The Babes In The Wood Murders

The fourth of February 1990 was a cold, sunny day. The kind of day where a good walk blows away the cobwebs. A couple were out for a stroll, on a beauty spot called the Devil's Dyke on the Sussex Downs. This is England’s green and rolling land.  No doubt Susan and David Clifton were enjoying the views in the late winter sunshine when a small girl came stumbling towards them, emerging from the bushes with her clothes hanging from her, nearly torn off. She was bleeding from scratches all over her arms and legs and around her throat where there were tell-tale bruises of attempted strangulation.

She was seven years old.

And very lucky to be alive.

Sussex

She had very nearly been strangled by a technique taught to the SAS, known as The Sleeper. It is a particular hold that compresses the carotid artery, cutting off the blood supply to the brain. Unconsciousness comes quickly, death follows in three to five minutes.

The girl had a horrific story to tell. After her family Sunday lunch, she had put on her new roller skates and went out to play in the estate where she lived in Brighton. She was skating along the pavement and saw a red car with its boot open. She thought little more about it and skated closer. As she tried to pass the car the man got out.

And showed her a screw driver. He said four words to her. Scream and I’ll kill you.

He then put her in the boot, drove her to the Devil's Dyke and took her out the boot. He strangled her until her body went limp, then put her in the back of his car and sexually assaulted her.

Convinced she was dead, he dumped her body in the bushes and drove off.

She was a brave, clever little girl, never named for obvious reasons) and she was able to give the police a very good description of the man, and his car – a red ford Cortina.  She was also covered in forensic evidence.

It all pointed clearly to one man - Russell Bishop.

                                                

                                                                 Bishop

At the trial, he was convicted  of abduction, kidnap and attempted murder and got a life sentence.

Three years before, he had stood in the same dock and been acquitted of the murders of two little girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway. It became famous as the 'babes in the wood case'.

The two cases are  very  similar.

                                       

                                           The famous Babes In The Wood Photograph

Nicola and Karen had been playing round the estate where they lived, in Brighton. They were seen buying chips from the local chippie at about half past six. The next day, at twenty past four, during a massive search by police and local residents, two small bodies were found in the dense undergrowth, deep in the bushes. They had died with their arms round each other. The pathologist, the same pathologist who picked up the sleeper marks on the other girl three years later, suggested that both girls had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

                                     

An unemployed labourer, in his twenties had lived on the same estate as the girls, he had known them both and their families; he played football and cricket with their dad.  Although he had a history of petty thieving, he was living quietly at the time with his partner and their child.

                                        

The evidence presented at the trial against him was some specks of blood on a jumper that other witnesses said belonged to him and the fact that the jumper had been found on his most likely route home. Some fibres on that jumper matched fibres from the clothes worn by Karen and Nicola when they had gone out that day.

                                          

His defence was that he was one of the first people on the scene when the girls were found. He argued as he had taken their pulses,  any exchange of trace evidence could be accounted for.

It took the jury less than two hours to find him not guilty. But with hindsight, as soon as the  law changed, the police saw the chance  to review the Babes In The Wood case.

                                                    

In 2005-6 new legislation came in in England to  release the Crown Prosecution Office from double jeopardy If new evidence has come to light.  Brighton police  tried but could not find enough evidence to press for a new prosecution for the first two victims.

He was eligible for parole last year and it was turned down.

                                                 

Interestingly, the police had always had an eye on Nicola’s dad Barrie. He had been questioned before Bishop’s arrest and there was some local feeling that he might have been involved in some way. His house was daubed with paint and as he moved house, so did the malicious vandalism – the message was always the same. Don’t let the murderer live here.

Then in April 2009, Barrie was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to rape his own daughter before her death, but  that was based on false allegations that the police later claimed as malicious.

In a strange twist, the girl who played Nicola in a UK prime time TV reconstruction of the babes in the woods murders, was then also murdered, found stabbed in a graveyard in 1996. Her killing also remains unsolved.

Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.

Caro Ramsay

The sad story of Mikaeel Kular

A happy wee boy, always smiling

At about 9pm on Wednesday January 15th last year, a three year old boy, Mikaeel Kular was last seen in the house he shared with his mother and four siblings in Edinburgh. He was going to his bed dressed in his PJ’s. 

                                    

By 7.15 the next morning the temperature had dropped to 2.3 degrees outside. Rosdeep Kular, the boy’s mother, made the terrible discovery that he was missing from his bed. She found a stool pulled over to the front door and deduced that he had climbed up to reach the lock to get out.

Two hours later a massive police search was under way. Neighbours heard about Mikaeel and came out to help. A helicopter was scrambled as the  police released a picture of the boy with a description of what he might be wearing. It touches the heart, an innocent faced Asian featured boy, with a big smile. He is said to be wearing a beige hooded jacket, brown shoes and blue joggers over his pyjamas. 

                                                       

This picture makes every TV news, the late editions of the papers carry it on their front page.  People talk, as people do. The Mum’s marriage was in trouble. Maybe the Dad had taken the boy? How many three year olds can dress themselves? Do their own shoes up? How many are strong enough to open the heavy fireproof front doors on a modern house?

                                       

An hour after that image is released, the police make a  statement that  there is no suspicion of foul play but they are keeping an open mind. The mother is said to be distraught. Neighbours of the family are asked to search huts and garages, just in case Mikaeel has taken shelter from the weather and got locked in.

                                               

That afternoon  coastguard and lifeboats search the coast. A Child Rescue Alert is initiated so all police forces in the UK are now involved. This allows TV and radio programmes to be interrupted with news flashes. Statements are made in parliament, hoping for a safe return of the child. The police refuse to comment on ‘local intelligence’ that there was a custody issue about the boy.

                                            

As darkness falls again,  more neighbours, the entire community, all emergency services are out looking for the boy as the temperature drops well below freezing. It is now a matter of extreme concern. The search goes on all night.

By nine the next morning, the police issue an  updated image, showing  what he was wearing when he disappeared.

                                                   

 By first light the public, the police and all support services, police dogs, horses are all out searching. Family dogs are asked to help. There are over 150 calls to the helpline but no confirmed sightings. By mid morning, one hundred people are organised into a specific search. Mikaeel's image is prepared to go on billboards and train stations across the country. Meanwhile on Cramond Shore more volunteers, firemen and mothers with prams search the sand and rocks.

                                    

 By late afternoon the  Assistant Chief Constable  announces that they are  now exploring a theory that Mikaeel might have left the flat of his own free will after he became the subject  of a criminal act. And the general public were left to fill in the blanks.

By tea time it became known that all  family members had been traced and talked to. Mikaeel’s timeline was established. It showed that he hadn’t been to nursery since before Christmas because he had been ill. It was now January 17^th. A  forensic team was seen entering the boy’s house that night.

Later that night the police thank everybody who has helped in the searches but say they will continue on their own. There is a sense that the investigation is now targeted and that there will be more announcements.

 Just after midnight, on the morning of Saturday 18^th January 2014, the police announce that they have found a body that  maybe Mikaeel’s over 25 miles away in Kirkcaldy, fife. The  family have been informed and somebody has been detained in connection with the incident.

That person was the boy’s mother, Rosdeep.

 People are upset, flowers and toys are left outside his house and the property in Kirkcaldy. There is a genuine sense of shock. Even for those of us who didn’t really believe the first version of events.

 By four o’clock that afternoon,  a small body is removed from woodland behind a house in Kirkcaldy. The house is owned by Rosdeep’s sister and Risdee and her five children lived there until 18 months before. One hour later, the police are granted another twelve hours to keep Rosdeep in custody.

At seven that night a candle light service is held for the boy, everybody attending holds  a candle high in his memory. Four hours later, the body is officially confirmed as  Mikaeel and his  33 year old mother is arrested and charged in connection  with his disappearance. Later she is charged with his murder.

                                        

His aunt Pandeep, Rosdeep's sister, was 'devastated' by her nephew's death as the  forensic search of the wood behind her house continued. 

Two things emerged from the community involvement– a sense that they had come together. And a sense that their kindness had been abused.

Rosdeep Adekoya was  sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment after she admitted killing the boy, wrapping him in a duvet, hiding his body in a suitcase and driving him 25 miles to dispose of the body in woodland she knew well – behind her sister’s house.  In the three days prior to his death, he had received injuries bad enough to  severely damage his internal  organs.

He had passed away on the evening of 14 January,  probably from injuries inflicted the previous Sunday. The boy had been sick in a restaurant so she had beaten him with her fist, striking him about the body. He was then beaten while laid over the edge of the bath. She couldn’t take him to a doctor because of the bruising and his  condition worsened. She found his body on the Tuesday morning, but  had the sense of mind to drive his two sisters to nursery before  driving his body to Fife.

The pathologist found forty separate injuries to his body.

The judge said her actions were  "cruel and inexcusable".

So as crime writers we have gave to ask the question. Why?

                                    

Rosdeep’s remorse  is ‘genuine and heartfelt" She was an intelligent, articulate  woman with no history of violence to any of her children. She was in tears all the way through her sentencing appearance. In the end, unable to cope with the pressure, she  told the police where to go and get his body.

She is a complex lady. Her parents were doctors, her Dad died relatively young.  Her mother remarried another doctor. The family are wealthy members of the Asian community. Her five children have complicated parentage. She used to be very overweight, she got a gastric band  and reinvented herself as a slim, chick about town. Before that there was a history of depression and, at least one suicide attempt.  On social media sites she asked questions about why she loved all her children except one. Why was she so aggressive with only one of her children. And how do you get rid of bruises.

Mikaeel's father, who had already another partner and had other children by the time Mikaeel was killed, says that Rosdeep, Rosie as he called her, never got over their break up and resented the child because he looked so much like his father. That relationship was disapproved of by her family.

Rosie, the ‘dancing queen’ became a social butterfly after her marriage broke down and it seems to me, she began to live  life the way teenagers do.  She hung about night clubs with  friends of dubious character. Despite having five kids under the age of ten she set up her own  beauty business  then continued with her love of partying.  Her facebook  page was full of photos of her enjoying the night life. Including one friend who later died in a shooting incident.

The parents of her  estranged husband always had reservations about her party lifestyle.  Her husband tried to curb her behaviour, she objected so he left and believed that Rosie had moved on to another partner.

He divorced her on Christmas day 2014.

It seems a sad tale for all involved.  Little Mikaeel paid with his life. A father has lost his son. His siblings will grow up knowing that their mother killed their brother.  But you can’t help thinking that somewhere in there was a woman crying for help, or trying to be somebody she wasn’t. Trying to live a life that she thought she should have had.

Like I say, sad all round.

Caro 

Introducing Prince Axel

 One of the best things about being a writer is MSU.

 Making stuff up.

Did anybody read Susan's blog on Murder Is Everywhere last week and not think of a new Bond villain who sits and plots the downfall of western civilisation while watching the seahorses in his tank going about their own guerrilla tactics?  

Or was that  just  me?
                                   

I was wandering around the aquarium in Long Beach, tickling the horseshoe crabs etc and I saw this display showing the different layers of the ocean and who hangs around in each doing what.
                                   

The sunlight zone is from the surface to about 200 meters depth and it is the extent of visible light and heat from the sun. The thermocline - an interaction of wind, warm water and rapidly cooling water  - is strongest in the tropics yet is almost  non existent in the Polar regions. This ocean layer nourishes life of every colour. The colours lessen on the way  down as the increasing lack of sunlight filters some out.  The first colours to go are the reds, then oranges, yellows, greens, and then finally blues.

The next zone is the twilight zone (200 meters to 1,000 meters) The light here is faint and flickering. The thermocline causes  great temperature changes. Bioluminescence begins to appear on life. The eyes on the fishes are larger and generally upward directed. Human eyes can detect nothing.

In the midnight layer (1000-4000 metres) there is constant darkness. The only light is from the bioluminescence of the animals themselves. The temperature is 4°C.  There is no light, no day, no night. There is organic rainfall; dead microscopic organisms, faecal matter, the odd carcass.

The abyssal layer ( 4,000 to 6,000 meters). It is pitch-black. Three-quarters of the area of the deep-ocean floor lies in this zone. The temperature is near freezing and only a few creatures can be found at these crushing depths. The deepest fish ever found was at 8,372.

Then there is the Hadal Zone (6,000 to 10,911 meters) in the Mariana Trench. The weight of water overhead is that of 48 Boeing 747 jets).  There are only tiny single-celled organisms; foraminifera.

And in the novel that I am writing, I have a character who is lying in a coma. And it struck me that the layers of the ocean could work as a metaphor for the character swimming in the deep blackness of his own conscious mind as it probes and tries to feel its way out/up into the real world. Or maybe that is what the character is hiding from.

My research tells me that much of what is universally believed about coma is not true but as it is a pleasant panacea for the relatives, the myths are allowed to persist. Patients so do not hear or see anything so they do not think. They just are.
                     
                                   

As I would rather be happy than right I just refuse to believe this. I am told by experts that the little bits patients do recall are only because the incident occurred when they are 'close to the surface' anyway and ready to re-emerge. The fact that they have been played their favourite pop tunes and read their favourite stories is neither here nor there, except it makes the family  feel they are doing something  about the  situation.

I have met a few folk who have been in a coma, (traumatic not induced) and they tell similar stories of picking up minutiae, the scent of peppermints, the fact the girlfriend had started smoking again as he could smell it off her breath and could recall conversations between his girlfriend and his mum- the latter giving the former a row for going back to the fags. That young lad was in a coma for 8 months, the girlfriend starting smoking again when the accident happened, so some of his memory seems to come from the early days ... before he dived deep if you like.

                               
                                              Whale fall. A long way from Skyfall.

So in my book I have that analogy going on. Then I saw the display on whale fall ( when a whale dies and lies decomposing on the floor of the ocean and creates a whole ecosystem of new life, and that ecosystem can go on for decades). And there was organ donorship right there, new life from death. That  also fits in with the book and gave me its working title ‘Whale Fall’. I know the publisher will fling that out the minute they see it, but it is a good pet name for the book and will help keep me focussed.

                              

And the book is set in Glasgow. I want it to be in that area of the city with big hotels, good restaurants and classy nightclubs. The streets here are all named after the Crimean War and run down to the Clyde and Atlantic Quay… oh I thought that’s handy. So I have invented a new street in there called Inkermann Street. On that street is a building called the ‘Ocean Blue’. Many of the buildings here  are old tobacco warehouses. The council has a policy that any new buyer can do as they  wish with the building as long as they  keep the front.
                                       

                                     

                                            

Who would not want to keep frontage like the above? So to have something like that as a base, I have designed a  couple of penthouse flats, restaurants, offices but down the middle, in a central glass tube is a huge aquarium.  And in that tube is another tube at huge pressure for creatures of the deep deep (very technical I know and  I have no idea if a glass tube, no matter how thick, can contain pressurised water to keep a fish alive if it likes to live at a pressure of, say, three jumbo jets but it is my book and I can do as I want.) I have a patient who is a deep, deep tiny submarine person and he has a windscreen so the glass is capable of it!

Isn't MSU great!

                             

So imagine sitting in a restaurant,  very posh and watching the central wall which looks like this.  Then as the evening goes on, the light falls, and the inner tube ( where the fish have their  luminescence) will slowly become visible,
And out of all that blackness appears this......
.

                                 
                                                 The Prince Axel Wonderfish

Not pretty. But wondrous. And I do wonder what Prince Axel thought when he was told that is was being named after him.    'I saw this and I thought of you...'.

His is Thaumatichthys axeli, his Phylum: Chordata

                               

He has a luminescent organ dangling from his toothy jaws to attract prey. The first specimen was trawled from a depth of 11,778 feet by the Galathea expedition of 1950-52.  He is black of course, about 18 inches long.

Here is a very short video of him blinking his lure,  but blink and you will miss it.

http://deepsea.tumblr.com/post/50334221304/astronomy-to-zoology-a-prince-axels-wonderfish

Caro Ramsay 20/02/2015

Deeply Dippy About the dinosaur

The fangs are out.

And the flippers are in.

                               
                                     Who wouldn't want that in the front room?

The Natural History Museum has just announced that Dippy is being retired. The rather splendid cast of diplodocus is being removed and being replaced by the skeleton of the blue whale.

                              
                                       Artist impression of the new entrance

But not after a fight. Some of us it seems, are rather fond of Dippy and are not going to let him go without a fight.

                               
                                                             oldie but goldie

The plaster cast skeleton was a gift to the Museum from Andrew Carnegie (from Val McDermid and Ian Rankin country in the kingdom, of Fife) and he bears the name Diplodocuscarnegii for that reason.  At that time, 1905, he was the largest dinosaur known.

                                      
                                            bearded chappies nibbling canapes in wonder

Although there are other copies of Dippy... Dippy doubles…10 of them, decituplets? something… in Berlin, Paris and Milan, he is always associated with the Natural History Museum in London.

                                 

He has taken pride of place in the main hall since 1979 and he reflects the beautiful architecture around him. He seems to fit in a way that I’m not a blue whale would.

Dippy has appeared in numerous films and documentaries and is a bit of a star in his own right. He had his own twitter account, 'save Dippy' is trending in the world of hashtags.  Petitions are being signed to keep him or her in place. (it is impossible to sex the diplodocus ... but as long as Dippy  or Miss Dippy himself knows the difference that’s all that matters.)

Rumours are now abounding that the Museum have ill judged the denizens depth of devotion to Dippy.

Dippy fits the Monty Python theory of the dinosaur 

ie small at each end and big in the middle

If they have their way, over the next two years Dippy will be dismantled and replaced with a mounted blue whale skeleton that will dive down from above. It may be very conservative and environmental and worthy, but will it be fun!  Museums must change with the times and the blue whale is an iconic image in the green movement to look after the planet, but  a whale is a whale is a whale. I’ve seen them in the wild and on the tv. I’ve seen blue whale models in long beach aquarium for one instance… and it is impressive, they are impressive…

but  Dippy is engaging, and he talks to the young.  There is a sense of evolution when you talk to Dippy.  Dippy discourse. Of course.
                                         

Over the last few years Dippy has raised nearly a million pounds in funds and the dinosaur exhibits that he heralds is the only one that always has a queue to get in. On our recent visit we saw the sign that said an hour to queue from here. And that was a school day, early Friday morning. Instead we watched homo sapiens fall over on the ice rink, where the sun had melted the top inch of the surface so there was a lot of water sloshing about. Anybody who fell got very wet. Especially on their backside.  Homo sapiens soakius gluteus.

So what is going to happen to Dippy's remains. Maybe he will be kidnapped for his own good, as in One of our dinosaurs is missing. But he is a senior citizen, a golden oldie, a crumbly or as we call them in Glasgow, a coffin dodger. He is over a hundred years old, he is fragile and delicate.  Decorously Delicate Dippy. So touring seems out the question.  He could be set free and put outside to graze on the grass at the front of the museum but he would need to be recast  to withstand the weather and therefore he would not be not Dippy the delectable. The thought of him being wrapped up and put in a box with a bar code on top is dastardly and deplorable.

He has 292 bones, 36 packing cases brought him to London, it took four months to build him and he was unveiled on Friday 12^th May 1905. He was taken down during the war to protect him and over the years he has been re configured as paleontologists advanced research and understood more of  how Dippy would look and how he would move. Originally his tail and head were down, now the neck is horizontal and the tail forms a graceful arc over the heads of his visitors.

                                           

As I said there is now a petition. it attracted 22,574 signatures in just one day and novelty pop duo Right Said Fred have released a single to help prevent Dippy’s demise. Their hit song was called deeply dippy so it's not a huge lyrical leap. 

The lower comment says that replacing Dippy with a blue whale is like replacing the Eiffel Tower with a stack of toilet rolls.

The director of the zoo says that he  loves Dippy, too but the dinosaur has had a good 35 years in the limelight and he is ready for something new.

I've known men to use that theory about their wife.

Caro Ramsay  



Sawney ( Has) Been

 I was running about as I do, listening to a fine account of the first serial killer well documented in British history, in Colin Wilson’s Mammoth Book Of Murder.

                           

So to set the scene; Scotland. 1400, James 1^st is on the throne. Edinburgh is little more than a village. Glasgow, which means dark glen, is exactly that. All of Scotland is wild and green. And cold. And empty.

(Not much has changed)

                  

And then there started a reign of terror. Down in Galloway people started to go missing. Travellers on the coast road simply vanished off the face of the earth. At first it was thought to be wolves but there was never any trace left, no bones, no clothes, no jewels. When the list of disappearances topped a thousand over a period of twenty plus years, the King sent out a posse.  They hung a few tramps, a few innkeepers and anybody else they didn’t like the look of. But the disappearances continued.

Then a couple were riding their horses on the coastal path coming home from a fair. Savages appeared, dragged the woman her from the horse, slitting her throat and disembowelling her there and then. The man, still on his horse, fought with his cutlass until some other travellers came round the corner, returning from the same fair. The attackers fled.

The horse and the man were the first survivors in 25 years.

Word got back to the King who turned up four days later with a small army of 400 men. They found nothing. Eventually they went down to the beach and at low tide rode along looking up at the caves in the cliff face.  Narrow and jaggy, maybe broad enough to allow a man through but little more than that. Then two of the hunting dogs got a scent and ran up to a cave mouth. Once past the narrow entrance the cave widened out, the king recalled his men and waited for torches to be lit.

                                          

                                          

Outside the caves the dogs went crazy. Deep inside were 48 people living in squalor, body parts lay around the cave, some hanging from higher rocks, clothes and jewels scattered the floor. The cave is said to have been 200 feet deep and its entrance became totally submerged at high tide.

They were all captured and taken back to Edinburgh as the King’s men buried the remains of the dead.

The leader was identified Sawney Bean who had been born Alexander Bean in East Lothian. He had left Leith 25 years before with his wife. They had 8 sons and 6 daughters, 18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters all inbred. And they were cannibals. The story appears well documented in The Newgate Calendar, a crime catalogue of the notorious Newgate Prison in London. It says that Bean was the son of a ditch digger and hedge trimmer but Bean Jnr soon realised he had no taste for honest  toil.

And a taste for human flesh.

                                       

                                                     The lay out of the cave 

All were executed without trial because the king regarded them as beasts and therefore had no right of trial, no right to any kind of human dignity. The men had their hands and feet cut off and were left to bleed to death. The women were all burned alive in three separate fires.  The chronicler John Nicolson said ‘They all died with no repentance, cursing up to the last gasp of life.’

The story of Sawney Bean has been used time and time again in horror films and books.  Wes Cravens, The Hills have Eyes for example.

                               

None of it is true.

It is now popularly thought, with some pride it has to be said, that it was all anti-Scottish propaganda to portray the Scots as ‘dangerous savages’ at a time of political difficulties within the Union.

                                               

                                                   There are many things wrong with the picture. The corpse, the kilt, plaid with laces!!! 

Scottish historian Dr Louise Yeoman says about the books published about the story: "the books it sold were published not in Scotland but in England, at a time when there was widespread prejudice against Scots." She points out that despite the story being set in various times, the story of Sawney Bean cannot be found until the times of the Jacobite risings. The English were looking to show the Scots in a negative way “either as subjects of ridicule or as having a sinister nature.” Dr Yeoman adds: "The name Sawney itself was a popular English name for the barbarous cartoon Scot."It's like calling a cartoon Irishman Paddy.”

                                                              

                                                         James The King, with a better stylist.

There is huge historical inaccuracy.  His reign of terror ranges from James I of Scotland in the early 1400s, to James VI of Scotland (who was James I of England) around the turn of the 17th Century. So, legend rather than reality.

                                         

David Haymam, in the film....

                                    

where he stalks the city in a black cab then takes his victims out to the hills...The Flesh Of Man...

I did giggle when Dr Yeoman pointed out a very humane fact. Although King James was a keen hunter he was unlikely to have put himself in danger by leading this perilous trek against the savage beats living in the caves. He would have sent somebody else. If he had gone there and rounded up the tribe by his own fair hand, we would never have heard the end of it and he would be regarded as a hero of the time.

He wasn’t.

Reading round the internet, it seems cannibalism was not unknown in medieval Scotland. And Galloway can still be a pretty wild place. I know. I've been to the Wigtown book Festival.

Caro Ramsay  06-02-15