Innocents. Jonathan Rose
Russ, who had identified it as an old – possibly 1965-Vauxhall Viva, but the men had been unable to say whether there were any people, or children, in the car. The first sighting was by an elderly lady who was unable to give much detail beyond the car being a cream-coloured four-door, with red primer on the passenger side doors. This witness claimed to have seen a girl in the car who she thought looked exactly like Lesley. A light-coloured vehicle with red primer paint on the bodywork had been seen at the lay-by between 6.15 p.m. and 6.45 p.m. by Sandra Chapman and by Colin Sutcliffe.
Yet another vehicle was also spotted parked in the lay-by. This was described as a dirty blue-green 5cwt Morris van, which had had a green check blanket draped over the windscreen and driver’s window. It had been seen by a couple driving past on the Sunday of Lesley’s disappearance, at 2 p.m. and again at 3.30 p.m. This vehicle was subsequently described as being a Morris Minor-type van, hand-painted in turquoise or light green. No fewer than fourteen people came forward to speak of this van, covering a period between 1.30 and 6.30 p.m. Press reports at the time indicated that the police believed that this vehicle was being used by a courting couple, although the failure of the driver to come forward to police appeals made the police proffer the opinion that the couple involved a man and ‘someone else’s wife or girlfriend’. The police so wanted to identify the driver of this vehicle that they were prepared to offer him anonymity should he come forward voluntarily, but the tone of Detective Chief Inspector Bill Little gave away the anxiety of the police when he said, ‘Come forward, there will be no embarrassment and the matter will go no further,’ before adding the warning, ‘If [this] man does not come to us we will eventually find him and we can’t make the same promises then.’ It does appear that the police initially believed that this vehicle contained potential witnesses, rather than the abductor(s) and killer(s) of Lesley, but so determined were the investigating officers to move the enquiry along expeditiously, that they were not averse to making open threats. If the police did initially think this van contained an innocent courting couple, that view subsequently changed dramatically when DCS Dibb spoke to the press in these terms: ‘[This van] has got to be found even if we have to check every Morris or Austin five hundredweight van in this part of the country. It might well be a major breakthrough if we can trace this vehicle,’ which was believed to be a 1967 or 1968 model.
The threats were replaced by a sense of urgency. DCS Dibb regarded it as ‘absolutely necessary’ that the van be traced, although he was concerned that the van had been disposed of in the used car trade, or resprayed. He had assembled a team of twenty officers, lead by Detective Inspector Brian Sidebottom, to work full-time on this one aspect of the enquiry, with motor taxation officers helping the search by covering scrap yards and garages. The details of over 6,000 vehicles were considered. But by the end of October 1975, although the police had somehow managed to trace every other vehicle seen in or near the lay-by, the blue-green van had still not been found.
A further car was sighted and referred to, this time a sports car of the Triumph Spitfire or MGB type. It had allegedly been seen, again in a lay-by not far from the moorland grave. This car had been parked at right-angles to the road, with two men standing not far from it, upon the moors themselves. The seemingly innocuous part of the description ‘parked at right-angles to the road’ barely concealed an obvious element: a car parked with its boot away from the road was perfectly positioned for unloading a body from the boot, without it being visible to motorists speeding past.
When officers set about taking statements from motorists who had driven along the A657 on Sunday, 5 October, and, in particular, from those who had seen anything at or around the lay-by, they were to obtain a plethora of information such that, had the investigation centred or been dependent upon finding a particular car, it would have rapidly foundered. Forty-six witnesses came forward to give statements concerning cars or vans seen in the lay-by between 1.20 p.m. and 11.45 p.m. on Sunday, 5 October. There was little or no unanimity, as to make, colour or the number of occupants. Indeed, a number of witnesses would claim to see different cars in the lay-by at any one time, so that, for example at 3 p.m., one witness claimed to have seen a dark Triumph Spitfire and another said that there was a pale-blue Mini in the lay-by. At 5 p.m., an orange Mini and a cherry/maroon Vauxhall 101 are described by one witness, but another witness claimed to have seen only a pale-green small van, whilst a third described having seen a green Bedford van. Between 9.55 p.m. and 10.15 p.m., a red Viva, a dark-red Mini and a dark Cortina were described by three separate witnesses as being the only car in the lay-by at the time of their sighting. At least five witnesses claimed to have seen something like a dark-coloured Morris 1000 van, possibly a shade of blue, but, again, there was no consistency. There can be no question but that these witnesses were doing their best to be helpful but, in providing the police with such a variable selection of information, they inadvertently added to the confusion and to the amount of police time which would have to be devoted to tracing and eliminating the vehicles mentioned.
DC Michael Roberts drove three possible routes from Rochdale to the lay-by. The three routes were of 9.6, 9.8 and sixteen miles and the police officer’s journeys took between fifteen and twenty-nine minutes. If Lesley disappeared at a time between 12.30 and 1.30 p.m., then she would have arrived at the lay-by at some time between 1 p.m. (fifteen minutes maximum from leaving home to being abducted + the shortest journey time to the lay-by, being fifteen minutes) and 2.15 p.m. (fifteen minutes + longest journey time, taking 1.30 as the time of leaving home) or 2.30 p.m. The possible car sightings within that time are:
| 1 | 13.20 | Light-blue/green Ford |
| 2 | 13.20 | Light-blue Hillman Hunter Estate |
| 3 | 13.30 | Dark saloon |
| 4 | 13.30 | Dark-blue or green Cortina or Vauxhall |
| 5 | 14.00 | Dark, similar to a Cortina |
| 6 | 14.20 | Light-cream or grey 1100 |
| 7 | 14.20 | White car |
| 8 | 14.30 | Cream or white Sunbeam Alpine |
| 9 | 14.30 | Pale-yellow Hillman Minx |
| 10 | 14.30 | Light Hillman Hunter |
| 11 | 14.30–15.30 | White car |
| 12 | 14.30–17.30 | White Transit Van |
Of those twelve cars, perhaps only numbers 3,4 and 5 allow of the possibility of confusion with the car owned by the man they would eventually charge: a bronze-brown Avenger. The best that the police had would have been the description ‘dark, similar to a Cortina’.
It would therefore appear that there was virtually nothing which the police could usefully glean from the many statements regarding cars sighted at or near the lay-by, provided by members of the public in good faith. Eighty-four different vehicles and a number of people were made the subject of reports, but after three weeks Dibb had narrowed the field down to three which were of interest, could not be eliminated and had to be pursued. The white car with primer paint on the doors, the cream van and the blue/green 5cwt Morris 1000 van.
At 1.45 p.m. on the Sunday Christopher Coverdale, a self-employed contractor from Rochdale, drove past the scene. As he approached the lay-by he saw a man and a little girl on the embankment above the lay-by. His attention was on these people, so that he had not noticed any car, he thought it foolhardy to be on the moor in poor weather conditions, especially with a child. He recalled the child was wearing a blue, hip-length gabardine coat with the hood up. He believed the child to be a girl, because he could see uncovered legs. The man was facing towards the road, reaching down the embankment and pulling the child up by the hand. Coverdale described the man as being a 30- to 35- year-old white male, with light-brown or fair hair cut short and giving the appearance of being receding. He was five feet six to five feet eight, plump and dressed in a mid-brown jacket with a check pattern, matching trousers and a beige or mustard-yellow cardigan.
This was the first description obtained of a man and a child. Dibb was anxious to act, and he personally took Coverdale to the lay-by. It was not the cold which caused Jack Dibb to shiver when, asked to show the place where the man and child were standing, Coverdale pointed out a spot within yards of the place where Lesley had been found.
Within a week of the investigation commencing, police had obtained the names of, and were taking statements from, over 14,000 people using a team of 300 officers. The names had been taken at the road stops on the M62 and from door-to-door enquiries on the Turf Hill Estate. But such a volume of