'So was I ... but I came back.'
Lou gave an uneasy wiggle of her shoulders. 'There weren't no sense us both getting done.'
'No,' said Cill, taking another twist of hair and digging her knuckles into the smaller girl's scalp. 'But you fucking well will be if you or Billy ever tell on me.' She stared into Lou's eyes, her own full of tears. 'You got that? Because if my dad has a go at me again, I'm off ... and I ain't never coming back.'
The cooling between the two girls was noticed by their families and their teachers. Once or twice Louise Burton's father tried to find out what had caused it, but Lou, who kept pestering to have her hair cut in the urchin style she so craved, shrugged and said Cill had found another friend. Billy slipped out of the room each time, but it didn't occur to either of his parents that he knew anything. Nor were they interested enough to pursue it. Free of Cill's influence, Louise reverted to dressing appropriately for a thirteen-year-old, and the brief flurry of truanting that had brought her to the unwelcome attention of her headmistress ceased abruptly.
For Priscilla Trevelyan's parents, the break was equally welcome. Their daughter had become wayward in puberty, but Louise Burton's unquestioning subservience had exacerbated it. Mr. Trevelyan, disappointed by Cill's unwillingness to apply herself and troubled by her early maturity, had exercised a tough, physical discipline to control her, and the sudden loss of affection between the two girls was acknowledged with relief but never mentioned. He was worried that talking about it would rekindle the dependence and he forbade his wife to show sympathy. He put Cill's bad temper down to the broken friendship, but overlooked it because of her new-found commitment to attending school.
The girls' teachers were less sanguine after a fight broke out between them during a PE lesson on Friday. May 29. There had been three weeks of hostile silence before Louise said something that prompted Priscilla to react. It was a catfight of teeth and claws with the smaller child taking the brunt of it before the pair were finally pulled apart by a furious games teacher and marched in front of the headmistress. Priscilla stood in stony-faced silence, refusing to speak, while Louise sobbed about having her hair pulled and Cill trying to persuade her to truant again. The headmistress, who didn't believe her, nevertheless made the decision, in the absence of apology or explanation, that Priscilla should be punished with a week's suspension while Louise was let off with a caution.
Predictably, Cill's father took out his disapproval in a thrashing and, as she had threatened, she ran away some time during the early hours of Saturday, May 30. Mr. Trevelyan described the punishment as 'a couple of smacks' when the police asked if there was a reason for his daughter absconding, but otherwise he could not account for the out-of-character behavior. She had never done it before, she had a good home and was doing well academically. Yes, there had been a few truancy problems in the past, but that was the fault of the secondary-modern system. Priscilla was easily bored by lessons that were geared to the less intelligent.
Louise, under questioning by a sympathetic policewoman, began by saying that Cill would kill her if she told the truth, then confessed the rape. She couldn't name the boys, but her description led to them being rounded up and their homes searched for any sign of the missing girl.
They denied any knowledge of rape, Priscilla Trevelyan or Louise Burton, and nothing was found to connect them with an assault or the girls. It didn't help that Louise hadn't known their names, could only give vague descriptions, couldn't remember how they were dressed, and that Cill's crocheted top, miniskirt and knickers had been thrown away. Nor, when Louise tearfully insisted that Cill had brought it on herself by getting drunk and talking sexy, did the police believe an assault had taken place. Heavy petting, perhaps, but not full-on gang rape.
However, as the major stumbling block was the alleged victim's absence, the boys were released after token questioning at 1323 on Monday, June 1. Rape was taken less seriously in 1970.
The following is a single-chapter excerpt from
Dr. Jonathan Hughes's
Jonathan Hughes, 34, was born in London where he now lives. He graduated with a first- class honors degree from Oxford University in 1992 and has made a particular study of the Middle East. He lectures widely on comparative religion and internecine conflicts. His first two books,
Dr. Hughes is a research fellow in European anthropology at London University.
12.
Howard Stamp-Victim or Murderer?
Many would argue that the brutal murder of fifty-seven-year-old Grace Jefferies in June 1970 in Bournemouth, Dorset, was another case where public pressure influenced police handling of an investigation. Press outrage over the slashing and stabbing of shy, disabled Grace whipped the public into a frenzy, and pressure was on the police to find a culprit. The headlines of Saturday, June 6, 1970, drew parallels with the Manson family's killing of Sharon Tate less than a year earlier. (The trial of Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel began six weeks later on July 24, 1970.)
Police fear copycat murder as Manson trial approaches'; 'Grandmother tortured in California-style bloodletting'; 'Orgy of bloodlust'; 'Walls daubed with blood.' We must assume that these ideas came from the police, because there's too much unanimity to lay the blame on journalists. If so, it was criminally misleading. Grace was alone when she was murdered, unlike Sharon Tate whose five guests were slaughtered with her, and 'daubed' was a fanciful description for the arterial splatters of blood on Grace's wall. It gave the impression that Bournemouth police had found something similar to the 'Pig' scrawled in blood on Sharon Tale's front door.
Not unreasonably, the public was terrified. The 'Tate murders' in Los Angeles on August 9, 1969, followed twenty-four hours later by the 'La Bianca murders,' had shocked the world. Newspapers obsessed on 'drug-induced cult horror' after details of the massacres emerged. The Beatles were in the dock for their song 'Helter Skelter,' along with the Vietnam War, Californian 'flower power,' Woodstock, long hair, pot-smoking and free love. The idea that these American diseases had crossed the Atlantic to erupt in savage murder in respectable Bournemouth was so shocking that there was a collective sigh of relief on Sunday, June 7, when Howard Stamp confessed.
There was no gang involvement. It was a 'domestic.' Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old with a noticeable harelip, was Grace's grandson. He had a history of truancy, bizarre behavior, refusal to work and an unhealthy obsession with the rock group Cream, particularly the drummer, Ginger Baker. He was held for questioning for thirty-six hours and finally admitted the murder at four o'clock on the Sunday morning. There was no solicitor present, and because he was illiterate his statement was written for him. It was an open-and-shut case and the accused was duly sent to trial and convicted in August 1971.
Disturbing Parallels
Open-and-shut cases had similarly led to the convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley in the 1950s, and the later convictions of Stephen Downing for the murder of Wendy Sewell in 1973 and Stefan Kiszko for the murder of Lesley Molseed in 1975. Like Stamp, all four were illiterate or semiliterate with physical or mental disabilities, and all were highly vulnerable to police suggestion.
