by Ted Tayler
The other local pubs soon became aware they faced competition for their trade as the Ring O’Bells drew an increased regular clientele throughout the week. On Friday and Saturday nights, they offered live music, and the bar areas were even more crowded.
The town still had its fair share of petty crime and pub fights. Someone might get their wallet lifted from a jacket, or a handbag could be sneaked away under a coat. It wasn’t unheard of for the community hospital to have late-night visits from people needing a stitch or two.
As long as they enjoyed themselves, it seemed a reasonable price to pay. Everyone in town hoped that the bad times lay behind them. The days when two rival gangs ruled the roost. There were too many recreational drugs in circulation, but they shared that menace with every other town in the country.
Soon after midnight on the fifth of October, Krystal Warner went home by taxi with her current boyfriend, James Bosworth. Trudi Villiers was saving for yet another holiday and volunteered to stay on at the pub. The usual routine was to collect the glasses, empty the ashtrays and leave everything for the cleaners in the morning. After a series of hectic weekend nights, that became a significant issue with the day staff.
So, Trudi and Gary, the bar manager, had tackled the glasses, got them washed and dried, then put them back on the shelves. They replaced the beer mats and stacked the bar stools on the tables. By one o’clock the bar areas were cleared so floor and carpets could be swept clean ready for the Sunday lunchtime rush.
After Trudi left for home, Gary had locked up and gone upstairs to join his wife in bed. He was a happy man. The extra ten pounds he paid Trudi would stop the moaning from the cleaners and save him looking for someone else to do the dirty job for peanuts.
Riverside Walk was a pretty stretch during the day; the path wound between weeping willows and plane trees alongside the river. There were benches and fishing points. In daylight hours it received plenty of visitors. However, at night it was poorly lit and not recommended for a young woman alone in the early hours.
Steve Li, the owner of the Imperial Dragon Chinese restaurant, spotted a young woman on the opposite side of the road, heading for Market Square at one o’clock. He was preparing to drive home in his Jaguar. He recognised the person as Trudi Villiers. She was a frequent visitor to his premises. Trudi was always loud, often drunk and with her arms around a young chap, more out than in her dress.
Steve had thought of calling out to offer her a lift but knew his wife would give him hell if she ever found out. Steve hadn’t seen anyone following Trudi, nor was there anyone on the streets when he drove home minutes later.
There were no reports of further sightings.
Dawn broke on the riverside and the chill of the morning kept many residents indoors until a pale sun warmed the streets. Ten o’clock struck on the church clock before anyone entered the pathway heading into town. It’s remarkable how often a poor dog walker is first on the scene at times such as these.
Tony Virgo, a thirty-seven-year-old hairdresser, exercised Bubble and Squeak his Yorkshire terriers. As he walked down the slope onto Riverside Walk from the street where he lived with husband, Tristram, Tony spotted Trudi’s partly clothed body dumped on a patch of ground behind a bush, five yards from the path.
Trudi’s body was only visible from the higher ground on the edge of the Greenwood Estate. She had been stabbed in the throat and chest at least a dozen times.
Police found no weapon at the scene.
Her skirt, underwear, mobile phone, purse and shoes were missing.
Wiltshire Police reacted with haste once they received a report of the body’s discovery.
The pathologist took several swabs, and subsequent forensic examination confirmed semen in the vaginal and anal orifices. The blood type was determined to be ‘O’ positive. Trace evidence was gathered, including fibres underneath Trudi’s fingernails.
There was little evidence the barmaid had made any sustained attempt to fight off her killer. Given her well-documented promiscuity, she may have been a willing participant at least at the outset. The ferocity of the sexual assault might have made her change her mind. Perhaps she told the man involved to stop, and that resulted in an argument. However, there were no reports of shouting or screaming in the early hours. Something had prompted the frenzied attack.
Did Trudi have rough sex with someone she knew? Her history didn’t preclude it.
Did she meet a stranger on Riverside Walk and take one risk too many? That was something to consider.
The wounds to Trudi’s throat grouped closely together. Although the blade was four to five inches long, it proved impossible to specify the weapon.
There were two wounds to the chest, made by a similar weapon. The pathologist determined one of these had been the fatal wound.
The repeated onslaught destroyed so many wound edges in the throat that he couldn’t say whether the same weapon made them. Different weapons may have caused the throat and chest wounds.
The pathologist noted a marked difference between the force used in the two areas. The chest received a higher degree of force.
The news of the murder spread around the town like wildfire. The cleaners arrived at the Ring O’Bells to find a third of their work already done. As they stopped for a mid-morning coffee and cigarette, their good mood faded as they heard passers-by querying the significant police presence on Riverside Walk.
The rumour spread of the discovery of a body. A young girl murdered. Gary, the bar manager, went to investigate. He had a sick feeling in his stomach. Gary prayed it wasn’t Trudi. Gary’s wife and the cleaners gathered by the side door to the pub when he returned. One look at his ashen face told them the truth.
The Ring O’Bells closed at lunchtime out of respect.
The slip of paper pinned to the barred front door notified their regulars they would re-open at seven in the evening.
There would be no last orders tonight. Many of Trudi’s customers and several of her lovers would enjoy a lock-in to remember the busty barmaid with the beaming smile.
CHAPTER 3
Few additional clues emerged during the rest of Sunday. The hunt for suspects began on Monday morning, the sixth of October 2003.
DI Dominic Culverhouse had recently assumed control at the Old Police Station. It was his first major case. He turned to one of his long-serving detectives to carry out the grunt work. DS Terry Davis took WPC Debbie Turner with him to interview Krystal Warner.
The officers found Krystal still in her bedclothes. Her fluffy pink dressing gown wrapped around her like a comfort blanket. Krystal’s eyes looked puffy and red; the twenty-four-year-old barmaid didn’t appear to have slept much. She was drinking a mug of coffee. The two police officers didn’t get an invitation to join her.
Krystal was heartbroken. Trudi, her flat-mate and best friend dead. They had planned to spend two weeks in San Antonio next Spring. She told them she arrived home at a quarter past twelve with her boyfriend, James Bosworth. The taxi dropped her off, and James carried on to his place on the Westbourne Estate on the other side of town. Krystal had been shattered after their busy shift in the Ring O’Bells and slept through until ten o’clock.
Krystal hadn’t been too worried when she realised her friend didn’t make it home. It wasn’t unheard of for Trudi to jump in the back of a van with band members that played in the pub. When pressed, Krystal admitted that before she met Bosworth, she had joined her friend more than once on a Friday or Saturday night.
Davis and Turner then crossed town to interview James Bosworth during his lunch break. Bosworth was thirty years old and a self-employed electrician. Bosworth was tall, swarthy-looking and his hair curled over his shirt collar. Debbie Turner could see why women were attracted to him. His dark-brown eyes and designer stubble gave him a good look, even if that look held a hint of danger.
Bosworth’s story differed from his girlfriend’s. According to him, when they reached her place, she begged him to stay until Trudi got
home. Bosworth told them Krystal became angry when he refused. He hadn’t wanted a quick shag and then have to walk two miles across town. If their relationship was serious, then he wanted to spend the night. He wasn’t happy with them shooting off to Ibiza together either, because he knew Trudi. She’d jump into bed with anything with a pulse.
WPC Turner noticed scratch marks on Bosworth’s forearms, plus a bruise on his cheek. When she asked how he came by them, he said Krystal had done it after they stepped out of the taxi. He kissed her goodnight. She begged him to stay. When he refused, she laid into him. He got back in the cab, and the driver left her standing on the pavement outside her place cursing him.
DS Davis traced the taxi driver later that evening, but he reckoned he had so many fares that night he couldn’t remember that one. He suffered his fair share of domestics inside the cab, youngsters puking on the back of his seat, and punters running off without paying.
“How the heck can I be expected to remember a girl slapping her boyfriend when they weren’t even in the taxi? I was probably listening to the radio.”
The following morning, Davis and Turner drove to Salisbury to visit various addresses. Each of four band members that played in the bar that night admitted having had sex with Trudi Villiers on previous occasions. However, she was still working when they finished packing the gear away on Saturday night.
When DS Callum Wood had interviewed the bar manager, he told him he called ‘last orders’ ten minutes early. His wife dealt with a few stragglers reluctant to be separated from their glass, but everyone left before midnight. He wanted to crack on with the clean-up operation. Gary and Trudi got stuck in straight away, and his wife went upstairs to the flat.
The band had been in and out to their van with equipment until a quarter past twelve. When the guys called out their goodbyes, Trudi had locked the door behind them. The two of them worked on until five to one, and then he’d let Trudi out of the front door, locking and barring it behind her. He saw nobody in the street as she left.
Gary’s wife told Callum Wood she was asleep by the time her husband joined her in bed. The last time she looked at the clock before she drifted off to sleep, it was twenty-five to one.
“Any thoughts so far?” asked Gus. There were two puzzled faces in front of him. One person looked more troubled than perplexed.
“Are you okay with this, Neil?” he asked.
“Yes, guv, there was bound to be a cold case where my Dad was involved. The police didn’t have much to go on, did they?”
“Did they follow up on the witness report from Steve Li?” asked Alex.
“Well, either he was the last person to see Trudi alive, except for the killer, or he followed her into Riverside Walk and attacked her,” said Lydia.
“Steve Li has lived and worked in the town for a long time,” said Gus, “his wife confirmed he arrived home at twelve minutes past one. He’s also a regular blood donor, type B.”
“Could the bar manager have followed Trudi after Steve Li drove home?” asked Neil.
“His wife said he came to bed after twenty-five to one,” said Lydia, “but if she was sound asleep, it may have been two o’clock, or later. She wouldn’t have known.”
“They interviewed the cleaning staff,” said Gus, looking for the details, “here we are.”
‘No way was there any funny business between Gary and either of the two barmaids. His wife would have killed him if he’d tried it on with them.’
‘Gary’s a lovely bloke, but he only employed Trudi and Krystal because they were game for anything. He knew the pub had to appeal to the working man to survive the recession.’
‘Pubs are closing all the time. Gary protected his livelihood. Bonking the barmaids would have seen him out of house and home in weeks. If half the punters got extras with their drinks, it wasn’t his problem.’
“That’s a no for Gary’s involvement then?” said Neil.
“I reckon so,” said Gus, “of course, as Jimmy Cricket used to say - there’s more.”
“I won’t enjoy this next bit, will I guv?” said Neil.
Trudi’s murder occurred ten days after a rape in Glastonbury. This earlier assault followed reports of a string of sex attacks across Hampshire, Dorset and Somerset. The attacks showed a degree of escalation in violence and took place in Ringwood, Blandford and Yeovil. The gap between each of the assaults had been getting shorter.
DI Culverhouse was under pressure to get a result.
Not just because this was his first murder case, after the events two years earlier, residents wanted reassurance the police had wrested control back from the criminals who blighted their lives for the past decade.
The news came through that a team of detectives from Dorset Police had liaised with officers at the Portishead Headquarters of Avon & Somerset Police.
Dennis Lewington, a delivery van driver for a major transport firm, had been arrested in Minehead on a charge of actual bodily harm.
An analysis of the company’s records showed Lewington near each of the recent attacks on the days they took place. There was enough circumstantial evidence to support a theory the twenty-eight-year-old had been responsible for a string of unsolved cases of indecent exposure, molestation, attempted rape and rape.
When they scrutinised his delivery schedules for the last two years, a pattern emerged. The area he covered included Hampshire, parts of Berkshire to the east, and Devon to the west. Unsolved cases in the counties involved stretched back six years.
Within a month five police forces in the South of England eyed the prospect of wiping a catalogue of historical cases from the books.
Research showed that escalators were younger men who attacked strangers with increasing severity. These men often have a previous psychiatric history. Dominic Culverhouse looked at the details of Trudi Villiers’s case and wondered whether the violence had continued to escalate, culminating in murder.
DS Terry Davis went to Portishead. The first thing he discovered was that Lewington was ‘O’ positive. The same blood type as the semen recovered from their victim. Davis also learned that ‘O’ positive was the blood type of over twenty per cent of males in the UK. So, this was not conclusive proof Lewington was their man.
Lewington had a history of mental illness. His parents said that, as a teenager, their only child had been held in psychiatric facilities on two occasions and prescribed anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications.
Terry Davis reckoned the increased frequency of attack and escalation in violence made it possible for the murder to be a natural progression from assaults in Ringwood, Blandford, Yeovil and Glastonbury.
The Avon & Somerset Police believed the Minehead attack to be an aborted attempted rape. Terry Davis considered the ABH as the first step on Lewington’s next string of sex attacks. If they didn’t stop him, Lewington would go on another rampage which could lead to another young woman’s death.
Davis convinced his boss that Dennis Lewington had escaped justice for six years and now it had caught up with him.
Once Lewington’s name was in the frame, the narrative from the file suggested Davis fitted the crime around Lewington rather than prove he fitted the crime. There was an element of time-shifting to suit the picture he wanted to paint.
Lewington insisted he was in Bristol on the night of Trudi’s murder.
Davis countered that by checking the route, Lewington took on Saturday the fourth of October from the transport company’s records. He made deliveries in five towns within a ten-mile radius of Riverside Walk. There were no witnesses to prove the van driver’s assertion he stopped in Bristol overnight.
Davis argued that Lewington could have driven through the town early on Sunday morning on the hunt for his next victim. Trudi Villiers might have appeared at just the right moment for him to satisfy his urges. It was circumstantial, but his past gave this conjecture credence.
There was no semen or degraded semen found in the other assaults. Davis offered a pla
usible explanation for the sperm discovered inside Trudi Villiers.
Dennis Lewington was inadequate, said Davis. He intended to assert his dominance and power. In his earlier assaults, he relied on verbal threats, intimidation with a weapon, and increasing levels of force to subdue his victims.
Lewington’s brand of rapist fantasised about sexual conquest and rape. They believed that even though the victim resisted them at first, once they overpowered their victim, they eventually enjoyed the rape.
Lewington’s attacks had become more violent. It was only a matter of time before he killed someone. In choosing Trudi Villiers as a victim, he miscalculated. She was highly active sexually, and no doubt challenged his fantasy of dominance. If Trudi had laughed at him, told him he wasn’t enough for her, he could have lost control in more ways than one.
The police hadn’t recovered a weapon from the murder scene. Again, Davis provided an answer.
Lewington had punched and kicked his other victims and threatened them with knives but never used them. He carried a toolkit in his van containing items such as screwdrivers and Stanley knives. The chest wounds didn’t show a close match, but the throat wounds were so ragged that a frenzied attack with a screwdriver could have caused them.
Why would Lewington attack another woman in Minehead so soon after an attack had ended in him killing someone? Wouldn’t the murder have satisfied his rage?
Davis argued that because it was only a fantasy, Lewington never felt reassured for long, either by his performance, or the response of the victim. He had to find another victim, convincing himself the next one would be the right one. Offences by rapists such as Lewington became repetitive and compulsive, and they often committed a series of rapes over a short period.
