at around 1.10 p.m. She said she could because she had seen the bus at its scheduled stop at the same time. Once again, I had reason to thank Hulleys buses for helping to plot the course of the day’s events.
Pat Shimwell asked if I’d spoken to any of the youngsters who were playing around the area that lunchtime. I recalled Ray saying something about children when we walked around the cemetery.
She suggested I should track down Ian and Lucy Beebe. The story was that something ‘horrible’ had frightened them in the cemetery that day. Shimwell admitted that they were very young at the time, and told me they used to live along Burton Edge but had since moved away.
I soon discovered that the Beebe family played a crucial but often maligned role in this murder inquiry. The eldest daughter was Jayne Atkins, a fifteen-year-old at the time, who was a half-sister to little Ian and Lucy, then aged four and seven. Jayne appeared as a major new witness at the Court of Appeal in October 1974 to give evidence in support of Stephen Downing.
Jayne told three appeal court judges she had seen ‘a man and a woman with their arms round each other’ in the cemetery on the day Wendy Sewell was attacked. She confirmed the man was not Stephen Downing.
She explained that only a few minutes before she saw the couple embrace, she had seen Stephen leaving the cemetery. She said the couple were standing on the lower path, behind one of the chapels, and not far from the very spot where Wendy was later found bleeding to death.
Jayne told the court she had been afraid at first to tell the police about what she had seen, for fear the man had recognised her – and that she might become a victim as well.
At a pre-trial hearing, the three law lords decided she could not be believed. They maintained that, had she been a credible witness, she would have come forward much earlier with such vital information. They decided her evidence was therefore ‘not credible’ and rejected it, and Stephen’s appeal against his conviction was hastily dismissed.
I wanted to meet Jayne Atkins, and to see if her story had changed over the years. I was also keen to track down and interview the younger children and find out what had frightened them.
This proved no easy feat. Former neighbours told me the Beebes had moved to a new house because they had been so terrified of reprisals after Jayne had given her evidence to the Court of Appeal. They said the family had received several anonymous threats.
Back at my office, after spending much of the morning on the estate, I received a telephone call on my direct line. ‘Been snooping around again, then?’ a man’s voice sneered.
‘Who is this?’ I asked. It was not the same voice as before. This man sounded much older.
‘Never you mind. That little sod got what he deserved. If I see your car on that estate again, you’re dead,’ he claimed, before slamming down the phone.
My heart was pounding, and my thoughts turned to Kath and my two boys. What if this person knew where I lived? Not for the first time, I wondered just what I was getting myself into.
* * *
Later that week, I finally tracked down the Beebes. They were living on the outskirts of Chesterfield, in a council house in Renishaw, on the road out towards Sheffield. Margaret Beebe opened the door. She was a very pleasant lady in her fifties with a strong local accent.
She greeted me with a friendly smile. When I told her the purpose of my visit she appeared enthusiastic and ushered me inside. She told me that the children, by now in their twenties and thirties, had all left home. She and her husband Ken lived on their own.
Once she started talking about past events, her mood changed. She told me that she and her family left Bakewell in 1977, moving first to Lichfield in Staffordshire before ending up here in Renishaw, about 15 miles from Bakewell. She confirmed what I had already been told – that they were forced to move because they believed their lives were in danger after Jayne gave evidence at the Court of Appeal.
They had received anonymous threats for more than two years, and could take it no more.
‘The worst thing was,’ she said, ‘no one believed us. No one took us seriously, except for our immediate neighbours. We were just left to get on with it and deal with all this bother on our own. It was very upsetting. And it was terrible for the little ones.’
‘So, tell me what happened that day, Margaret,’ I said.
‘The children, that’s my Ian and Lucy, and their little friend Pam Sheldon, were all out playing on waste ground, then in the cemetery, when something frightened them. I think they told me at the time that somebody with blood on them jumped over the wall out of the cemetery and frightened the life out of them. They wouldn’t go into the cemetery for a long while after that.’
‘What time of day was this?’
‘Ian and Lucy had come home at lunchtime from infant school and were out playing on their bikes,’ she said. ‘Then Ian came in as white as a sheet. He’d left his bike somewhere. He couldn’t say anything at first. I sat him down on the couch. He was very scared and talked about a man with blood on him.
‘He had nightmares for a long time afterwards. He couldn’t go back to school and had to stay at home.’
Margaret Beebe was sitting on the sofa next to me but was talking thirteen to the dozen, and flailing her arms around like a windmill, as she became more and more engrossed in her story.
I had to duck several times.
‘I put my little one, Adrian, in the buggy,’ she continued, ‘and took Lucy back to school. As I passed the cemetery there were police there, and an ambulance. I remember seeing them putting a body into the ambulance.
‘When I went back home, Ian had messed himself with fright. I thought I’d fetch a doctor, then he calmed down a bit and said, “Mummy, that man got blood all over him!”’
‘Were the police told about all this?’ I asked.
‘They came around on the Friday night, two days after the attack, but didn’t take any statements. Ian was in bed asleep, so they said they’d come back to talk to him. They never did, though.’
‘And this was the first time the police came to your house? They didn’t come on the day itself?’
‘No, the Friday was the first time. They didn’t go to any of the houses on Burton Edge on the day it happened.’ Margaret added that some time after 1.10 on the day of the attack she popped her head round the perimeter hedge of the cemetery to look for the family’s pet dog.
Her daughter Jayne had already gone out to look for it. Margaret said, ‘I didn’t see anyone.’ A few minutes later, though, she recalled hearing a shout, something like ‘Hey!’ or ‘Help!’
‘It must have been a shocking experience for your family,’ I said.
‘Well, later that day, when I went to work at Cintride at six o’clock, I heard all about this woman who had been battered in the cemetery. I kept Ian off school till the following Monday, but he continued to suffer with his nerves until 1977. It was four years of misery until we moved to Lichfield.
‘I had a breakdown after all this. Our family was called a pack of liars by the police. We only said what we saw. I used to work at Cintride on the 6 till 10 p.m. shift. One night, when I was walking there on my own up Bagshaw Hill, a car came alongside me and slowed down.
‘There were people in the front and back, and someone wound down the window and shouted, “You had better keep your mouth shut or else things will happen to you and your girl!” I think this was after the trial but before the appeal. When Jayne gave her evidence, the judges basically called her a liar.’
Margaret Beebe added one other interesting fact to my ever-increasing portfolio of information. Her husband Ken, a quarry worker, had been approached by a workmate during one of his breaks, some two or three years after the murder, who told him, ‘It’s a shame Stephen Downing is doing time for someone else. I know who did it.’
This gem of information was typical of many statements I was to encounter over the next few years. If it was all true, then the identity of the murderer of Wendy Sewell had been one of the worst-kept secrets in the Peak District.
