The Scapegoat: One Murder. Two Victims. 27 Years Lost.. Don Hale
was fascinated by this witness. He had been scribbling down notes the whole time Jackie had been talking. ‘She confirms Downing’s timings too!’ Allan said. ‘Her account of seeing this woman in the Garden of Remembrance coincides exactly with what Stephen wrote to you, Don – and the time he left the cemetery and Stephen returning. It all fits! And the description of Wendy Sewell’s clothing was accurate, although she could have got that from newspaper reports, I suppose. But why didn’t she say all this at first?’
Jackie held the Jayne Atkins file aloft. ‘Plenty of reasons,’ she said. ‘In the Court of Apeal, Lord Justice Orr made the point that she didn’t come forward with her story for many months after the murder, even though the police visited her house and asked if anyone had seen anything.’
Jackie paused and studied the paperwork more closely, searching for Jayne’s exact words. She said, ‘“I was afraid the man in the cemetery might have recognised me, and I might be the next one!”
‘Now, we know the judges didn’t accept this as a good enough reason for her keeping quiet for several months,’ Jackie continued. ‘But there were things that were never said about Jayne Atkins.
‘For a start, she was only 15 when all this happened, and a very vulnerable 15 at that. I don’t know the exact details, but she had quite a troubled home life. Soon after the murder, in early November, Jayne ran away from home.
‘She was eventually placed with foster parents in Buxton. I know it’s only ten miles away, but it would be like another world, away from the estate and all the neighbours gossiping about the murder and Stephen Downing. She simply lost touch with developments on the Wendy Sewell murder case.
‘That is, until she saw an article in the newspaper. She had a Saturday job at the Barbecue Cafe in Buxton, and this article had been left lying open on a table by a customer.’
With a flourish, Jackie produced a copy of the Derbyshire Times from 23 February 1974. She turned to page six.
YOUTH ON MURDER CHARGE FOUND GUILTY
Stephen Downing, aged 17, was found guilty of murdering 32-year-old typist Mrs Wendy Sewell in a cemetery at Bakewell, Derbyshire, by a unanimous verdict at Nottingham Crown Court last Friday.
‘Look at the last paragraph!’ Jackie insisted.
He had told the jury that he found the victim lying semi-conscious in the graveyard after going home during his lunch hour, but the prosecution said his lunchtime walk was only an alibi after he had carried out the attack. Downing pleaded not guilty to the murder.
‘When Jayne read it,’ continued Jackie, ‘she knew Downing had told the truth at his trial. That phrase – “The prosecution said his lunchtime walk was only an alibi after he had carried out the attack” – she knew it wasn’t like that.
‘She had seen Stephen leaving the cemetery on his lunchtime walk. Wendy Sewell had been very much alive at that point – she had been in the arms of another man.
‘It dawned on Jayne that there were probably only four people who knew that Stephen had told the truth – herself, Stephen, the victim, who was now dead, and the man Wendy had been embracing before she was attacked. The mysterious sandy-haired man had not come forward, for whatever reason.’
‘So, is that when she went to the police?’ asked Allan.
‘No, not straight away. It was in March. It kept playing on her mind, though. You see she’d always assumed that Stephen must have attacked Wendy later that afternoon, after she saw him going back to the cemetery. I mean, the police were so confident they’d got the right man, that’s what they kept telling everyone on the estate – “he’s confessed, he did it” – so why should Jayne query it?
‘She only heard about the attack when she got back from school later that afternoon, and no one had told her the exact time it was meant to have happened. And, of course, she was terrified. This mystery man was out there somewhere. But who could she tell? Remember, she was only 15, cut off from her family, and maybe knew she wouldn’t be believed.
‘Eventually she told her foster parents what she knew. Ironically, her foster-father was a Buxton policeman. He told her she should go home and tell her family, and the Bakewell police, everything she had told him. So that’s what she did. She then visited the regional HQ at Buxton and spoke with CID officers there.’
‘And did they believe her?’ Allan asked.
‘Well, partially,’ said Jackie. ‘Talking to her family, it seems the police basically believed her story about seeing Wendy with this other man, but they told her she must have got the wrong day.’
‘Even if they thought she’d got the days mixed up, they should still have tried to track him down. If Wendy Sewell had been meeting someone in the cemetery and knew him well enough to be putting her arms round him … well, surely the police should have found out who he was,’ Allan pointed out.
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