Authors: Paul Britton
Emma blurted out, ‘She does, she does talk to me.’ She clutched the toy a little and explained that when she had her healing crystal with her, she dreamed of Naomi walking, talking and naming her killer. But without the crystal, she had terrible nightmares.
‘Do you think Naomi would want you to help us catch the person?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. I could see her relax a little.
Together we drew up a list on a piece of paper of the sort of secrets that teenagers might keep from their parents.
Sexual relationships
Stealing
Truanting
Drinking and smoking
Going out late at night
Staying out too long
Being with people she shouldn’t be with
Drugs
As we began to go through the list, Emma admitted that Naomi wasn’t a virgin and had slept with a number of her boyfriends. She preferred quite active partners but was only interested in boys in their twenties rather than anyone her own age. Apart from the condoms her dad had given her, Naomi had eighteen that she’d been given by someone else.
Naomi easily transferred her affections from boy to boy, but couldn’t say goodbye to them so just went out with someone else. She liked to have sex indoors because it was more comfortable and wasn’t so keen on sex outside because she thought it was ‘indecent’.
As Emma realized that I wasn’t going to criticize her, it became easier for her and almost a cathartic experience as everything came bubbling to the surface. She described how sometimes she and Naomi would go out at two or three o’clock in the morning dressed in miniskirts and ‘tarty clothing’. Sometimes men approached them in cars, but the girls never accepted their offers.
‘Naomi would brag about being looked at and having people say, “Hello, Sexy”. Folks at school thought she was ugly but when she got dressed up guys thought she was sexy.’
Normally they just walked in the fields with Naomi’s dogs, Sandy and Tammy, but the dogs had recently killed a cat so Naomi had given them away. Emma thought that if the dogs had been with Naomi, she wouldn’t have been killed.
Describing the night, Emma said she initially thought Naomi might be up a particular alleyway with a boy that she fancied. ‘I thought she’d gone to see him again - where I’d seen them before, up the alley.’
Back at the house, she volunteered to search The Rec with Brian Smith because she wanted to warn Naomi just in case she was up there with someone. ‘I ran up to The Rec, waiting to shout in her face, “What are you doing?”’
Clearly, the picture that emerged of Naomi was of a girl far more worldly wise and able to use her female wiles than had come across previously. This didn’t make her unusual, however. In fact it confirmed that she was a completely normal girl within the cultural value system in which she lived.
Naomi had been sexually aware and active, enjoying a broad-ranging series of friendships with young men, normally older than herself. Her dislike of sex out-of-doors made it unlikely that she easily agreed to a quick sexual coupling beneath the slide. At the same time, she tended to get into teasing relationships with men without fully understanding male sexuality and the inherent danger of lighting a fuse and then hanging around for the fireworks to go off.
In the first week of November, seven weeks after the murder, Tony Bayliss telephoned to say that the DNA testing had produced a match.
‘We got him in the first sweep, damn near top of the list,’ he said. ‘Edwin Douglas Hopkins - his friends call him “Eddy” - he lives in Ansley Common, very close to The Rec.’
‘Have you picked him up?’
‘No. We’re pulling together a history and a list of known associates. I want you to see the file.’
Bayliss knew that under the restrictions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), he needed to have the case against Hopkins nailed down tightly before making any arrest. Similarly, he had to establish if anyone had been shielding him since the attack.
The following morning, a lever arch file arrived at my office from the incident room. It contained dozens of statements and intelligence reports that related to Eddy Hopkins, a nineteen-year-old apprentice paint sprayer who lived at home with his mother and father and younger brother.
Hopkins had first come to notice on 18 September, four days after the murder, when he phoned Bedworth Police Station and told a policewoman, ‘My mum suggested I call. I was in the area of Ansley Common that night. I am six foot tall with mousy blond spiky hair, I had a pushbike with me on that night.’
He made a statement on the same day, describing how he arrived home from work at 5.00 p.m. and after a bath and something to eat he went to his sister’s house several doors away. Julie Hopkins, aged twenty-two, lived with her boyfriend, Steve, and her two young children. At about 9.30 p.m. Hopkins said he left the house borrowing Steve’s mountain bike to ride along Ansley Common to the Triple A shop, a journey that took five to ten minutes. He didn’t notice anything as he passed the Bretts Hall Estate.
He bought eight cans of Carling Black Label lager and about fourteen bags of 10p crisps from the Asian owner and then cycled back to his sister’s house with a carrier bag in each hand. He arrived back at 10.00 p.m. and stayed there drinking until about one o’clock on Friday morning. That’s when he heard the police helicopter circling over The Rec and he and his cousin John Simpson decided to walk their dogs down to the Bretts Hall Estate to see what was going on.
Officers making house-to-house inquiries on 3 October interviewed housewife Mrs Mary Oxford who said that her daughter Rachel Hamilton had told her in confidence that on the night of the murder Eddy Hopkins had called at her house in Ansley Common at 10.30 p.m., asking for some shampoo and aftershave because he wanted to take a shower.
Following this up, detectives interviewed Rachel, the girlfriend of John Simpson. She insisted that Hopkins had asked her for shampoo at 6.00 p.m. and not 10.30 p.m. According to her statement, he left her house at 6.00 p.m. with John Simpson and she didn’t see them again until 11.45 p.m. when they both called into her house to take the dogs for a walk. They said that something had happened down at the Bretts Hall Estate and went off.
On 15 October, Hopkins had made another statement and revealed how he used to visit The Rec regularly when he went to Hartshill High School prior to 1992.
‘I used to play football and meet with all my mates. It is considered a general meeting place. I have not visited The Rec for at least the last six months, in the main I go about with my cousin John Simpson …’
Hopkins retold his story of riding the pushbike to the shop in Birmingham Road to buy beer and crisps. He remembered seeing the shopkeeper’s two sons restocking the shelves and getting ready to close up. It must have been 9.45 p.m. when he left the shop and he rode directly back to his sister’s because it was spitting with rain.
He, his cousin and his sister’s boyfriend had then played computer games until about midnight when they heard the loud noise of the helicopter. From the back of the house they could see the search-light sweeping over the Bretts Hall Estate, so Hopkins and Simpson went for a walk. They spoke to a police officer who had sealed off The Rec but couldn’t learn what had happened. A few minutes later they spoke to a local girl who told them that Naomi Smith had been murdered.
‘I knew Naomi to be a girl who lives in Bretts Hall Estate and is a friend of Emma Jones. I knew Emma because I used to go out with her sister Rebecca. I’ve seen Naomi and Emma around the village and occasionally spoken to them. We had just general conversations, usually they would have a dog with them. It may be a couple of months since I last spoke to either Naomi or Emma. I have no personal knowledge of any lads that they went out with or anyone else they may have been associated with.’
Intelligence files had already unearthed a rather disturbing incident involving Hopkins that dated back to March 1993. A local teenage girl had alleged that he had indecently assaulted her in the fields at the rear of The Rec. She claimed that Hopkins had followed her until they were out of sight and then tripped her. He allegedly dragged her leggings and pants down, sat astride her and pulled her clothing away exposing her breasts. Shortly afterwards he ran off.
Hopkins denied the offence and several witness statements gave conflicting versions of what had happened. Shortly afterwards the girl withdrew her complaint and the police had no choice but to caution Hopkins about his future behaviour and to drop the case.
As I read the details, I had no doubt that it had been properly investigated. Even so, if anyone had wanted an early blueprint of what had happened to Naomi Smith, here it was.
Edwin Hopkins had criss-crossed the investigation right from the very beginning and emerged as one of the first names from the computer when the DNA swabbing batches were compiled using the psychological profile. Even so, there was absolutely no suggestion that the police could or should have identified him any earlier. His apparent background and links with Naomi were no more spectacular or noteworthy than 100 other young men in the surrounding streets. If you wanted an Agatha Christie plot, set on a council estate instead of a grand country house, this was it. There were suspects everywhere.
For this reason, it had proved a perfect case in which to use psychological profiling to narrow down the field - not only acquiring a suspect who had otherwise deflected attention, but also saving considerable time and money.
At dawn on 16 November, detectives arrested Hopkins at his parents’ terraced house in West View, Ansley Common. They raided twelve more houses in the area, making three arrests and taking the suspects to separate police stations in Bedworth, Nuneaton, Atherstone and Rugby.
The previous day, I had visited Warwickshire Police Headquarters at Leek Wootton and given my advice on how Hopkins should be interviewed. As with Gordon Wardell and Robert Napper, it was important that Hopkins confirm his earlier statements about not having been to The Rec for six months or having spoken to Naomi since the summer.
Similarly, the police had to give him the opportunity to restate his alibi story for that night. This would nail down any provable lies. Hopkins had already given police a story which he believed separated him from the crime, yet the police were holding DNA evidence that proved beyond doubt that he had to be on The Rec that night and had bitten Naomi during the assault.
As the interviews began, Hopkins said very little. Confronted with the DNA evidence he accepted that it linked him to the scene and to Naomi but maintained that he had not killed her. On 20 November, he appeared in Nuneaton Magistrates Court charged with the murder of Naomi Smith and entered no plea. Meanwhile, two other men aged twenty-three and twenty-one were bailed to appear at Bedworth Police Station in connection with allegations of intending to pervert the course of justice.
Fourteen months later, on 22 January 1997, Edwin Hopkins stood trial at Birmingham Crown Court. As the charges were read to him, the slightly overweight twenty-year-old looked directly at the jury of six men and six women and said, ‘Not guilty.’
A lumbering youth, of average intelligence and popularity, he didn’t strike anyone as looking particularly evil or menacing. In fact, Tony Bayliss later admitted to journalists,
‘He [Hopkins] portrayed himself as a fairly inoffensive young man and there were no outward signs that he would obviously be considered a suspect in this case.’
Prosecutor Colman Treacy, QC, told the jury that Naomi had fallen victim to a ‘warped sexual attack’ and there could be no doubt about the person responsible. He revealed how the mouth swab taken from Hopkins during the DNA screening had suggested him as a strong suspect.
A further blood test, sent off for analysis, had resulted in a positive match with the DNA profile gleaned from saliva found on Naomi’s body. As a result, there was only a one in forty-four million chance that someone other than Hopkins could have murdered her.
Further damaging evidence emerged from dental experts. Hopkins had fallen from a bicycle when he was seven years old and knocked out one of his front teeth. Other teeth had moved into the space and closed the gap so that his upper jaw was lopsided.
When Dr Andrew Walker, a forensic odontologist, compared a plaster impression taken of Hopkins’ teeth he found that all the irregularities matched the bite mark found on Naomi’s breast completely.
‘It was probably better than if the killer had left his autograph,’ Mr Treacy QC told the jury.
When Hopkins entered the witness box, he said he knew Naomi and would sometimes pause on his bicycle to chat with her and her schoolmates. For a while he dated Emma’s sister Rebecca and, according to Emma, Naomi ‘quite liked him’ although they’d never been out together.
On the night in question, Hopkins maintained his story of drinking and playing Trivial Pursuit at his sister Julie’s house in Ansley Common. He left at about 9.30 p.m. to buy lager and crisps from the off-licence - a round trip that had taken him about thirty minutes on a bicycle. Although he was in the same area where Naomi posted the letter, he couldn’t recall seeing anyone on the way.
However, a tearful Julie Hopkins destroyed her younger brother’s alibi when she told the jury that his trip to the Triple A shop had taken longer. ‘I didn’t want to see him get into any trouble,’ she said, explaining why she had initially lied to the police.
Hopkins had been away so long that Julie feared that he’d been involved in an accident. When he returned forty-five minutes later, she noticed that he was wearing fresh clothes. He said that he’d been stopped for having no lights on the bike and she assumed he’d been caught in the rain.
Further evidence revealed that Hopkins had an unusual interest in machetes and Rambo-style knives which he hung from his bedroom walls and often carried around with him. His father had taught him to skin rabbits at an early age and the two would often go off hunting in the countryside around Nuneaton.
After hearing seven days of evidence, Hopkins displayed no emotion as the jury found him guilty.