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

  ‘It was not until 21 December of last year, more than 26 years after the murder of Colette Aram, that you finally admitted that you were the murderer and pleaded guilty. During that period, you have lived your life with your wife and children who were, of course, completely ignorant of who you really were.

  ‘But whilst you have lived your life, in a very real sense you deprived Colette’s family of their lives, not only through the horror of their daughter and sister having been murdered but through the fact that for all those years they knew that the killer had not been found and could have no comfort and closure in relation to this terrible act. The marriage of her parents was broken apart by all this. The impact on their other child Mark, who saw his sister’s body in the field and who is still haunted by it, has clearly been profound.

  ‘The community of Keyworth were all affected by the murder and changed forever by the knowledge that this terrible act had taken place in their village and by suspicion, correct as it transpired, that it had been committed by someone within their community.’

  With that, Mr Justice Flaux jailed my daughter’s killer for life, with a minimum tariff of 25 years.

  This was the moment I’d been waiting for, but, when it finally came, I somehow felt cheated.

  It left me feeling slightly hollow inside. Life should mean life, I thought. However, I was later reassured by the Crown Prosecution Service that he would serve 25 years, almost as long as it had taken us to get our day in this court. After that, if he applied for parole, I was told that he wouldn’t necessarily get it.

  No one made a sound as Hutchinson was led down but I was later told that there was a woman at the back of the court who was crying to herself. I’m still not sure who this lady was. Others heard her weep but I didn’t. I’d blocked out all the surrounding noise; all I wanted to do was focus on that bastard as he got his just deserts. Up until then, it was the only time that he’d not tried to stare me out in court – not that he could with sunglasses, but he didn’t even turn his head in my direction. As they led him from the dock, I wondered if, finally, the bastard had realised that there was no more running, no more hiding. He’d just been unmasked as the cold-blooded killer he was. Now, after all this time, he would be punished.

  No one cheered as he was led off down the stairs to the holding cells below. I craned my neck to get my very last glance at him as he disappeared from view, bobbing down each step with his head hung low.

  You might well hang your head in shame, I thought. I hope that you rot in hell.

  It was over. After 26 long years, our torment was over.

  For the next few minutes, no one from my family made a sound. Instead, we sat in a dignified silence reflecting on Colette and what could have been, what we’d lost as a family. I prayed that my lovely daughter was up there looking down on us all, knowing that, through Kevin and his team and all the countless other officers who had gone before, we had finally got justice for her.

  Lots of shocking things came out that day but none more shocking than the lies that Hutchinson told in an attempt to cover his tracks. It appeared that he had spent much of his adult life lying. He was very good at it. He’d hoodwinked everyone, even his family – they were victims in this too, but obviously not as much as my family had been.

  This bastard had led a double life but now, slowly, the false existence that he’d created for himself had become as flimsy and shaky as the foundations on which it had been built.

  After the court case was at an end, there were dozens of journalists waiting for a comment from my family. I was on familiar ground here; I’d hated doing interviews over the years and now – even though it was over – was no exception. Cameras and microphones jostled for the best position in front of me on the court steps as the waiting reporters descended in their droves. A hush fell as someone asked how I felt now that I finally had justice for my daughter. I cleared my throat of emotion and began to speak.

  ‘I hate him,’ I said simply. ‘We have spent the past 26 years looking over our shoulders, wondering who murdered our beautiful Colette. We can now spend the rest of our lives remembering the happy times we had with her.’

  I looked up at the crowd of cameras and familiar faces that had looked at me from the press bench inside the court room.

  ‘You could see that Hutchinson has no remorse for what he did.’

  Suddenly, an anger rose inside me. I’d held it back inside the court but now, here on the court steps, I couldn’t contain it any longer.

  ‘I would like to poke his eyes out,’ I said. I spat each word out with venom. ‘My mum has always said that God doesn’t pay his debts in money. Hutchinson is suffering now mentally, but I think a lot of it is put on. I feel angry every time I see him. I want him to suffer. How has he been able to carry on the way he has?’ I asked.

  A few of the reporters looked at me and shook their heads. They agreed that the extent of Hutchinson’s deceit had been unbelievable.

  ‘He has still not said anything, still never said the reason why. I feel cheated by him,’ I added.

  Suddenly, a lone reporter’s voice rose above the others. He asked what I thought of the sentencing.

  ‘At the end of the day, he is going to go to prison but he is still going to get to see his family – he will get visitation rights. Hutchinson took a lot from us. He took a whole lifetime away from us. Our lives have been put on hold until now. He has got on with his life. He took my daughter away from me, yet he has carried on living what would appear a normal life. He destroyed our family.’

  Then I thought of Colette – the beautiful, vibrant girl she had been. I didn’t want today to be all about that murdering bastard; I wanted it to be about her, my lovely daughter. I looked up and spoke once more.

  ‘Colette was beautiful inside and out,’ I began. ‘She left my house, perfectly happy – a normal 16-year-old girl. She said, “I will be fine, Mum.” But she wasn’t. That was it, I never saw her again.’

  The shouts and requests from reporters rose once more and I agreed to give a few further interviews on camera. Afterwards, I went back into the court building. I felt exhausted, drained by everything that had happened that day. This was the full stop to 26 years’ worth of waiting and now it was at an end. I felt dizzy, almost light-headed as I walked down some steps. Suddenly, my head spun and my legs gave way, buckling beneath me until all that was left was my body falling against thin air. I landed heavily in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. I was shocked and upset but luckily I escaped unscathed. The only thing bruised that day was my pride. It was a small price to pay.

  Hutchinson had become tangled in a web of his own lies – the very foundations of his life had been built on pillars of sand and, now that his secret was out, everything had come crashing down around him, never to be rebuilt. Colette’s killer was behind bars. My ordeal was over and our nightmare had come to an end.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE DOUBLE LIFE OF A KILLER

  During sentencing, many things came to light about Hutchinson which proved what an accomplished and convincing liar he’d been over the past 26 years.

  Fat, balding and in ill health, this pathetic man had by now turned 51 years old. His picture had been plastered across national newspapers and TV screens for all to see.

  After the case was at an end, the police stood outside the court and branded him an ‘inveterate liar’. It was those lies and his shocking but smug self-belief that he’d never be caught that led to his ultimate downfall and final disgrace. He’d been unmasked for the liar he was in the most public of ways.

  One of the most astonishing things about the case was that it proved what a devious and cold-hearted callous killer this man really was. But he didn’t just hoodwink us and the police; he’d conned everyone he met, including his own family.

  Hutchinson had lived in Keyworth at the time of Colette’s murder but later moved to Gamston – only a few miles from where he had dumped her body. I wondered how this man could h
ave remained so close to where he’d committed such a depraved and wicked act. How did he function on a day-to-day basis with that on his conscience? It was now obvious to me that he had no conscience whatsoever. But how was he able to detach himself from his brutal actions of that night? Was he such a good liar that he’d convinced even himself?

  More clues began to emerge from his dark and murky background. The full story of his breathtaking deceit had been told to a packed room at Nottingham Crown Court at sentencing in January.

  The judge had labelled him a ‘compulsive liar and fantasist’, saying, ‘You have lived your life with your wife and children who were completely ignorant of who you were.’

  It was true. When officers had begun to dig into Hutchinson’s background, they uncovered an astonishing web of deceit that had astounded even them. Hutchinson’s second wife had been duped by her husband for years, as had his first. He styled himself as a community champion as he raised his own children, and played the role of perfect father with aplomb. The supposedly upstanding member of the community was a member of the Nottingham City Lions Club, raising funds for underprivileged children when, in fact, he was little more than a child killer himself.

  The chubby killer had risen through the ranks of the club to become its president, earning respect and praise from all who knew him. In 1997, he was even pictured giving toys away to underprivileged children at Christmas. He was photographed alongside someone dressed as Father Christmas and the then Nottingham Forest football club goalkeeper. Back then, no one knew who they were sharing the photograph with. They had been frozen in time shoulder to shoulder with a killer. No one had an inkling of Hutchinson’s murderous past.

  Hutchinson fathered four children in total. He’d first married back in 1978 before splitting with his first wife. They had a child from that marriage but then he met the woman who was to become his second wife.

  The police discovered that he was due to marry this woman at the end of 1982, but he knew that he couldn’t because he wasn’t yet divorced from his first wife. They didn’t officially split until November 1982. This is when officers believe Hutchinson began to weave lies about illness. He faked having lung cancer to his family, who had felt sorry for him. He’d fooled everyone.

  The police were certain that he invented the cancer as a way of putting off his wedding date and deflecting attention from the fact that he was still married to his first wife. But he soon moved on. He eventually married his second wife Kiaran on New Year’s Day 1983, just ten months before he killed my 16-year-old daughter.

  At that time, his parents’ family home was in West Bridgford, only 500 yards across open fields from where Hutchinson would steal the red Ford Fiesta he used to stalk other girls before he abducted and murdered my daughter.

  After her murder in October 1983, Hutchinson paid little thought to Colette lying cold and dead in her grave. He revived his well-oiled cancer lie to cover his tracks and his movements at that time. He asked family and friends for lifts to the hospital. He would ask them to drop him off at the doors of the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham. Hutchinson claimed that he had to go there for cancer treatment to halt the spread of the killer disease. His family must have shed a million tears for this seemingly sick and brave man. Meanwhile, just miles away, I was shedding my own tears, trapped in my own living nightmare, still waiting and willing my daughter to walk through our front door. My marriage was crumbling and I felt as if I was losing my mind.

  Hutchinson would always insist on his family leaving him at the hospital door, purporting to be ‘brave’. They revealed to the police how he’d told them that he wanted to face the treatment alone. Detectives actually suspect that all he was doing at that time was walking inside the hospital, possibly enjoying a cup of coffee to kill time before returning home hours later.

  To make his story more convincing and, in an attempt to cover his tracks following Colette’s murder, Hutchinson continued the ruse by shaving his head to mimic the effects of undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Anyone who has suffered with cancer or has had to watch a loved one go through such gruelling treatment would feel sickened by this act alone.

  Hutchinson soon realised that his cancer lie was a handy one to use to explain various absences or when he had no alibi as to his whereabouts at the time of the murder. In fact, at the time of the killing, he was away from home and his family truly believed that he was having a lung removed as a result of the cancer. He returned and settled down to a relatively normal life with his South African-born second wife, Kiaran.

  He fathered three more children. When I found out their names, my blood ran cold. Shockingly – almost unbelievably – he gave one of his daughters the middle name Colette. The police insisted that there was nothing sinister in this as his second wife also had the middle name Colette. They explained it away as family tradition. But I did wonder. You would think that if you had killed a girl called Colette – family tradition or no family tradition – when it came to naming your own daughter, you would go out of your way to avoid that name.

  Hutchinson was employed as a railway engineer but later worked with children with special needs. His sheer gall took my breath away – how would the parents of those children feel now knowing that their own precious sons and daughter had been in the care of a killer?

  Immediately after Colette’s murder, many of the local residents had refused to let their daughters out at night fearing another attack by this monster. But years later, there was Hutchinson, an upstanding member of the community and allowed to work with vulnerable children. He also became a school governor.

  In a horrible twist of fate, Hutchinson met my uncle Roy Greensmith on 8 April 1998. Back then, Roy was the Lord Mayor of Nottingham. He met Colette’s killer after the Nottingham Lions had donated a Skoda car as a raffle prize to raise money for local charities. Uncle Roy shook hands with his niece’s killer 15 years after Hutchinson had left Colette dead and naked in a muddy field that cold October night.

  My uncle had been in office three times and had greeted hundreds of people over the years at different events and so he didn’t give much thought to the tubby middle-aged man standing before him. Years later, when the local paper discovered the photograph, they interviewed Roy and he expressed his shock that he had shaken the very same hand that had taken Colette’s life from her.

  I was staying at Mark’s house for Christmas when the picture was published. Mark had picked up the paper and showed it to me. I spotted Uncle Roy’s face immediately. The picture had been taken a long time ago, but I knew the impact of its very existence and publication would send shockwaves throughout my entire family.

  Neither of us could comprehend that the killer had met a member of our family. It made us both nauseous.

  Had Hutchinson been aware of Uncle Roy’s connection to Colette? It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had. It would have all been part of the same sick and twisted game that he’d played out over all these years. He’d remained living nearby after Colette’s murder, he’d given his daughter Colette’s name; surely this man wouldn’t think twice about shaking the hand of one of her relatives?

  At that time, Hutchinson must have been convinced that he’d finally got away with murder. He had created a false image of himself in the local community of a loving father and devoted husband. He threw lavish birthday parties for his children, and one neighbour later remarked that this evil man always had the best car in the street. He’d been successful, and was envied by those around him. But all the time he’d been sitting on a dark secret, one that had finally pushed back up to the surface for all to see.

  He was the ultimate Jekyll and Hyde character. The cancer lies had covered his tracks for all these years but it was his own flesh and blood that would finally see him caught. When the police arrested him on the morning of 7 April 2009, they found that he had posted a boast on the Friends Reunited website that he held a BSc and an MSc in psychology. But this, like everything else, was a lie. He’d said how
he’d gone to university to complete his studies. But, when police searched his home, they discovered a forged certificate.

  As the family revealed his brave fight with cancer, the detectives were able to get hold of Hutchinson’s GP records. There was no cancer – there never had been. The only thing this vile creature had ever suffered with was diabetes. The effects of the condition had left him partially sighted and in poor health.

  I was glad that his health had failed him. Perhaps it was the poison leaking from his very soul, killing him slowly from the inside.

  With his medical records, the police were able to tear his web of lies to shreds. The cancer had been a shroud of deceit he’d hidden behind during the years following Colette’s murder. What other lies had this man told to worm his way out of any awkward questions that his family had asked? It was bad enough lying to the police about having cancer but lying to your own wife and children – it beggared belief. What kind of man would put his family through something like that just to save his own neck?

  Not content with the lies that he’d already told, Hutchinson then tried to blame Colette’s murder on his dead brother Gerhard. Poor Gerhard’s widow must have been devastated. Grieving for a husband who had died only months before, only to be told by her brother-in-law that he wasn’t the man she thought she’d married. Thankfully, the police were also able to dispel this wicked lie and allow Gerhard’s widow to grieve in peace.

  It was clear to everyone in court that Hutchinson’s deceit knew no bounds. He was cunning and sly, a pathological liar who would go to any lengths to save his own skin when faced with the reality that detectives had finally caught up with him after all these years.

  At the time of his arrest, Hutchinson ran his own newspaper distribution service. He would have read the ongoing appeal to catch Colette’s killer – him. He must have read numerous appeals as he pushed the papers through the doors of all those unsuspecting households. All the time he knew it was him making front-page news.