Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years

by Kirby, Jacqui

  In October 2008, I caught a flight from Greece to Heathrow for the Crimewatch recording. I’d been lucky to secure the last seat available that evening. A young man took the seat next to mine, and he smiled at me as he pushed his bag into the holdall locker above our heads. The man was a Greek student who was returning to the UK. Soon we were exchanging pleasantries and he told me a little about himself. I politely nodded in the hope that he wouldn’t ask me anything about my trip. Thankfully, he didn’t. Soon, the stewardess brought our food along the aisle and placed it on the fold-down shelf in front of me. I didn’t eat very much of my meal; I didn’t feel hungry, and my stomach was knotted with anxiety about my forthcoming TV appearance. Moments later, our trays were collected and cleared away. I clipped the shelf back up to the seat in front and settled back in my chair.

  Suddenly, I felt something warm on the leg of my trousers. I looked down to see that the student had placed his hand on my leg. He had clasped his hairy hand right across it, spanning his fingers across the inside of my thigh.

  In horror, I looked from his hand to his face. He registered my surprise but didn’t flinch; instead, he gripped me tighter and grinned back at me. I was momentarily frozen. What should I do? His hand began to move rhythmically as he attempted to rub his sweaty palm up the inside of my thigh. I gasped in shock – I was absolutely mortified! Not only was I a married woman, I was old enough to be his mother! With a quick but well-aimed slap, I struck the back of his hand hard and he withdrew it.

  ‘Don’t touch me again!’ I hissed at him in Greek.

  By now I was hot with embarrassment. I turned back towards the window, shut my eyes and pretended to go to sleep. I could feel the man looking at me – his eyes burning into the back of my head. I hoped that my ‘sleep’ might deter him from trying again. But it didn’t. Instead, he began to whisper sweet nothings in my ear in Greek.

  ‘I want you, I want you,’ he said, his hot breath catching on the skin of my neck.

  My heart began to beat loudly in my chest. I felt trapped and frightened, physically sick. I opened my eyes and glanced down at the metal buzzer situated in the middle of my armrest on my seat. I wanted to press it but I was too embarrassed. Who would believe me, a middle-aged woman? Who would believe that this young Greek man was trying to molest me as I sat on the plane? It would have been his word against mine. Plus, he was Greek and so were the cabin crew; I thought they would be more inclined to believe him.

  I thought about getting up and rushing off to the loo to get away, but I was too scared. I was frightened to stand up in case the creep saw his chance and grabbed me more intimately. Instead, I remained seated and watched out for his wandering hands, slapping him any time he took a chance. For the first time in years, I acted typically British. I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I sat there for almost four hours and suffered in silence. I couldn’t even ask to be moved either as the flight was full.

  As soon as the plane landed, I jumped up like a cat on a hot tin roof. I threw the man a filthy look and got off the plane as fast as I could, quickening my pace as we walked through the airport terminal.

  I finally walked through the arrivals gate and sighed with relief when I spotted my brother Michael and sister-in-law Sue. As soon as they saw my face, they knew instinctively that something was wrong.

  I began to explain. ‘There was this man,’ I gasped. ‘A young Greek man, he kept…’ My voice trailed off as Michael looked at me intently, waiting for me to elaborate. ‘He kept touching me,’ I whispered, looking either side of me.

  Sue put her hand to her mouth and gasped in horror.

  Michael’s eyes widened; he was mortified. He lifted his arm and placed it protectively around my shoulders. ‘What did the stewardesses say?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, er, I didn’t tell anyone. I just sat there.’

  Michael shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘I was embarrassed,’ I continued. ‘I didn’t want to cause a scene so I just sat there and kept quiet. Although I did give his hand a couple of good hard slaps!’

  ‘You need to report this,’ Michael insisted. ‘You need to tell them about this man to stop him from doing it to anyone else.’

  I knew he was right, but I was in such a state that I couldn’t deal with it then. All I wanted was a hot bath and a comfortable bed. I did eventually report the incident to the airline. Michael was right: if I didn’t say anything, this creep would be allowed to get away with that sort of behaviour again and again.

  The following day, I left my brother’s home and travelled back to Nottingham to stay with Mum. Shortly afterwards, Pauline, our lovely family liaison officer, picked me up in her car and drove us over to Newark station. Once there we met up with Kevin and a senior female detective called Karen. We all caught a train to London so we could do the appeal at the main BBC studios. After we lost Pauline on the tube – she did not get on in time – and then found her again after much giggling, I knew that this day had a really positive feel about it, different to the last time I had been on the show. I dared to hope that we might get results.

  The studio was a hive of activity. We sat off-set until we were ready to be called on. Just as before, I was very conscious of what I wore, how I looked and what I said. I had to get this right and nail Colette’s killer once and for all.

  Once again, I hoped that someone’s conscience would be pricked enough to bring them forward this time. I thought that the killer by now must be in his fifties and have a partner or wife who must be suspicious of him. I couldn’t believe that someone could carry on as if nothing had happened for all these years, that he’d not raised a single suspicion from anyone.

  This time, Kevin and I sat on the Crimewatch sofa together to be interviewed by the very glamorous Kirsty Young, one of the new presenters. They recapped the whole murder case using the old Crimewatch reconstruction tape from the BBC vaults, before Kirsty turned to me.

  ‘It’s been a quarter of a century now since your daughter was murdered and people always say time heals things. Has time healed?’

  I shook my head sadly. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I don’t believe that at all – it’s like it happened just yesterday. To be honest, I didn’t think 25 years from then that I’d be sitting here. I would have hoped that someone would have come forward by now.’

  ‘Explain to me then how it does feel to have this whole horrible thing unresolved,’ Kirsty asked gently.

  ‘There’s no closure on it,’ I told her. ‘People say that life goes on. It does, but it’s still there at the back of your mind. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colette or what happened.’

  Kirsty looked at me and in that brief moment we made a connection as mothers.

  ‘Tell me about your beautiful daughter,’ she asked. ‘What sort of girl was she?’

  I looked back at her. ‘She was full of fun,’ I began. ‘The house was always full of laughter with her and her brother. But, of course, after what happened the house was quiet. It had all gone.’

  Kirsty then turned to Kevin, who was sitting by my side. ‘The key thing to this is surely that science has come such a long way in 25 years. You were in a very different place then in terms of forensic evidence and pinning things down.’

  Kevin nodded and answered, ‘We’ve had a massive boost to the inquiry in that we’ve been able to develop the DNA profile of the offender – and 25 years on that’s been a major boost.’

  Kirsty asked Kevin what people should do if they suspected someone – dead or alive – of committing the murder.

  ‘Ring in,’ he said simply. ‘Give us that information. We’ve been able to eliminate people, locally, nationally, those that have moved abroad, even people who have passed away because we have this DNA profile.’

  Kirsty then mentioned the driver of the stolen red car who’d been seen stalking girls nearby. ‘Why can you be so certain that he’s the man responsible?’ she asked

  ‘Again, through the advancements in DNA scienc
e, we’ve now definitely been able to put Colette in that red Fiesta. We know that the man who went to the pub at Costock – the Generous Briton – is the offender. Most definitely.’

  ‘So,’ Kirsty recapped, ‘what do you know about the killer? Take us through the certainties.’

  ‘He frequented the Holme Pierrepont area. He was seen jumping into hedgerows throughout the Sunday of Colette’s murder before he came across the red Fiesta. He stole that car and then drove it over to Keyworth.’

  He then went on to describe the killer who the police believed to be in his fifties or even his sixties. I just hoped that the new appeal might jog someone’s memory.

  After filming was complete, Pauline and I decided to set off back home. Kevin stayed behind in London with his colleague to help man the phones as the calls came flooding in.

  Before I left, Kevin asked one of the studio managers if they could phone for a taxi to take Pauline and me to the train station

  ‘Oh no,’ said the woman. ‘We’ll arrange for one of our chauffeurs to take them.’ Minutes later, we were standing outside as a fleet of cars queued up to take various people in different directions. I still half-expected a London cab to arrive and call our names when a big silver Mercedes pulled up in front of us.

  I looked at Pauline and grinned. ‘This is all right, isn’t it?’ I said, winking at her as we both got into the back seat.

  On the way to the station, Pauline and I laughed as we pretended to wave out of the car window like the Queen.

  ‘No, Pauline, you do it like this,’ I said, perfecting a mock-regal wave with my right hand to the city of London dashing by in a rainy blur.

  Again, the calls came in following the extra publicity – around 400 in total. Kevin told me that Colette’s case had received more calls than any other item featured on Crimewatch that evening. He must have sensed the surprise in my voice. I thought that after all these years that people would have simply forgotten about her.

  ‘It’s such an emotive case,’ Kevin explained.

  There had been lots of new leads but still no killer. Despite this, I refused to give up hope – without hope, I had nothing. I had to have hope because I felt I had lost everything else.

  Central TV, the regional news channel in Nottingham, covered the new appeal, and I was interviewed by a helpful journalist called Phil Brewster. Another interview was set up with the Nottingham Evening Post. I think the police were sure that Colette’s killer was still living in the area and we wanted to somehow smoke him out, bring him forward, make him sweat and panic. I thought of all those leaflet drops. Surely, someone’s going to come forward with something new? I couldn’t explain why, but I felt as if the net was slowly closing in on the killer and that Kevin would be there to catch him at the right moment.

  Kevin assured me that the case had lived in the consciousness of the residents of Keyworth and the surrounding villages and never gone away. He explained how some people from those villages had grown up but that Colette’s murder was always in the background, hanging over the whole area. Everyone wanted to bring this to a conclusion and get results, not just for the family but for the whole community.

  It meant a lot to me to hear that I wasn’t alone in this. Other people wanted Colette’s killer caught as much as I did. The case might be old but it was and would always remain active until the man responsible had been caught and put behind bars.

  I felt more confident and hopeful after the Crimewatch programme. Kevin told me he would catch the killer before he retired, and I believed him. I had nothing but the utmost confidence in Kevin.

  I hoped this newfound feeling of confidence would somehow bring things to a conclusion. Maybe – just maybe – something was going to happen after all. I hoped and prayed for all our sakes that it would.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE BREAKTHROUGH

  It was in March 2009 – five months after my Crimewatch appearance – and I was at home in Greece one day when my mobile phone rang. I didn’t react particularly quickly, presuming that it would just be a friend calling to see how I was.

  Then I looked at the incoming number – it was Kevin. He often called me to touch base and keep in touch, so I assumed this was just another one of his calls.

  ‘Hi Kevin,’ I answered breezily.

  Kevin said hello and we went through the niceties of polite conversation. He asked me where I was. He always asked me this question before telling me his purpose for calling. I suppose it was Kevin’s way of making sure that I was in a suitable environment before discussing something as brutal as the ongoing investigation into my daughter’s murder. I told him that I was at home. Once he knew that I was in safe surroundings, Kevin began to tell me that there had been developments in Colette’s case.

  ‘Jacqui, you know I told you about this familial DNA?’ he asked. ‘Well, there’s someone we’re interested in.’

  But then he added cautiously that the police were still working on it and so couldn’t do anything at that moment.

  ‘But we are expecting some arrests to be made,’ he said. ‘Obviously, I will keep you posted.’

  My heart leapt at his words. I could barely comprehend what Kevin was telling me. Arrests? It had been 25 years since my baby girl had been murdered and found dead in that ditch. I steeled myself, clutching one hand against the kitchen worktop to steady myself.

  ‘Wow,’ was all I could really muster. ‘Really? Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’ I said, lost for words.

  ‘At least it’s something positive,’ said Kevin. ‘As soon as there’s anything to tell you, I’ll call to let you know.’

  I didn’t doubt it for a second. Kevin had been a complete gentleman. I had felt involved and informed at every stage since he’d taken over the murder inquiry some five years before. He was also a cautious man; I knew that he wouldn’t tell me something if he wasn’t absolutely sure of it. I felt a small flicker of hope burn in my heart. Could we really be getting close to capturing the monster that had done this to my lovely Colette?

  A lump formed in my throat as we said goodbye. Sheer emotion began to overwhelm me. Could we really be nearing the end after all these years? I felt something wet on my cheek and automatically lifted my hand up to wipe it.

  It was a solitary tear. A tear for Colette. A tear of relief, a tear to betray all the pent-up emotion I’d been holding deep inside for all those years.

  I stood that way, frozen in the moment, replaying Kevin’s words over and over again in my head.

  We are expecting some arrests to be made.

  Was there more than one person involved? Were they looking at a number of people? The details were too sketchy to form a complete picture, but at least I knew that something was about to happen. The anticipation was like a big warm and welcome hug. Arrests. Maybe now, a quarter of a century after her murder, I might be able to get the justice I’d so craved all these years for my lovely Colette.

  I looked at a photograph on the side of the cabinet. I walked over and took it in my hands. It was a picture of Colette, happy and smiling. She looked beautiful and I so wanted to be able to pull her from that picture and back into the safety of my arms. I missed my baby girl so very much.

  I began to stroke my hand over her face, tracing the outline of her mouth as she stared back at me.

  ‘Colette,’ I whispered to her. ‘If you can hear me, my darling, I want you to know that we may be getting some good news after all these years. You might finally get some justice.’

  My voice cracked with emotion as I continued to speak. ‘I just wish with all my heart that we could turn the clock back and you would come walking through the door with that happy smiling face of yours. I love you, sweetheart, I love you so much. I miss you, Colette. Sleep tight, darling.’

  Before he said goodbye, Kevin had asked me if I wanted him to telephone Mark and tell him the news?

  ‘No,’ I insisted, ‘I’d like this to come from me.’

  Kevin understood and said that he
would call Tony to let him know the latest developments. I wondered how Tony would feel. I tried to picture his face, his sigh of relief as Kevin told him about the possible arrests. He would be delighted, upset, anxious and relieved all at the same time. He would experience the same set of emotions that I had.

  I picked up the phone to call Mark and began to tell him about Kevin’s call.

  I sensed Mark’s breath catch as I mentioned the word police. He knew there was something, some update on Colette’s murder. He could tell from the tone of my voice. I couldn’t contain my emotions any longer; suddenly huge streams of tears began to flow freely down my cheeks. Mark heard my voice; he could hear me sob down the phone, thousands of miles away.

  ‘Mum,’ he said, beginning to panic, ‘are you all right? What’s happened?’

  By now, I could barely breathe. Everything had built up inside me and it all came flooding out in that moment. My head was spinning with the enormity of what I was about to tell my son – the first piece of good news we’d had in all the years since he’d found his little sister’s body, battered, bruised and dead in a field. I so desperately wanted this latest development to come to some sort of fruition – I couldn’t stand another disappointment. I couldn’t stand putting my son and Tony through another 25 years of hurt.

  ‘Mum, are you still there?’ Mark’s voice was urgent and full of concern.

  I tried to snap out of it, to tell him my reason for calling. The words I’d carefully prepared inside my head before picking up the phone had vanished. I was struggling for breath between each deep sob. Finally, I composed myself and began to speak. I told him what Kevin had said about arrests.

  ‘Oh my God,’ exclaimed Mark. ‘I can’t believe it, after all this time. It’s, well, it’s just unbelievable.’