fred leicester - Regional Press Awards

LDM-E01-S2 LMSA
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2014
leicestermercur y.co.uk
LEICESTER MERCURY
13
FRED LEICESTER
Wise words from our curmudgeonly columnist
A
few miles away, in a neat and
well-looked-after
council
house on the edge of the
Braunstone estate, lives a
grieving mum. She lost her
daughter, her beautiful, smart, teenage daughter, 31 years ago but she still
grieves because you don’t just stop
grieving. There is no time limit on
loss.
Especially when you lose a loved one
in the way she lost her daughter. I
know this not just because it stands to
reason, but because I’ve sat with her
and she told me so, in a way that
moved me then and still does today.
I’ve sat in her house and I’ve drunk
her tea and I’ve warmed to her because it’s impossible not to warm to
her. I hugged her as I left. I don’t make
a habit of hugging people I interview
for my job, but I hugged her because it
felt right. I wanted to hug her.
And even though I’ve told her story
in the Mercury because that’s my job
and she wanted me to do that, I’ve still
felt partly guilty about it. Because I’ve
felt her grief.
And I felt, even decades later and
even though she invited me to see her
grief, that I was intruding on it.
Her name is Kath Eastwood.
On November 21, 1983 – 31 years ago
yesterday – Kath’s 15-year-old daughter, Lynda Mann, was returning home
from seeing a friend.
She walked along a little short-cut
back to her house in Narborough.
Lynda didn’t make it home. Colin
Pitchfork, a local baker, was lying in
wait. He raped and murdered her.
I’d hope that living among a bunch of
angry men, some of them not that
keen on child killers, might make
you a bit more wary, a bit more selfconscious.
I’ve no doubt Pitchfork has changed
in some way. But I doubt that he could
ever possibly change enough. Because
I doubt if that’s possible.
Never forget – Pitchfork raped and
murdered two teenage girls.
I’ve sat in that neat home on the edge
of Braunstone and I’ve seen the pain
in Kath’s eyes – and I don’t think he
should ever be free.
I don’t care about how much time
he’s served, his new-found love of art
or anything else. It’s irrelevant.
He killed two schoolgirls. That overrides everything else.
And yet still, 30 years on, Colin Pitchfork continues to make the news. Still
we write about him. Still the books
come out. Still the TV companies
make plays and dramas and, still, a
grieving mum feels the pain all over
again.
I thought about Kath when I saw the
story in the Mercury the other week,
another TV play, another drama about
the murder of her daughter.
Lynda would have been in her 40s
now. A mum, probably. Who knows?
She wonders about this, Kath. She
wonders how it might have all turned
out.
U N E ASY
❝
I’ve no doubt
Pitchfork has
changed in some way. But I
doubt that he could ever
possibly change enough.
Because I doubt if that’s
possible.
Three years later, Pitchfork struck
again, raping and murdering another
15-year-old schoolgirl, Dawn Ashworth.
Colin Pitchfork is now serving life in
prison, although he is trying to gain
parole. You might remember the story
from a few years ago that Pitchfork,
eager to win his freedom, claimed he
was a “changed man”.
The proof of this Damascas-like conversion was some dainty little origami men he had made while he was
banged up.
The artwork was put on display at
the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, until someone there leaked the
story to The Times and there was such
a furore – a rightful furore you might
think, and I wouldn’t disagree – that
they had to remove it.
The little origami men were used
again, in court, by his Legal Aidfunded lawyers, who told the appeal
court that Pitchfork was a changed
character – a quiet man, a better man,
a lover of art, no less – and that he’d
put all that dreadful murder and rape
stuff behind him.
Personally, I’d hope that 25 years of
prison, alone with your thoughts, the
constant memory of the evil you have
committed haunting you in the quiet
hours after lights out, that you would
change, at least a little bit.
For double
child killer,
life has to
mean life
It was a godsend, the DNA evidence.
Of course, Pitchfork would try to
dodge it. So the police knew if they
didn’t get him directly with the DNA,
they might get him when he tried to
squirm out of it, which, of course, is
precisely what happened.
Losing your daughter to a senseless
child killer will always be headline
news. But when they catch that killer
thanks to the first-ever use of DNA fingerprinting, well, that makes it a global story. One that never seems to end.
So it comes back around, again and
again. Books. Films. TV programmes
and then newspapers like ours reporting on the books and TV programmes,
the fact that actor John Simm looks
just like Sir Alec Jeffreys in this new
ITV drama.
It’s served up as entertainment now.
Although ITV say they want to do it
sensitively and accurately and
they’ve written to the families for
their permission to do this, it’s still
the worst moment of a poor woman’s
life, served up as two hours of peaktime entertainment.
That makes me feel a bit uneasy. And
I wonder how, in a small house full of
photographs of a 15-year-old girl who
never grew old, Kath feels about that.
Yet, she says, it keeps the case in the
news. People need to know about
Pitchfork and what he did.
In 2009 Pitchfork, somehow, won a
two-year reduction in his 30-year life
sentence. In 2016 – the year after next –
he will be eligible for parole.
It would be a brave, or reckless,
Home Secretary who would free a
double child killer, especially one in a
case that’s as well known as this one.
And once again, a grieving mum will
pick up the cudgels again.
“As long as I am alive,” she told the
Mercury in 2009, “then I will fight to
keep him behind bars.”
She deserves our love and our total
support.
Colin Pitchfork should never, ever be
freed.
Do you agree with Fred? Let him know at: [email protected]