As Operation Salop got into its stride it became clear that it lacked a silver bullet. Most homicide enquiries, however serious loss of life is, are not that hard to solve. Many murders I investigated over the years were less a whodunnit, more a whydunnit. The suspects I met struggled to protest complete innocence if they were caught, quite literally, with blood on their hands. Their only hope was to argue provocation, self-defence or diminished responsibility. Normally such pleas are blown out of the water by evidence of pre-planning or of them picking up a weapon when they had the chance to run away.
Nowadays, with the indelible digital footprints we all leave, whether by logging on to the internet, passing a CCTV camera or just phoning our friends, let alone the staggering advances in forensic science, most false alibis do not get past first base. Eyewitnesses also have a habit of scuppering any hope of getting away with murder. It is not just the sharp-eyed passer-by with keen powers of observation who sees the slaying from start to finish that nails murderers. Many are caught by a patchwork of sightings – human and digital – which, when overlaid with other circumstantial evidence, can seal their fate.
Police forces stop at nothing to catch a killer because murder is the ultimate crime and one for which there is no possible restitution. If you steal from someone you can pay them back. But if you kill them, that is final. Not only have you destroyed them, you have destroyed the lives of their loved ones too. Forever.
The overriding imperative to stop the Babes in the Wood killer striking again meant a result could not come quickly enough. But nothing happens in isolation and this was not the only intractable murder vexing Sussex Police at the time. Another was already stretching Sussex CID to its limits. This one not only lacked an obvious killer but also a complete body.
Just over a month before Nicola and Karen were killed, a motorcyclist’s early morning ride through Ashdown Forest, one of the largest and most beautiful public spaces in the south-east of England, was rudely interrupted.
The biker’s overwhelming call of nature forced him to pull over to relieve himself. So as not to offend the sensitivities of other road users, he pushed his way through a bush, out of sight.
The frenzied swarm of flies and a putrid stench made him curious. Venturing further he stumbled across what appeared to be barely concealed lumps of flesh wrapped in cloth. He initially assumed it was an animal, perhaps someone’s beloved pet, dumped at the mercy of the food chain.
He called the police nonetheless. A detailed forensic examination revealed a woman’s dismembered body divided into two shallow graves, wrapped in curtain material and nightdresses.
The head, hands and feet were nowhere to be found. Despite this, the pathologist was able to determine the sex, age and cause of death – a slit throat. Still, the police had no idea who this woman was.
At any other time, that investigation would have become the single most important priority for Sussex Police. No expense would have been spared. But less than six weeks in, still with no idea of who the body or killer were, Detective Superintendent Brian Grove lost half his investigation team to Bernie Wells. With morale and resources on the floor, Brian and his team needed a little luck.
When the case featured on BBC’s Crimewatch – a monthly prime-time programme consisting of appeals for information about the most serious and puzzling crimes in the UK – the flurry of calls led the team to look at Crawley, a busy and bustling new town on the northern edge of Sussex, some fifteen miles from where the body was found.
A local man, Kassem Lachaal, had taken advantage of Islamic tradition and married a second wife, Fatima, in his native Morocco. His first wife, Latifa, was less than pleased but had mysteriously disappeared.
Kassem tried to convince the police she had travelled to Morocco to divorce him but neighbours and the other evidence suggested this was unlikely. Cutting-edge forensic techniques showed the body was the same age, height and build as Latifa and bore the same scars as she did. Meanwhile, investigators proved a connection between her and the curtains that became her shroud.
Kassem and Fatima were arrested and subsequently charged in connection with the murder but Brian knew that without a firm identification, he would struggle to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. An act of God saved the day.
Following the 1987 hurricane, which wiped out thousands of acres of woodland across the south of England, a woodman clearing fallen trees near Worth Abbey stumbled across a human skull. This was quickly connected to Brian’s enquiry and the team held their breath as forensic odontologist Dr Bernard Sims tried to compare the skull to Latifa’s.
Two X-rays of Latifa’s jaw – one from the dentist and a second from her treatment following a vicious assault by Kassem – together with an unusual sinus satisfied Dr Sims it was a match.
With this final piece of the jigsaw, Kassem was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment and Fatima was jailed for eighteen months for assisting in the disposal of the body.
With two concurrent high-profile murder investigations, it was a wonder that the 3,000 officers in Sussex Police were able to do anything else. No force solves every murder. Sussex was no different but within a week of the Babes in the Wood killings, the local newspaper the Evening Argus recapped some of the force’s other unsolved cases for its readers.
There had already been more than a dozen murders in 1986 and, in fairness, most were cleared up, but some from years before still waited for answers.
Among the catalogue of cases was the death of Keith Lyon, the twelve-year-old son of a popular local bandleader, who was found stabbed with a steak knife on the Downs close to his home in Woodingdean, Brighton. That remains unsolved to this day.
The one that would truly haunt Operation Salop, however, was the rape and murder of thirty-four-year-old Margaret Frame on 12 October 1978 – eight years almost to the day before Karen and Nicola died.
Margaret, happily married with a nine-year-old son she adored, disappeared while walking home from her cleaning job at Falmer High School, on the edge of Moulsecoomb. Ten days later, her body was found in Stanmer Park, less than half a mile across the Coldean estate from Wild Park. All the indications pointed to her having been clubbed over the back of the head, stabbed in the back, then raped. Attempts had also been made to sever her head. The evidence suggested the killer returned later, dragging her 500 yards to bury her in a shallow grave.
Despite a huge police investigation involving the taking of around 2,500 statements and calling at over 5,000 homes the killer was never found. Even a reinvestigation twenty-two years later, led by Kevin Bazyluk, my first DS on joining CID, using new scientific breakthroughs, failed to unmask him.
Although there were stark disparities between Margaret’s murder and the Babes’ – age, modus operandi, levels of violence, offender behaviour after the murder – many in the press kept returning to the coincidences in time and place to assert the two cases were connected. This was never a serious hypothesis but it was yet another unnecessary distraction Bernie Wells could ill afford.