usual sensitivity of ghoulish newspaper men, but he was certain that, even with I.
the gruesome highlights which became public knowledge after the trial, there were still some things that had been left out. He recalled talking, some years before, to a senior police officer who had assisted in identifying the body of a child buried in dense woodland and found some six months after her murder.
`We don't even bring some things out in court,' the detective had said. `I identified that child's fingerprints certainly, but they had to remove the hands and bring them down to London. I never saw the poor kid's body.' The bulk of the file was a detailed and annotated report on the case by the police officer in charge, a Detective Superintendent Richard Seymour, and, even though the lengthy document was couched in official police jargon, the language did nothing to reduce the sense of blind horror.
The events took place in the town of Preston around thirty-five miles north-west of Manchester deep in the old cottonmill country.
Bond thought of grey granite buildings, and the uncompromising, no-nonsense though cheerful people of Lancashire who were the actors in this story of terror.
When Christine Wright, of 33 Albert Road, Preston, went missing, just before Christmas 1971
her name was simply added to the missing persons file. She was twenty-two, blonde, very pretty and at constant odds with her parents who, she was always telling her friends, still treated her like a child. The file did pass across Superintendent Seymour's desk, but all the indications were that young Christine had run off: she was always talking about getting away, living on her own, or finding Mr Wright-this last was, naturally, a little running joke with her friends. Later it would smack of grim gallows humour.
She did tell her closest confidante-one Jessie Styles, who worked with her at the National Westminster Bank that she had met someone truly exciting. The report gave the friend's exact words: `Chrissy said she thought this lad was right for her. She wouldn't talk much about it. Said he was a bit of a toff, had money. Said it could lead to a new life. They were in love, but then Chrissy was always in love with the latest boyfriend. The difference this time was that she didn't give me any details. Usually she'd have photographs. Tell me everything. She wouldn't even tell me the name of this one.' In the early spring of 1972, a pair of hikers literally stumbled over what was left of the missing girl. Christine Wright was identified by her fingerprints-originally, the police had gone through the motions by taking prints from her room at her parents' house in Albert Road.
What `was found by the hikers was simply the torso, in the early stages of decay. The head had literally been hacked off, and the remains buried in a grave less than eight inches deep, near one of the roads leading across the moors above Manchester.
It can be very cold in that part of England, and the freezing temperatures that had persisted from early December 1971 to April of `72, had left the body in a well-preserved state, for it was only just beginning to decompose with the first warmth of spring.
Superintendent Seymour began investigating on the day after the remains were identified. He did not get very far. In his notes there was a query regarding the father, and the constant arguments between him and his murdered daughter; but the policeman, after some long question and answer sessions, noted that he thought Christine's father was not even `in the frame' as the English police slang has it.
On the Tuesday of Easter week, Bridget Bellamy told her parents she was going to spend the night with her friend Betsy Sagar. She had not returned by the Wednesday evening, so it was her mother who eventually telephoned Betsy's home. At first she was angry. Even though Bridget was twenty-one years old, Mrs Bellamy liked to think that her daughter always told her the truth. Bridget had not stayed with the Sagars, nor had she been at work on this, the following day.
It was only after Betsy Sagar had owned up that Mrs Bellamy called the police. For the past week, Bridget had been on a high. She had met the man of her dreams, she had told her friend Betsy. They were in love, and he had asked her to marry him.
His mother was dead, and the family had a wonderful house which the new boyfriend would inherit, together with a fortune, when his elderly, ailing father died. Bridget Bellamy was a blonde, and the one thing she did not tell Betsy was the name of this wonderful man, though she did mention that he lived in his own house near that of his parents.
Bridget's remains were discovered, again on the moors, in early July. She was more difficult to identify, but there was no doubt, just as there was no doubt that her head had been severed possibly with an axe and a saw.
There were two more cases during the summer.
Both blondes, and in their early twenties; both found headless, soon after telling friends that they would shortly be announcing their engagements.
In those days the name `serial killer' had not yet entered either police or public language, but Seymour did not have to be told that they had one killer on the loose in his area. Someone who had already murdered four times, who favoured blonde females, and whose diabolical work included severing their heads possibly keeping them as souvenirs.
The Superintendent's notes over the next two weeks gave the impression of someone under great stress. There were no leads, no clues, and he was doing his best to keep the Press at bay. At one point he wrote: `If this continues I shall have to let the truth come out. All blonde young women in the area are obviously at risk, but if I release the full details there will be both a panic and a concerted attack on us by the Press, who will want to know why we have not arrested anyone. If there is another killing, we will just have to give in and make a full statement. This man is a maniac. I am no forensic specialist, but it is certain that the decapitations are performed in a frenzy, and the two medical examiners who have helped me on this case are both of the opinion that the girls died from the blows to the neck in other words, died from decapitation. I dread another missing persons' report.
What he feared occurred in the last week of August. Janet Fellowes, aged twenty-one, blonde as they came. However, Janet was different. Her friends spoke of her, not unkindly, as the Pony Girl `Because she let anyone have a ride,' one of them said. Also, Janet talked. On the night she went missing she told Annie Frick who, the Superintendent noted, was probably a member of the same pony club, that she was really having some fun with a stuck-up young man. `I been teasing him stupid,' she was reported to have said.
`Keeps saying he's in love with me, but I know what he wants and he'll get it tonight.
Janet had also said that he would be okay for a good time, but he would not be around for a while.
The reason, she told Annie, was that he was a student: `Says he's up at Oxford University. Has to go back for the new term.' Those words constituted the first, and final breakthrough.
There were twenty-four undergraduates in the Preston area. Only fifteen of them were up at Oxford. David March was the third young man to be interviewed by Superintendent Seymour.
Giving evidence at the trial, at which David March pleaded guilty by reason of insanity by then, his only true option Seymour merely said that after a number of questions, March had admitted to the offences.
Bond had been right.
Not everything came out in open court. The Superintendent's official report told the entire chilling story.
The March family lived in a large eighteenth-century house, standing in four acres of garden on the outskirts of Preston. Behind the main house were substantial outbuildings, one of which originally had been a coach house. This, David's father had completely restored and made into a roomy two-storey cottage so that David, having obtained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, could have his own privacy, and not be tied to his family during the vacations.
David was packing, getting ready to return to university when Seymour arrived, accompanied by a detective sergeant, and his first impression was that here he had a well-set-up young man: a quiet, good-looking, scholarly type; confident and with a high IQ. He was later to confide that he had immediately scratched March from the list.
They sat and talked in a large, book-lined living-room, and the detective began a gentle probing, showing him photographs of the girls, taken in life; talking of David's future; and slipping in questions about his activities on the significant dates. At the same time, Seymour had the opportunity to look at the books on the shelves. Most were concerned with law, but one whole section was taken up by books on the occult and comparative religion.
David March behaved perfectly normally for the first thirty minutes or so: eager to answer questions, apologizing for the mess, offering coffee. Then, Seymour noticed a sudden change in him. He seemed to be distancing himself from the two policemen, his head cocked on one side, as though listening for something or someone near by. In the middle of answering a question regarding his hobbies and other activities at Oxford, David
