Authors: Paul Britton
Imagine a fishing net formed by a matrix of hundreds of lines with thousands of knots connecting them. Any single knot may be interesting but when you try to pick it up, all the others come with it. They are all interconnected and you can’t truly understand any single knot unless you understand the principles of those around it. That’s what makes psychology so fascinating. It’s like having a three dimensional map that you journey upon and through.
After three years of lectures, assignments and late night essays, I graduated with a First and accepted an advanced postgraduate studentship at Leicester University. My work was connected with phobic anxiety - in particular measuring arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, and I established elaborate mazes for human subjects and spiders to explore the problem.
The move to Leicester, thirty-five miles from Leamington, hadn’t been taken lightly. For Marilyn and the children it was like going to the other side of the world and they were desperately homesick. Ian, then aged seven, now walked and ran properly, although it would be years before his joint problem would be completely cured. We told him that he’d make new friends and on the day we moved into our new house he went outside and stood on the edge of the street, saying that he wouldn’t come inside until he’d found a friend.
The sight of him plucked at the heart strings. Eventually, the lady who lived opposite said to her young son, ‘Oh, go and talk to that little boy. He’s been standing there for ages.’
Ian’s wish had been granted.
Soon after starting my postgraduate work, I became an unpaid trainee clinical psychologist with the Leicestershire Health Authority, the largest in the country. My long term goal had been to work in the clinical field and I accepted a full-time salaried post when it became available nine months later.
After qualifying, my day-to-day work involved assessing and treating people who were damaged by unfortunate events in their lives. This included people who suffered recurring nightmares or acute anxiety, others had sexual problems or personality disorders; some couldn’t sleep, or stop washing, or bring themselves to walk out of their front door to post a letter. There were also psychosomatic complaints from patients who thought they were paralysed or had exotic illnesses and disorders that doctors had failed to diagnose.
None of these conditions are trivial or minor, because they affect the quality of people’s lives and can destroy relationships and families. I remember an eight-year-old boy coming to my office one day and giving me a pen that he’d obviously bought with his pocket money.
‘This is for helping my mum,’ he said nervously and dashed back to her side. For the previous six years his mum had not been able to leave her house to go to the shops or take him to the park. It had taken months of work but now she was free of her agoraphobia.
In another case a young woman in her mid-twenties was referred to me by her doctor. Martha suffered from anxiety-related problems that were putting great pressure on her marriage. She and her husband desperately wanted a baby but she hadn’t been able to fall pregnant and had never actually menstruated. Coupled with this, she had quite serious hearing difficulties and these embarrassed her.
Although I tried to make Martha feel less nervous, every ounce of her being seemed to advertise her poor self-esteem and lack of confidence. Similarly, the very normal history she related was inconsistent with everything else I could hear in her voice and see in her mannerisms. Her words were telling me one story but her body couldn’t maintain the deception.
I began telling her a story about how sometimes people came to me for the first time, anxious and upset, and they had notions of what might happen that were based on what they’d seen on television and at the cinema.
‘They spend days beforehand preparing themselves, trying to plan exactly what they’ll say, but when they step into the room they can’t remember any of this and they feel stupid,’ I said. ‘And then, when we begin to talk about parts of their lives that are very uncomfortable, they get nervous and embarrassed. After all, I’m a perfect stranger. I know it’s hard but it’s like skydiving; you get to the door of the aeroplane and have to make that last step.’
I went on to explain that very often in these circumstances it turns out that their problem has taken place a long while ago when they were much younger. Perhaps an adult made them do something which upset them a great deal and they don’t know how to talk about it. Sometimes they feel, quite wrongly, that they are somehow to blame.
As I continued talking, Martha began crying and eventually collapsed in tears. She described a childhood hampered by hearing problems which eventually led her to be enrolled in a school for the deaf. While at the school she was systematically sexually abused by a member of staff. The attacks started before puberty and went on for a number of years.
Unable to make herself understood and painfully shy, Martha internalized the brutality and felt it must somehow have been her own fault. I took her through the painful memories, explaining where the blame really lay. As I spoke, I could see the guilt falling away in front of me and a different person emerging.
Before Martha left the outpatients clinic she agreed to come and see me again. That evening she menstruated for the first time and became pregnant within weeks with the first of three children.
This is why I chose to become a clinical psychologist -to help people like Martha. Everything I had worked towards and dreamed about had become a reality and there was no sense of anticlimax or what happens next? I had a career that would challenge and motivate me, one that could provide for my family’s future and also repair people’s lives.
Early in 1984 when a telephone call came from Detective Superintendent David Baker, my first reaction was that one of my patients was in trouble. The head of Leicestershire CID politely introduced himself and said that my name had been mentioned to him by a colleague.
I racked my brain.
‘You helped us out once before,’ he prompted, mentioning the officer.
‘Ah, yes,’ I said, remembering the case which involved a young woman who had become dangerously infatuated with a policeman.
‘To be honest it’s rather out of my line, psychology,’ said Baker. ‘You see I’m … ah … I’m a detective …’ he let the statement trail off.
This must be leading somewhere, I thought.
‘Am I right in thinking that your work gives you an insight into what motivates people and how they become who they are?’
‘Yes, in very broad terms,’ I said, cautiously.
‘Well, I’m involved in a rather difficult murder investigation and I wonder if you’d mind coming to see me? I’d appreciate your help.’
I was intrigued. What could I possibly bring to an investigation? My knowledge of police work came from being a police cadet at the age of sixteen and reading Sherlock Holmes stories as a child. Then I remembered Lynda Mann and stopped myself.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘will tomorrow do?’
‘Have a good breakfast before you come,’ he said, rather cryptically. ‘You won’t want any lunch.’
At the County Police Headquarters, on the London Road in Leicester, Baker’s office was littered with the evidence of his twenty-seven years on the force. The walls carried pennants and photographs and adorning his desk was a set of the delicate scales used by drug dealers to measure their wares. In his late forties, Baker wasn’t a tall man although quite heavy-set, with thinning hair and an almost cherubic face. He had a slight military bearing and favoured immaculately pressed dark blue suits with a stripe. He sat with his jacket on.
‘There aren’t any established rules for what I’m about to ask you,’ he began, like somebody who knew that he might sound foolish. ‘If I were to show you the scene of a crime, pretty much unchanged since it happened, is it possible for you to tell me things about the person who was responsible for the murder?’
I took a deep breath and again my mind went back to Lynda Mann.
‘Depending on what you can show me, yes.’
He relaxed just fractionally. ‘Have you heard about the death of Caroline Osborne?’
I was surprised. ‘No, I’m sorry …’
‘Her body was found last August in waist-high grass in Aylestone Meadows, beside the Grand Union Canal in Leicester. Certain aspects of the attack are very puzzling.’
I nodded.
As he continued, Baker wavered slightly, unsure of how to proceed. The previous year, 1983, had been a bad one for Leicestershire CID, with three unsolved murders. In July the body of Caroline Hogg, aged five, was found on a grass verge close to Twycross Zoo, ten days after going missing from Edinburgh’s Portobello area. That same month, Caroline Osborne, a pet beautician, was murdered while walking her dogs in Leicester, and then came Lynda Mann’s killing.
Caroline Osborne, aged thirty-three, had lived and worked in the corner terrace house in Danvers Road, Leicester, for seven years. She ran her business, Clippapet, in the front rooms of the house and lived in the rear and upstairs. On the day she died, she left the parlour at 6.00 p.m. to walk her dogs through Aylestone Meadows; a large green-belt area of sports fields, allotments, waste ground and walking paths. She took her black Labrador Tammy and a neighbour’s brindle-coloured Labrador-cross of the same name, letting them run off their leads.
Later that night, Caroline’s dog was found wandering alone by John Douglas, a local resident, who recognized Tammy and noticed she’d been in the water. He took her back to his house and then told her to go home. Three hours later, neighbours in Danvers Road heard Tammy howling and called the police.
A late-night search found no trace of Caroline. It resumed on Saturday morning and at 10.30 a.m. a police dog handler spotted Caroline’s fully clothed body lying in waist-high grass.
‘There are some rather disturbing aspects,’ said Baker, pulling out several loose-leaf spiral-bound folders marked, ‘Property of the Chief Constable’. ‘Her hands and feet were bound with twine. She was stabbed in the neck five times and the chest twice, puncturing her heart. There were no signs of robbery or of a sexual assault and we haven’t found the murder weapon …’
He paused. ‘We did, however, find this…’
A piece of paper had been discovered lying near the body that contained a drawing of a pentagram in a circle - an image often associated with satanic or black magic rituals.
‘We think the murderer left it behind,’ said Baker, unable to hide his disquiet.
Opening the first spiral-bound folder, he asked, ‘Have you ever seen crime scene photographs, Paul?’
I shook my head.
‘I’m sorry, it’s not a pleasant thing.’
The first pages consisted of area-establishing shots of the canal and towpath. The images then gradually focused down upon the body which was pictured from every conceivable angle. It was appalling, and I had a most powerful urge to put the photographs down, close the album and walk away. I’d never seen anything like it.
Until then, I didn’t know what stab wounds did to a body, or how in violent death limbs can often project at unnatural angles, or that with so much blood it was difficult to make out what had happened.
Caroline had also been photographed through each stage of the postmortem and, as I opened a new folder, I quickly saw the difference between a person lying at a scene of crime and then washed, weighed and cleaned for the pathologist. It was like looking at a statue that is more or less perfect except for these terrible ripping holes - like a work of art despoiled by a vandal.
Forcing myself to look, I began to concentrate on what had happened to Caroline. I needed to understand the distribution of the wounds and how they were clustered. Almost unconsciously, I began asking myself questions. What sort of knife did he use? Was he right-handed (95 per cent of people are)? If so, was it possible to tell if he was standing in front of or behind Caroline when he began stabbing her? When did he tie her up? How long had she been conscious? How quickly did she die?
The answers were important because they influenced the much larger question of motivation. What did the killer seek to achieve when he murdered Caroline? A robbery that went wrong has far different implications to a sexually motivated killing.
Eventually, I closed the albums and leaned back from the desk, trying to rid myself of the images.
‘What was Caroline like?’ I asked Baker.
He slid a snapshot across the table that showed her smiling at the camera, vibrant and alive. He began to give me a fairly standard description of height, weight, hair colour, complexion … but I stopped him. ‘No, what was she like as a person?’
‘Oh, I see … well… she was fit, hard-working, bright … A careerwoman, I suppose. She certainly devoted a lot of time to her business. She and her husband separated about eighteen months ago and were getting a divorce. He lives down south. He checks out. As far as we can establish she had no secret life or boyfriends; nor any outside interests.’
‘And no-one saw her that evening?’
Baker shook his head. ‘We estimate there were probably about two hundred people in the Aylestone Meadows area at the time. About one hundred and twenty of them have come forward and no-one can remember seeing Caroline on the towpath. We’ve also checked with the holiday companies who rented barges and house boats on the canal… nothing.’
Baker couldn’t hide his frustration. The inquiry had been one of the largest ever conducted in Leicestershire. Over 15,000 people had been interviewed, some as many as seventeen times, and eighty men had been arrested on suspicion for further questioning before being released.
‘Can I get back to you?’ I asked, as the meeting ended. ‘I want to think about this.’
‘Of course,’ he said, shaking my hand.
‘Is it possible to take some of the material with me?’
‘Give me a note of what you need.’
At home Marilyn sensed something was wrong from the moment I walked in the door. I wouldn’t talk about the case and at dinner-time my legendary appetite deserted me. For the next three days I sank into the pain of Caroline Osborne’s death, sifting through the details. With Lynda Mann I had only contemplated what questions to ask, now it was real. What could I tell the police about Caroline’s killer? It clearly wasn’t an act of the moment - the bindings and the knife were brought along for the purpose, as was the drawing of the pentagram. This suggested a degree of planning and deliberation.