“She hates that one,” her mother said, “but it’s a good enough likeness.”
The policeman smiled reassuringly to help hold them together and said, “Oh, when she gets back she’ll be so annoyed at you for giving us this photograph, won’t she?”
Robin’s fair old grilling had to do not only with where he’d been the previous day, which was meticulously followed up by the detectives, but where he’d been on the night of Lynda Mann’s murder. Robin Ashworth got a bit of what Eddie Eastwood had gotten nearly three years earlier, but the police were sensible enough not to probe too far in that direction.
During the prior year, Dawn was known to have had two or three casual boyfriends, but was never known to have had any sexual experience. About the most serious peccadillo anyone reported to the police was that Dawn had been seen smoking a cigarette the prior week out in front of a boy’s house, and she reportedly had kissed a boy at a pajama party. She was not the sort of girl to have suddenly run off.
“Dawn wears a brace on her upper teeth, does she?” a policeman asked Barbara Ashworth.
“She’s worn it for a year,” Barbara said. “She’ll be having the brace taken off very soon. On August thirteenth.”
“She’ll be happy about that,” said the policeman.
That afternoon the newspaper headline read:
HUGE HUNT FOR MISSING SCHOOL GIRL
Senior detectives and uniformed police with tracker dogs have joined a huge search of the Narborough area for a 15-year-old girl who disappeared last night not far from the spot where another school girl was found murdered three years ago.
Dawn Amanda Ashworth, of Mill Lane, Enderby, has not been seen since she visited friends in Narborough yesterday afternoon. She left their house on Carlton Avenue, Narborough, at 4:30 P.M. and disappeared.
That night at 10:55 P.M., as a result of the newspaper story, the Ashworths got their first phone call. Barbara answered it. There was no voice on the line.
“Is it you, Dawn?” she cried. Then she shouted, “Robin, get to the other terminal!”
Robin picked up the second phone and said, “If it’s you, Dawn, we want you home! Please, Dawn! If we’ve done anything to upset you please come home and we’ll talk about it!”
The thoughts of Barbara Ashworth were veering crazily. Maybe she’s had a bump on the head! Maybe she’s got amnesia! Maybe …
Then Robin said, “If you’re holding our daughter, please just put her down anywhere! Unharmed! I beg you!”
The person on the telephone may have tired of it. The line went dead.
Exactly fourteen hours later, at 12:55 P.M., the phone rang again. The person still refused to speak.
“I beg you, please!” Barbara Ashworth sobbed. “Don’t hurt our daughter!”
“Just let us know she’s all right!” Robin pleaded. “That’s all we ask!” It was a reasonable request, and he was a reasonable man. He may have expected a reasonable response, but got none. No response at all.
The police arrived and decided that the person might be someone doing shift work, ringing them up when he was going to or coming from work. The police stayed and took a similar call for them at 4:30 P.M. that afternoon. The detective told the Ashworths that those things often happened in such cases.
The newspaper headlines on Saturday, the 2nd of August, were growing more ominous:
DAWN: FEARS GROW FOR HER SAFETY
More than 60 police, some with tracker dogs, are now involved in the investigation. They are concentrating on house-to-house enquiries while surrounding fields are being searched, and Dawn’s friends interviewed.
The spot where she disappeared is five fields away from the lonely Black Pad footpath where the body of another 15-year-old girl, Lynda Mann, was found nearly three years ago. Her murderer has not been caught.
And there was a plea from Robin Ashworth printed by the Mercury that day:
Dawn’s distraught father, Mr. Robin Ashworth, a scientific officer for British Gas, said, ‘If anybody is holding her, at least let us know she is safe. She would never have gone anywhere by herself. She always respects what we say.’
Robin ended his plea by saying, “She will be panic-stricken by now, from being away for so long!”
That morning, while searching the freshly mown fields between the M1 motorway and Ten Pound Lane, a police sergeant found a blue denim jacket by the footbridge that went over the motorway. There was a lipstick and cigarette packet in the pocket. The entire area was sealed off immediately by wide bands of orange tape, and by uniformed constables.
13
Square One
Before noon that Saturday morning, several police officers encircled a clump of blackthorn bushes in a field beside Ten Pound Lane. A bank of freshly cut hay, broken nettles, tree branches and other foliage had been heaped atop the blackthorn, all but concealing the body of Dawn Ashworth. They could see only the finger-tips of one hand.
Like that of Lynda Mann, the body was naked from the waist down except for underpants still on her right ankle, and the white pumps still on her feet. She was on her left side with her knees pulled toward her chest. Her bra was pushed up to expose her small breasts and there was a smear of dried blood extending from her vagina across her left thigh. She wore only one earring, a silver three-quarter flattened hoop.
There were numerous injuries to the body, many of them post-mortem, from insect bites and from being dragged through stinging nettles. The body showed generalized rigor and a temperature of 64 degrees.
Nature had tried very quickly to claim Dawn Ashworth. Relentless crawling insects had savaged her so badly that at first detectives thought she’d been brutally beaten. Implacable flying insects had deposited eggs in every orifice of what had been a vibrant human being. Like Lynda Mann’s, her eyes were heavy-lidded as though she’d been grieving.
One arm was outstretched in front, the one wearing a wrist-watch. Robin and Barbara had often told friends of the joy they’d gotten in choosing that watch for a Christmas present, the last Christmas their child had seen. The watch displayed the correct time.
On the Friday night that Dawn Ashworth was missing, there was a party at the home of a Leicestershire policewoman. Derek Pearce had been one of the revelers in attendance. But he was thinking about the missing fifteen-year-old. It was like Lynda Mann all over again, a failure he’d never gotten over. That evening another inspector said to him, “We’ll find her dead somewhere.”
As the party progressed, Derek Pearce found himself talking to “a lovely young lady with big eyes.” He couldn’t take his gaze from those big eyes. In fact, they may have made him a bit giddy. Or he may have been listing to starboard. He leaned back against a wall.
No wall. It was a door that opened into the bathroom. There was a step down. Pearce later described his move as a “pirouette.” Others described it as a Benny Hill pratfall. A human skull collided with a toilet bowl leaving a visible crack in each.
True to form, Pearce resisted the partygoers who wanted to rush him to hospital.
“No way I’m going!” he said to Sgt. Gwynne Chambers, who was several years older than Pearce, and a friend on and off duty.
Chambers showed Pearce the blood and said, “You’re going.”
The emergency staff of the Leicester Royal Infirmary worked on him from 1:30 to 5:45 A.M., finally burning the vessels to stop the bleeding.
He woke up Saturday morning. The first thing he saw was the ward sister bringing a bottle to his bedside.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“For urination.”
“I’ve got some pride,” Pearce informed her. “I’m not peeing in a bottle.”
And so it started. He tried to get up, she pushed him down. One word led to another and he leaped out of bed. He was weak.
She smiled and said, “Now will you get back in bed and behave like an adult?”
He reached up and found his hair matted with dried blood.
“I’m having a shower,”
he said, later admitting that he felt like a tire puncture in the rain—out of control and skidding.
“Promise you won’t get your head wet!” she demanded.
Never a great line-walker due to his lifelong inner-ear problem, he now walked like a racetrack pickpocket, bumping into anything in his way and fumbling for handholds. He managed to shower but failed to tuck the curtain inside the stall. The sister found bloody water washing down the floor of the corridor.
She stormed into the room and shouted, “You promised faithfully you wouldn’t wash your hair!”
“Where’s my clothes?”
“We’ve taken your clothes.”
“I want my clothes.”
She stalked out again and he staggered across the ward but had to return to bed.
An hour later he opened his eyes and was shocked to see Chief Supt. David Baker and Supt. Tony Painter sitting beside him.
“You look awful,” Baker said.
“I feel great!”
“You’re a liar.”
“You’re right. What’re you doing here?”
“We came to visit you,” said Painter.
Pearce said, “You didn’t come to visit me, boss.”
“You’re right this time,” Baker said. “We’re here on a post-mortem.”
“You found her!”
“In a field by the motorway,” said Painter. “Raped. Strangled.”
Pearce said, “Please tell them to give me my clothes, Mister Baker! This is no place for someone like me! I can’t stand it!”
“No, I told them to take your clothes away,” Baker said.
“Will you at least let my folks know so they can look after the dog?”
“Obey your doctor,” Baker told him. “And rest.”
It fell on Robin Ashworth that day to behold the cruelest, most ravaging sight this world has to offer: the lusterless desecrated flesh of one’s own murdered child.
After he made the official identification and was gone from the infirmary the postmortem began at 6:30 P.M. Chief Supt. David Baker, Supt. Tony Painter and other detectives were present to observe.
Supt. Tony Painter had been the chief inspector of the Police Mobile Reserve during the Lynda Mann inquiry, but had been promoted. A veteran, close to Baker in age and service experience, he was very different in personality. Assertive, often aggressive, he’d tell just about anyone what was on his mind, whether or not he’d been asked. He was tallish, fit, balding, with a smooth unlined face, aviator eyeglasses, and the jaw of a drill sergeant. Tony Painter could fill a room or clear one.
He was the kind of cop who might profanely decry the profanity found in current films. He’d deal with reporters by telling them nothing they wanted to know while trying to make them believe he had. He’d been weaned in a tough police district in Leicester and risen by virtue of brains and nerve. Not as complex a man as Derek Pearce, he still inspired similar comments: “You either like him or you don’t.”
The official measurement showed that Dawn Ashworth had sprouted perhaps an inch taller than her parents had realized. Her height was measured in death at five feet five inches.
One couldn’t fault the initial assessment that she’d been viciously beaten. The pathology report listed two antemortem abrasions on her upper left forehead, a superficial on her nose with swelling over her left cheek, bruising from the left eye down as far as the jawline, and more from nose to ear, associated with a large conjuctival hemorrhage on the lower left eyelid.
There was swelling of the lips and a linear cut on the inside of her mouth relating to the spring on a dental brace attached to her upper teeth, a brace that was to have been removed on the 13th of August. There were other abrasions on her face and much bruising on the anterior neck at the level of the larynx. On her upper right chest there was a group of abrasions, antemortem.
They found no broken fingernails, and the tongue had been gripped but not bitten. It was concluded that most of the marks on the body had probably been caused by the assailant’s attempt to hide it, rather than by the beating that was presupposed, although there had been face, neck and trunk injuries before death, and severe injuries to the perineum where the assailant had viciously penetrated her vagina and anus.
The pathologist’s opinion was that she’d died of manual strangulation, and had possibly received a “commando type chop” or suffered some sort of stranglehold where a forearm was pressed against the larynx by an assailant behind her. The pathologist could not completely exclude a ligature. The blows to the side of the face suggested a right-handed assailant, and her mouth lacerations suggested a severe gripping of the mouth to muzzle her.
About the severe injuries to the perineum, the pathologist found that a lack of reaction in one of the abrasions suggested that it had been received at or after death. He found recent hymen tearing and no evidence of old hymen tears. The pubic hair was damp and matted. “The victim,” he wrote “was virgo intacta and had experienced forceful sexual penetration and acute forceful dilation of the anus as would occur in forceful buggery.”
Few of the marks on the battered body of Dawn Ashworth suggested defense injuries. Tapings were taken from various parts of the body, along with oral, vaginal and anal swabs. Fingernail and hair samples were collected and a red fiber was found in the debris covering her. For the record, the cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation.
The pathologist editorialized in his official report that it was “a brutal sexual attack,” a theme that was seized upon by the press, and would, as the rumors and gossip blazed through the villages, suggest lurid stories of Dawn Ashworth’s having been raped by bottles and tree limbs and other objects.
The pathology report was not as ruthless and dehumanizing as most. An opinion was mercifully added to the conclusion: “When one considers the amount of bruising in relation to the larynx I have to suggest that the sexual attack occurred after strangulation and, therefore, at or after death.” A drop of solace.
An employee who’d worked with Dawn on the last afternoon of her life told police that a boy had bought her a “cuddly toy” and of course that boy was sought, interviewed and cleared. From the joy of being presented with a cuddly toy by an admirer, the vivacious virginal girl had gone immediately to a nightmare death on Ten Pound Lane.
Even veteran policemen sought consolation in the opinion of the pathologist, and hoped she hadn’t been aware of all that was being done to her.
Sunday morning Pearce woke up at 6:00 A.M. as he normally did, but he felt anything but normal. Still, he summoned a student nurse and said cheerfully, “I’ve cracked it!”
“You’ve cracked it, all right,” she answered.
“No, I mean I’ve beaten it. I’m fine. Magnificent!”
He started hopping down the corridor to show everyone how magnificent he was.
They sent for a doctor and Pearce told him, “I feel a bit of a fraud, doctor. I shouldn’t be here.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” the doctor said.
“No, really,” Pearce said. “I’m just wasting your time and taking up bed space. I’m signing myself out of here.”
“Promise me you won’t be completely stupid,” the doctor said. “Take three weeks off from work.”
“Right. I’m going to stay with me mum and dad and rest for three weeks,” Pearce promised.
The doctor then said something to the effect that it was Pearce’s funeral and left the world’s worst patient to his own devices.
Pearce rang the police station and got into another debate with a sergeant who thought it was perhaps unwise to be one’s own physician. “I’m giving you an order!” Pearce said. “Get down here with some clothes or I’m going out naked!”
The clothes arrived and Pearce was driven home, weak and sick, his head like a summer squash. He called David Baker at 6:00 P.M. Sunday night, but he was informed he wouldn’t be working the Dawn Ashworth murder inquiry. Baker reminded Pearce that he’d worked on previous murders and it was
time to let other inspectors gain some homicide experience. Pearce countered by saying he’d at least like to come back and cover the division, in that the doctor had overreacted and now realized Pearce was in great shape.
Pearce showed up at work on Monday feigning perfect health, but regretfully watched the formation of a murder squad to hunt the killer of Dawn Ashworth. He was profoundly disappointed. He knew they were also hunting the killer of Lynda Mann.
Headlines were huge. An early Mercury edition announced that the missing schoolgirl had been found dead. It was quickly followed by a later edition with a fuller story.
DAWN: HUNT FOR DOUBLE KILLER
The sex killer who brutally murdered 15-year-old Dawn Ashworth on Friday almost certainly attacked and strangled Lynda Mann, another schoolgirl, whose body was found a few hundred yards away near Carlton Hayes Hospital, less than three years ago.
Detectives hunting the killer, many of whom investigated Lynda’s killing, today asked for maximum public help to catch ‘a very sick person’ and said that a tiny scratch on a man’s face could be a vital clue to the killer … for Dawn put up a brave fight and probably injured her killer.
There were a few things wrong with that information. First, the police knew that Dawn had been killed on Thursday afternoon or early evening, and second, she had probably not put up a very vigorous fight. But, as in the case of Lynda Mann, it was impossible for journalists, family and even many of the police to believe that the victim of what the press would always call “a horrific sexual assault” would not have battled ferociously.
David Baker’s statement to reporters was more accurate: “There is every possibility that Dawn put up a struggle and she may have injured her assailant, either by scratching or biting him, or he may have injured himself in the struggle.”
By the second day of the inquiry the police had a witness from a factory yard across the motorway who claimed to have heard a scream just after 5:00 P.M., quickly followed by another, “like a young child but lower-pitched and muffled.” Originally the witness had thought it must be children at play, as indeed it may have been, since he had to have heard it some two hundred yards away, across six lanes of rush-hour traffic. Still, it was the best initial lead to come in.
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