Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years. Jacqui Kirby
for her to go missing. ‘That’s not like Colette,’ he replied, a little shocked. ‘But, if I see her, I’ll certainly let her know how worried you all are.’
I thanked him for his kindness, but by now I felt dead inside, like all hope had been lost.
I closed the front door wearily and returned to Tony. ‘I just know she’s dead in a hedge somewhere,’ I said, weeping.
Tony had reassured me earlier. But now, the more he thought about it, the more he knew something was very wrong. Eventually, he stopped talking altogether and we all just sat there in silence, numb and shell-shocked.
At 5.45am, I made the call I had been dreading. I called my mother Joyce to tell her that Colette was missing. I could barely get the words out for crying and Mum had to keep asking me to repeat what I was saying. She said she’d be over straight away with my stepfather.
When I saw her car pull up outside, I ran straight to her and, as she held me in her arms, I collapsed in a heap of tears. Everything seemed so surreal. Other people had arrived at our house too. My aunt and uncle, who we’d spent the day before with, turned up along with Russell’s parents. They felt dreadful and, like the rest of us, they blamed themselves.
‘If only the cars hadn’t been off the road,’ Russell had said time and time again throughout the night.
His parents stayed for an hour or so but no one knew what to say or think. My mum went into the kitchen to make everyone a cup of tea. I think it was her way of coping; something to occupy her mind, to stop her thinking the worst.
I appreciated everyone’s kindness, but I could barely speak to them. Instead, I just sat by the window, waiting for the light to come and bring me my daughter back home.
As soon as dawn broke, Mark and my stepfather Ron went out to continue the search. They were driving past a nearby field off Thurlby Lane, about a mile and a half from our home, when Mark spotted the striped blue tape of a police cordon at the side of a field. His car screeched to a halt. Mark jumped from the car and began running towards the cordoned-off field by the bottom of a hedgerow. As he approached, a police officer tried to hold him back, but it was too late. Mark glanced over the officer’s shoulder and saw a sight that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
‘That’s my sister!’ Mark howled, his cries echoing around the deserted farmland.
In front of his eyes lay his frail little sister naked, bruised, battered and dead. My nightmare premonition had come true.
She’d been strangled – the life squeezed out of her innocent and now broken body. She lay like a rag doll, cold and lifeless at the bottom of the hedge, and had been arranged by her killer in a sickening sexually explicit pose. He had even tied her blouse and bra around her wrist as some sort of twisted trophy or calling card.
The horrors of what he saw that day changed Mark in an instant. No brother should have to see his sister like that. My son’s life would never be the same again.
Back at home, I remained seated by the front-room window waiting for news. I was as pale and as frozen as a porcelain statue. A police officer had been dispatched to keep guard outside at the end of our drive.
I knew my daughter was dead before my son had even made it through the front door. When Mark and Ron pulled up in the car outside, I instinctively rose from the armchair where I had been sitting. As I did so, I saw the policeman shaking his head sadly, looking towards the house. I knew in that instant that my beautiful Colette had gone.
A scream came from deep within me and it didn’t stop. I saw Tony and my mother – their lips were moving but the only sound I could hear was my own desperate screams.
Then Mum picked up the phone and began to dial a number.
My screams didn’t stop until the doctor arrived with a couple of needles. He’d come to inject me with a tranquilliser. My eyes glazed over, a kind of numb relief came over me. Zombie like, I was led to bed, where I stayed for the rest of the day until the effects of the drug wore off. Then I was injected again, and again. This pattern of drug-induced numbness continued to keep me in a blurry, semi-detached haze for around ten days. It was meant to protect me from the horror of our reality and to give me time to adjust to the news that I would never see my lovely Colette ever again.
Our nightmare had begun.
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