She had been bludgeoned and was covered in blood. When Mr Thompson reached her, she was barely conscious.
“I tried to talk to her to keep her coherent,” he said. “I asked her a number of questions. One of them was the name of our son. She coherently replied, ‘Matthew’. I asked her other questions like, ‘Who did this to you?’ I just got a mumbling. I couldn’t work out what she was saying.”
She then managed to get out the words, “It’s all got too much,” before lapsing into a coma.
Vikki Thompson had received three heavy blows to the back of the head and two to the face, fracturing her skull and causing brain damage. Rushed to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, she was not able to say what had happened to her or who was responsible. She died there six days later when her brain ceased to function and the life-support machines were switched off.
Twenty-year-old odd-job man Mark Weston was arrested and charged with her murder. But at the trial it took the jury just fifty minutes to find him not guilty. Later the foreman of the jury wrote to him urging him to sue the police for wrongful arrest.
“I hope you are all getting on well now and hope you go ahead and get big compensation from the police as they had no evidence of any sort whatsoever,” he said.
Weston’s alibi was that he had gone fishing that morning and had worked in his parents’ garden later that day.
The case was featured on BBC’s
Crimewatch
and a £20,000 reward was posted for information. Then, in August 2005, on the tenth anniversary of Vikki’s death, her mother, Margaret Simpson, issued a fresh appeal for information, saying that she would never rest until her daughter’s killer was caught. “It’s never too late,” she said.
In March 2007, Thames Valley Police set up a team of eight detectives to review cold cases going back fifty years. A number of items found at the scene of Mrs Thompson’s murder were sent for analysis in the light of advances in technology.
Since his acquittal, Weston, an alcoholic loner who lived with his parents in Ascott-under-Wychwood, had been convicted twice of harassing women, including the daughter of a police officer. In 1997, he admitted harassing village bobby PC Bob Salmon, who was involved in the murder enquiry, by making more than fifty silent phone calls to his home and harassing his wife and children. Weston was given a two-year conditional discharge. A year later, he admitted harassing neighbour Lucy Bull by putting notes through her door, shining a light into her house and making silent telephone calls. He also put posters up around the village saying “Lucy is a grass” and “Lucy is a police informer – don’t trust her.”
In 2003, his girlfriend, twenty-four-year-old Helen Rusher, claimed that he tried to strangle her shortly after she had given birth to their child. But when she reported him, police failed to act, even though she told them that Weston had also confessed to killing Mrs Thompson. She said that Weston often became tearful after he had been drinking and would claim to have been responsible for the murder. He also once boasted of duping police into believing he wore a different shoe size. However, in October 2009, following a re-examination of the crime scene evidence, Weston was rearrested and faced trial again in 2010. Meanwhile, the crime scene investigation moved to his parents’ home where police removed patio slabs and began digging in the back garden.
At his first trial, a plastic bag containing two bras stained with Weston’s semen had not been admitted as evidence. The bag seemed to have been deposited in the area some time after the murder. This time it was deemed as admissible evidence. But the crucial piece of evidence that had been overlooked were two tiny specks of blood found on Weston’s boots that had been retained after the first trial. In 2008, two scientists using microscopes and a type of halogen lamp not available in 1995 found tiny amounts of blood in the seams of both boots.
Alison Levitt, the principal legal adviser to the Director of Public Prosecutions, said: “It’s not that techniques are different, but methods of examination have moved on. Looking for bloodstains of this kind is really, really difficult. It’s a black boot with irregular surfaces and looking for bloodstains involves a combination of the naked eye, a microscope where you can, and dabbing areas with a reactive agent. I think it’s accepted by everybody it’s almost as much an art as it is a science.”
The investigation into Mrs Thompson’s murder was reopened in 2005 after a change in the Criminal Justice Act reformed the law on so-called “double jeopardy” cases by permitting retrials in very serious incidents where new and compelling evidence had emerged. Before this, no one convicted or acquitted of an offence could be retried for the same crime. But under the new legislation, prosecutors had to gain the Director of Public Prosecution’s personal consent before applying to the Court of Appeal for an acquittal to be quashed and for a retrial to take place.
“The threshold is an extremely high one for the prosecution to reach,” said Mrs Levitt, “because although the legislation permits it, it’s accepted by everyone it’s an exceptional step to take.”
Describing how the new blood evidence was revealed, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Beirne, the head of Thames Valley Police’s Major Crime Review Team, said: “We got it in three phone calls. The first one said ‘we’ve found blood’. A week or two later, ‘it’s female blood’, and then a week or two after that, ‘it’s Vikki Thompson’s blood’ and it was euphoria.”
LGC Forensics, the UK’s largest independent provider of forensic services, which had been working closely with Thames Valley Police on the reinvestigation into the death of Vikki Thompson, claimed that there was only a one-in-a-billion chance that someone other than Vikki would have the same DNA profile as the bloodstain on the boot. Weston had previously denied knowing Mrs Thompson or being on the scene that day. But he could not explain how the blood had got on his boots. Forensic scientists told the court that the blood was wet when it came into contact with Weston’s boots, so accidental contamination could be excluded.
The prosecutor, John Price, told Reading Crown Court: “Important articles seized in the original investigation were resubmitted for further scientific examination. They included a pair of black boots belonging to Mark Weston, which had been seized from his home on the occasion of his first arrest. Found upon each of the boots, but which had been missed when they were first examined in 1995 and 1996, were very small bloodstains, the DNA profile of which was found to match that of Vikki Thompson to a degree which proves beyond question, the prosecution submit, that it is her blood . . .
“If Mark Weston is not the person who killed Vikki Thompson, how did her blood, as it is submitted it plainly is, get on to not just one but both of his boots, especially when it has to have been wet when it did so?”
Other cellular material on the boot stood a one-in-fifty-fivemillion chance of being from someone unrelated to Mrs Thompson. Price added: “In respect of certain criminal offences, including murder, the law now permits that a person previously acquitted may be retried if since that acquittal, there has emerged fresh evidence of his guilt.”
According to the crime scene evidence, it seems that Mrs Thompson had caught Weston masturbating while watching her walking her dog. He chased after her as she ran screaming up the lane and struck her with a rock.
“You attacked her in the lane, dragged her across a field and finished her off in a railway embankment,” said the judge. Evidence gathered at the post-mortem examination and at the scene of the crime suggested that, after the initial attack, Weston lifted her over a fence and dragged her across a field by her arms before dumping her. Police thought that it was Weston’s intention to make it look like Vikki had been hit by a passing train.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Beirne said: “This is the first time using double jeopardy legislation that new forensic evidence has been used to secure a conviction, so it is very significant.”
It took the jury of seven men and five women just under four hours to return a guilty verdict this time. The judge, Mr Justice Bean, said the attack on Vikki was not premeditated but that by the time it ended Weston had “clearly intended” to kill her. He sentenced Weston to life, recommending that he serve at least thirteen years.
“It has taken fifteen years for justice to catch up with you, but it has done so at last today,” he said.
Detective Superintendent Barry Halliday, head of Thames Valley Major Crime Review Team, said: “Weston was originally tried in 1996 and the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Thanks to an intensive investigation by my team, working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service, LGC Forensics and the Forensic Science Service, new forensic evidence was uncovered which proved Weston’s guilt and he has now been convicted of Vikki’s murder. Weston pleaded not guilty and has still shown no remorse for his crime.”
O
N THE NIGHT
of 4 December 1979, twenty-two-year-old gas-board clerk and part-time barmaid Teresa de Simone was working at the Tom Tackle pub in Commercial Road, Southampton. After finishing work at around 11 p.m., she went to a nearby disco with her friend Jenni Savage, where they drank only soft drinks. At around 1 a.m., Savage drove de Simone back to the pub to pick up her car, which was parked in the backyard. They sat chatting for a while, then de Simone waved goodbye and walked to her car. She was never seen alive again.
Shortly afterwards, a number of witnesses heard screaming and the banging of car doors. At about the same time, another witness saw a man near the scene of the murder who appeared to be vomiting near to some railings.
The following morning, de Simone’s mother, Mary Sedotti, found that her daughter had not come home and sent her husband Michael, de Simone’s stepfather, to investigate. He drove around to the pub and saw Teresa’s car, but did not take a closer look. At around 10 a.m. the landlord was expecting a delivery and needed to move the car. He discovered de Simone’s partially clothed body on the back seat of the vehicle and immediately called the police.
The pathologist arrived at 11.45 a.m. His crime scene report described “the deceased lying on her back, with her leg bent at the thigh and knee, with the knee resting against the back of the seat, and the left thigh running along the edge of the seat with the leg hanging over the edge. The body was naked from the waist down and her left breast was exposed. Part of a pair of tights was pulled down to the left ankle. The remainder of her underwear and the other part of her tights was found in the passenger well.”
Six swabs were collected at the scene: a low and high vaginal swab, two anal swabs, a mouth swab and a control swab. Further swabs were taken from de Simone’s clothing and the car.
The time of death was placed at between 1 and 2 a.m. that morning. In a statement issued at the time, Detective Superintendent John Porter said: “It is 99 per cent certain that the girl was murdered, attacked, chatted to or met by her killer in a matter of seconds after Jenni Savage left her. He could have been waiting, and seen Jenni leave. It is possible that he was actually sitting in Teresa’s car, as we found the nearside door unlocked.”
The pathologist found that the cause of death was strangulation. The air passages of the deceased were congested and contained abundant white frothy mucous. His evidence was that foam coming from the mouth of a victim of strangulation was not a feature of every strangulation, or even of most strangulations. It was a feature only of the long, slow strangulation from which this deceased had died.
On Teresa’s neck were “a series of multiple, roughly horizontal, linear, bruised abrasions on the front of the neck [that] matched the description of a chain which the deceased had been said to be wearing that evening”, which was probably used as a ligature. The gold chain carried a crucifix. As a result, the tabloid press began calling the murderer the “Crucifix Killer”. The chain was not present when the body was discovered and has never been found.
There was no fingermark bruising on the deceased of the sort that is sometimes associated with manual strangulations. However, the abrasions were consistent with the clothing having been gripped and twisted against the neck.
Semen was found in the vaginal canal, “in sufficient concentration to indicate that it had been present no more than three to four hours before death”. As Teresa’s movements for the entire evening up to her death were known, no one suggested that the semen could have come from anyone else except her assailant. Evidence of bruising to the left outer lip of her vagina and a half-inch split in the posterior wall demonstrated that the intercourse was non-consensual. The anus was swollen and the lower margins intensely congested. The buttocks were stained with blood and dirt.
Blood in the semen was of blood group A. Teresa had blood group B. Tests performed on the high and low vaginal swabs also gave reactions for blood groups AB. So the assailant had either blood group A or AB. In addition, a bloodstain recovered from a J-cloth cleaning wipe, found on the front seat of the car, was of blood group A.
A black comb was found in the rear offside well. The victim’s leather handbag and personal belongings, including a diary, were found scattered around the crime scene, but her car keys, Rotary wristwatch, two necklaces, three rings and a bracelet were missing and have never been recovered. However, the police did not think that robbery was the motive for the murder. Teresa was the victim of a “vicious rape by a brutal and merciless killer”, they said.
Two days later the police interviewed drink and drug addict Robert Graham “Sean” Hodgson, who had been arrested for stealing a car but claimed he had some information about the killing. He had arrived in Southampton on the night of the murder, but gave a statement implicating another individual. But the suspect had blood type O and was eliminated from the enquiry. Hodgson had numerous previous convictions for offences of dishonesty and deception, as well as many related to offences involving motor vehicles. He had one conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse and another for being in possession of an offensive weapon. He had no convictions for offences of violence, but it was known that he had a disturbed personality and a history of significant self-harm. In 1978, he attended a clinic after several incidents of overdosing. There he was diagnosed as having “a severe personality disorder” and being a “compulsive liar”.