Authors: Paul Britton
Nor was it a case of a man coming across an attractive woman, becoming aroused, being rebuffed and angrily stabbing her before running away. Caroline had been disabled, tied up in a particular way and then attacked. Yet despite these elements of control, there was also a lack of sophistication. Why did he choose such a public place and such a busy time? He could have achieved so much more if he’d chosen somewhere more private. He could have exerted more control, made the bindings more elaborate and increased his pleasure. Instead, the killing was over in a matter of minutes.
This element of opportunism suggested that the killer was a stranger to Caroline, although she may have been known to him. Perhaps he’d seen her walking her dogs or been a customer at her shop.
In terms of a motive, I had no doubt that it was sexual, although not in the way that we normally think of a rape or sexual assault. It displayed evidence of a more extreme deviant sexuality. My work in the sexual dysfunction clinic at Leicester General Hospital had helped me understand that people’s sexual functioning can become tied to and crossed with other things.
When men and women find themselves unable to have sexual intimacy in a way that feels good for everyone involved, the drive doesn’t just go away. Sometimes they find themselves developing fetishes and vivid fantasies to such an extent that they lose the ability to sustain or enjoy sexual intercourse unless they imagine or actually have some very specific factor present, for example, certain types of pornography, underwear, footwear, or ritualistic behaviour.
Some people become so preoccupied with these things that the actual sexual act becomes less and less important or valuable so that even their masturbatory thoughts turn increasingly towards these fetishes and vivid fantasies. For a man, the woman can cease to be a mutually consenting, eager participant and instead become a depersonalized vehicle for his pleasure.
Caroline Osborne’s murder was an expression of a corrupt lust. The bindings, control and choice of victim suggested a killer whose sexual desire had become mixed with anger and the need to dominate. Rather than fantasizing about some form of mutually consenting sexual contact, the killer’s fantasies would feature extreme sexual aggression against women and closely mirror the events that unfolded on Aylestone Meadows. He would have rehearsed the scene in his mind beforehand - fantasizing about a woman being taken, restrained, bound, dominated, mutilated and killed with a knife.
But how did he become like this?
A sense of bitterness and anger towards women often begins early when, for example, a lonely and sexually immature young man may discover that he hasn’t the necessary social skills to get girls to take an interest in him. He sees other boys and young men having success with women but it doesn’t happen for him.
Feeling hurt and rejected, he may begin to blame women for his loneliness and sexual frustration. Over time, this can lead to a growing sense of bitterness and anger which can distort sexuality. Instead of fantasizing about consenting and mutually pleasurable sexual events, he may begin to link pleasure through masturbation with gross sexual violence. In his fantasies he can make women do what he wants and, more importantly, he can punish them for what he believes they have done to him.
The pentagram found near the body was the crux. Caroline’s murder wasn’t a ritual sacrifice. The diagram had been drawn earlier and left behind so that the scene would resemble the re-enactment of a ritual sexual sacrifice to a satanic or other black magic figurehead. This is how the killer rationalized his grossly deviant urges to control, torture and murder a woman. It gave his actions a purpose, even if totally spurious. If devil worship or human sacrifice had truly been the motive I would have expected to see far more of the elaborate preparation, degradation and theatre that is associated with the black arts.
Finding a foolscap page, I began writing down a list of psychological features that I could draw from the material. ‘The lack of ultimate sophistication or practice in the killing suggests a very young man in his mid-teens to early twenties,’ I wrote. ‘He’s likely to be very lonely and sexually immature, with few previous girlfriends, if any. He will have wanted relationships but won’t have the necessary social skills to begin or maintain them.’
Point two: ‘He will probably live at home with his parents or a parent.’ This is quite a common feature that emerges among young men with poor social skills and no sexual confidence.
Another common feature concerned his likely employment. The inability to verbally express himself would make it difficult for him to hold down a managerial or higher clerical job. For this reason I wrote, ‘He is more likely to be a manual worker in the sort of job that demands dexterity and may involve being comfortable with sharp knives.’ The reference to knives had been flagged by his handiwork on Caroline’s body.
‘He’s physically strong and athletic,’ I wrote, something evident from the way his victim had been subdued and bound, as well as the force used to inflict the knife wounds.
‘He may have known Caroline, or at least been aware of her, and she may have played a part in his various masturbatory fantasies.
‘This is his territory. He knows the area and lives very close by - if not now then at some point in the recent past.’ This explained how he managed to murder Caroline and then disappear so quickly from Aylestone Meadows that none of the people who were in the general area noticed anyone acting suspiciously or anything untoward. For this to happen, he had to be confident in his surroundings.
At the same time, to have struck in the open air, on a warm summer’s evening when it was still light, involved taking considerable risks, but he was so aroused he was willing to take the chance.
‘His violent sexual fantasies will be fed by pornographic magazines, books, posters and videos, some of it violent and featuring satanic themes,’ I wrote. ‘When you find him and look inside his house, I expect you’ll find ample evidence of this, as well as his strong interest in knives.’
The fact that the murder weapon had not been found at the scene indicated that the killer may have a forensic awareness. Equally, it suggested that he might regard the knife as a treasured artefact and, therefore, he wouldn’t have casually discarded it; he would have kept it close.
Going through each point with David Baker in his office, I sensed that he didn’t quite know how to respond. Although grateful, he was unsure of how I could read so much into photographic and case history information that he and his colleagues had studied for months. How much weight could he give to my conclusions? Nobody, as far as we knew, had ever asked a psychologist to become involved in a murder investigation in quite this way before - it was virgin territory, without maps, and I was a guide who followed signs that David couldn’t see.
Weeks were to pass, then months, and when I didn’t hear from Baker again I assumed my role had ended. There was no way of gauging whether I’d been a help or not, I simply went back to my clinical work.
Fourteen months later, on Monday 29 April, 1985, I saw a newspaper poster on my way home from work -NURSE, 21, SLAIN ON FOOTPATH. Amanda Weedon had been one of our own, working at Groby Road Hospital in northwest Leicester as a state enrolled nurse not long finished her training and soon to be married.
David Baker called me that evening and next morning I found myself back in his office, listening to another briefing.
Amanda’s body had been found by a teenage girl at 4.15 p.m. on Saturday, lying under a hedge alongside a tree-shaded footpath which ran between Groby Road Hospital and Gilroes Cemetery. A few yards away further along the path stood a red-brick building called The Chantry, a psychiatric halfway house where patients lived for a time before they returned to the community. A member of staff had seen ‘a shadowy figure’ lurking on the footpath at about the time of the attack.
Like Caroline Osborne, Amanda had been stabbed repeatedly and there were none of the normal signs that flag a sexual killing. Initially the police thought they might be dealing with a small-time mugger who had bungled his attack. Amanda’s purse containing Ł20 and her cash-card was missing from her brown handbag.
She had withdrawn the money during the morning and gone shopping with her fiance, Clifford Eversfield. The couple had said goodbye at lunchtime and Clifford, the manager of a local football team, Epworth, was on the touchline watching a game when Amanda was attacked. The news was broken to him when he came to the nurses’ home on Saturday evening to pick up Amanda for a party.
After lunch, Amanda had walked to a friend’s house in Amadis Road, Beaumont Leys. She left there at about 3.15 p.m. and went to buy a greeting card from Martins newsagent’s in Fletcher Mall at Beaumont Leys. The shop assistant remembered her.
At 3.45 p.m. she started back towards the hospital through the snow flurries and bitter wind. The walk would have taken seventeen to twenty-two minutes and she would have reached the footpath at about 4.00 p.m. Her body was found fifteen minutes later. The greeting card lay nearby.
‘There’s only half an hour we have to account for,’ said Baker, with a palpable sense of urgency.
‘I need to know about Amanda.’
‘It’s early days,’ he said, finding a folder. ‘Her family comes from Burton-on-the-Wolds, ten miles north of here. Father’s retired … used to work for Rolls Royce … Amanda’s the youngest of three children … the only daughter … always wanted to be a nurse … not much else.’ Baker continued reading out loud. ‘She spoke to her mother three times on Friday about wedding invitations. She was getting married on July twenty-seven.’
Baker slid an album of crime scene photographs across the table, looking almost apologetic. I took a deep breath. Immediately it was clear that the pattern of knife wounds was similar to the first murder, aimed mainly at the neck and shoulders. Again there was an absence of an overt sexual assault but I had no doubt that it was sexually motivated. It was like laying one template on top of another. There were differences, but these were far outnumbered by the similarities.
‘You’re dealing with the same man who killed Caroline Osborne,’ I said.
Baker nodded in agreement.
‘The attack was sudden and not as thought out. He took a greater risk…’
‘Which means?’
‘Well, it suggests that there was some disinhibition which argues either for him being in a state of greater excitement or illness. He hasn’t had the protracted interpersonal exchange with his victim - not like with Caroline - which suggests he’s immature, otherwise there would have been more refinement. Sexual murderers tend to refine their techniques and increase their control over victims with each new murder. But this killer took a greater risk and even less time. There was also no attempt to bind the victim and no symbolism around the edges.’
Baker asked, ‘And that means … ?’
‘Well, it makes it far less likely that he knew Amanda.’
‘So he struck at random?’
‘Well, no … not quite. I don’t think she was a random victim.’
Baker raised an eyebrow.
‘There could have been a dozen women walk along the path and he ignored them. Something singled Amanda out; she attracted his attention just at the moment when he was most aroused. Maybe she looked like someone he knew, or her hair was tied in a certain way, or it was something she wore.’
Gilroes Cemetery sprawled across dozens of acres, dominating the aerial map that Baker gave me of the scene. He explained that police were searching the area, a known haunt for glue-sniffers, in the hope of finding Amanda’s purse.
Almost in passing, he said that Caroline Osborne had been buried in the cemetery. Our eyes met momentarily and I could see we were asking ourselves the same question: could he have visited the grave?
The cemetery is vast and I reasoned there was a fair chance that any local person who died would finish up there. If there was a connection it was probably of mixed salience, I thought, although visiting Caroline’s grave was just the sort of thing that might have heightened his arousal. In such a state, carrying a knife, it’s possible he walked out of the cemetery and came upon Amanda Weedon.
The public had reported three sightings of a man or men in the area between 3.15 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. One description concerned a man seen leaving the footpath at 4.05 p.m. He was white, tall and wearing drab clothing, either khaki or olive green.
Baker explained that the murder squad was working through the massive list of suspects interviewed after Caroline’s murder and also checking local records for known flashers and sex offenders in the area. My psychological description would, initially at least, help them channel their resources and focus on a much smaller pool of suspects who had the relevant characteristics.
We agreed to talk in a few days’ time and I left police headquarters, driving to Leicester General where my NHS work was waiting.
Paul Kenneth Bostock, aged nineteen, of Beaumont Leys in Leicester, being six foot five inches tall and weighing fifteen stone, certainly matched the description issued of the stranger seen on the footpath.
Bostock’s grandmother encouraged him to go to the police to eliminate himself and on Wednesday afternoon, four days after the second murder, he walked into Blackbird Road Police Station. He was nervous and contradicted himself several times when explaining his movements on the previous Saturday.
He had been interviewed three times after the first murder but had given an apparently satisfactory alibi. He lived with his parents in Blakesley Walk, Beaumont Leys, near to the scene of both murders. Eight months earlier the family had lived in Walton Street, around the corner from Caroline Osborne’s pet parlour where they took their two dogs to be groomed.
Bostock came across as a mild-mannered giant and was a popular figure in his job as a meat processor, which obviously involved working with knives. A fitness fanatic, he jogged and cycled before or after work and had turned his grandmother’s garage into a fitness studio.
He had played junior rugby with West Leicester - a natural forward because of his height - and later developed an interest in martial arts, training on Tuesday and Friday nights at a Leicester working men’s club. He would arrive at the training lessons with his kit washed and neatly pressed, but rarely say anything to anyone.