Wicked Beyond Belief. Michael Bilton
of the room. The jeans could have been undone at this stage and pulled down, together with her underclothes, and this caused the loss of the left shoe. Bloodstaining on the carpet, the handbag, and the smearing on the leg of the bedside chair, showed probably that another blow to the skull had been struck and that the head had moved about on the floor.
4 The killer, with wet bloody hands, manoeuvred the body on to the unmade bed, probably by clambering on to the bed and dragging the body, rather than by lifting it. In doing so a bloody footwear impression was left on the bottom sheet between the body and the wall.
5 The bloodstream distribution on the bed indicated further blows to the head and a great deal of blood being lost as a result of the wounds sustained. He also believed the stabbing injuries to the abdomen were probably sustained on the bed.
6 The killer then began a process of ‘tidying up’, during which the jeans were partially pushed or drawn on to the legs. The bedding was then piled on top of the body and straightened out sufficiently to cover it almost completely, leaving the injuries and the greater part of the bloodstaining hidden from view.
Shortly before midnight all the work that could be done by Domaille’s team, Gee and Stockdale was complete, and the body was placed on a large plastic sheet and put into a coffin shell before being taken to the Bradford city mortuary. There Tina’s ex-husband, Ramen Mitra, identified her body in the presence of Professor Gee and the coroner’s officer. At 1.30 a.m. on the Sunday morning Gee began his post-mortem. It continued until 5 a.m. The usual crowd of officers was present, including a young constable called Alexander, who was, as the first officer at the scene of the murder, also required to attend the post-mortem.
During the autopsy Gee discovered four major depressed fractures of the skull caused by it being struck with a blunt instrument which left crescent-shaped wounds. There were also wounds to the trunk in the form of abrasions to the middle of the back and another group of grazes and stab wounds over the lower abdomen, linked by an irregular linear abrasion across the left side of the chest. He believed that some kind of large-size hammer was involved. Domaille noticed several stabbing wounds just above the pubic region. The killer obviously had some kind of serious sexual hang-up. These and some of the other stab wounds caused Professor Gee particular problems. He thought some object with a blade half an inch wide might have been used – perhaps a screwdriver or chisel.
What he was looking at confirmed what they had seen in the three other murders – a clear and established pattern: similar kinds of head injuries; similar movement of the clothing; the absence of sexual intercourse; and multiple stab wounds produced by a variety of different instruments. ‘So far we had two different knives, one screwdriver, and, I now thought, some rectangular-shaped, rather blunt object, like, say, a cold chisel,’ he said later. ‘In fact, in this I was wrong. I had by now got the clear impression that what happened each time was that the victim was knocked down purely to make them immobile, possibly with the same hammer, then the clothing was disarranged and the stab wounds inflicted with a different weapon each time, because that act provided the necessary satisfaction [for the killer]. One of the big problems I found in an extended series was trying to keep distinct the themes of the patterns of pathology on the one hand and the nature of the actual weapons on the other. But certainly in this case my conception of a hammer on one hand and a blunt chisel on the other prevented me from putting the two together – into one weapon.’ He only ascertained the truth much later.
For Gee, as a forensic pathologist, it was crucial to determine how the death was caused. He examined the pattern of injuries, the position of the body, the nature of the wounds, and endeavoured to reconstruct a form in which the injuries could have been sustained. This meant developing, sooner or later, some idea of what actually happened – the order of events. It also meant developing preconceived ideas about the situation, but this could be dangerous, though he saw no way to avoid it. Sometimes it led to mistakes. In his own mind he saw a clear and logical sequence of events for all four cases in the series so far.
‘I was quite wrong,’ Gee said. ‘It turned out that this particular girl [Atkinson] was indeed struck with a hammer, but the penetrating injuries were caused by the claws of the claw hammer, which was used on this occasion.’ He should have realized this, he said, by noticing that there was a small second abrasion alongside the main one on the side of the body and from the general pattern of marks on the abdomen. ‘I am sure I was misled on this occasion because of having developed this preconceived idea of two weapons being used – a hammer and a stabbing instrument of some kind.’
A thorough search of the flat produced a diary among Atkinson’s meagre possessions. It contained the names of some fifty men, a good many of whom were probably clients. Two days after the body was found Domaille briefed the local news media about the latest killing.
This was a brutal murder, a very brutal murder. The man we are looking for could be a maniac. The leads that we are following are that there are a number of people in the area that I know knew this lady. I have her diary. This lists a lot of people, names a lot of people, and I would like to see all those people, I shall be making inquiries to trace them. I shall treat as a matter of complete confidentiality any information that comes to me. Anyone can ask to see me personally and I think it might be helpful to some people if they came forward to see me, rather than me making inquiries about some of the facts that I know.
Domaille’s team of ninety officers had begun working hard to learn more about the murdered woman. It emerged that Patricia Tina Atkinson’s family had lived in the Thorpe Edge district of Bradford and she had two brothers. In 1960, when she was sixteen years old, she met her husband, Ramen Mitra, a Pakistani, at a dance hall in the town. She was working as a burler and mender at a mill in Greengates, Bradford. Perhaps it was an omen that they married on All Fools Day – 1 April 1961. They then lived for a short time with her parents before moving to their own home at Girlington, an area of Bradford next to Manningham. During this period both of Tina’s parents died. She and Ramen, known to most people as ‘Ray’, had three daughters during subsequent years and went on to live mainly in the area of Thorpe Edge where Tina had grown up.
In her mid-twenties she was attractive – slim and with long dark brown hair – and she liked a good time. She knew she looked alluring to men whatever she wore. Dressed in tight jeans and a blouse tied at the waist, as she was the night she died, she appeared quite vivacious. Tina – the mother of three and married so young – felt she hadn’t yet done any real living. She enjoyed men’s attention and couldn’t stop herself being unfaithful; the couple separated on a number of occasions, but then got back together for the children’s sake. Finally she left home. In 1975 she had been convicted for prostitution and her husband divorced her on 25 September 1976. He was awarded custody of the children. For a while at least Tina gave up the sex industry. She had met a man called Robert Henderson. They became lovers, but it was a strange, desultory relationship made worse by the fact that she was an alcoholic, and an uncontrollable alcoholic at that. More than that, she got into debt from accumulated fines. A short time before she was killed she went ‘back on the game’ to improve her finances.
Ten days before she was murdered, Tina rented a small flat in a purpose-built 1960s block in Oak Avenue, Manningham, close to the red-light area of Lumb Lane. The block of apartments, which had a flat bitumen and felt roof, was run down and in poor condition. Surrounded by large Edwardian houses, themselves converted into separate flats and maisonettes, the flats were built on sloping ground, two storeys high at the front and three at the back. Atkinson’s was on the ground floor at the back of the premises. To reach it from the Oak Avenue entrance you had to go downstairs.
The Friday night before she died, her boyfriend slept with her. They had sex when the effect of the previous night’s alcohol was beginning to wear off – at about four o’clock on the Saturday morning. On the Saturday night, 23 April 1977, Tina went out determined to have a good time visiting her regular drinking haunts, including the Carlisle Hotel. She had been drinking for most of the day. When the stripper who had been booked for the pub failed to turn up, Tina did an impromptu turn, climbing on to the stage. She knew she was good looking, but she was in no condition to entertain the Saturday-night crowd. Tina was totally out of control and things got rowdy. Instead of stripping down to her bra and pants, Tina took all her clothes off. An argument