The official closing of the case after Andrew George’s failed appeal in 2006 provoked further releases of information to me. For years I had known the police had ignored reliable reports of changes in the state of curtains, lights and the side door of Hilda’s house between the Thursday and Friday. Now, we were able to piece together an extraordinary jigsaw of suspicious activities around Ravenscroft and Hunkington, where Hilda’s car was found during the week of the crime. All these were reported to the police at the time – yet they appeared to dismiss them, and none was put before the jury at George’s trial. Failure by Cole, Smith, Stalker, Tozer and Brunger to connect these dots of inconvenient evidence and accept the implications, deepened my suspicion about their motives.
At 1pm a man wearing a heavy, ankle-length coat with distinctive, small brown and grey checks is seen standing outside Hilda’s house by two men driving past. Aged 35-40, he is short and stockily built with tidy ginger-blond hair, a high forehead, and is smoking nervously. It is too warm to be wearing such a coat, which is too big for him.
An hour later, the same witnesses see the same man walking along a road near Haughmond Hill. He walks over to where they are working in a field and requests a cigarette. He asks how far the next village is. They tell him – then challenge him that they have just seen him in Sutton Road. Shaken, the man replies: ‘You couldn’t have done’ before walking off towards Uffington. An hour or so afterwards, the witnesses spot two tramp-like men walking along the same country road. One is 30-35 years old, medium height and build, with greasy swept-back brown hair and wearing a dark coat, while the other is younger, slimmer and shorter.
Two days later, between noon and 12.30pm on the Wednesday Hilda was abducted, the same witnesses see the ginger-blond man a third time, still wearing the distinctive coat. He is standing stroking horses over a wall near the Uffington junction on the road where, less than half an hour later, Hilda’s car passes on its way to Hunkington.
Around 7.45am on either the Monday or Tuesday morning, a woman is cycling past Ravenscroft, where she knows Hilda lives alone, when she sees a white Ford Fiesta parked across her driveway. This is a dangerous and disruptive place to stop, where Sutton Road narrows and bends slightly; so there must be an overriding reason for a car to stop there. The driver is a clean-shaven, well-built 30 to 40 year-old man with tidy collar-length dark brown hair, pronounced sideburns and is wearing an unusual dark green, peaked cap. The woman cyclist notices he is looking at Hilda’s house.
I already knew that in the morning, Mary O’Connor, Hilda’s elderly neighbour living almost opposite, had been concerned about a strange young man outside her home. She found him sitting on the pavement leaning against her low garden wall, smoking an ornate pipe. Having to step round his legs to enter her property, she was concerned enough to fetch a garden fork and go back to her front garden to show him she was watching. He got up, sauntered off across the road and disappeared down the alleyway between Hilda’s house and Millmead Flats.
A local woman is walking past Mary O’Connor’s house, when she sees the same strange man coming out of the alleyway onto Sutton Road. He sits on a low wooden fence in front of Millmead Flats. The woman meets Mary, and they discuss this suspicious behaviour and his appearance. Aged about 20, he is of medium height and build with dirty, collar-length ginger hair, a chubby face, and wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, blue jeans, a stained waistcoat with badges on it, and black motorcycle boots. Looking around, he walks off past Ravenscroft.
Soon afterwards, a man living in Millmead Flats strolls over and starts chatting with Mary outside her house. They notice another strange man walking towards them from town. He passes them, crosses the road and walks back past Ravenscroft, looking around. They watch him until he is some 300 yards away, near Stonehurst Flats, where he loiters for a while. He is clean-shaven, 35-40 years old, medium height and build, with tidy brown collar-length hair brushed forward. He is wearing a khaki-coloured mackintosh.
At 2pm, another neighbour sees a stranger standing outside Stonehurst Flats. He is about 50 years old, medium height and build, with short straight hair but untidily dressed, and he is looking around warily.
At 3.30pm in Cross Houses, a village five miles southeast of Ravenscroft, a stranger with an Irish accent asks the way to Atcham, the location of Little America. He is clean-shaven, aged about 40, medium height, with well-trimmed collar length mousy hair. He is wearing a heavy fawn mackintosh that almost reaches his ankles.
At about 5pm the following afternoon, four hours after Hilda’s abduction, the same witness is surprised to see the same man in the same long coat walking about 400 yards from Hilda’s house.
Going to work early that morning, Brian George was concerned about an odd-looking man and woman in long coats walking fast and furtively a short distance apart in the same area.
At about 9.20am, a woman driving along Sutton Road has to stop for oncoming traffic because two cars are parked close together outside Hilda’s house. The first one is a white Renault. A wider car ahead of it is a distinctive metallic turquoise blue with a thick white rear bumper. No one is in or near either car. Ten minutes later, another neighbour notices only a metallic blue Talbot car, now parked on the verge opposite Ravenscroft.
About an hour afterwards, around 10.30am, a nurseryman who once worked for Hilda is driving past her house when he has to stop suddenly because a red Ford Escort, with no one in or near it, is parked partly on the pavement. Half an hour later, a similar red car is seen parked about a hundred yards further along the road.
Ursula Penny told me that, around 11.10am, she was standing on the pavement opposite her house chatting with a woman friend when they saw Hilda drive past into town. Moments later a strange man jumped over a low wall in front of Stonehurst Flats and walked rapidly towards Ravenscroft. He was about 40 years old, medium height, athletic build, with a clean-shaven weathered face, fairish short-cropped hair, and wearing a grey lapel-less windcheater zipped up and grey slacks.
A woman is visiting her daughter who lives opposite Hilda. At about 11.30am, she glances out of the front window expecting a washing machine repair man. Instead, she sees a stranger standing on the pavement outside Hilda’s house. In his late twenties, fairly short and slim, he has a sallow, Pakistani complexion with thick black wavy hair parted in the middle and a small moustache. He is watching the traffic, and fiddling nervously with his coat. It is military style with a belt, full-length and too big for him, dark navy or black with a collar pulled over what he is wearing underneath. The witness is distracted by the repair man arriving. When she looks out again, the suspicious man has disappeared.
Ten minutes later, two plasterers working outside a house near Stonehurst Flats notice a scruffy man in his late twenties walking towards Ravenscroft, looking furtive. As he passes them ten yards away, he turns back to face them, then walks on. Stocky and medium height, he is unshaven with untidy, collar-length wavy dark brown hair parted in the middle and hanging over his face. He is wearing a red-and-black check lumber jacket and faded jeans with a tear in the right knee. The witnesses keep an eye on him until he disappears from view at the bend by Hilda’s house.
Within minutes of Hilda driving into town, three suspicious men converged on her house, one of whom matched Rosalind Taylerson’s description of the driver of Hilda’s car. High walls along the front of Ravenscroft, and around a complex of outbuildings with an outside toilet and cover to enter the house through the conservatory, provided plenty of options to lie in wait. The overgrown alleyway down the side of the garden offered discreet and easy access over a fence. Hilda had often chased young boys stealing fruit back over it.
At about 11.40am Hilda came home and left her shopping basket in the kitchen before visiting Mary O’Connor. A woman cleaning the front room of another house opposite watched her walk slowly out of her drive leaving the kitchen door open, and return about ten minutes later entering Ravenscroft through that door. The woman did not see Hilda’s car in the drive, so she assumed she had parked it in the garage, because its door was shut.
Did Hilda put her car away to keep her driveway clear for ‘Inspector Davies’ coming to question her at midday, as Laurens Otter claimed she told him?
At about noon, a neighbour has to drive around a white transit van parked on the pavement beside Hilda’s front wall. Ten minutes later, another man walking past her gateway sees an unmarked white van parked well back in Hilda’s drive opposite the front door with its rear to the road – but no white Renault. The van, similar to a Toyota Hiace, has no windows in the rear doors. He sees no people.
So, here was corroboration that her car was in the garage. Hilda had not yet been abducted. What was a van doing there at that crucial moment?
As a young woman leaves her parents’ house off London Road a few blocks from Sutton Road to walk into town around midday, she sees a strange man walking towards her. Seeing her, he quickly turns and walks back to the main road, where he stands as she passes. He follows her, dropping back until she loses sight of him. He is about 50 years old, six feet tall, well built, clean shaven with a pockmarked face and broad nose. He has grey, bushy collar-length hair under a checked cloth cap, and is wearing a stone-coloured full-length mackintosh and dark brown trousers.
From London Road there is a pedestrian shortcut through back streets to Sutton Grove, which joins Sutton Road almost opposite Ravenscroft. Was this fourth stranger the same older man outside Stonehurst Flats the previous afternoon?
At 12.20pm, a woman riding a moped past Hilda’s house towards the by-pass has to brake suddenly as a vehicle – ‘not a lorry or a van’ – pulls out of the Ravenscroft gateway to her right, and drives off ahead of her at speed.
Was this the Range Rover that roared past Jill Finch in her friend’s car at the junction of Sutton Road with the by-pass at this time? Was this how ‘Inspector Davies’ arrived for his ‘meeting’ with Hilda? According to police, the first confirmed sighting of Hilda’s car on its ‘abduction run’ was some 25 minutes later, at the junction between Sutton Road and Wenlock Road.
At about 12.45pm, a woman driving along Sutton Road sees a vehicle emerge from Hilda’s gateway, and turn left towards town. Moments later, a woman police surgeon standing outside her home in Sutton Road almost opposite Laundry Lane is nearly run over by Hilda’s car trying to avoid gasmen digging up the road nearby. Three days later, she is the first person to examine Hilda’s body in Moat Copse.
At 1.20pm the man who saw the white van in Hilda’s drive at 12.10pm returns. The white van is still there.
This extraordinary weight of evidence, from neighbours who were reliable witnesses, demolished the police theory and hugely complicated the case. While that van was there, witnesses had seen two other vehicles drive out of Ravenscroft. Could the first one around 12.20pm have been the Range Rover heading by the shortest and safest route to Hunkington with a drugged Hilda hidden inside?
Here was evidence of the Ulster snatch squad scenario, with the driver of Hilda’s Renault and her female impersonator able to get into it unobserved via the side door of the garage. Was she the woman seen walking suspiciously early that morning by Brian George? None of the many witnesses who saw Hilda’s car driven through the town recognised the slumped woman passenger as Hilda, because her face was obscured by a large floppy hat. Did the driver and passenger wait for about 25 minutes before setting off on the decoy run, until they knew Hilda was in a safe house?
Did the van then come into its own, removing a terrified 16-year-old petty thief found upstairs after the abduction team held guns to his head, and he had defecated in the downstairs toilet?
None of the many sightings of strangers near Hilda’s house that week was of a small, scrawny 16-year-old boy and his brother. At his trial Andrew George claimed he was walking through the alleyway beside the house, and saw no car and the side door open. This could have been in the five to ten minutes while Hilda was visiting Mary O’Connor. The white van was parked outside, invisible behind the wall to George when he took a disastrous snap decision to hop over the fence and burgle Ravenscroft, unobserved by a team waiting in the van to abduct Hilda and search her house after she returned? This would also explain Mr A’s claim that George told him at least three others and a white van were involved.
Later that afternoon, there are two sightings by neighbours of another scruffy man near Hilda’s house. In his late twenties, medium height and thin, he has greased-back, straggly collar length black hair, and is wearing a light-coloured mackintosh. At 3.50pm a local woman on an errand to a neighbour notices the man standing just inside Hilda’s gateway. On her way back about ten minutes later, he is on the pavement but still in the gateway. As she tries to see his face, he deliberately turns away. However, she notes it is thin, and under the mac he is wearing jeans and a dirty pair of trainers.
About half an hour after this, another woman walking along the alleyway notices a light on in an upstairs room in Hilda’s house, on a fine afternoon.
From late that afternoon until at least 11.30pm, a blue Hillman Hunter saloon is seen parked about 40 yards from the entrance to Ravenscroft.
That evening around 6.30pm, a neighbour saw a red Cavalier estate stop outside Ravenscroft, reverse to get a better look at the house, then drive on.
Some 15 minutes later, another neighbour living in Laundry Lane behind Ravenscroft returns home and finds the white gate into his property jammed shut. This gate has been difficult to open, so he always leaves it ajar. He struggles to pull it open. Concerned, looking around he glances at the unoccupied bungalow next door. A shed door at the back is open, which has never been like that. Entering his house, he finds no other evidence of an intruder.
Was that shed another hiding place for members of the team involved in Hilda’s abduction? They only needed to walk down the lane, then a hundred yards along another back street to gain access to Ravenscroft through the secluded bottom of the garden, surrounded by a warren of houses with access lanes and pedestrian walkways between them.
At about 8pm, a student at the Technical College and his girlfriend walk past Hilda’s house into town. They see an unoccupied red saloon car parked on the grass verge almost opposite, facing Ravenscroft. When they return at about 11pm, it is still there.
Around 8.10pm, a man who knows Hilda by sight approaches Ravenscroft driving into town from the by-pass when he sees ahead two white lights on his side of the road. They are the reversing lights of an otherwise unlit white hatchback starting to turn into Hilda’s gateway with its rear door up. The car pauses to let him pass. He notes a black stripe down the side, and a man standing on the pavement close to it, as if directing the driver. The pedestrian is 30-35 years old, medium height, slim build with scruffy shoulder length dark hair, wearing a dirty, light-coloured mackintosh.
This description broadly matched the older stranger seen by Mary O’Connor outside Ravenscroft on the Tuesday morning, and two more sightings on the Wednesday afternoon. Was he also one of the two ‘tramps’ seen together near Haughmond Hill on the Monday afternoon?
At about 11pm, a resident of Stonehurst Flats observes a strange Pakistani-looking man with a dark moustache standing beneath a tree near the flats. He pulls back into shadow. In his thirties, he has thick, wavy collar-length hair, is of slight build, and wearing a dark coat well below his knees.
Was this the man seen acting suspiciously outside Ravenscroft shortly before Hilda returned from shopping? If so, could he and the driver of Hilda’s car have been using one of the flats as a base?
Half an hour after midnight, the matron of the Hollies old people’s home opposite Stonehurst Flats is driving back there with her husband. As they approach Ravenscroft, a car is reversing out with no lights on. She switches to full beam to warn the driver. Red brake lights come on, but it has no reversing lights. It is a small grey or pale blue saloon, not Hilda’s white Renault. After they pass, it resumes reversing out, still without lights on.
Was this the old blue Hillman Hunter – which had no reversing lights – seen parked near Hilda’s house all evening?
Behind Millmead Flats at about 11am on Thursday, a woman neighbour sees a strange man standing at the end of the alleyway alongside Hilda’s garden. When spotted, he walks off quickly down a lane past the bottom of Hilda’s garden. In his late twenties, he is short, thin and pale-looking, with frizzy shoulder-length hair and a black beard. He is wearing a black beret, navy blue sports jacket, blue jeans and dark glasses. The woman last saw him a few weeks before, walking up the alleyway, looking as if he was crudely disguised.
If he was a member of the lookout team, he would have seen Hilda’s friends Hana Bandler and Lucy Lunt arrive, check the house and leave.
Meanwhile, local people around Hunkington reported equally suspicious strangers and vehicles. Some matched descriptions of those seen near Hilda’s house.
At about 8pm an unattended light blue Vauxhall estate car is seen reversed into the wide field access a hundred yards from where Hilda’s broken spectacles, knife and hat are later found. It is still there at 7.30pm the next night, but has gone by Wednesday morning – the day of Hilda’s abduction. Then a different witness spots it at 8am on the Thursday morning, on the concrete pad opposite Hilda’s crashed car.
Around 11am, a woman who keeps a horse in a field behind the copse where Hilda’s body is later found drives past a stranger walking along Drury Lane. He is about 50 years old, six feet tall, medium build, wearing a cap and a grey mackintosh, with his neck hunched into the collar on a calm, sunny morning.
The description matched that of the man seen behaving suspiciously in London Road near Ravenscroft an hour later.
Around 11.30am, a man planting potatoes in a field a few miles south of the copse notices an unfamiliar red, two-door Ford Escort drive by heading towards Hunkington. The sole occupant is a 30-40 year-old, clean-shaven man of medium height and build with short brown hair, wearing a brown jacket.
An hour afterwards, as Hilda is about to be abducted, a similar unoccupied red car is seen parked in a gateway in a hollow just over a mile across fields from where her car will shortly crash.
Around the same time, two unattended vehicles are noticed by three different witnesses parked on the roadside in Haughmond Hill wood: a small white car like Hilda’s seen outside Ravenscroft the previous morning, and a pale blue estate car.
The estate car matched the Vauxhall seen parked for over 24 hours in the Hunkington field access, and then again on the concrete pad early on the Thursday morning near Hilda’s crashed car.
Between 12.50 and 1pm, a young mother who has lived in the area for 16 years approaches the Somerwood crossroads from Haughmond Hill. She drives up behind a small white car with two occupants travelling in the same direction about 20 yards from the crossroads. It jerks to a halt, angled in towards the left-hand verge. As the witness pulls out past it, she tries to give the driver a dirty look, but he turns his head away.
Was the driver of Hilda’s car wanting to let her pass before dropping off his woman passenger impersonating Hilda before reaching the ‘crash’ site?
Minutes before this, a woman is driven by her husband from a cottage beside Hunkington Farm up to the crossroads, then right towards Newport. They see no crashed car.
An engineer who commutes daily along Hunkington Lane passes Hilda’s white Renault crashed hard up into the bank shortly before 1pm – as he approaches it he tries to tune his car radio to the weather forecast before the lunchtime news. He sees no one in or near it, and does not stop. Subsequently he passes it twice each day until the Saturday and sees no change.
These two reports established that Hilda’s car crashed around 1pm. Within the next hour, four other witnesses reported finding it, but saw no one in its vicinity. Surely, if Hilda had been abducted in the car, she and/or her abductor would have been seen by these witnesses near it or in the field?
Around 1.10pm, a woman living on the other side of the copse near Somerwood Farm notices a strange man walking slowly along the road towards her. In his early forties, he is of medium height and build, with thick fair or grey hair, wearing an anorak with a stripe down each sleeve. She does not see him again.
John Marsh first spotted Hilda’s car as he returned to Hunkington Farm soon after 2pm. He inspected it, then went back to phone Shrewsbury police station around 2.30pm.
John Rogers rode past ten minutes later. A man on a horse would have had a clear view over the hedge across Funeral Field – but he reported seeing no one. Yet this was where the police and John Stalker speculated that, within the previous hour, Hilda had been frogmarched at knifepoint.
Around this time, a truck driver who travels along Hunkington Lane every three weeks is delivering goods to Withington. As he drives through Haughmond Hill wood he sees two unattended cars in lay-bys: a green Fiat and an unidentified blue car. Where the lane enters thickets, he has to slow down for a woman walking in front of a man. They are both in their fifties; she is wearing a dark mac and head scarf, he a light-coloured mac and cap; and he is carrying a shepherd’s crook stick.
The truck driver stops for his lunch in the wide field access, and notices the roof of a white car across the field. At about 2.30pm he drives on, and slowly passes Hilda’s car. No one is in or near it, but an unattended white saloon car about the size of a Ford Cortina is parked on the concrete pad on the left. Further along the lane, he notices an unattended tractor in a field on the left. Looking round for the driver, he spots a strange man at the edge of a copse across the field, with long hair and wearing a long coat. Puzzled, he drives on.
If Hilda had been in the field near where her broken spectacles were found, she would have seen and heard that truck. The driver would have seen her – and recognised her, because he used to deliver goods to her. She would also have seen the white car on the pad, the strange shaggy man in a long coat by the copse, heard the tractor, and crawled towards them, calling out. None of these witnesses reported a ‘running man’, initially given so much police attention, yet dismissed at the trial.
At about 2.40pm, a woman who lives near the gamekeeper’s cottage is walking her dog with a friend near Somerwood crossroads. As they turn down Hunkington Lane towards Hilda’s crashed car, a strange jogger trots by. The man, who looks as startled as they do, is in his mid-thirties, about six feet tall, well built with a flushed but unstressed face – and wearing a khaki safari hat and muddy green clothing unlike a jogger’s.
Were he and the other man seen near the copse more team members keeping a lookout?
The two women walk on a short distance, when a white car races over the crossroads behind and passes them, then stops suddenly in a gateway about a hundred yards ahead. The car is like one seen by one of the women parked in Haughmond Hill wood an hour and a half earlier. As the women return to the crossroads, a large yellow and green van approaches from Haughmond Hill woodand drives on down Hunkington Lane. Soon afterwards, a regular male jogger they recognise runs past from Upton Magna, wearing a grey tracksuit. They look back across the field and see the white car still parked in the gateway – and Hilda’s crashed car askew in the hedge near the concrete pad.
At about 3pm, a long-time resident returns to his home in Drury Lane behind the copse. He is surprised to see a strange man with a grey whippet dog walking across a field by the crossroads at the southern end of the lane. He is in his early thirties, six feet tall, slim build, wearing a dark cap, sports jacket, grey trousers and wellington boots.
Ian Scott was known to have whippets, but was an old man. Was this a crude attempt to impersonate him while keeping a lookout, at this most risky phase of Hilda’s abduction? Marsh had reported her crashed car to the police, and the Symondsons could have been asking neighbours to check if Hilda was at home.
Around 3.40pm, the driver of a school bus who collects and returns pupils in the Hunkington area is dropping off children in Uffington, when he notices a man he has never seen before walking quickly through the village ahead of the bus. In his thirties, of medium height and build, he is clean-shaven with neat ginger-brown hair and sideburns. He is wearing a clean and tidy grey anorak, stonewashed denim trousers and dark trainers. As the bus catches up with him, he turns to look at it several times, but does not thumb a lift.
This man matched the description of the Ford Fiesta driver acting suspiciously in Hilda’s gateway early on the Monday or Tuesday. He also resembled one of the police identikit photos of the driver of Hilda’s car.
An hour later, at around 4.30pm, two young tearaways, Charlie Bevan and Chris Watton, visited a local car dealer to swap Watton’s Morris 1000 van for a bigger one. The dealer refused because the Morris was not taxed. Returning to Shrewsbury via back roads to avoid the police, they came across Hilda’s car. Watton found the passenger door unlocked and stole the tax disc.
Fifteen minutes after this they drove on – and spotted a red Ford Escort, reversed into the field access on the right. As they approached, Watton had to brake as the car suddenly shot out in front of them and sped up the lane out of sight. Watton recognised it as a Mk II model, but more powerful than the 1300cc version, with a screw-on CB aerial in the middle of its boot lid. The word ‘Escort’ above the rear bumper was in different black lettering from the word ‘Ford’. He described the driver, who was alone, as 20-30 years old with tidy, straight, collar-length dark brown hair. The man resembled the driver of the red Ford Escort seen in the vicinity at 11.30 that morning.
Watton and Bevan appeared in court charged with stealing the tax disc on 18 April, during Hilda’s thanksgiving service. In the Shropshire Star that evening, DCS Cole also appealed for information about the red Ford Escort seen near Ravenscroft on the day Hilda was abducted. What he omitted to add was that John Marsh and Bryan Salter had reported no less than five sightings of such a car in Hunkington Lane between the Thursday and Sunday. To these Cole should have added two sightings in the area on the Wednesday morning, and this one.
Three weeks later, both young men were required by the police to make new statements under caution. The youths now claimed they had fabricated the story about the red Ford Escort, because they feared they would be accused of murdering Hilda. However, would Watton have made up such a detailed description? Were they, like the telephone engineers, landowner, fireman, tyre-specialists and others pressured to change their stories, or not to speak to me?
Around 4.45pm, an unattended white Renault 5 car is seen a few yards from the Somerwood crossroads, parked on the offside grass verge facing towards Haughmond Hill wood. The witness has owned a Renault 5, and notes its lower half is muddy. Fifty yards further along the road on the near side, a yellow van is parked with two men in it conferring.
The van was close to where Hilda’s driving documents and AA membership card were later found. Was this the same van seen three hours earlier driving down Hunkington Lane? Was the Renault the one seen parked outside Hilda’s house on the morning of her abduction, then in Haughmond Hill wood, before racing past the women walking their dogs and parking in a gateway some two hours earlier? If so, could it have been a backup car in case anything had gone wrong with Hilda’s – and to confuse the police and witnesses further?
Around 5.30pm, a local woman and her husband drive along Drury Lane and notice two strange men, looking like farmers, standing in a field using what appear to be walkie-talkie radios.
Half an hour later, a van passes Hilda’s car heading towards Shrewsbury. The driver sees a dark green Ford Cortina parked in a gateway almost opposite Rogers’ cottage facing towards Hunkington. Three men in their twenties to thirties are standing beside it.
At 6.20pm, PCs Paul Davies and Robert Eades arrived to follow up Marsh’s second phone call an hour earlier to Upton Magna police station where Davies was based. They opened and closed the front passenger door, but failed to notice the missing tax disc. They quickly established Hilda was the owner. Why did they not make further urgent enquiries when the car had been left unlocked?
Around 8.15pm, a young man drives past Hilda’s car, and is concerned enough to stop, get out and try to inspect it despite it being dark. He opens the front passenger door, and rubs his hand along the driver’s side to check for any damage, but feels none.
At about 8.45pm a woman driver overtakes two strange men walking in the same direction just beyond the gamekeeper’s cottage. They are both in their early twenties, medium height and slim build with shoulder-length hair: one fair and wavy, the other mousy-coloured. The fair-haired one is wearing a denim jacket and jeans, the other a red pullover. The weather is fine but cold.
At about 9.15pm in Drury Lane, Nick Waters told me he saw a dim torch in Moat Copse for about five minutes, focused on a small area rather than moving about. A farmer discovered the next morning that the latch and chain on his paddock gate in Drury Lane had been released. Was this where the mysterious torch user gained access to the copse? Was a member of the team checking where Hilda was to be taken to die the following night after interrogation?
Around 9.30pm, a man and his girlfriend are about to park on the concrete pad when they see Hilda’s car. He pulls up in front of it: keeping his headlights on, he gets out and inspects it. On trying the front passenger door, he finds it is locked. The driver’s door is too close to the hedge to get at.
Yet an hour and a half earlier, a local man had found the front passenger door unlocked.
At 2.50pm, a local farmworker and his wife pass Hilda’s car and see two men about 20 yards from it in the field close to the hedge. Both are aged 35-40, clean-shaven with mousy hair cut short. They do not look like farmworkers.
Ten minutes later, Ian Scott was seen approaching Moat Copse with two dogs. He checked each tree for felling. Then tractor driver Bryan Salter watched a dark car drive slowly past Hilda’s car, park opposite the wide field access, and a suspicious man in a suit walk along the hedge to the copse and back.
At about 7pm, soon after nightfall, a light-coloured Ford Cortina is seen parked on the concrete pad, and a man walking away from Hilda’s car. He is in his mid to late forties, of medium build and in casual clothes.
Half an hour later, a stranger is seen walking towards a red car parked on the roadside in Haughmond Hill wood. About 45 years old, he is of medium height and build, with thinning mousy hair, and is wearing a dark suit and white shirt.
Around 8.30pm, a van is parked in a gateway between the concrete pad and Marsh’s farm. Its headlights are directed across the field towards Moat Copse.
Was this when Hilda was being moved into the copse?
Early in the morning, back at Hilda’s house an unfamiliar pale blue saloon car is seen parked in the drive of the two empty houses owned by the police almost opposite. A dark-haired man in a dark coat is sitting in the driver’s seat. At the same time, a tramp-like man is observed thumbing a lift while walking towards town. Of medium height with a beard, he is wearing a long, grey mackintosh and a dirty blue scarf wrapped round his head, and carrying three bags.
Was the blue car the old Hillman Hunter seen reversing out of Ravenscroft soon after midnight on the Wednesday night, having been parked nearby from late that afternoon? Clearly, the two police houses were highly convenient options from which to watch Hilda. With Hilda placed in the copse overnight on Thursday, by early Friday morning had the team planted the Totes rain hat, spectacles, knife, boots and other clothing, thoroughly searched the house for papers, drawn curtains, switched on more lights, and opened Hilda’s side door before leaving tyre scuffmarks in the drive?
At about 6.30pm that evening, according to Judith Cook and Tam Dalyell, a professional counsellor in Shrewsbury who helped with sex-crime investigations was visited by ‘two senior officers from Shrewsbury police station’. As mentioned earlier, they wanted leads on anyone who might have a sexual hang-up with old ladies, and might be violent. The following Monday, the counsellor was shocked to discover via the media that some of the details matched the scenario outlined by the two detectives. He contacted Cook and Dalyell because he realised the detectives had visited him the night before Hilda’s body was found.
Around 7pm, a man who has lived nearby for 15 years and done decorating work for Hilda sets off on his regular walk along the pavement opposite her house. As he approaches it, two strange men are standing on the opposite pavement next to two cars parked close together bonnet to bonnet. A small white car like a Mini Metro is facing towards the by-pass with its rear almost alongside Hilda’s gateway. The other car is larger, like a Ford Granada, and dark buff in colour. In the gathering dusk, the walker notes the bigger man is in his fifties, clean shaven, about six feet tall and heavily built, wearing a collar and tie, cloth cap, and a long, dark-brown overcoat. He is talking earnestly with a man in his thirties, clean-shaven with short dark hair and smartly dressed in what could be a police uniform. When they notice the walker watching them, the older man hurriedly gets into the larger car and drives off quickly. The younger man jumps into the white car, and reverses into Hilda’s drive out of sight opposite the front door.
The older man’s description matched that of the one seen in Drury Lane near Moat Copse at about 11am on the Wednesday, and then in London Road soon after midday. Was he ‘Inspector Davies’? Was he leading the ‘Special Branch murder hunt’ on Marsh’s land earlier on Friday? Had he just visited the sex counsellor? Was he instructing PC Davies what to do next after having finally taken the initiative and gone to Ravenscroft? If so, the policeman must have been under surveillance for the older man to be there. This would explain Davies’ extraordinarily incoherent, rambling statement about his fleeting and incompetent search of the house and lack of subsequent action. Was this why Latham stated in George’s trial that the police went into Hilda’s house only on the Saturday morning?
Meanwhile, Besford House records regarding the evening movements of Andrew George read as follows:
21.3.84 Went swimming.
22.3.84 Stayed in all evening. In a lively mood, but reasonably well behaved.
23.3.84 Stayed in watched video, generally well behaved.
Staff at Besford House would have noted if he had gone missing at any time, or was behaving strangely. If George had succeeded in overpowering Hilda and placing her in her car, would he have gone back in to Ravenscroft, locked and bolted the front door, locked the side door leaving the key on the inside (as a policeman reported on Saturday morning), and found his way out through the conservatory doors? Even presuming he could drive, which he could not, how could he have been driving the hatchback reversing into her drive around 8.10pm – let alone the unlit small saloon car reversing out half an hour after midnight? Whose vehicles were they anyway?
And how could he have come back to Ravenscroft undetected between the Thursday and Friday and closed curtains, turned on lights and unlocked the side door? Why on earth would he have bothered, with the huge attendant risks? As for the footprint fiasco, at George’s trial, why were the prints of an unusual Romanian trainer design size 8-9 apparently first found, only for the casts of them to disappear once George was charged? Instead, the cold case review seemed to find Doc Martens bootprints in Hilda’s kitchen – a pair of which George owned in March 1984, but which were also standard police footwear. Was it because his foot size was only 6 at the time and he did not have trainers?
Objective analysis of this avalanche of evidence, concealed from me for over 20 years, made a mockery of ACC Smith’s feeble explanation in June 1985 for the extraordinary number of coincidences in the case. Most of these reports were made within days of Hilda’s murder, by local people who recognised habitual visitors and traffic. Eleven strangers and ten different strange vehicles acted suspiciously at or near Hilda’s house between early on the Monday or Tuesday and soon after midnight on the day of her abduction. Most of these were seen by more than one witness, and some seen twice by the same one. On separate occasions two different strange men were seen by the same witnesses near Hilda’s house and in the Hunkington area.
A comparable pattern of suspicious vehicles and strangers was reported around the copse and then Hilda’s car after it crashed. The police never mentioned any of them. However, they admitted to us at our final meeting that five of the strangers seen in Sutton Road were never traced. No one saw any suspicious small teenage boys near the house or copse. Despite several witnesses and police touching the car inside and out, the only fingerprint found was on the inside of the rear window – and in police photographs the car’s bodywork looked suspiciously clean despite muddy wheels. Who locked the car on the Wednesday evening after the first police visit, before the keys were subsequently found in Hilda’s coat pocket?
What had emerged was a circumstantial smoking gun, pointing to a sinister web of vehicles and disguised agents in a carefully coordinated major operation, encircling poor Hilda and where her mutilated body was eventually found. Above all, the police theory of a lone, petty burglar – let alone a teenage truant who could not drive – was demolished. Anger welled up as I realised how the media, Dalyell and I would have confronted Cole had I known then that the police knew all this.
Meanwhile, pathologist Peter Acland had been abandoned by the police. In July 2008, he failed to get the High Court to override a decision by West Midlands Police to refuse to give him work. He was awaiting disciplinary proceedings for alleged incompetence in two murder cases the previous year, and four police authorities in the Midlands had stopped using him. In 2009 his name was removed from the Home Office Register of Forensic Pathologists. In July 2012, the General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel found that he had failed to perform adequate post mortems in these cases. Despite finding that his fitness to practice was impaired, the Panel allowed him to continue working as a doctor.
After I had openly admitted in media interviews and to friends and supporters that I was writing this book, it came as no surprise when our mail experienced renewed interference, and we had indications that surveillance had been stepped up. The British State security apparatus seemed increasingly desperate to impede us, and frighten us into not finishing it. Of course, the effect of such corroboration that it had things to hide was to encourage us to keep going.
A neighbour living opposite our Christchurch home told us that, for a month after we returned from the trial in mid-2005, he saw various cars parked outside our house for several hours during the daytime with the driver reading, alone. It was so persistent that he thought he was under surveillance. This was corroborated by a young woman working for us when she went out for lunch. We were advised that the car was probably fitted with special monitoring equipment capable of picking up our conversations through any electronic appliance in our house, and accessing our computers.
In February 2006, former Central Television producer Andrew Fox came to help us start writing this book. Shortly before he left, while we were being interviewed for both British and New Zealand TV programmes on the case, we found a large envelope containing a feature article about us slit open in our letterbox. Earlier that morning, a neighbour saw a strange young man run out of our drive. The date, 3 February, was the centenary of Hilda’s birth. Soon afterwards, graffiti of our initials appeared on our gatepost. Feeling threatened, we took the precaution of briefing Prime Minister Helen Clark, whom Kate knew, while she was visiting Christchurch. Thereafter we updated her periodically.
Early in 2008, as we were about to go to Britain for three months to research and work on this book, Fox posted us a CD of his latest draft by ‘track and trace’ airmail so we could review it before we left. He received notification of its safe arrival on 1 February – but it had still not appeared when we departed ten days later. The day after we left, it turned up at the ‘safe’ address of a barrister’s chambers.
Over Easter we visited my sister for a family reunion. Unfortunately she emailed that she had booked us into a local pub. At 1.30am on the last night of our stay, we were woken by an intruder trying to unlock our door. He had gained initial access through a latchkey in an outside door at the top of old stone steps leading into a corridor. Luckily the old deadlock on our door was faulty, and we had inserted our key in it. Viewed briefly through the keyhole, a big man in a blue tracksuit who, unlike a drunk, remained silent, failed, and left. Moments later, vehicle hazard lights flashed in the street below. A white rental van with aerials had been parked across the street since we arrived. The pub manager, who had gone home after closing time, later confirmed we were the only occupants that weekend. On returning to Fox’s home to resume work on the book, we had five silent phone calls over the next two days.
We returned home to find Kate’s computer running. She had switched it off and unplugged it with instructions to her daughter and a friend house-sitting in an upstairs apartment that it should not be used. They, and two of our assistants who called in periodically, agreed it had been off until about two weeks before we returned. One who visited Kate’s home office weekly noticed it was off again at one point and then back on, but assumed Kate had changed her instructions.
Yet again our mail was interfered with, despite being delivered to a PO box in our local post shop. A large padded envelope, filled with United Nations books and pamphlets and posted by surface mail from the UK, arrived unusually quickly. It was torn open, but with a single strip of broad sellotape wound longitudinally around it to prevent the contents spilling out. These seemed complete, but they now included a small padded envelope with a UK airmail sticker and unfranked stamps from a Yorkshire address by someone unknown to us. Marked ‘Urgent Spares’, it was addressed to a stranger in Wellington, New Zealand. Having photographed it, we handed the small package unopened to our local Post Shop manager for onward delivery. He agreed this looked like intimidation, and briefed his sorting staff.
Another A4 padded envelope posted at the same time from Shropshire arrived slit open and empty of all documents. It was enclosed in a Royal Mail plastic bag marked ‘Item Damaged Before Arrival In UK’ – yet it was clearly stamped ‘SU Royal Mail postage paid UK’. During this time one of our staff once found our PO Box unlocked.
This was serious enough to warrant briefing the Prime Minister again. In a letter, hand-delivered by one of her ministers who was a trusted friend, we explained the latest mail interference, surveillance and the pub intruder. We requested that, in the event of any ‘accident’ befalling us during our next UK visit, she would immediately initiate a formal inquiry. We also asked her to investigate whether there was any involvement by the NZ Security Intelligence Service (SIS), or if they had any knowledge of such operations. When we next met her, she confirmed that, as head of the SIS, she had been assured they were not involved. Meanwhile, visits to our home by MPs, including ministers, and journalists to discuss our disarmament work and security problems helped protect us.
Before leaving again for Europe in early July 2008, we warned our middle-aged male house-sitter about earlier breakins. He expressed sceptical amusement. Late that night, as he drove up the drive he saw through the living room window a man silhouetted by torchlight. On our return after two weeks he described how, thoroughly ‘freaked out’, he had left hurriedly without investigating further. Then, determined not to let us down, he nervously returned. As usual there was no sign of forced entry, and nothing seemed to have been taken.
There was another disturbing incident. The same house-sitter, now fully alerted, noticed a car parked outside our house several times. Returning late one evening, he found it still there. Pulling up about 20 feet behind it, he could see a man in his thirties to forties in the driver’s seat, apparently doing nothing. Having waited about 20 minutes with headlights on, our now intrepid house-sitter was about to get out and challenge him when the car started, executed a violent 180-degree turn and disappeared down the street with tyres squealing. We reviewed our security procedures, including never discussing book details in our home, keeping copies of draft chapters in safe locations, and minimising discussion of plans by phone or email.
In April 2009, Kate had a remarkable 45-minute meeting with the SIS Director, Dr Warren Tucker. After explaining that the only motive for such persistent harassment could be that we were writing this book, she showed him the damaged envelopes and a photocopy of the small padded package of mysterious ‘spares’. Suddenly, he recognised the addressee: it was an acquaintance of his. Repeating Prime Minister Helen Clark’s assurance that it was nothing to do with the SIS, he commented with a wry smile: ‘You wouldn’t know we had been there. These guys wanted you to know.’ He asked who we thought was trying to intimidate us. Kate replied: ‘MI5 or MI6.’ She recounted Tozer’s response to my request in 2002 for our house to be swept for bugs before he returned to Britain. Tucker undertook to brief the Inspector-General and Police Commissioner about this blatant harassment of two law-abiding New Zealanders, and request intermittent police protection.
Three months later, he honoured his promise to Kate that he would visit me at home. While she was overseas attending a meeting of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament (which gave us added protection), Tucker listened carefully for over an hour – aware we were probably being bugged – while I briefed him on why I believed the British State security apparatus seemed so determined to try to intimidate us. I could never imagine having a similar meeting with the Director of MI5. Soon after Kate returned, we decided on impulse to walk to a local restaurant for dinner. We were pleasantly surprised to see a New Zealand policeman sitting in an unmarked vehicle outside our house.
We were now under no illusions as to what we were up against in trying to finish this book. After 27 years of surveillance and harassment, I had become inured to having to discipline myself to be discreet when using my own phone – and despite this enduring the irritation of phone calls disconnected in mid-conversation. Then there were all the silent calls. There was the need to find and then arrange to use safe phones to make sensitive calls, and to organise safe addresses for mail. Because of the ease with which a mobile phone user can be followed and listened to, I do not have one. Kate became expert at removing the simcard and battery from hers before leaving the house for any sensitive discussion, and we had to ask those we met to do the same. Constantly restraining our anger, we endured the slightly fearful frustration of not being free to discuss the book in our home or car – instead we had to go to safe houses, with the associated risk of involving friends. There was the tedious business of backing up computer files, making and hiding copies, and arranging safe storage for my archive. Finally, where possible we always travelled overseas together; while there we never used rental cars, and when visiting Britain, I felt like a fugitive in my own country.