The Blooding (35 page)

Carole Pitchfork, sitting next to a policewoman, leaned forward in court to get a look at Barbara Ashworth who was accompanied by Robin and Supt. Tony Painter.

Barbara had a feeling that the plump young woman must be Colin Pitchfork's wife. She asked Tony Painter and he verified it.

Barbara's emotions were rampant. She couldn't believe that Colin Pitchfork hadn't been marked during Dawn's murder. Dawn had been so proud of her nails. Carole must have known, must have at least suspected, must have shut her eyes. Or maybe not. Barbara just didn't know. Not knowing could be the cruelest, sometimes. Except for the outrage. To survive one's murdered child. The infinite outrage.

To Barbara Ashworth, Dawn's wristwatch was sacred. She'd never gotten Dawn's clothes back because they were used in forensic tests, but she did get the watch. Barbara had worn it to Australia, always keeping it set to English time, and had worn another with Australian time.

Barbara said of the watch, "It had never stopped and it kept perfect time, and maybe it sounds macabre, perhaps it's sick, but that watch lay there with her for those two days. . . ."

So when the mother of Dawn Ashworth sat in that courtroom and looked at him, she touched the watch frequently.

It was staring at him and having him look straight back at her, without contrition, that made her suddenly cry. Like all the others, she was searching for something in him but did not find it. He looked nothing like the spiky-haired punker she saw in her nightmares. His receding hair and beard were the color of farmhouse eggs. His face was chubby and expressionless.

Standing there in the dock he could occasionally look sardonic, yes. But he was really so ordinary. So banal

Colin Pitchfork's sentencing had been slotted in on a busy day. He went in at 11:50 A
. M
. and they adjourned for lunch at 1:00 P
. M
. The
y r
econvened at 2:15 and continued until 3:00. And then it was over. Yes, it was decidedly anticlimactic.

And it was a pity that the psychiatrist didn't choose to describe him as a "sociopath" instead of a "psychopath" in his report, because of the misunderstanding that accompanies the latter. Everyone connected with the case seemed to confuse the word with "psychotic." Even the journalists made the mistake, writing copy like "Only when brave Liz grabbed hold of the car's steering wheel in an attempt to force it off the road did Pitchfork snap out of his psychopathic trance and agree to take her home."

Both the television and print media showed pictures of Colin Pitchfork at his wedding, sporting a silk topper, his brows arched with a saw-toothed grin, all hinting of a latter-day Mr. Hyde. There were many references to his "sickly grin" or "dead eyes," and endless allusions to "evil." Almost everyone, it seemed, preferred original sin to clinical definition.

And everybody was distressed by his indifference, though it was to tally consistent with the tendency of sociopaths not to respond to threatening events as normal people do. The physical indicators of stress and apprehension just weren't there, which explains why sociopaths are unfit subjects for polygraphs.

So while the defense lawyer spoke of a haunting, and the judge talked of treatment, the fact remained that Colin Pitchfork may have understood instinctively that he could no more alter his makeup than he could alter his genetic fingerprint. In his interview with Derek Pearce and Gwynne Chambers he told them he hoped to study accounting while in prison. He wasn't dismayed by a prison term. He said, "I'll simply be changing a larger world for a smaller one."

The judge and the defendant's barrister implied that a third act could be written. But for the sociopath there is no third act.

Chapter
30.

Hindsight

Lykken (1957) demonstrated that psychopaths do not develop the fear necessary to avoid a noxious stimulus. . . . They simply do not learn well from punishment, an observation that indicates imprisonment will not change their behaviors and personal traits.

--Rimm and SOMERVILL

. . . Little is really known about possible organic factors that might be involved in the psychopath's impulsive behavior. Until the etiological picture is clarified, systematic therapeutic procedures will be difficult to develop.

--SuiNN

When it was over, the British media offered lots of the tabloid quotes for which there are no equivalents in the rest of the world. Such as: "Behind his sickly smile was the evil mind of a killer," or "His deviant mind was to plummet to new depths."

Carole Pitchfork was bitter about the press coverage. One story claimed that the life of the hitchhiking girl was spared because Colin Pitchfork had suddenly realized supper was ready and he had to rush home to a wife who was a strict disciplinarian. This, even though the crim
e h
ad occurred at one o'clock in the morning when Carole was on a camp-out with the kids.

Eddie Eastwood was interviewed by the television news and claimed that after seeing Pitchfork and Kelly, he realized he'd played darts on Christmas eve in a Whetstone pub with the two of them. But police found this very unlikely. Both Colin Pitchfork and Ian Kelly said they'd never been together outside of work, except during the blooding scheme.

As to his feelings about Colin Pitchfork, Eddie said, "I'd like him to be in front of me, so I could bleed him dry very slowly. Hanging is the only way to deal with this monster."

Kath said, "He must never be allowed to walk the streets again. He should hang. With this new DNA genetic fingerprint there is no chance of a person being later proved innocent after he's been hanged. There is no excuse anymore."

The television reporters wanted an interview with the Ashworths but the Ashworths declined. However, an old interview, given long before Colin Pitchfork had been captured, was intercut with footage dealing with his sentencing.

The old segment showed the Ashworths when they were still working with the police, attempting to pique the conscience of the killer's family. In that old interview the reporter asked, "Is it conceivable that you might forgive the man, in your own heart?"

There was a very long pause on that videotape before Barbara Ashworth could swallow and say, "I have to. Because otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life being very bitter and twisted. And I don't think you can go on like that."

During that old interview Robin said, "I don't feel any hate or wish for any revenge for the murder of Dawn, because it's not going to do any good, whatever I feel. It's not going to do any good."

In February, 1988, when the new show was aired, the announcer told his viewing audience, "The parents of Dawn Ashworth have no bitterness toward the man who robbed them of part of their lives, only forgiveness."

So the Ashworths saw themselves on TV offering absolution to Colin Pitchfork. They'd suffered every other indignity, now humiliation.

As to how they truly felt, Robin said, "If the genetic test can prove guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt, I don't see why they don't reintroduce the death penalty."

One month after Colin Pitchfork was sentenced, the Leicester Mercury polled its readers on a proposed return to capital punishment, and on
e r
eader in ten responded. The respondents felt a need for the Lord of Death with icy breath. Ninety-six percent wanted to bring back the hangman.

There was a fair amount of hindsight and second-guessing to be found in news reports, and Chief Supt. David Baker faced a grilling about alleged "blunders." Journalists wanted to know why, given Colin Pitchfork's flashing background, he'd never been brought in for serious interrogation, and how an altered passport could slip past the police. Baker explained that Colin Pitchfork hadn't even lived in the village when he'd killed Lynda Mann, and there'd been thousands of people giving blood and presenting all sorts of identification to harried detectives. He ended by saying he could offer no guarantees when dealing with deceptive criminals.

There had been a critical editorial asking why Colin Pitchfork had never been photographed and fingerprinted during his earlier brushes with the law when he'd been charged with flashing offenses. Baker said that in years past the police had not routinely photographed and fingerprinted minor offenders. The law had always treated flashing as a nuisance crime.

At the end of the day, it had to be said that nothing would have changed even if there had been photos and fingerprints taken in Colin Pitchfork's early flashing career. Latent prints had not been found at the scene of the Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth murders. And it was unlikely that a prior photograph would've been pulled from his file to await his arrival at the blooding.

Moreover, the girls he'd assaulted in 1979 and 1985 and 1987 probably would never have picked out his mug shot among those of hundreds of Leicestershire sex offenders, since in one episode he had grown a full beard and the other two happened in the dead of night. In any case, an arrest for an earlier assault would not necessarily have diverted Colin Pitchfork from violence. He had always been more opportunistic than compulsive, this sexual sociopath.

Chief Supt. David Baker said that he was satisfied with the way his men had conducted both murder inquiries with untiring self-sacrifice. Despite the clamor for a return to hanging, David Baker still wasn't sure about capital punishment. He worried as to whether some killers truly had the capacity for criminal intent as defined by law.

As for the other senior officers, Chief Supt. Ian Coutts, the Scotsman who'd commanded the Lynda Mann inquiry, said one evening at police officers' mess, "I'm not exceptionally religious, but I believe God had a hand in this DNA business." Supt. Tony Painter, commander of the Dawn
Ashworth inquiry, completed thirty years of service in February, 1988, and retired.

The bakery outlet manager came to the police station amid fanfare. The police brass had decided she would be awarded half of the PS20,000 reward for having reported Ian Kelly's pub chat to the police. The other half was not awarded.

There had never been an investigation like it, and the future of genetic manhunts was now being studied by lawmen from all over the world. The revolutionary murder hunt for the footpath killer had resulted in the blooding of 4,583 young men, the last being Corm Pitchfork of Littlethorpe, whose DNA pattern did indeed provide a perfect match to the genetic signature left by the slayer of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth.

-koom....

The older son of Colin Pitchfork missed his father. Carole explained his absence by saying, "Daddy had to go away. He can't come back but he loves you a lot."

When the child asked why his daddy had to go away, she said, "For doing something bad."

"Like breaking a window, or something?" his son asked.

"No," she explained, "something really bad. Like hurting somebody, or something."

When the child painted pictures he'd often say, "This one's for Daddy."

Carole often wrote letters for the boy and sent the paintings to her husband, but she never wrote to him on her own. Colin Pitchfork in turn composed picture stories for the children, stories that Carole would not share with any adult. He drew maps and animals indigenous to various countries, and he'd tell a brief story about that country, such as one about Eskimos and a whale as big as a double-decker bus. At the end there'd be questions: How big is a whale? What does a whale eat? Carole would read the stories aloud.

Carole's failure to visit or write to her husband caused trouble with her mother-in-law who said, "You ought to go see him."

"If he was my son, I would," she told his mother. "I respect you and you must respect me." But finally Carole lost her temper, after which they had a very strained relationship.

Carole had become a part-time youth worker for the county council. It was financially and emotionally draining, raising her young children all alone. And sometimes there was too much time to think.

"It's like somebody being dead," Carole said. "Or perhaps like being at a seance, because letters come in the letter box, as if from another world. It'd be better if he was dead, then you could grieve and get over it and it'd be finished.

"His parents want to see him free before they die. But I feel dread at the thought that someday, years from now, he'll knock. Yet other times I forget he's gone. Whenever I'm at home and hear a motorbike, I expect him to come in the door."

After all the smoke had cleared, the last sixteen members of the murder inquiry had a party at a local pub. Derek Pearce presented the others with personal gifts that related to intimate moments during the long inquiry. One of them had gotten a bit tipsy during a mid-inquiry do and had tried to scoop a fish from the aquarium of a seafood restaurant. Pearce presented him with a fishbowl and a live goldfish to commemorate the event. Another, who'd suffered an eye injury during one of their more raucous parties, was given the fresh eye of a bullock.

Gwynne Chambers's old passport was redone with a picture of the back of John Damon's head and the signature "Colin Pitchfork." It was presented to the cop who'd been fooled by Ian Kelly.

They knew there would never be another case so important in their careers. Many of them reported a letdown, of feeling bored and unsettled after returning to ordinary police work. The intensity was missed. Some of them became quieter and more serious.