Authors: Paul Britton
3) Give in to his demands, pay the ransom and trust that he just goes away. Not an option for the police.
4) Put out a false profile suggesting, for example, that the blackmailer was psychotic, of low intelligence and sexually immature. Although I included this, for the sake of completeness, as a way of drawing the blackmailer back into contact, I quickly discounted it as being too dangerous because it could also goad him into killing again solely to punish the police for insulting him.
That left option five - playing the game. If the management committee accepted that his deep motivation wasn’t just money but was the contest itself, then this had to become the central organizing motif of the entire investigation.
By drawing this man into the field on our terms, to the extent that this was possible, and understanding the options open to him at each point, we could keep his need for the game satisfied and so begin to channel his behaviour to stop him killing again. At the same time, we could move him closer to a position where he would disclose enough information about himself, or become overconfident and drop his guard, making an operational mistake that would lead the police to him.
Just as with Rodney Whitchelo, each new contact increased our chances of catching him and each letter told us something more. We had to let him think he could win and then prepare to beat him.
The last option, option five, was accepted and planning began for his next contact and the inevitable demands. The team had to be ready to respond to whatever situation he engineered rather than waiting until it happened and then reacting instinctively. Part of this involved choosing and rehearsing a courier. A massive murder and extortion investigation involving scores of officers and specialists would, for a brief period, funnel down and rest on the shoulders of a lone policewoman. For that time she carried the weight of the entire operation and we had to make sure she could handle the pressure and deal with the unexpected.
Such outside operations are co-ordinated by the Regional Crime Squad, in this case No.3 unit based at Wakefield, and a senior officer came to see me at Baverstock House in Lincoln where I conducted an outpatients clinic once or twice a month. We discussed the attributes of a successful courier/negotiator - someone bright, fast on her intellectual feet and able to deal with rapidly changing situations. She had to be able to maintain her role and not give way to disabling fear even when she felt totally alone and at the mercy of a calculating and very deceptive killer.
The blackmailer would deliberately attempt to use his words, his vocal tone and pace to control and intimidate her, perhaps even trying to make more direct physical contact.
‘She has to be rehearsed over and over again,’ I said. ‘I don’t care how confident she says she is, she won’t have experienced anything like this. When that man speaks to her, everything will freeze.’
Several days later, the officer introduced me to a detective constable in her late twenties who looked me straight in the eye as she shook my hand. Anna (not her real name) had solid police experience but had never acted as a ransom courier. A question remained over her appearance. The blackmailer had stipulated that the police use the same WPC as before. Would he recognize the change? That depended upon how close he’d got to the first courier. What would he do if he discovered the deception? Perhaps take another life or set a store ablaze. How could we prevent it? I thought about this and suggested a cover story. We could tell him that the first policewoman had gone on sick leave suffering from stress. It would appeal to his sense of control and need to intimidate.
Anna sat in my room at Baverstock House listening to my description of how the blackmailer would try to manipulate her. Finally I had her pick up a nearby phone and I stood behind her out of sight.
‘Hello, Julie speaking,’ she said, a little self-consciously.
‘Switch off your radio - NOW!’ I yelled, with all the venom and authority of the extortionist.
She flinched. ‘I… I haven’t got a transmitter.’
‘Don’t insult me,’ I spat. ‘I’ve got a radio detector hidden near the phone box. I know you’ve a transmitter open. Switch if off!’
There was a long pause as Anna went over our earlier briefing in her memory. ‘Look, we’re trying to do what you want, honestly, but please, why do you have to do this’
‘I’ll ask the fucking questions. Get that transmitter off!’
‘OK, OK. I’m doing it now.’
Anna indicated that she wouldn’t turn off the radio, anticipating that the blackmailer was bluffing about having a detector. If he did have such a device, she’d say that she fumbled the switch in a panic.
‘Now try something else,’ I said. ‘Even though he threatens, sneers and abuses, don’t challenge him or confront him yet -just build a rapport, let him truly think that you are trying to do things his way. But remember he has to learn that you are just a messenger, he can’t win policy concessions from you. Make him see that although you might want to go along with his demands, you’re just a cog in the wheel. Use your vulnerability to satisfy his need for control.’
Again I stood behind Anna as she picked up the telephone.
‘Unscrew the light bulb in the booth,’ I said, ‘then wait no more than twenty seconds and walk behind the bush by the kiosk, get into the blue Ford car that is parked there and drive off immediately, straight ahead. Take the first lane on the left, travel at precisely forty-five miles per hour, and stop at the phone box in a lay-by a mile and a quarter on the nearside. Go into the phone box and wait for my call. It’s timed exactly, if you’re not there within six minutes I’ll know that you’re not taking this seriously enough. Oh, you must have got rid of your watchers and backup or it’s all off anyway. START NOW!’ I shouted.
Anna said, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t make that decision.’
‘No, try again,’ I said, ‘don’t just dismiss it, offer him some reason.’
‘I’m trying to do what you want, but I can’t twist the bulb.’
‘I don’t want excuses.’
‘I know you’re very serious, but I’m frightened that there isn’t enough time for me to get there.’
‘Unless you start now another one will be dead tonight and it will be your fault. It’s not me - she lives or she dies depending on what you do now.’
The conversation continued as we practised and honed Anna’s responses over and over again until she was able to deal fluently and naturally with a broad range of threats, demands and tricks. Eventually, I was confident that if this stage of the operation went wrong, it wouldn’t be because the courier fell apart.
On Tuesday evening, 6 August, the ransom drop began again and Anna waited at the telephone box at Leicester Forest East. An hour after the deadline passed, all units were stood down. The blackmailer had failed to make contact.
Two days later another letter was found at Leeds sorting office, postmarked from Nottingham. Bob Taylor faxed it to me.
Re Julie,
Could not make it Tuesday evening due to the fact that there was no suitable hostage in the Huddersfield red light area on Monday evening, also our young lovers are not down the lane on Monday evenings, the latter are more important than the prostitute, as a prostitute can be eliminated any time should the police no cooperate. But another suitable couple have to be located but the day will have to be changed to Wednesday. This being the case, a phone call will be made to the usual box on Wednesday 14 August at 8.15p.m. (not 8.30 p.m.). The extra 15 min being needed due to location change.
Also this time your W.P.C. will need a Stanley type knife, with a sharp blade, she will not now be travelling to the box where there is one located, this will be the last time you will receive a call at the usual location, should anything go wrong, then you will not be given the location of the incendiary device or the location of the prostitutes body, mind you, you found Julies within 24 hours. I did think of hiding her body till it was all over but felt sorry for her, she was only killed because she saw where she was, but this time the second prostitute will need to be kept for 24 hrs so there should be not problems if nothing goes wrong.
I will also need to know the phone number of where you want to be told the location of the incendary, this phone number must be given at the second box not the first box at Leicester.
Again he apologized for missing the appointment - almost suggesting that ‘if you play it straight with me, I’ll be straight with you’. He wanted the police to admire him as an honourable opponent. Another handful of misleading clues were added to the pot like a pinch of salt or dash of pepper. The Stanley type knife? The extra fifteen minutes he needed? The lovers in the lane and the change of days? He loved stirring the pot and watching it bubble.
As instructed, the operation began again on Wednesday 14 August and this time the telephone call was made at 8.16 p.m. The blackmailer said that he’d taken another hostage, a prostitute from Ipswich called Sarah Davis or Davies and he instructed Anna to take the Ml northbound to junction 40, then take the A638 to Wakefield. After an eighth of a mile, on the right-hand side near a bus stop, she’d come to another telephone box. She had ninety minutes.
At the control centre, detectives scrambled to establish if any woman had been reported missing in or around Ipswich. A convoy of unmarked police cars shadowed Anna to the next contact point where she discovered there was no telephone box an eighth of a mile down the road. Two possible boxes were found nearby and a quick decision made to put a second female officer into the field, so both phones were covered.
Anna didn’t get the call, it came to the other policewoman. As she picked up the receiver she found the cradle had jammed. Struggling to free it, she heard the blackmailer say that he’d call back in half an hour. No call arrived and at 11.30 p.m. the operation was stood down.
When Bob Taylor told me what had happened he couldn’t hide his frustration. He cursed British Telecom and cursed the blackmailer. The cradle had jammed - a simple fault - and now he feared the police were going to be punished for this with the death of another woman.
Checks with Ipswich police indicated that no-one had been reported missing and the street name given for the abduction didn’t exist. Despite this, telex messages were sent to all heads of CID throughout England and Wales informing them of the possibility of another hostage being taken.
Later that morning, 15 August, a road cleaner on the Ml motorway, south of junction 37, spotted a white-painted brick lying near a disused railway bridge that crossed the carriageways. Attached to the brick was a brown envelope and nearby lay a silver tin with two red lights, one of them illuminated.
The South Yorkshire police were unaware of the blackmail operation and, fearing the package was a bomb, they called in an army bomb disposal team which used a remote controlled robot to destroy the suspect device. The envelope survived and contained a stencilled message directing police to another bridge used by pedestrians further along the motorway where a second white-painted brick was discovered but no letter.
Despite the missing pieces, a picture began to emerge of the ransom trail. The blackmailer had planned to direct the courier beneath the pedestrian bridge. He would then drop a length of rope from above and she would attach the package using the dog clip. He would then pull it up and make his escape, perhaps along the disused railway line.
The railway connection interested me. New Street Station had featured in the first demand; Julie’s body had been dumped near a disused stretch of track and now the latest ransom drop involved the Dove Valley Trail, another disused line. Meanwhile, all of the letters had been posted from towns or cities that were linked by the rail network and often put in post boxes within a few hundred yards of the station.
If you dropped a pebble on a map, how many times would it land close to a disused railway line or bridge? I asked myself. Occasionally, yes, but not three times out of three. Railways were obviously an important part of this man’s life and his planning. He didn’t necessarily work on the trains but he had more than a casual interest in them.
Six days after the failed ransom drop, a seventh letter arrived in Leeds, having been posted on 19 August in Grantham. Littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, it revealed a great deal about how cunning and manipulative the author could be.
No prostitute had been kidnapped from Ipswich. Instead, he claimed it was all a ruse to let him watch how the police would react and counter him. He was merely gathering information for a later, greater ransom demand.
He wrote:
Game is now ababdoned, Crimewatch U.K. will tell me most of what I wanted to know, but what I was realy looking for was the package, I never envisaged any money in the package, but had made arrangements for the bug/transmitter would have been in, to be made inoperative, I wanted a sample of the type police would use…
You will have to file your papers until I try again, which is what this was all about, as you know I never picked anyone up in Ipswitch or planted and devise, I didn’t need to following Julies unfortunate death, you would cooperate in anthink I said.
For your records Julie was picked up on Tuesday the 9 July 11.30 p.m. just off Roundhey Road and was wearing jeans not a skirt, I believe I mentioned last time the date and reason she died. The reason the body detiated so quick, was that it was kept in a wheely bin in a greenhouse for two very hot days, I thought this was the best way to keep the body… The wheely bin was used to transport the body to where you found her, although you will know that by the tracks.
Much of the letter was an explanation of how messages had been left and how clever the plan had been, but everything he wrote had to be questioned. Part of his smokescreen was to drop in truthful details among the lies, trying to disguise his true plans. The letter also confirmed that Julie Dart had died as a demonstration rather than by accident, although he still attempted to dress up his motivation as being less brutal.
On 21 August the blackmail threats finally became public and the Yorkshire Evening Post ran the front page headline: PAY UP OR I KILL AGAIN.