Innocents. Jonathan Rose
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and knees, scouring for the most minute of clues, and the further reports of house to house enquiries, there is, from the moment the body is discovered, a far more private aspect of the investigation. It takes place in the clinical sterility of the laboratory and in the case of Lesley Molseed, it was a side of the investigation which was to have substantial and profound implications.
High on the moors, away from the anguish of the Turf Hill Estate and the homeliness of 11 Delamere Road, Dick Holland presided over the murder scene, one eye on his watch as he awaited the arrival of the forensic and pathological support services. He was only too aware that the further away from the moment of killing he got, the more difficult it would be to find his man. Moreover, the passage of time accompanied intrusions into the evidence: a wind blowing across the moors could blow away a fragment or fibre, a rainstorm could destroy footprints, a less-than-careful bobby might obliterate some tyre tracks, or the killer himself could dispose of clothing, or a vehicle, or a weapon.
Anxious to preserve the murder scene in at least one respect, Holland had directed PC Stuart Akerman to take a series of photographs, of the features of the moorland and the area in which the child was found, and of Lesley’s body itself, in situ, before there could be any further disturbance of the area. He was confident that the body had not been moved by Greenwell or DC Roberts, and therefore had no reason to suspect that the child was not in the same position as she had been left by the murderer. One further photograph. A seemingly innocuous print of a blue-grey coloured fibre-tipped pen, with a white cap and base, found on a rock about fifteen yards from the body, in a direct line between the body and the lay-by. If every picture does in fact tell a story, what tale would be told by the print of this harmless writing instrument?
Senior colleagues of Holland began to arrive at the lay-by. Awaiting the arrival of the pathologist, there were a number of officers of the West Yorkshire police force, among them Assistant Chief Constable Donald Craig, DCS Jack Dibb and Detective Chief Superintendent George Oldfield (whose name would later become inextricably linked with the investigation into the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper). Officers from the adjoining Greater Manchester force who covered the area from which Lesley had disappeared were also present.
At 10.30 a.m., the assembled officers witnessed the arrival of Home Office pathologist Professor David John Gee. Holland briefed Professor Gee with a thumbnail sketch: the identity and age of the victim, when and where she went missing, when and how she was found and that the body had not been moved since its discovery. The professor prepared to view the body. He was accompanied by trainee pathologists Dr Boateing and Dr Swaloganathan, and by Home Office forensic scientists Ronald Outteridge from the Harrogate laboratory, and a Mr Firth from the laboratory at Chorley. The forensic scientists would examine the scene, removing samples of grass and vegetation from around the body, and soil and stone samples both from the site where the body was found, and from the lay-by. Clear plans would indicate the exact location from which each sample was obtained, and the bags containing the samples would be marked accordingly. Later, they would examine the clothing of the deceased and any samples obtained by the pathologist.
Police officers continued to work, first with a finger-tip search of the immediate area, then with a wider, less-detailed rake over a more extensive area, hoping to find anything relevant but, in particular, the weapon used to end this tiny child’s life.
The pathologist’s work would primarily take place in the mortuary, after the body had been moved from the scene, but it was important for him to view the body in situ as it would help him to determine whether that was the place where the murder had taken place, or whether the child had died elsewhere and then been moved there. He would go on to consider the injuries, how they were inflicted and in what order, and which one or ones had been responsible for the death.
Times were vital factors for all the investigators, since they would attempt to provide a band of times within which death had occurred. These parameters would be crucial in eliminating suspects who were able (as Greenwell already had done) to account for their movements within those times.
An access route to the body had been created, so that the scientists could make their way to the corpse without fear of intruding upon any potential evidence. Ascending the steep grassy bank from the lay-by, the men reached a broad, grassed terrace from where they could see, beyond, a rock-strewn slope, steeply rising to the moorland proper far above. At the back of the terrace, some fifty yards from the roadside, they saw, as Greenwell had seen, mere cloth blowing in the stiffening breeze, which, only on closer inspection, became their ultimate objective: the body of a child lying face down in the coarse grass. It was still clad in the dark-blue gabardine raincoat, the hood raised over the back of the head so as to obscure the hair and other features. The left arm was bent up at the side of the body towards the face, the right arm was beneath the child. The thin legs were flexed at the hips, somehow twisted to the left, and the trunk was tilted slightly to its right. The skirt of the raincoat was somewhat displaced upwards, exposing an area of white padded lining, and beneath that could be seen a pink skirt and a pair of red knickers. The blue shopping bag lay across the feet, not quite obscuring the brown shoes, and the Bay City Rollers socks of which Lesley had been so proud.
A closer examination revealed a number of slit-like cuts in the material of the raincoat, running across the back of the body and between the shoulders, and one, similar cut, to the back of the head. Dark stains around the cuts of the material gave an overall appearance of stab wounds with slight blood-staining of the coat’s material. The exposed parts of the body – the left hand and thighs – were not blood-stained, save for a single smear of blood approximately two inches (five centimetres) in diameter on the upper surface of the left thigh. There was blood soiling of the grassed area some three inches (seven centimetres) in diameter below the body, approximately one foot (thirty centimetres) beyond the lower end of the trunk. Behind the right side of the child’s back lay an unzipped purple purse, and for a moment the thought entered many minds, ‘Has this child been murdered for the sake of the meagre contents of her purse?’ The body and clothing appeared not to have been disturbed since the child’s death, but that did not prevent there being a collective theory that the motive for this crime had been sexual, not financial.
Then, for the first time since hands had taken her life from her, Lesley Molseed is touched again, but this time it is by people who care about her, at least in the sense of being anxious to help bring her killer to justice. They are gentle, not violent, deliberate, not frenzied, and they are painfully experienced in the performance of their various tasks. With minimum conversation they go about their macabre but necessary business. Detective Sergeant Kenneth Godfrey has been appointed exhibits officer, responsible for the collection, collation and identification of every single item of physical evidence, whether seized by a scientist or police officer, whether taken from a witness or, in due course, a suspect. He receives the Tweety Pie-crested handbag and the purple purse, and places each into a separate polythene bag which is then sealed and labelled: a description of the item, the time, date and place of recovery and a unique reference number which relates to the person who recovered it. The items will remain protected in their polythene sheath until the time comes for forensic examination in the sterile atmosphere of the laboratory.
Sellotape lifts are taken from the child’s left hand and legs, the simplest of tools to search for the tiniest fragment of evidence. A fragment of blue material is found stuck to the back of the left thigh.
Then, and only then, does Professor Gee begin to intrude on the body itself. He first removed the child’s knickers. They did not appear to have been tampered with, giving at least an indication that there had been no sexual interference. Then the professor took anal and vaginal swabs, which were placed in exhibit tubes and handed to the exhibits officer.
To assist in determining the time of death, Professor Gee took the rectal temperature of the body. At 12.30 p.m. it was 46 degrees fahrenheit. The examination had by now taken over two hours, and though the weather was dry, there was a cold westerly wind blowing. The air temperature on the ground varied between 52 and 48 degrees fahrenheit, whilst the temperature three feet above the body varied between 47 and 48 degrees fahrenheit. Although the ground appeared to be dry, the upper clothing of the deceased was slightly damp, and a few beads of moisture had been visible on the upper surface of the raincoat when the men had first arrived at the body, but