HOMICIDE
COUNT 4
On another occasion, with a detective sergeant, we were on night duty CID patrol in an unmarked police car. We were given a radio message to urgently attend a house at an address in Dagenham, Essex, which comes under the umbrella of Greater London, covered by the Metropolitan Police. On arrival at the house, an ambulance was just racing away. We instructed a uniformed PC to preserve the scene of crime and to literally allow NO ONE into the house until he heard from us. We followed the ambulance to the hospital where a ‘crash’ trauma team was standing by in readiness. It transpired that a man had walked into the front office at Dagenham police station and placed a gun on the station officer’s desk, claiming to have shot his wife. He was obviously taken into custody immediately, searched and processed until the full facts of the case became known.
Back at the hospital, my colleague and I were allowed to be present in the trauma area of the A & E Department, whilst the very experienced nursing team did their jobs. Most readers have probably seen what goes on in real life situations in such TV series as Trauma, which was on BBC 1. The medical ‘crash’ team fought like crazy to keep this poor woman, who was in her late 30’s, alive. This included use of the high-voltage electric paddles to shock the heart into resuming its normal beating-pattern. These attempted
life-saving procedures lasted about an hour and a half. Whilst it was going on, one of the nursing sisters said quietly to me: “I bet this lady comes from a beautifully-kept home.” I said: “How could you know that?” She said: “Look at her beautifully-kept toe nails, they tell me everything about her.”
Unfortunately, she did not make it. Not many people survive one or more bullets in the head. So we had a murder on our hands. Once somebody dies under suspicious circumstances, each police officer who comes in contact with that person in life, or after death, for the sake of continuity of evidence, takes on the temporary role of ‘coroner’s officer’. He or she must stay with that body until there is a chance to hand over the responsibility of proving the identity of that person, along the chain of persons who will
be involved with it, right through to the inquest and even beyond. This is to ensure that there can be no mistake or accidental or careless ‘bodyswitching’ or incorrect identification. In the case of this poor woman from Dagenham whose husband had just murdered her, we summoned a trusted firm of undertakers from the local police ‘approved’ list, who arrived at the hospital and took away the body in a light-weight, easily-manageable coffin called a ‘shell’. This was in the days before purpose made body bags were available.
We followed them to the public mortuary, took possession of what few valuables she had with her, marked the body at a toe with a tie-on label containing her full name, date of birth, date of death etc. We then wheeled her over to one of the deep freeze compartments and using the inbuilt trolley raise/lower mechanism, lined up the stainless steel tray on which she lay, with an available empty shelf, and eased the tray in. We then filled out an identifying ticket with her personal details as before, and placed the ticket in the deep freeze door at the appropriate level, as part of the continuation of evidence routine. Finally we entered up her details yet again on the large ‘Body Identification Board’ fixed to the mortuary wall and released the undertakers. On a later date, having made a statement of
what actions we had taken to date, we returned to the mortuary and identified the body to the pathologist at the post mortem, often remaining to witness the unpleasant laborious but essential task.
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In early 2004, Exeter Crown Court heard a case against an elderly former RAF pilot, Alan Wickenden, 67 yrs, who had allegedly beaten his wife to death with an iron bar, when she refused to go along with his wishes to sell the marital home so as to relieve the serious debts situation they were in.
Amazingly, passers-by witnessed the killing, which took place in a layby. The defendant, aged 67 years, tried to flee on a bicycle but was taken into custody by the passers-by. When police searched his home at Down St Mary, Devon, they found hispre-prepared ‘blueprint’ for the crime, which was set out on 2 sides of A4 paper, like a shopping list, as follows:
1) Secretly buy second car.
2) Hire bicycle.
3) Train times.
4) Where to hide the push bike ready for the getaway.
5) Which car to take to the layby.
6) Cut grass in churchyard just before taking wife to her death.
7) Fake breakdown in mower to give alibi for sudden disappearance
and return to churchyard.
8) Feign puncture in car tyre at layby.
9) Cycle back to station and catch train home.
10) Return to churchyard.
Three months before the unlawful killing, Mr Wickenden took out a
£250,000 life insurance policy on his wife. The Judge, Mrs Justice Hallett
told the defendant: “It was not a spur of the moment reaction to a nagging
spouse. Your plan to kill your wife was the way you saw of getting out of
financial difficulties.” His barrister told the court: “The defendant felt they needed to move to a more modest property to release capital to support them in their declining
years. Mrs Wickenden could not face it. Whenever the issue was raised, she
would blame him for the financial disaster in Majorca. (Loss of £450,000 15
years previously when a boatyard he bought in Majorca went bust.) It was
a constant bone of contention.”
TRIAL JUDGE - MRS JUSTICE HALLETT
The Judge sentenced him to four years imprisonment after the defendant
had admitted manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, after
psychiatrists said he had become depressed by money pressures.
No doubt you have all seen the way that banks and finance houses
bombard us all with huge advertisements of ‘unlock the equity in your home
and release capital you can utilise today’, which are most often aimed at
elderly people, whom you might think are most vulnerable to this kind of
approach. There can be no doubt that Mr Wickenden was sorely tempted to
respond to an advertisement like this, and when his wife refused to go along
with his plan, she paid the ultimate penalty.
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Two months after Ian Madden, aged 54 years, and his wife Lynn, aged 38
years were divorced, he discovered she was seeing a new man, after hacking
into her emails. He threw a rope around her neck and throttled her. Then
he left the body in the house, hanging from the rafters, to look as if she had
committed suicide, with the two children of the marriage still in the house.
He returned to the house next morning, as if nothing had happened, to
collect his children, pretending that he had just found the body. In the
meantime, his five-year old son stumbled across the ‘awful spectacle’ of his
mother hanging there. As he thought she was asleep, he found a knife and
placed it near her side so that she could cut herself free when she ‘woke up’.
Judge Geoffrey Rivlin said to Madden: “One dreads to think of the lifelong
torment you have inflicted upon the children and upon Lynn’s family
and friends.” Madden had been found guilty of murder by a jury at
Southwark Crown Court, in London, in March 2004. Sentence had been
postponed for psychiatric reports. He had denied murder but police found
defensive scratch mark wounds on the defendant’s neck, where his poor
wife had fought for her life. Madden, of Greenford, West London, was
sentenced to life imprisonment and it is reported that Madden gasped in the
dock, as the Judge said he should serve a minimum of 18 years.
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Chilling new TV footage will reveal the utter contempt that Britain’s most
notorious serial killer Harold Shipman showed towards the police. The
pictures, seen exclusively by the Sunday Express, show the GP responsible
for the deaths of more than 250 patients, with his back to the investigating
officers in the interview room while being interrogated. In the film, To Kill
And Kill Again, to be shown on ITV. Shipman refuses to answer questions
and remains silent with his arms folded.
West Yorkshire detectives were questioning him about the deaths, which
took place on one day in 1975, of three of his terminally ill patients in
Todmorden, where Shipman had worked after qualifying as a doctor. He
would later move to a surgery in Hyde, Greater Manchester. The GP is
shown a photograph of each victim, but fails to respond. One of the
detectives says: “For the benefit of the tape, Harold Shipman’s eyes are
closed and he won’t look at the photographs at all.” Consultant psychologist
Paul Brittan tells the programme: “Shipman is showing his contempt for the
police and contempt for their lack of medical knowledge. He is trying to
manipulate the process. He has also lost count of how many people he has
killed. He has no idea that he has killed these people.”
HMP WANDSWORTH, LONDON,SW
DR HAROLD SHIPMAN
A Hangman's noose which Shipman would have faced a few decades earlier
To Kill And Kill Again features another interrogation in which Shipman is interviewed about the death in Hyde of former mayoress Kathleen Grundy, 81. Asked whether he injected her with a lethal dose of diamorphine, Shipman says: “No. And you tell me that people in Hyde don’t have access to drugs. I think you should talk to your drug squad.” He claims Mrs Grundy, whom he was treating for irritable bowel syndrome, was a drug
addict. The detective says: “Do you really expect me to believe that a wellrespected,
elderly lady like Mrs Grundy gave herself a fatal overdose of drugs?” Shipman: “Yes. I’m sure you’re aware that drugs like morphine, heroin and pethidine all cause constipation.”
But as the film points out, it was Shipman who had an addiction to pethidine since medical school. Later in the interview, the police say that after poisoning Mrs Grundy in her home with diamorphine, he changed her medical records on the computer. Shipman breaks down and crawls about the floor of the interview room. Shipman’s killing spree went undetected but local people had their suspicions. Funeral director Alan Massey said: “We used to say, ‘It’s another one of Shipman’s’.”
Shipman subsequently hanged himself in prison, thus defeating the ends of justice. In August 2005 the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, Mr Stephen Shaw, published his long-awaited report into the circumstances of Shipman’s death by suicide. He concluded that no HMP staff were to blame and that Shipman’s suicide could not have been prevented.
The widow of killer GP Harold Shipman has been awarded £35,000 of taxpayers’ money. Primrose Shipman, totted up the sum in legal bills for the inquiry into her husband’s 284 murders. He last practised in Hyde, Greater Manchester. Mrs Shipman, 55, gave three hours of evidence at the inquiry, but couldn’t remember details about the deaths of two patients. The money dwarfs that paid to the families of the victims, who got an average of £11,460 each. The inquiry has cost nearly £21million. Norman Brennan, of the Victims of Crime Trust, said the payment to her “will leave a very bad taste in the mouths of the families of Shipman’s victims.”
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What is wrong with our judiciary? How could Judge Thomas Crowther justify handing out a paltry sentence of two-and-a-half years to Craig Swann, a 21-year-old kick boxer, who killed William Bird with a single, brutal punch? Mr Bird was out walking with two friends and asked Swann to dismount from his bicycle while on a footbridge. Swann rode off laughing after the attack and was later heard bragging in a local pub. Mr Bird leaves
a wife, children and grandchildren. Their lives will never be the same again. He, at 67, was enjoying his retirement.
On the day of the attack he had been to a rugby match and no doubt looked forward to many more pleasant outings. A vicious, mindless thug has robbed him of all that. Surely, natural justice calls out for tough punishment, yet time and again judges hand out wilfully perverse and liberal sentences which enrage public opinion. Drink-drivers who kill, paedophiles, career burglars who shatter their victims’ confidence, many face nothing more than a few months inside before they are free to hurt again. What are these highly paid, jumped-up lawyers playing at? Do they feel some peevish need to assert independence from the public they serve, and the Government which they suspect of impinging on their authority? Or maybe it’s that proximity to the dregs of society has warped their sense of what is right and proper.
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