the Blooding (1989)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  The Blooding

  Joseph Wambaugh

  *

  Book Cover:

  For The First Time, Joseph Wambaugh Turns His Attention Outside the United States to deal with two murders in neighboring English Midlands villages -- ancient villages that still have whitewashed Tudor cottages, pavements too narrow for passing baby prams, streets barely wide enough for two cars, and churches or pubs as the sites of community life. What intrigues the master of true-crime writing is that out of the sleepy setting grew a landmark case: the first murders solved by genetic fingerprinting.

  The victims of the terrifying rape-murders --two fifteen-year-old girls who do not know each other--have in common one fatal mistake: they choose to walk village footpaths bordering the lands of a psychiatric hospital. Forever after, the names Ten Pound Lane and The Black Pad will evoke fear and dread.

  The murders occur three years apart, and during all those years the members of the Leicestershire constabulary never give up their search. The local newspapers cooperate by keeping the cases alive. And the families of the victims try to cope with the chaos of their existence.

  But the psychopath might never have been caught if a geneticist doing research on DNA at a nearby university had not stumbled upon a discovery: a procedure for mapping human genes--a method of establishing a genetic fingerprint, unique to it's bearer, through a drop of blood.

  The old and the new, the traditional and the startlingly up-to-date, combine for one of Joseph Wambaugh's most moving and most unusual books, the true story of a case that has revolutionized modern crime detection.

  *

  Author's Note:

  This is the true story of the Narborough Murder Enquiry, the world's first murder case to be resolved by "genetic fingerprinting," a stunning scientific discovery that may well revolutionize forensic science as dramatically as fingerprinting did in the 19th century.

  As always, I have re-created events only when my information comes from a reliable witness or can be independently corroborated.

  Chapter 1.

  Three Villages

  They say that in remote little English villages a newcomer can be accepted by the locals provided he buys property, pays his bills, and stays in continuous residence for about ninety-five years. The village of Narborough isn't remote, being only six miles southwest of the city of Leicester, and it's no longer so little--what with land developers enticing young families from urban housing estates with promises of safety and serenity--but it's a village nonetheless.

  If you have an ear for pub chat, you might still hear an arcane village debate between elderly dart players as to whether or not Narborough existed during William the Conqueror's Domesday survey of 1086. A pre-Norman grave cover found in the garden of Narborough House dates from the 10th century, so it can be argued that Narborough was there, Domesday or not.

  "If we ain't in the Domesday Book, we wasn't," is answered by "If we was in a Saxon graveyard, we was

  But the young villager of today cares less about Domesday and more about the fact that Narborough is woefully short on entertainment; the church/pub ratio is two churches, two pubs. Well, three churches if you want to count the Catholics who showed up about forty years ago.

  Narborough has a chemist's shop for pharmaceutical needs, a bakery and confectionary, a tobacconist, a mini-market and a National Westminster Bank. Also, there's a general store with an off-license, and there's "R. H. Howe, High Class Family Butcher," whose sign says: EST. 17m CENTURY. That's just down the road from the fruit and vegetable shop, which is next to the fishmonger's, which is across from the Narborough post office, whose lobby measures ten by fifteen feet.

  And that's nearly all there is to the commercial center--that and the two public houses. They complain that the village is woefully short on pubs, but they've got two "boozers" in neighboring Littlethorpe, one of which serves very good Leicestershire pork pies.

  The village of Littlethorpe is on the other side of the river Soar, ten minutes down Station Road (as measured by walking time), just past the tiny Narborough train station, erected in Victoria's day. Bordering Narborough on the north, a brisk twenty-minute walk up Ten Pound Lane, is the village of Enderby with a different sin-and-salvation mix: seven boozers, two churches. Enderby used to be a quarrying town and the working-class villagers look upon Narborough as being a bit upper crust, or "crusty." The recent growth of Narborough, Littlethorpe and Enderby causes fear that village identity will be lost entirely. Some think Enderby is already more of a township than a village.

  But despite local debate among members of the parish council about the alarming influx of strangers, to an outsider the three communities still seem to be typical English Midlands villages. There are reassuring granite churches with mossy slate roofs, turrets and parapets glowing rosy and amber in the setting sun. The churchyards are cluttered with whimsical tottering headstones, parted by irregular stone footpaths worn shiny through the centuries. There are still enough whitewashed Tudor cottages with gnarled black beams and thatched roofs two feet thick, carrying the trademarks of master thatchers.

  There is still the comfort of strolling on village pavements, too narrow for passing baby prams, along streets barely wide enough for two cars. Most villagers trouble to keep their doors and gutters painted: green, red, black, blue. And if all the door knockers and letter boxes are no longer brass, the shiny steel substitutes bespeak a certain pride that might not be found in many of the housing estates in the city.

  Perhaps a village is still a village as long as local publicans need to post notices that say: PLEASE KEEP ANIMALS OFF SEATS. Smoky village pubs tolerate lazy terriers and setters, and even pit bulls, which obviously have better press agents than do their American cousins. Pub dogs must have the highest rate of lung cancer in the animal world, but their presence remains as reassuring as empty milk bottles on the step of a whitewashed cottage.

  Nobody gets specific as to how a Leicestershire country pub or village pub differs from those in the cities, but everyone agrees that they do. It's more than lower ceilings, adzed beams and ancient undulating floors. More than carpet, curtains and wallpaper, those touches that help define the uniquely British institution that acts as halfway house between taproom and home. Whatever it is, the village pubs are different. The Leicestershire pork pies taste better, and the Stilton cheese in a ploughman's lunch is, well, different. The village parish council provide parks and play areas, roadside seats, pavilions, nature boards and even a community center, but the village pubs, like the churches, provide a resting place.

  The total population of all three villages is about twelve thousand souls, not counting the residents confined in Carlton Hayes Hospital. In 1938 the villagers thought it a good idea to change the name of the hospital, which was then called the Leicestershire and Rutland Lunatic Asylum. The hospital's farmland divides Narborough and Enderby and borders two footpaths: Ten Pound Lane on the east and The Black Pad on the west, names that came to evoke fear and dread.

  The M l motorway cuts across the eastern tip of Narborough, near the Narborough Bogs, and turns directly north through Enderby, next to the playing fields of Brockington School where Mill Lane joins Ten Pound Lane. It was long debated whether or not a scream of terror from Ten Pound Lane could be heard across the six lanes of that motorway.

  But there's no debate that it's in a village pub that an outsider can often come closest to monitoring the local pulse. It was in the village pubs that reporters would meet to seek gossip and tittle-tattle during the time of the Narborough Murder Enquiry. And it was in a pub that a casual comment would lead toward the solution of a case destined to become a landmark in the annals of crime detection.

  Chapter 2.

  Demon and
Spirit

  Leicestershire is one of England's smallest counties, formerly pastoral, now about half arable, well known for its cheeses and pork pies. It's had its moments of historical importance: In 1485 Richard III died here at Bosworth Field and thereby lost his crown to Henry Tudor. The county is divided east and west by the valley of the Soar, and the many hedgerows hearken to an ancient blood-sports tradition. In fact, there's still a fair amount of fox hunting in the county despite the relentless interference of animal rights groups. The devotees fear the day when one of the grannies with a sign saying TAKE THIS OLD FOX INSTEAD! gets accidentally trampled flat by horse hooves in some ditch beside a hedgerow.

  Just a fifteen-minute drive northeast from Narborough on Leicester Road is the city of Leicester, county seat of Leicestershire. It's long been the industrial center of the county, the traditional industry being hosiery and footwear. Nowadays, engineering, plastics and printing industries prosper there. It's a city of nearly three hundred thousand, and, like most of Britain, has acquired a large Asian and East Indian population. The city as well as the county is policed by the Leicestershire Constabulary, a force of more than seventeen hundred officers.

  The dialect of Leicester, particularly as heard around the working-class estates of the city, requires a bit of an ear.

  For example, "Gizza looks 'at" translates to "Give me a look at that."

  If a pub customer asks for a particular beer that's not out front he may be told: "You gorra way or else you gorra ge' a bokkle from ow a back." Which means "You've got to wait or else you've got to get a bottle from out back."

  "Toym ago" means "Time to go."

  "Flippin 'eck" is "flipping heck," heard almost as often as "bloody 'ell."

  Verbs sometimes lose their way. "Oh, you bleeda-ah" or "Oh, you bleeder are" means "Oh, you are a bleeder."

  As in other parts of England, short vowels are tortured so that a word like "crux" sounds like "crooks," requiring a bit of time to adjust to profanity. At first, "Oh, you bleeda-ah!" is less perplexing than "Oh, you fooka-ah!" or "Oh, you koont-ah!"

  Probably the most frequently heard expression is "m'duck," with the same meaning as "ducky" or "ducks" in London. Except that in Leicestershire it sounds like "midook."

  The people of Leicester have acquired an unfair reputation for being "offhand." By that, their critics mean a bit cool and abrupt--civil, but not friendly. Yet it's hard to judge people harshly when they sprinkle their speech with endearments like "m'duck."

  Moreover, Leicester natives are quick to note they are a diverse lot and shouldn't be lumped in one porridge bowl. After all, the Leicester folk point out that their city produced John Merrick and singer Engelbert Humperdinck. "We had the lot," they say. "From the Elephant Man to the Wolf Man."

  All in all, it's quite an agreeable city, but with a short commute to a countryside in which there are still pastoral scenes worthy of John Constable, it's no wonder that many city dwellers hope to raise their children in the villages.

  Living in a Leicester working-class housing estate in the winter of 1983 was a thirteen-year-old girl about to experience first romance. She was having more trouble with adolescence than most. As an adopted child, she had difficulty with the idea of it. At a later time, she was very quick to point out to police officers that she'd been adopted by her parents.

  "They were too strict and protective, me adopted parents" is how she put it to detectives investigating murder.

  "Dad got keen on CB radio," she told them, "and I were bored most of the time. The CB gave me something to do. I got to talk to all sorts. Got chatting with this bloke."

  He came to her as Spirit, his CB radio name.

  Her CB handle was Green Demon, and very soon Green Demon and Spirit exchanged personal information. Spirit was fourteen, only nine months older than Green Demon, but he didn't want her to know that. A big lad, he reckoned he could fool her, and opted for more worldliness. He told her he was fifteen.

  Green Demon might have settled for a radio romance, but Spirit wanted an "eyeball" and so they decided to meet at Rowley Fields School in Leicester.

  Demon wasn't all that disappointed in Spirit. He wasn't dreamy but he wasn't bad--a scruffy boy, with rosy cheeks and untidy umber-brown hair and grimy fingernails. She later said he always wore T-shirts and a greasy denim jacket and jeans "covered with spots" from grease and oil stains. He was crazy about bicycles and couldn't wait to own his own motorbike. A keen mechanic, he professed to know a lot about engines.

  Her menstrual periods hadn't begun yet, and she'd had no sexual experience. Nor had Spirit, but he was eager. After some rough preliminaries, a bit of petting and fondling--after he was just begging to do it--one spring night in Jubilee Park, near the Foxhunter Roundabout in Enderby, she decided to let him.

  Of course a deflowering seldom makes the earth move, but Demon's was particularly unpleasant. What she couldn't forget was how he looked when he was inside her for the very first time. He just stared. He hardly uttered a sound. His brown eyes just stared.

  It was unsettling for the girl, and if that wasn't bad enough, when it was over they sat and chatted about records, and motorbikes, and anything other than the Great Moment they'd just experienced.

  She later said: "It were not mentioned! Just as though it hadn't happened!"

  Spirit's appetite had been tapped by Green Demon. There was sex whenever he could get to her, but during it he never took off an article of his own clothing, and she was permitted nudity only from the waist down.

  She started her periods later that year, and the encounters continued into the autumn when she began to worry about pregnancy. They never used contraceptives and Demon had some thoughts about what her parents might do if she came up pregnant and she not fourteen until December.

  She started resisting Spirit's intimacies, but he'd get furious when she did. He'd swear and call her names. Spirit was growing bigger and stronger and he'd grab her shoulders and shake her. He even slapped her across the face and they had sex while she wept, humiliated.

  When his parents weren't home she went to his house for bedroom sex. Whenever she refused him, he punched her in the stomach and forced her to the floor with his hand on her throat. Even when he got his way, he called her a "slag."

  Another time in his bedroom he punched her and the force bashed her head against the wall. She lay dazed and he put something foul-smelling under her nose to revive her. His younger brother often at home when they were in the bedroom, came running.

  "Ye don't know your own strength!" the younger brother cried. Still, she returned to him. Demon was a very lonely girl.

  Finally, first love or not, Demon began to understand that Spirit's sexual demands could get a bit dangerous, especially when problems occurred. Spirit, it seems, was suffering from "brewer's droop," as he called it. She laughed at first, but he didn't think premature ejaculation was funny. When it happened he'd rage and bang the wall with his fist, and all but weep. She'd slip away and leave him alone until the fury passed.

  "Nobody likes me," Spirit would cry out. "Nobody! Especially you slags!"

  Perhaps to counter the brewer's droop, Spirit started experimenting. He wanted her to "do the sixty-nine," but she thought it was immoral.

  "Okay, then, let me bum you," he suggested one day, but Demon refused.

  "But he just insisted on sex in me back passage," she later explained, "and finally I gave in."

  The back passage sex, with her on all fours, began in the autumn of 1983 at the start of school term. There were some very cold days, especially in November, but according to his later testimony, the first time they tried it was outdoors on a railway bank. Inclement weather couldn't dampen this Spirit.

  She later emphasized that anal sex became as frequent as vaginal sex, but even that wasn't enough. He liked to bite. Aggressively. She didn't fancy all those love bites on the neck and shoulders and on the inside of her thigh; it was almost as bad as being back-passaged. Finally, Spirit's sex play
got too rough.

  "Once when we was in his bedroom he began messing about with belts," she said. "He tied up me hands and pulled off me knickers and did it to me."

  That did it for her. Demon met another boy and the contrast opened her eyes. She rang up and said it was over and she never wanted to see him again. He called her a slag.

  As the girl matured, and was forced to remember her sexual experience with Spirit, she recalled that it had always been the same as the very first time. Afterward, he'd play records, or talk about motorcycles, or cars, or make other small talk.

  "We'd simply carry on as if nothing ever happened. Nothing at all."

  It was the strangest thing about him, she decided. It was even more weird and disturbing than being bound helpless while he stared.

  Spirit later told his own version of the brewer's droop humiliation that had plagued those first encounters.

  "She were laughing at me when it happened," he later confided. "They always laugh at me!"

  "Who?" he was asked by his interrogator.

  "Them!" he answered. "Them. I call them slags, dogs, whores, bitches. All of them."

  Chapter 3.

  The Black Pad

  One of the city dwellers who thought village life would be healthier for her two daughters was Kathleen Mann. Kath was Leicester born and raised, and when her five-year marriage ended in 1970 she brought her tots to her mother's house in the city. But Kath quickly learned that two mothers make the job twice as hard. After enough disputes over child raising, she arranged with her brother to take his subsidized flat in the village of Narborough when he moved out.

  To Kath, Narborough was all that an English village should be. You could go for lovely strolls down Church Lane, past cottages with bottle-glass leaded windows, past ancient doorways framed in a time when robust country squires seldom topped five feet three inches in height. It was fun to watch tall young villagers passing in and out of cottage doors, in a semi-genuflection.

  Nearly everyone had a garden. There were smells of wood smoke and carnations, and climbing roses on trellises. You might spot a treat almost anywhere, such as Victorian birdhouses with individual rooms and perches --solidly built and painted a hundred times over the years--nearly as eternal as the oaks in which they rested. And just beyond the winding village streets, sheep and cows grazed in summer pastures under oatmeal clouds.