Innocents. Jonathan Rose
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pieces of information.
One was from Mrs Emma Tong who had seen a small girl in a cream car, parked on Well-i’-th’-Lane, Rochdale – some 800 yards from the Turf Hill Estate – on Sunday, 5 October at 1.30 p.m. Mrs Tong became convinced that the child was Lesley.
The other was Mr Coverdale’s statement regarding his sighting of a man with a girl in a blue gabardine coat, at about 1.45 p.m. on Sunday, 5 October, climbing the embankment above the lay-by. Apart from her killer, he was, quite possibly, the last person to see Lesley Molseed alive.
Both of these statements illustrate the merits of turning the sweeping net inward on the Molseed family. The child in Well-i’-th’-Lane was sitting in the car, looking down. She was not struggling to get out of the car or otherwise make good her escape. She smiled at Mrs Tong, she did not open a car window and scream for help. The child at the lay-by was being helped up the embankment, she was not being dragged against her will. At worst these two statements show nothing more than that the child was being lured, duped and deceived into taking the car journey which lead to her death. At best, they showed that the child knew her killer, and had nothing to fear from him. The latter may not mean that the killer could only come from her immediate family (meaning Danny Molseed or Frederick Anderson, since the children had no contact with other relatives) but it would narrow the field to the family, to neighbours, to schoolteachers or youth group assistants.
But there was little to go on, despite the mass of information which was overwhelming the incident room. It had become apparent that a quick result to the enquiry would not be found. All the most obvious and common solutions to murder enquiries had been followed with no result.
In truth, there was little substantial evidence to pursue, apart from the enquiries flowing from the Tong and Coverdale statements and the suggestions of the car involved. Twenty-two vehicles had been swept and subjected to Sellotape lifts, fifteen suspects had had their clothing subjected to forensic examination, 335 other articles had been examined forensically, including fifteen knives which had been found on the moors or the estate, or in the possession of suspects. Nothing had been found.
Substantial numbers of men had been eliminated, including Danny Molseed and Frederick Anderson, family friends, local traders and other local suspects, but it had not enabled progress towards a positive identification. All that it had done was to create a profile of the murderer, a man who was believed to have used a knife which had a blade three and a half inches long and seven sixteenths of an inch wide. The police believed that the offender was a man who was sexually active and with a liking for children. He may have come to the attention of the police or other bodies in the past for sexual or other peculiar behaviour. He would be able to drive and would have access to a vehicle which might be a turquoise Morris 1000 van or a light-coloured Ford Anglia or Cortina – cars sighted at the lay-by but still not traced by police. He might be in his thirties and approximately five foot six inches tall, and it was also believed that he would be unable to verify his movements between twelve noon and 3 p.m. on the Sunday, and possibly for a longer period. He may have cut his hand and his clothing may have been stained, certainly with traces of Lesley’s blood, possibly with wallpaper paste remnants. It was also felt, at least by the senior officers, that the person they were seeking had not merely behavioural problems, but mental health problems, too.
The officers thought the identity of the killer might be revealed by tracing the persons responsible for the numerous sexually related incidents reported to them, especially those of indecent exposure on the estate. They prioritised these enquiries and restructured the investigations in line with their review.
And then Dibb was called back to West Yorkshire to head another murder enquiry in the Bradford area. He would retain an overview of the Molseed case but essentially the case was now firmly in the hands of Dick Holland. Holland was immediately promoted from detective chief inspector to detective superintendent, a great personal advance for him based entirely on his ability and on previous successes.
The undertakers, who had collected Lesley’s cleaned and reconstructed body from a police mortuary, paid brief respects to April and Danny before gently closing the front door behind them. They would return later that morning to take the child for burial. April and Julie had selected a spot close to a clump of trees, where a family of wild rabbits played. In the bright October sunshine the place had seemed perfect, for Lel had loved all animals. Now she could rest among them.
For a couple of minutes after the men in black had gone, no one could muster the courage to enter the front room with its curtains closed, where the small coffin had been placed. Julie, the 16-year-old sister whom Lesley had called Jupes, had placed a tentative hand on the door to the room with the will of a teenager and, wondering if the lid of the coffin would be opened or not, she had eased the door open. Entering the darkened room, Julie saw the cat, Tiger, curled up on the coffin lid, settling down to sleep. It could have been seen as a desecration, but to Julie it was somehow natural that the family pet should be with her younger sister at this moment of passing. Julie crept up to the coffin, subliminally wondering whether she had done so to avoid disturbing the cat or Lesley, and she gazed at the inscription on the brass plate fixed to the lid. It read, simply, ‘Lesley Molseed. Died October 8 1975.’ Julie cried, because the inscription brought home grim reality. Lesley was not coming back. And Julie cried because the inscription was wrong. Lesley had been found on 8 October, but it was thought that she had died on the day she had gone missing, 5 October 1975. It was that date which would ever be fixed in the Molseed collective memory. The discrepancy, whatever the reason for it, greatly upset Julie and all her family who had cared so very deeply for the child who was now gone.
Julie stared at the coffin, yearning to see her beloved Lel, but afraid to move the lid. She had wanted to see Lesley before she came home from the undertaker’s, but all the family had advised against it. ‘Remember Lesley as she was in life,’ the undertaker had solemnly said. She had wondered if that was because her sister’s face had been distorted by the violence and stab wounds administered. She thought about that gap-toothed grin, and hoped that the memory of that smile would restore unity to the Molseed household.
In the darkened room the pregnant teenager was immersed in thought as she stood alone by the coffin, but on this day her thoughts were only of Lesley. It seemed that Lesley had never been destined for a long life; she had been blighted since birth. There was the operation on her heart and the fact that Lesley’s growth had been suppressed, making her small and skinny, but Julie managed a half-smile as she recalled her mother’s description of Lel. ‘Lesley is not skinny, she is dainty.’ A family plan to emigrate to Australia had been vetoed by the Australian Immigration Service because of Lesley’s medical condition. But for the hole in the heart the family would have emigrated. ‘Then I would not have been pregnant,’ thought Julie, ‘and Lesley’s kidnapper would have murdered some other little girl, and I would not be watching this cat sitting on my sister’s coffin.’
Julie recalled that Lesley had previously brushed with death, on three occasions. She had poked a hair clip into an electric socket and been blown across the room, somehow escaping serious injury. Lel explained that she had been copying a repair she had seen her electrician stepfather perform many times. Later, on a family holiday in Spain, the lightweight Lesley had been swept off her feet by a wave which would have had little effect on her more robust contemporaries. Only the speed of April dashing into the sea had saved the 7-year-old child from drowning.
The last occasion had been when Lesley’s dressing gown had brushed against a fire, catching light and engulfing the child in flames. Again it had been April who had saved her, leaping from her bed when she had heard her daughter’s screams and rushing to the child in time to smother the flames with a blanket. Lesley had suffered burns to her leg which required hospital treatment.
But this time there had been no one to hear the child’s screams. This time there had been no April racing to the scene to rescue her daughter. This time had been the last time that Lesley would take on death. This time she had lost.