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CHAPTER 6
Stephen’s Version

I was about to visit a couple of potential witnesses when Stephen’s personal account of events arrived. He also included a hand-drawn diagram of the cemetery layout, which roughly matched the one I’d made myself when I’d visited his parents. Stephen explained:

The cemetery always seemed empty even when there were other people milling about – although I felt particularly isolated when I was alone. The creaking of the huge timbers in the roof structure of the unconsecrated chapel gave the place an eerie feeling, as if you were never quite alone.
It was September and, while the day was warm enough to work without a jacket, the chapel had a chillness that cut to the bone. I wasted no time in getting a fire going with the hope I could push back the blanket of cold – at least enough to be able to enjoy my break.
I then collected the tools I needed. I don’t have any recollection of any unusual visitors to the cemetery during the morning before my break, although I do recall one lady who regularly walked her dog in there. More often than not I would see her in the afternoon, but on that day she came in the morning. I never got to know her name but, as was customary, she stopped by me and we chatted briefly.
She asked me where I had been for the past two days, as she had not seen me, and I told her that I’d been off with a cold. She told me to keep warm and I informed her that I had a fire going in the unconsecrated chapel.
I remember the lady quite clearly, as it was the first time I had seen her wearing a salmon-pink wool topcoat. I think I may have commented on how nice it looked and that it went well with her blonde hair. I recall her saying it was a new one, as she normally wore a beige coat. She went on her way and I returned to work.

This particular section from Stephen struck a chord with me. His very accurate recollection and description of a meeting with this woman may indeed have been mentioned to his defence team – although I could find no trace of it. The evidence from this witness could have been used at trial to establish his state of mind less than an hour before the frenzied attack on Wendy Sewell – and at the very same location.

It seems, however, that no effort was ever made to try to trace her, or indeed that she was even considered for questioning. It could be argued that she too was a similar vulnerable female, so why didn’t he attack her?

Her knowledge that Stephen had been absent due to sickness for the previous two days, and the fact the attack happened on that Wednesday, his first day back at work, could again have helped clarify and substantiate other additional claims from key witnesses. Stephen’s testimony continued:

I heard the clock strike noon and I stopped clipping grass and took out the pocket watch I had borrowed from my father.
I gathered my tools and returned to the unconsecrated chapel where I had my lunch and a cup of coffee. I followed this with a cigarette and reluctantly pulled myself away from the fire’s inviting warmth to tinker with an old Allen mower. I took out my father’s pocket watch again and saw that it was about 12.55 p.m.
I then lit another cigarette and went to smoke it standing by the steps to the right of the unconsecrated chapel. I noticed a woman walking up the path towards the junior school. I had never seen her before, so I continued to watch her until she went behind the hedge surrounding the Garden of Remembrance.
There had been some damage caused to some of the graves, nothing too serious, just childish vandalism, so I was asked to look out for any such behaviour. By the time she passed behind the hedge I had finished my cigarette and, realising she would not be the kind of person to do any damage, I went back inside the chapel where I stoked up the fire.
I then put on my jacket and picked up my lemonade bottle with the hope of getting to the shops before they closed for lunch.
By the time I left the unconsecrated chapel it would be about 1.05. The shop I was heading for normally closed at 1 p.m., but had on occasions been known to stay open for a few minutes longer if they had customers in already being served.
As I walked along the main drive I soon noticed that the woman, who I later learnt was Wendy Sewell, was walking along the bottom footpath that runs alongside Catcliff Wood. She was a little way ahead of me and seemed to be in no rush.
She appeared to be looking from side to side at the inscriptions on the headstones. I estimate that it would have taken around two to three minutes to cover the length of the path, with the woman disappearing behind the consecrated chapel moments before I drew level with the building. As I went past she did not continue on her journey and I naturally assumed that she had turned around to retrace her steps. I didn’t turn around to look.
When I came level with the lodge I saw Wilf Walker and his wife at the door. I don’t think his wife acknowledged me, but Wilf and I nodded to each other. I turned left outside the gates and passed Peter Moran crossing the road on his way back to work.
We both said hello to each other without stopping. As I got nearer to the shop I passed Charlie Carman, also on his way back to work. We both greeted each other and again neither of us stopped. Moments later, I realised the shop had already closed so I went home.

I would later come to learn that Stephen had received a good education in prison and took several exams to improve his English and writing skills, so he was a far cry from the boy with a reading age of 11 when he first went to prison. As I studied his personal account, something struck me as very odd. I thought Charlie Carman, a trial witness, could perhaps have helped Stephen establish his alibi, yet he was only called as a prosecution witness due to his sighting of Wendy Sewell. And he only gave written evidence for the prosecution. It was only ever said in court that Stephen saw Moran, not Carman. I found it strange that Carman had not been called or even cross-examined by Stephen’s defence team.

I continued reading.

Upon arrival I went to unlock the door and my mother called to me to say the door wasn’t locked. I went in via the back door where my mother greeted me. She was in the process of making herself a cup of coffee and explained that she had not long arrived home.
I asked if she would buy me a bottle of lemonade when the shop reopened. My mother said she would. I then counted out the money – minus the allowance on the returned bottle. She asked if I would like the bottle of lemonade bringing down to the churchyard and I said something along the lines that it would be all right either way, as I could always take it with me the next day. I then asked her if she had fed my baby hedgehogs, as that was one of the main reasons I had gone back home. She said she had.
A couple more minutes passed and then I said I had better be getting back. My mother offered to make a cup of coffee, but I refused. I never liked to be away for too long in case anyone checked up on me and I had to explain the reason for my absence, as I had perhaps spent about five minutes or so with my mother before leaving and making my way back to the cemetery by the same route.
As I entered the main gates of the cemetery, I noticed that Wilf and his wife had gone into the lodge and closed the door. After going a little further, I took my jacket off and carried it over my shoulder. It wasn’t until I was passing some of the first graves that something caught my eye, so I looked to my left. It took a few seconds to realise that it was someone lying on the bottom path, so I walked over. It was impossible to see the blood from the main drive or any of the external signs of injury.
I threw my jacket down at the victim’s feet and then I knelt at her side. It was not possible to check for any signs of life while she was lying on her front, so I rolled her over towards me. There was quite a lot of blood on the path and her hair was heavily soaked in it. I don’t recall seeing any facial injuries.
I felt for a pulse at the neck but found none. It came as a shock when she raised herself up, and I too reacted by getting to my feet.
It was at this point that I had something sharp pressed into the small of my back and I began to turn to try to see who was behind me.
I was ordered not to turn around and was told if I was to say anything my sister would get the same. The man said something along the lines of ‘have you found it?’, as if to address another person. No reply came and then the next thing I knew was that the person had left me, and I turned at the sound of rustling foliage as they made their escape down into the woodland area.
I gave him and his companion no more attention but picked up my jacket and ran over to the lodge, whereupon I asked Wilf Walker if he was on the phone.
He said he wasn’t and asked me why I should enquire. I informed him that a woman had been attacked. He asked me to show him where and he followed me to the corner of the lodge. I pointed in the direction of where she lay. He said some of my work colleagues had come into the cemetery and we should check first to see if they had already called the emergency services.
As we got to within a few yards of the chapel we were met by other workers carrying out sheets of asbestos and leaning them against the outside of the building ready for loading on to a Land Rover. They had arrived in Watts’s white van.
Wilf asked them if they had seen anything or called the police or an ambulance. They said they hadn’t and one of them went off to make the call. Shortly afterwards Dawson arrived in the Land Rover. As I recall, Dawson made to go over to where she was, and at the same time shouted she was getting up.
I had my back to her and turned to look. She was already on her feet and managed to take a few steps, perhaps two or three, before losing her balance and falling forwards, banging the left side of her forehead on the corner of a headstone.
Dawson was slow to react and had taken only a couple of steps by the time she was falling over. Watts shouted to Dawson he should just leave her alone and not touch anything.
We then stood outside the unconsecrated chapel near to the steps leading to the bottom footpath. It must have been about 10 to 15 minutes before a police officer, PC Ball, arrived on the scene and came over to where we were standing. He asked a few questions as to who had found her, what we were doing there, then asked where she was. We indicated, and he went over to her and had a look and then walked part of the way back before calling me over to where he waited. He asked if I had been the one who found her, and I said I was. He then went on to ask me to say where, and I told him, and even pointed out the place from where we stood.
Finally, he asked if I had touched anything. I said I hadn’t except for turning her over, and I showed him my bloodstained hands. I asked if I could wash the blood off my hands, but he said no, it would be needed for forensics. We then went over to where the rest of the group stood. I seem to recall him asking a couple of questions – if any of them had seen or touched anything. They all answered no.
I think it was Dawson who asked if it was all right for me to help them load the Land Rover and the policeman said it was. The policeman then went back and placed his tunic over the body before going to his car and making a call on the radio.
It would be a good 15 to 20 minutes, at a guess, before anyone else arrived and maybe as much as another 5 to 10 minutes before a Detective Inspector Younger came to ask me the same questions that PC Ball had just asked. I gave him the same answers.
He went back to the others for a brief moment and then came back with someone else in a suit. I was asked if I would be willing to go with them to the station for further questioning, which I agreed to do. I was led over to a blue and white police car where I sat in the back with one of the policemen, while the other got in the front with the driver. As we were about to go through the cemetery gates the ambulance arrived.

I already had many queries and misgivings about the case. This latest account from Stephen threw me into even greater turmoil.

The thing that immediately stood out was his description of someone assaulting him and threatening his sister, as he knelt by the injured woman. If this were true, and this unidentified person had a companion as suggested, then who were these people? And why was no mention of them made at the trial? Could one of them be the man who trial witnesses Louisa Hadfield and George Paling saw running away from the direction of the cemetery? I also wondered why so little effort was made on the part of the police to establish who this running man was.

Of course, this latest account was at serious odds with Stephen’s original confession, which he had retracted after 13 days. However, apart from the omission of someone in the cemetery threatening him, it was same story he had told the police during the first nine hours in the police station, and in subsequent years in prison. I needed to know why Stephen had briefly deviated from this version and admitted in his confession to attacking and sexually assaulting Wendy Sewell.

When I re-read Stephen’s alleged confession statement, there were various bits and pieces that simply did not and could not match the facts. Stephen said he hit Wendy twice on the back of the head to knock her out. The Home Office’s own summary confirmed that Wendy had been hit ‘seven or eight times’ with repeated, savage blows to the head.

I also questioned how, after such an attack, any jury could have imagined Stephen Downing walking out of the cemetery appearing ‘calm’ and ‘perfectly normal’, with no apparent bloodstaining after such a frenzied attack. There was also no mention in his ‘confession’ of Wendy having moved from the path to the graves. In fact, he said, ‘She was lying on the ground the same way I had left her.’

One of the workmen, Hawksworth, said he had picked up the murder weapon earlier in the day. In which case his fingerprints would have been on it as well as those of the murderer. Were any fingerprints or blood samples taken from the murder weapon? Or from the workmen, who were also allowed to carry on working in and around the chapel even though the supposed murderer had gone back there after committing such a violent attack? If the pickaxe handle had come from the council store, any of the workmen’s fingerprints could have appeared on it quite innocently, even Stephen’s.

Another important factor taken from Stephen’s account of the day was that, on his way home from the cemetery at 1.08 pm, he spoke words of greeting to one of the prosecution witnesses, Charlie Carman. He said he saw him between the shop and the cemetery, walking in the direction of town on his way to work. Unfortunately, Carman was now dead, but I found out that at the time he had been employed, like Stephen, as a gardener with the council.

That day, Carman was working in Bath Gardens in the town centre. I checked his evidence. It confirmed he was heading back into town that lunchtime, but made no mention of seeing Stephen Downing.

Carman said he looked over the hedge of the cemetery somewhere near the phone box and saw Wendy walking along a path. At this point on his route he would have already passed Stephen, who was heading to the shop. So, Wendy must have been uninjured after Stephen had left the cemetery. Why then had Carman not been quizzed over this anomaly? Had Stephen ever queried this with the police or his defence team?

I also noticed a major time discrepancy. Carman said he had spotted Wendy at 12.50, but everyone agreed that Stephen did not leave the cemetery until around 1.08. If Stephen saw Carman, and vice versa, then Charlie’s timing was well out.

There were many parts of this puzzle that didn’t make sense. But I also needed some more answers from Stephen. Why did he change his story at the police station? Why admit attacking and, moreover, sexually assaulting Wendy? Why did he wait 13 days before retracting his confession?

I was also interested in knowing more about Nita’s assertion that he changed his boots when he came home at lunchtime.

She claimed it was because he had put on the wrong boots in the morning. And I also needed to clear up the allegation concerning this mystery man in the cemetery who had poked Stephen in the back and threatened him. Why on earth had that allegation not formed part of his defence? I knew I would still need to ask some difficult questions, which many people, the Downings included, might not like.

I wrote to Stephen again and asked him if he could answer some additional queries. In particular, I wanted to hear his version of the interrogation at the police station. Ray told me the confession was forced out of him, but I needed to hear it all directly from Stephen.

CHAPTER 7
Believing the Beebes

I realised my presence and my nosey-parker attitude was making an impact around Bakewell. Perhaps I was beginning to upset some locals who thought their secrets had been buried with Wendy Sewell.

I noticed it far more on the council estate near the Downings’ home, where quite often people would stop and point at me as I drove past, no doubt muttering something about me under their breath.

I was apprehensive about becoming involved in such a delicate and controversial case. I knew my involvement was likely to make enemies in this small rural community, and was bound to reawaken many thoughts and emotions that had been suppressed for decades.

One morning as I breezed into work, Elsie, the receptionist, who was on the telephone, began frantically beckoning to me with her free arm. I was about to ask her what the matter was when she put a finger to her lips.

I hurried through the door and round the back of the counter to where she was sitting.

‘Really, young man,’ she was saying in her best telephone manner, ‘now do go away and stop being so silly!’ With that she slammed the receiver down.

‘Who was it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, Don. But he said he wanted to kick your head in,’ she replied, raising her eyebrows. Elsie had been with the Mercury for donkey’s years and was used to dealing with irate callers. She was not easily fazed.

‘Did he say why?’

‘He just said you would know why.’

‘Well, I might.’

She peered at me over her glasses. She was a tall, thin woman with a quick temper who was in her late forties and was always impeccably dressed. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and had a real bee in her bonnet about ‘time wasters’ interrupting her regimented routine.

Elsie then added casually, ‘To be quite honest, it’s the second time he’s rung.’

‘When was the last?’ I enquired.

‘A couple of days ago. I wasn’t going to mention it. He was more abusive the first time, rather than threatening. But if he’s starting to talk about beating you up, well, you should know. It was definitely the same chap. He didn’t sound particularly old.’ She paused, obviously waiting for me to explain.

‘I’m sorry, Elsie. If you get any more, don’t talk to him. Just put him straight through to me. Or if I’m out, hang up.’

I walked through to my office, leaving Elsie burning with curiosity. I was angry that someone was upsetting my staff, but if they thought they could put me off that easily, they had another thing coming.

Even at that early stage, I had a gut feeling about the case. Lots of people kept singing the same tune – Downing was serving time for someone else. I had an overwhelming desire to seek out the truth once and for all. If Stephen Downing was guilty and I could prove it, then it would at least end the mystery.

But what if he was innocent?

Certain prominent local characters and traders began to show a peculiar interest in my preliminary enquiries, displaying a curious nervousness about the victim’s past. Calls came in to me from a publican and several shop owners in Bakewell, asking me why I was suddenly ‘digging up dirt’ about this old case.

Feedback about my investigation also came from my advertising reps. They felt that pressure was mounting for me to drop the case. Advertisers were becoming nervous that it could have an adverse effect both on advertising revenues and the tourism trade, as Bakewell was not that sort of town.

More interesting to me, however, was the reps also confirming that the town was buzzing with gossip about the victim’s love life. It was being said that she had had several boyfriends, echoing what Ray and Sam Fay, my deputy editor, had told me the first time the Downings came to my office, and there was even mention of a love child, despite it being said at the trial and in the Home Office report that the Sewells had no children. I would have to look more closely at the life and times of Mrs Wendy Sewell.

My reporters also added that the local ‘plods and pips’ weren’t happy about me kicking up dust over an old case like this, which was already long gone and forgotten.

Reputations were on the line. I asked Jackie to make an approach to the duty inspector, but he seemed to be advising us to leave well alone. I asked her if he gave a precise reason. She shook her head and replied, ‘All he said was that Downing was guilty. A right little pervert.’ This claim was something I would come to hear a few times – but why?

‘It’s strange,’ I said. ‘But that’s what some other contacts have said. All very interesting, but I can’t find anything to substantiate their claims.’

All this was happening despite the fact that I had not yet published one word in the Mercury about the case. I did, however, start to gain a lot of support from many people who were starting to express their doubts and opinions about the case. The residents of some houses that overlooked the cemetery had lived there for years and confirmed that no routine house-to-house enquiries were carried out at the time.

Marie Bright, an elderly lady, asked to see me urgently. When I visited her home, she told me she was still worried – even now – about possible repercussions. She explained she’d seen a ‘pasty-faced’ man with a bright orange T-shirt hanging around the main entrance gates about an hour before the attack.

She claimed the man got off the bus from Bakewell at about noon. Mrs Bright said, ‘This man was aged about 40 to 45 and was acting rather queer. I hadn’t seen him around before and I think he was a stranger because he kept looking around, and at his watch. He looked suspicious, as though he was waiting for someone. I saw this man coming over the top of the wall, out of the cemetery, about an hour later.’

She said she had also seen another man parked up in a dark-coloured van near the phone box by the cemetery gates some time that lunchtime. She described him as a fat, bulky figure.

Margaret Richards, another elderly woman who lived close by, told me she too had seen a man standing close to the beech hedge by the cemetery gates. Her description of him was almost identical to that given by Marie Bright of the man in the orange T-shirt. She claimed he appeared to be acting suspiciously, looking at his watch, and was very nervous.

Both Bright and Richards said they had been to Bakewell police station to report their sightings. They had seen PC Ernie Charlesworth, who hadn’t seemed interested and told them they already had someone in custody charged with the murder. I knew Charlesworth and believed him to be an arrogant and lazy beat bobby. He was considered something of a bully by junior colleagues.

I wondered why he had not referred these witnesses to a more senior investigating officer. What I wasn’t aware of at that time was the fact that he had been the one who got the confession out of Downing, which he had boasted about for years.

I wondered, too, whether the noon bus driver had been questioned, or whether he had seen any suspicious characters running around. In those days everyone knew everyone, and a stranger would be noticed.

I was then contacted by another witness, a Mrs Gibson from a neighbouring road, who said the police did call at her home on the Saturday night after the attack and actually took a statement. She claimed she was told not to tell anyone or say anything to anyone else. But she too confirmed the police didn’t make general house-to-house calls.

This was agreed by housewife Pat Shimwell, who explained she had been chatting with a friend at the door of her house on Burton Edge, overlooking the cemetery, and noticed Stephen Downing leaving by the main gate at about 1.10 p.m. with his pop bottle.

She was standing at her garden gate with her arms folded as we spoke, relating her story in a matter-of-fact manner. Like many of the women who were eager to talk to me, Pat Shimwell was in her mid-fifties and had been at her home near the cemetery all day on 12 September.

I believed the police would have had a ready-made set of witnesses with any one of these plain-speaking women who apparently noticed everything – if only they had bothered to talk to them. Pat Shimwell later told me that she was in her bedroom tidying up when she heard a ‘commotion in the cemetery’, with several workmen yelling at each other.

She remembered someone shouting out something like ‘leave her!’ At about 1.30 she saw the policeman in the cemetery. She told me that a bobby asked if she had seen anything. And then claimed that she was quite remarkably told, ‘If anyone asks, I haven’t been here.’

I asked her if she could be sure that Stephen had left the cemetery at around 1.10 p.m. She said she could because she had seen the bus at its scheduled stop at the same time. Once again, I had reason to thank Hulleys buses for helping to plot the course of the day’s events.

Pat Shimwell asked if I’d spoken to any of the youngsters who were playing around the area that lunchtime. I recalled Ray saying something about children when we walked around the cemetery.

She suggested I should track down Ian and Lucy Beebe. The story was that something ‘horrible’ had frightened them in the cemetery that day. Shimwell admitted that they were very young at the time, and told me they used to live along Burton Edge but had since moved away.

I soon discovered that the Beebe family played a crucial but often maligned role in this murder inquiry. The eldest daughter was Jayne Atkins, a fifteen-year-old at the time, who was a half-sister to little Ian and Lucy, then aged four and seven. Jayne appeared as a major new witness at the Court of Appeal in October 1974 to give evidence in support of Stephen Downing.

Jayne told three appeal court judges she had seen ‘a man and a woman with their arms round each other’ in the cemetery on the day Wendy Sewell was attacked. She confirmed the man was not Stephen Downing.

She explained that only a few minutes before she saw the couple embrace, she had seen Stephen leaving the cemetery. She said the couple were standing on the lower path, behind one of the chapels, and not far from the very spot where Wendy was later found bleeding to death.

Jayne told the court she had been afraid at first to tell the police about what she had seen, for fear the man had recognised her – and that she might become a victim as well.

At a pre-trial hearing, the three law lords decided she could not be believed. They maintained that, had she been a credible witness, she would have come forward much earlier with such vital information. They decided her evidence was therefore ‘not credible’ and rejected it, and Stephen’s appeal against his conviction was hastily dismissed.

I wanted to meet Jayne Atkins, and to see if her story had changed over the years. I was also keen to track down and interview the younger children and find out what had frightened them.

This proved no easy feat. Former neighbours told me the Beebes had moved to a new house because they had been so terrified of reprisals after Jayne had given her evidence to the Court of Appeal. They said the family had received several anonymous threats.

Back at my office, after spending much of the morning on the estate, I received a telephone call on my direct line. ‘Been snooping around again, then?’ a man’s voice sneered.

‘Who is this?’ I asked. It was not the same voice as before. This man sounded much older.

‘Never you mind. That little sod got what he deserved. If I see your car on that estate again, you’re dead,’ he claimed, before slamming down the phone.

My heart was pounding, and my thoughts turned to Kath and my two boys. What if this person knew where I lived? Not for the first time, I wondered just what I was getting myself into.

* * *

Later that week, I finally tracked down the Beebes. They were living on the outskirts of Chesterfield, in a council house in Renishaw, on the road out towards Sheffield. Margaret Beebe opened the door. She was a very pleasant lady in her fifties with a strong local accent.

She greeted me with a friendly smile. When I told her the purpose of my visit she appeared enthusiastic and ushered me inside. She told me that the children, by now in their twenties and thirties, had all left home. She and her husband Ken lived on their own.