The Cutter - It started as an obsession with hacking hair from women's heads. It ended with murder. Michael Litchfield
(a purple-blue hue) would discolour the shoulder, arm, hip and leg on that side. So if the right side of the corpse was bluish, but it was lying to the left, the inference would be that the body had been moved. Bacteria invaded cadavers, endowing them with a greenish tint, but that did not occur until 48 hours afterwards, so obviously this was not something to be expected.
The carnage that November afternoon, coupled with the devastation of two children, who had witnessed the stomach-churning injuries to their mother, reduced veteran officers to tears.
However, one vital piece of evidence – much, much more than a mere crumb of comfort – convinced them that they would soon have the killer in their sights.
Sometimes, at the moment of violent death, the victim would clutch something, possibly a defensive weapon, and it would remain clasped in the hand. This clenched fist around an object after death was known as a ‘cadaveric spasm’, termed a ‘death-grip’ by pathologists. This was usually the result of superhuman exertion, fuelled by an adrenalin surge, characteristically when someone was fighting – or running – for their life. This sort of speeded-up rigor mortis was notorious for throwing the time-sequence out of sync. Without all the other factors, this was one element of this case that might have skewed the estimated time of death.
Gripped tightly in Heather’s right hand was a small amount of human hair, retained in her grasp by cadaveric spasm. In the last desperate moment of her life, as she fought to save herself, had she wrenched the hair from her attacker’s head? Maybe it was that final retaliatory act of hers that had driven her assailant to such acts of inhuman sadism. If so, surely there would be such a surfeit of DNA evidence that the perpetrator would be in the net within days.
That was the mood of the investigators in Capstone Road, Bournemouth, on day one of this investigation. With such a convincing piece of evidence, the smart money was on a swift and brutally efficient manhunt and conviction.
They were wrong, of course. Completely and utterly wrong.
Names and addresses were documented of every person gathered on the streets in the vicinity of Heather’s home, 112 Capstone Road. Everyone was told that he or she would be interviewed within the next few hours or days. All this information would be fed into the National Criminal Records database. Desk-strapped officers trawled tirelessly through the names of residents in the streets that surrounded Charminster Road, the main thoroughfare that ran through Heather Barnett’s neighbourhood. The computer searches would flag up anyone with a criminal record for violence, sexual assault or harassment. The sex offenders register was also checked. Of particular interest would have been anyone from outside the immediate area who was among the sightseers in Capstone Road as the drama unfolded. Nothing immediately leapt out.
With so much blood and mutilation, plus the fistful of hair in Heather’s right hand, senior officers of Dorset Police had every reason to be upbeat about an early arrest. They could be forgiven their confidence – not to be confused with complacency – that the crime scene must have been a treasure trove of forensic and DNA opportunities. One senior officer was heard to say to an angry, tearful colleague, ‘Don’t fret, we’ll have this bastard canned by tomorrow.’
Certainly they were all buoyed up by the impetus of the investigation. They had started this enquiry as if in a sprint, and no one at the outset was prepared for the marathon that lay ahead.
Forensic units are trained to be diligent and painstaking. Fiction, especially on the big and small screens, has always peddled the romantic fable that murder cases are cracked by swashbuckling, foul-mouthed, maverick, beer-swilling urban cowboys with scant regard for authority or the rule book. In the real world, however, it has always been the plodders who get their man – or woman. Nowadays, the plodding takes place in forensic laboratories. Microscopes elicit far more meaningful information than any truncheon. Unfortunately, many a cast-iron case has foundered, not because of a lack of evidence but because it has been ‘contaminated’ due to rushed and sloppy detective work. Hence the meticulous care, right from the outset.
Hair samples were delicately deposited into special forensic ‘envelopes’, then sealed. Blood went into glass tubes. Clothing was dried before being packaged in separate bags, with great care being taken not to disturb trace materials. The need for drying was to avoid damage and deterioration due to mould, hence the containers into which the materials were fastidiously packed were deliberately not airtight: the contents had to be allowed to ‘breathe’. Everything was labelled, timed and dated. The exact location of each discovery had to be included on the labelling and initialled by an inspector supervising the search.
Everything had to be accounted for, and an audit trail had to be developed for each and every item of evidence. There had to be a traceable ‘footprint’ of all forensic evidence from the crime scene to the court for the trial. The prosecution had to prove that all forensic evidence had been kept secure and in appropriate conditions throughout the entire ‘journey’ of collection, collation and analysis; in other words, from the flat, to the laboratories, and to the courtroom. Everyone handling the evidence had to be named; all times and dates when it was tested had to be logged.
If the prosecution was not able to satisfy a judge that the forensic evidence could not have been tampered with or substituted, it would be ruled inadmissible. Paper bags were used to store a considerable number of samples because they prevent condensation and bacterial growth. Vials of hairs were placed on official record sheets that were sealed with wax as a means of eliminating the danger of tampering.
Of course, all this forensic activity was spread over a period of weeks and months. Meanwhile, other avenues of the investigation were pursued vigorously.
The three police officers first to arrive at the murder scene found that the front door keys were still in the lock on the inside. The patio door was locked and there was no sign of a forced entry. The paramedics quickly assessed that Heather was well beyond saving. One of the officers escorted the children back to Fiamma’s house, where he stayed with them, doing everything possible to stabilise their shock and distress.
Dr Allen Anscombe, a Home Office forensic pathologist, arrived at Heather’s flat at 8.45pm on the day of the discovery to examine the body and note all relevant medical and scientific evidence. The postmortem examination, conducted by Dr Anscombe, was performed the following day. As he went about his meticulous work, he recorded his findings on tape, which were later transcribed. His completed report read:
Scattered over the top and back of the head were ten separate, full thickness scalp lacerations, being of linear, curved or irregular outline, between 1cm and 4cm in maximum extent, many showing bruising of adjacent scalp tissue. The largest of these lacerations was a gaping, irregular, three-cornered laceration 4 x 2.5cm, centred 10cm above the top of the left ear, which had penetrated through the underlying skull, brain tissue being visible in the depth of this wound.
Large, gaping, incised wound completely across the front of her neck, extending from 2cm below her right ear to just below her left earlobe. This wound had cut through all soft tissues of the front of the neck and had cut through into the front of her spine.
TRUNK: Both breasts had been cut off by means of a knife or other sharp-edged implement. Shallow, interrupted incised wound vertically down the mid-front of her abdomen, 24cm long, with a horizontal, similar incised wound 1.5cm long, joining right mid-part, and a smaller separate, similar wound 3cm long on the lower left abdomen. All these incised wounds were of dry, parchmented appearance, without apparent bleeding from them.
HANDS: She had lacerations and bruises to the backs of her hands, with a fracture to the underlying bone of her left hand.
CONCLUSIONS: The deceased died as a result of brain injuries due to multiple impacts to the head,