So with Richard Kelvin, Sunday keeps coming into the picture. He was abducted on a Sunday and he was dumped on a Sunday. This fitted with our original theories about our murderers being working people who plied their deadly trade mainly on weekends. However, they were opportunists, and they were active on other days but were freer to hunt their prey on weekends.
Richard was kept alive for five weeks after his abduction. We could prove all of these things. We knew that Richard Kelvin was drugged and beaten during his captivity but Richard would not have been completely out to it. He still had to drink to stay alive. We could show that he had eaten food at some time during his captivity as he had food in his stomach. He had eaten an apple and cornflakes just before his death. But we still could not be certain about the cause of death. Richard could have died from his anal injury but suffocation could not be discounted.
So this was the sum of the case so far: We had an admitted homosexual who picked up boys. We could prove that he also drugged boys. He worked in an office and had weekends off. We found drugs hidden in his house that were similar to those Richard had in his system. Richard had Mandrax in his system. Mandrax was found hidden in von Einem’s house. He also had trichloroethanol in his system, which is the byproduct of having been given chloral hydrate, the active ingredient of the drug, Noctec, which was also found hidden in von Einem’s house. He also had the active ingredient of Valium, diazepam, in his system. Additionally, there was a suspicion that Rohypnol was also present in Richard but the amount could not be measured. This also presented problems as to whether or not that evidence would be accepted. Even so, von Einem also had quantities of Rohypnol in his pill bottle in his bag. We knew that he used Rohypnol to drug boys. Valium tablets also were found in his little pill bottle with the piece of paper with ‘Uncle Bevan’ written on it.
How sickly ironic were those words, I pondered. The doctor or person who wrote ‘Uncle Bevan’ and placed those words in his drug bottle knew von Einem gave the appearance of being a nice, ‘uncle’ figure. In reality he was a shocking deviate.
Another problem related to the fourth drug. A barbiturate was also found in Richard’s system but we did not find any at von Einem’s. However, we knew others were involved and they could have been drug users. Brian Martin could argue that one of the other killers supplied the barbiturates.
Not only did the evidence of von Einem picking up and drugging boys become more clear as time passed, but other circumstantial evidence became stronger. That evidence related to miniscule particles found on Richard’s clothing. Des Phillips took fibre samples from von Einem’s house when we first went there on 28 July 1983. Also, von Einem volunteered a sample of his hair, which was taken by police doctor Noel McCleave on the same day. When Des had dried Richard’s jeans, socks and T-shirt and taken tape lifts from them, he found trace evidence: sand, paint, fibres and hair.
The sand from Richard’s clothes was quite fine and it was subsequently looked at by AMDEL, a centre which examines minerals — but nothing came from this line of enquiry. The sand was quite common and we couldn’t determine where it came from.
Small particles of paint were found, which was predominantly coloured red. There were forty small fragments, which was quite a large amount. Beneath the paint there appeared to be a yellow undercoat, possibly a metal primer, but we could not be sure. The size of the largest chip of paint found by Des Phillips was half a millimetre. This chip was a light green colour and was similar to paint found on Mark Langley. Other coloured paint flakes were four particles showing different green colours: particles of grey paint, blue paint and yellow paint. Unfortunately, we couldn’t match any of the paint with the colours at the homes we visited.
There were 525 foreign fibres on Richard’s clothes and they were sorted into their different colours: mainly red, orange, brown, violet and aqua. The red fibres were mostly synthetic but there were some woollen fibres. The orange fibres were a combination of synthetic and wool, and most of the foreign fibres were taken from Richard’s jeans. The brown fibres were predominantly wool but some were synthetic, while the violet fibres were synthetic and all over Richard’s clothing; the aqua fibres were also synthetic.
The scientific evidence to show that Richard Kelvin was at von Einem’s home was standing up to scrutiny. At the time of von Einem’s arrest the fibre evidence was still being checked. Scientific examination using a technique called thin-layer chromatography showed that nine different coloured fibres from four different sources — all relating to von Einem — were on all of Richard Kelvin’s clothes, including his underpants. There were
