Blooding

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Since the Lynda Mann murder there’d remained a strong belief that the answer might lie at the psychiatric hospital. On one of Damon’s trips to the hospital, he had occasion to speak with a ward sister about a man the police were interested in blood-testing. During the conversation in her office, Damon, who felt very uneasy in those surroundings, casually asked what they did if a patient got violent.

  The sister was horrified by the question. She said, “There hasn’t been a violent patient in … I can’t remember when!” He was chastened by her withering look.

  Suddenly there was a scream in the ward outside and a table crashed to the floor. Damon and the sister ran from her office and found a middle-aged nurse and a male orderly wrestling on the floor with a patient gone berserk.

  “He was a ruddy bear!” Damon later said. “They were trying to get him round the throat and the poor old dear’s skirt was up over her head! So I said, ‘Do you want any help?’”

  But no one answered. Those in the middle of the melee couldn’t, and the ward sister was paralyzed by the eye-popping spectacle of cellulite pillows bulging from the nurse’s white cotton stockings, as the poor old dear groaned pitifully and did Esther Williams-backstroke scissors kicks. The other patients just giggled and drooled, and rooted in their noses or ears, gleefully inspecting the nuggets by crosshatched light from wire mesh windows.

  Finally, the orderly wrestling on the floor yelled, “Please! Help!” So Damon took his glasses off and leaped on the ruddy bear, eventually subduing him. When it was all over, the ward sister recovered her composure, strode up to the exhausted cop and said, “Don’t you ever again lay hands on one of our patients!”

  It was eerie roaming about the hospital, among people who might be homicidal. Any one of whom might be him. Even without rolling on the floor with ruddy bears, John Damon said it wasn’t one of the more desirable assignments: blooding madmen at the nut farm.

  Another prime suspect had entered the picture. The murder squad received some tittle-tattle from traveling workers about a certain pipelayer who used to lure young girls into his transit van, to lay some pipe, as it were. The cops got particularly interested when they discovered he’d been working five hundred yards from the Ashworth house.

  Then a stunning piece of news energized the entire inquiry. The pipelayer had left work on the very day that Dawn disappeared and had gone directly from the job site to a travel agent in Nottingham. When the pipelayer was told he couldn’t change a flight he’d already booked, a flight leaving for California in two days, he paid £50 to cancel his ticket. And he coughed up an additional £50 to get a new one. It cost him £100 extra to get out of England in a hurry. Furthermore, he never showed up for work to collect £900 in wages owed to him!

  The more the police looked into the life of the pipelayer, the more excited they became. They traced him to an old job he’d done in the vicinity of The Black Pad. He’d been laying water pipe in and around Narborough at the time of the Lynda Mann murder!

  His ex-wife in Nottingham wouldn’t talk to the police about her former husband, and he had no police record for sexual offenses. But he was known to be a violent man, with prior arrests for causing grievous bodily harm. He was a handsome ladies’ man, twenty-nine years old, and had worked part-time as a bouncer at a disco.

  Tony Painter decided to get in contact with the FBI, hoping that the pipelayer could be located in California and blood-tested. And if that happened, Derek Pearce planned to drive the blood sample straight to the laboratory from Heathrow Airport. Pearce and John Damon dreamed about going to California to get the sample themselves. Damon wore an American baseball cap to work for a week, but it didn’t help. He didn’t even get to go to London with Pearce and Tony Painter to request cooperation from the American embassy.

  They never got the blood. Nor did they ever learn why the pipelayer had left in such haste. As with many police investigations the secret ways of people often produced peripheral mysteries as baffling as the one in question.

  He remained totally inactive for a long time after Dawn. There was only one more to relive sometimes. There was Lynda and Dawn and the hairdresser who sucked it, and there was only one other. She was the first he’d ever touched. It was the first time his exploits made the newspaper, the front page of the Mercury. It had happened a long time ago, but he could remember it crystal clear. He could remember every moment with all of them crystal clear.

  On February 13, 1979, a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl who lived in the Leicester suburb of Kirby Muxloe was walking home alone by Desford Lane. It was a rather lonely country road and it seemed a bit unusual to see a young man standing there by a farm gateway. But it was 2:30 in the afternoon so she didn’t think much about it.

  The girl was warmly dressed on that winter day. She wore a brown Shetland wool cardigan, blue jeans and a blanket-style coat. When she got to the gateway and walked past him, his arm whipped out and coiled around her neck.

  “Don’t scream or I’ll kill you,” he whispered.

  Then he dragged her through the gateway into the open field, the school bag still dangling from her arm. When he got her into the field he pulled her down and knelt on her coat.

  “No, no, please!” she sobbed, repeating it over and over.

  He grabbed her by the throat and ripped open her blouse. Then he tried to shove his hand down inside her pants, but the zip on the jeans was stuck.

  He was very strong—very cold and calculating about everything he did.

  Even as she sobbed and pleaded she studied him: pudgy face and meaty lips, full beard and moustache, gingery blond hair. She detected what seemed to be a stain or defect in his front teeth. She saw no mercy in his eyes. She felt utterly powerless.

  Suddenly he looked disturbed. He stopped his attack abruptly. He jumped up and ran off without looking back. It was later speculated that, like many rapists, he may have ejaculated before unzipping his trousers.

  It was the first. There was such unexpected ecstasy derived from power. From control. From terror. From all the “foreplay.”

  When they released the kitchen porter he still wasn’t concerned. When they started the blood testing he was. He thought of going to Nottingham to rape and murder once again, Just to divert them from the three villages. The test concerned him. He had faith in science.

  20

  The Flasher

  The terms sociopath and antisocial personality are often used synonymously with psychopath. Several behavioral signs have been identified by McCord and McCord (1964) and others as characteristic of the psychopath; they are antisocial behavior, impulsivity, hedonism, aggressiveness, guiltlessness, a warped capacity for love, and the ability to appear superficially adequate.

  —DAVID C. RIMM and JOHN W. SOMERVILL, Abnormal Psychology

  In the summer of 1979, when Carole was only eighteen, she finished her course in preliminary social work and took an appointment as a volunteer at Dr. Bamardo’s Children’s Home in Leicester. A charitable otganization, Dr. Bamardo’s had been founded in the 19th century as an orphans’ asylum, but in modern times had become a residential home for mentally handicapped children. Carole was an “auntie,” a residential social worker. When Colin Pitchfork came to Dr. Bamardo’s as a volunteer he was nineteen, just eight months older than she, but Colin had already been employed by Hampshires Bakery for three years.

  Carole was always given the hard jobs at the home, like washing and ironing, but Colin seemed to get the pleasant assignments, like playing with the children and organizing activities, and baking cakes for them.

  A pudding of a girl, plump and approachable, Carole had bird’s-egg-blue eyes that narrowed to slits when she laughed. Colin, on the other hand, was quiet spoken, but he had a cynical arch to his brows, as though he were repressing an urge to sneer. A ginger blond, bulky through the trunk and shoulders, Colin sometimes sported a beard, sometimes not. He had a bit of a saw-toothed grin, but if he kept his mouth closed he was very presentable.

 
; They seemed quite different, Carole and Colin, but being the same age, they drifted toward one another during those days at Dr. Barnardo’s. She said that after her parents divorced, Colin “was a pillar to lean on.” A very shy chap until you got to know him, Carole told her friends.

  In August of that year Colin asked her to go out for a drink. He wasn’t a pub man and didn’t drink often, but when he did, he talked. Carole learned that Colin was a local lad from Leicester, the second child in a family she came to call matriarchal. Colin’s older sister was quite assertive like her mother, and was bent on being a doctor with an ultimate goal of research in microbiology or bio-chemistry. His younger brother was intent on taking a degree in engineering. Colin, the middle child, told Carole that he was “the black sheep” and the “underdog.”

  We lived in the village of Newbold Verdon then, me mum and dad, a sister and brother. The older sister were very clever, always Mummy’s little girl. They paid for her all the way through her education clear up till when she was twenty-seven years old. And the younger brother, he were the baby so they doted on him. I was in the middle, but I was never neglected. I joined the Scouts because Mum expected it. She was heavy into the Scout movement. They were proud of me then.

  But I remember how the other boys used to make fun of me in school when I went in the shower because I were bigger than most and had pubic hair before the others. I guess the problems started at home. I used to show it to girls I knew. Right there at my own house from the age of eleven. I used to like to show it. I started going out on the streets to do it. I started showing it to strange girls.

  Then came the good part of life. I went to Norway one time with the Scouts, and when the Scout leader left the group, I became a Scout leader with Mum’s help. I became a hero at home then because I was doing so good. Everyone found it exceptional to be a Scout leader at the age of fifteen. The good side of life was always good and the bad side was bad and there seemed to be no in-betweens. That lasted for several months until a new Scout leader got appointed and then all the praise stopped.

  I enjoyed English, but for me the majority of subjects was a waste of time. And the same with church. Me mother was religious but I found it all hypocritical. But I attended church and I became a server, which I hated. All the bloody church ever done was make money from old ladies to make itself rich.

  Before I gave up on school at sixteen, I made a film on vandalism and it got shown at some local high schools. I loved the glory I got from that, but school weren’t for me. The thing I most hated was everyone calling me “her brother,” not feeling like a person in me own right. But I was still a Scout then, at least.

  There were things he told Carole during the time of their courtship, and things she discovered later. He told her a bit about his history of flashing. He even implied that it used to give him some of his greatest thrills. She tried not to worry about it. She was in love with him.

  The first time I got caught flashing it had an effect on me mother of horror and upset. I got visited by a police constable who gave me a lecture and told me how to avoid a similar incident. That was worth bloody nowt. Then I got caught doing another and had to go to court and it got reported in the local paper and they kicked me out of the Scout movement. It was bad because me mum was the group Scout leader in Newbold. But they allowed me to join the Glenfield Scout Group.

  Colin told Carole that he’d wanted to try for a Queen’s Scout Award and even the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Scout Award because his mother would’ve liked it. As part of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award he’d had to do voluntary service, which brought him in contact with Dr. Barnardo’s Home.

  I worked there for five years, taking care of those mentally handicapped kids, taking them for days out. The female members of the staff looked up to me. Me mum figured I was back on the straight and narrow and I never did no flashing at Glenfield because of my work at Dr. Barnardo’s.

  But you get that need. You go out sometimes and cover fifty or sixty miles looking for that opportunity. It’s the high I needed. Yet sometimes I didn’t get nothing out of it. You never knew how it would turn out. Then they caught me again.

  After her parents’ divorce was final, Carole moved into Dr. Barnardo’s and saw more and more of Colin Pitchfork. They eventually became engaged and lived as husband and wife, but during the engagement, even after they’d set the date, it happened again. Colin was summoned before the court for indecently exposing himself to young girls.

  “I was naive,” Carole later explained. “I simply didn’t understand the business of flashing. I actually thought it was like giving up smoking or going on a diet. That it’d be difficult for a few weeks and then just go away. I had no idea how complex it all is. Agoraphobia is about the only abnormality that I can understand perfectly. Any other abnormal behavior, I can’t. Anyway, according to Colin, the probation service told him he’d outgrow his problem, even though he was twenty-one years old at the time. They put him on probation again.”

  In May of 1981, they were married in grand style. Lace gown and veil, top hat and gloves—the young couple did themselves proud.

  Colin and Carole settled in Barclay Street in Leicester, and Colin continued working at Hampshires Bakery. He had an artistic side, a flair for drawing, and he was keen on learning to decorate cakes. He was also musical, having played tuba as a boy, and would sit for hours at a keyboard, a piano or a steel drum.

  Carole didn’t just love her young husband, she admired him. But it took awhile for her to understand Colin Pitchfork, and to sort out the relationships in his family. For instance, Colin didn’t know much about his parents, not even how they’d met. He knew only that his father had formerly been in the mines in Chesterfield, and that his mother had been raised in the house she’d raised Colin in, a house his parents retained after his maternal grandparents died.

  “They just didn’t talk about things” was how he explained his family to Carole.

  She, on the other hand, knew all about her family. She was a daddy’s girl and always had been. Hers had been the kind of family where they’d kiss each other as quickly as saying hello. And she’d had her own horses as a child, her last being a show jumper named Jamie. She’d ridden in competition since she was seven years old and her dad was always there to watch her win ribbons. He was a civil engineer who sold sewer work and motorway construction to government clients. He’d always worked in a jacket and tie at a middle-class job.

  After Carole’s father remarried, he and his new wife moved to Narborough village where he became one of the sixteen-member parish council. He was an active youngish man who loved boats, shooting and his daughter. His disapproval of his son-in-law, Colin Pitchfork, was even greater after Colin was caught flashing yet again, and was sent for psychiatric counseling to Carlton Hayes Hospital in Narborough. To The Woodlands, there by The Black Pad.

  I got dealt with by a probation officer and a doctor. I were referred to The Woodlands because that’s where they take outpatients. A waste of time. A bleedin waste. Probation officers and psychiatrists, these people are quite happy if you tell them what they want to hear. I can look at the two sides of my life so objectively. I look on meself as quite intelligent, and I can’t believe how easy it is to spin yams to these people.

  That particular flashing arrest never got in the papers, so life carried on, really. And the flashing were also carrying on at a nice little rate. I could see it getting up into the thousands in twenty years.

  Colin seemed very placid to Carole during the months of her pregnancy in the spring of 1983. He seemed to enjoy a class he was taking in cake decorating at Southfields College. It was an evening class, and he was often tired from working at the bakery, but he was still anxious to get to the community college.

  Soon he was riding to school with another student who would drop by and pick him up. Leslie was eighteen years old. To her he seemed worldly and experienced. He certainly knew a lot about making cakes and decorating them.

  Col
in began ringing Leslie at her home, and then seeing her secretly. Soon, when she came to pick him up at his home he’d invite her in for tea.

  Carole had a part-time job working with children at Venture Playground. One day when she was at work, Leslie and Colin had sex in Carole’s bed. It seemed foolhardy to Leslie, but that’s what he wanted. He used a contraceptive and the sex was straight-forward. She later said he was kind to her. She’d been a virgin up until then.

  Leslie was attractive, a fact not lost on Carole Pitchfork. And she was young. Perhaps she had a way of looking at Colin when she’d come to pick him up for class. Perhaps there was the scent of another woman in Carole’s bed.

  “Why do I keep putting two and two together and getting five?” Carole asked her husband one night, after she’d accused him of being a bit too chummy with the girl.

  “I just went out to the pub for a drink!” Colin told her. “One drink!”

  “You don’t have to go so often.”

  “Twice a week is too bleedin often? Am I a drunkard too?”

  He wasn’t a drinking man, nobody’s pub mate, and since Carole was pregnant she really didn’t feel like sitting with him in a smoky pub when she could be at home.

  “I’ve asked you to come along, haven’t I?” he said. And that was true.

  But one evening, after her fourth or fifth accusation, after he was just a bit too late coming home from the community college, he simply said, “All right, it’s true.”

  He showed no remorse or sorrow. It was a simple fact and it was pointless to deny it. It turned out he’d sent flowers to Leslie, which may have been his undoing.

  Carole, of course, was heartbroken, and tearfully vowed to leave him forever.

  When she moved out and returned to her mother’s house for two weeks, her dad learned where Leslie lived. He went directly to the girl’s home to inform her father that his teenage daughter was having an affair with a married man. The evidence of flowers brought forth a confession from Leslie, and she agreed to break it off for good.