Justice for Colette: My daughter was murdered - I never gave up hope of her killer being found. He was finally caught after 26 years

by Kirby, Jacqui

  But Kevin didn’t want me travelling thousands of miles for what would be an appearance of perhaps a couple of minutes. I was told to wait until the next time he was in court so that I could get a good look at the man who killed my daughter.

  I was sworn to secrecy. Kevin told me that the arrest hadn’t hit the news yet. No one knew other than Mark, Tony, Mum and me. I’d rung Mark and my mother to tell them, but that was it.

  I rang Mark first. The phone rang a few times before he picked it up. He said ‘hi’ casually, completely unaware of what I was about to tell him. I asked him to sit down as I had something to tell him.

  ‘What?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘They’ve arrested someone for Colette’s murder. A man called Paul Hutchinson.’ There was a pause. I could sense Mark’s brain whirring away, trying to place the name. I’d done exactly the same when Kevin had told me.

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ he concluded.

  It was no one we knew. A complete stranger had killed her. There was a few seconds of silence before Mark spoke again.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, his voice awash with relief. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ I answered, tears welling up in my eyes. ‘I’m not joking, Mark – it’s true.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he gasped. ‘After all this time, after all these years. I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘Neither can I, Mark, neither can I.’

  With that I began to sob. Mark was upset – I could hear it in his voice – but he tried to keep his emotions in check. Still, our voices both betrayed relief, vast emotion and grief.

  I could tell that this news had brought it all back to Mark. In the space of a few seconds, he was back there at the scene. Back in that field on the morning the police found Colette’s naked and battered body. I could tell now that he was visualising the horror that even 25 years had failed to erase from his memory. The moment of finding his sister was burned deep into his memory. It was a hot iron that had branded him internally and left a scar he would carry forever. Now that scar was picked open and bleeding once more.

  I needed to leave Mark to deal with these new feelings of relief, delayed anger and disbelief, to come to terms with the idea that we might finally get justice for his little sister. I told him how much I loved him and then replaced the receiver.

  Mark had promised not to breathe a word to anyone as the police didn’t want it to leak out from the family. I knew that – given how much he had held inside for all these years – this piece of good news would not be hard for him to keep to himself. Now he could sleep at night knowing that the police had caught the man responsible for murdering and battering his little sister. I hoped that in some small way it might help ease his suffering, though I knew that nothing would ever completely heal him of what he’d witnessed on that cold October morning.

  I picked up the phone once more, this time to call my mother and tell her the news. Up until that point, I’d been asked not to tell a soul and, besides Mark and my husband, I’d not spoken to anyone about the upcoming court appearance of Colette’s killer. Tony had been kept informed separately.

  I picked up the phone and dialled my mother thousands of miles away in Nottingham. I told her the killer was in custody.

  I could physically feel my mother reeling back in shock. The news had been like a smack across her face, sudden and unexpected. The pain smarted inside as she absorbed it and tried to make sense of what I was saying.

  ‘Kevin Flint has just rung me to tell me that they’ve made an arrest. They’ve got him, Mum – a man called Paul Hutchinson – they’ve caught him after all this time. They’ve got the bastard who killed my Colette.’

  Mum was silent save for an astonished gasp on the other end of the crackling phone line. The silence hung until, suddenly, she spoke. ‘Tell me more, tell me more, Jacqui,’ she demanded. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied truthfully. ‘But what I’m telling you is strictly confidential – you mustn’t say anything to anyone, Mum. It’s very important this does not leak out.’

  Mum promised not to breathe a word to anyone.

  ‘I’m coming over to England,’ I said. ‘I want to see what this bastard looks like.’

  ‘Come and stay with me,’ she offered.

  I agreed.

  With my plane ticket booked, I could almost taste the moment that I finally got to look my daughter’s killer directly in the eye.

  Paul Hutchinson. The man that had haunted me in my every waking hour, every day, every year. This was a man who had stolen Colette’s life from her just as it was about to begin.

  I wanted to come face to face with him. And, before long, I knew I would.

  CHAPTER 10

  JUSTICE

  I felt sick with fear, apprehension and anger as I walked into Nottingham Crown Court and took my place in the public gallery on Monday, 13 July 2009.

  This was only going to be a five-minute hearing, the police had warned me. I didn’t care – I needed to see him, the monster that had haunted me in my nightmares. Colette’s life had been stolen by this evil bastard, but he’d taken her innocence too. He’d taken her from us and now I wanted to be here to watch him squirm and suffer. It had been a cat-and-mouse game for all these years but now he was the frightened rodent fighting for his freedom.

  The courtroom was packed with the country’s media; journalists had jostled for space on the press bench so they could report on a case that had shaken Nottinghamshire to its core.

  I wondered what Colette’s killer would look like – would it be someone I recognised? Could I have served him during my time working in Debenhams? In a few minutes, I would know.

  My fingers trembled nervously in my lap as I tried to steady one hand with the other, but it was no use. I tried to hold my nerve. Calm, I thought to myself. Stay calm. I sucked in as much air as my lungs would allow before exhaling slowly. I needed to stay composed. I needed to be here to see him and let him see me. Every year of grief since my daughter’s death had been etched deep into my face. The hurt and pain was still raw after a quarter of a century – an open wound for all to see, waiting to be healed.

  I needed to be here for Colette.

  I heard a noise at the side of the court and craned my neck to get my first good look at him. He was brought in by two prison wardens. He walked in between them and, as he did so, looked up briefly at everyone in the court. I stared directly at him, not taking my eyes off him for a single moment. I wanted him to see me – Colette’s mother, looking straight back at him.

  The man was overweight and had a sallow complexion. His expression was hangdog and his overweight, bloated face gave away his age. He looked pathetic – a middle-aged man with hanging, flabby jowls, no doubt the result of fine dining and too many glasses of beer or wine. How many nights had he enjoyed with friends and family while my poor baby lay cold and dead in her grave?

  He limped slowly into the dock with the aid of a walking stick, as if he was the victim in all this. He was wearing a checked shirt, beige trousers and trainers, which were too young for him. He looked pathetic. I felt angry that I’d been scared of him for all these years – a ridiculous, overweight, bloated lump of lard. He was shaking as he tried to shuffle along with the aid of his walking stick.

  I turned to my brother Michael sitting behind me. ‘I’d like to put that stick where the bloody sun doesn’t shine.’

  I could tell that he was acting. I could see straight through it and so could everyone else in court that day. My brother Michael leaned forward to whisper in my ear: ‘I reckon he thinks that he’s going to get a bloody Oscar for that performance.’

  My family and I had all entered court together but we’d been separated by the court ushers. Mark was next to me but Tony was seated at the other side of the aisle. Michael was behind me and my mum was sitting with Pauline, the family liaison officer. Kevin and his colleague Karen were to one side of us.

  I looked at all thes
e people surrounding me in the courtroom. It seemed so surreal after all these years. My breath became shallow, as I watched Colette’s killer approach the dock. I couldn’t swallow because my throat felt as if it had seized up entirely.

  As he stood in the dock, he was asked to confirm his name, address and date of birth. But he turned his head, as if he had difficulty hearing. It made me want to be sick. He was quite clearly playing for the sympathy vote.

  ‘Paul Stewart Hutchinson,’ he replied, without a hint of remorse in his voice.

  He leaned against the dock as if to hold himself up. I wanted to kick his legs from underneath him and make him lie on the floor like a dog.

  I soon discovered that he was 50 years old. My mind began to whirr with numbers and dates. How old would he have been when he killed Colette? I did a quick calculation – he would have been 25 years old at the time of her murder. He was a grown man even then – nine years older than my teenage daughter and six years older than Mark.

  I wondered if my children had passed him before on the street. I knew by looking at him that my lovely Colette wouldn’t have given him a second glance, but had he seen her before? My imagination ran wild. Why? Why had he done this to her and my family? Why had he taken her life and ruined ours? Then he stated his current address. He lived nearby – something that I’d always known in my heart.

  Still I continued to stare. My eyes burned into his skull. I wanted to be able to look inside his head and see the secrets he knew from that night. I wanted to know why he’d done what he’d done.

  Suddenly, he turned his head to face me.

  He was staring directly at me. I continued to hold my nerve. Pure hatred flashed through my body like huge shocks of electricity as I found it harder and harder to breathe normally.

  He looked smug. A half-smile spread across his doughy face. I wanted to climb over the bench in front of me and rip out the bastard’s throat with my bare hands. Instead, I inhaled another deep breath and allowed the edges of my sharp fingernails to dig and cut into the skin of my clenched palm.

  He gave me the creeps. I concentrated hard on his face. Had I seen him before now? I despised the way he kept staring back at me – he was trying to intimidate me. I wanted to jump up and scream at him. My heart was pounding so loudly in my chest that I thought everyone might hear the hatred for this man pumping through my veins.

  I wanted to hurt him. Smack him, a clean punch right in the face. I imagined inflicting real pain on him – the sensation and joy of it felt so sweet that I could almost taste it. I wanted to dissect him with my fingernails, sharpen them up, just for the job. But, whatever I did to him, it would in no way make up for the pain that he’d inflicted on my baby.

  Paul Hutchinson didn’t enter a plea. Instead, he was remanded in custody and another date was set with the court for him to appear again.

  He still looked smug and self-satisfied. I soon found out why. Legal papers weren’t ready so the hearing was adjourned and he was remanded in custody until 5 October, when he would have to return to crown court to enter a plea. The trial was scheduled to take place starting Monday, 25 January 2010. At least now we had a date.

  The judge got up to leave the court, so we were all instructed to stand. Hutchinson himself was led from the court. He shuffled away from the dock, still looking me right in the eye. It took all the strength I had not to leap at him like a wild animal and claw at him until there was nothing left. I wanted to see him suffer, but not yet, not today. I wanted this to be a long and painful process – to make him suffer as we had.

  I’d travelled thousands of miles for this moment but it had been worth the journey just to see what the bastard looked like. Nevertheless, I felt pretty hopeless because, despite all the evidence stacked against him, he refused to admit his guilt. I wanted to shake it out of him. I was emotionally drained yet angry.

  I glanced at Tony and Mark – we all looked numb, united in grief yet, at the same time, completely isolated because of the trial which now faced us.

  Afterwards, I spent just over two weeks in Nottingham before returning home to Greece.

  On 5 October 2009 – almost 26 years to the day after he murdered my daughter – Paul Hutchinson entered a plea of not guilty. I felt sick when I heard. How dare he? How dare he not admit what everyone knew – that he’d done this vile thing and taken a young girl’s life? I was incandescent with rage.

  Before the hearing and, as part of his defence statement, this callous monster had decided to blame his dead brother Gerhard, who had been cremated in January. But, unbeknown to Hutchinson, Gerhard had already been ruled out of the investigation by police using his DNA. It had confirmed, without a doubt, that Gerhard had not been responsible in any way for the murder. Hutchinson’s statement only proved to detectives what lengths their suspect would go to to try to exonerate himself; he was prepared to blame his dead brother for a crime he’d not committed, all the time smugly thinking to himself that he was in the clear because poor Gerhard had been cremated.

  In court, Hutchinson stared at me as he had done before. I held his eyes and regarded him with a look of pure disgust.

  After the hearing, I turned to Kevin and my brother Michael. ‘Was it my imagination or was he trying to stare me out?’

  They said they had noticed it, and fully agreed with me.

  ‘But how would he know it was me?’ I said. ‘How would he know I’m Colette’s mother?’

  I’d forgotten about Hutchinson’s job – there’s no way he could not have known what I looked like. Hutchinson ran his own newspaper-delivery business at the time of his arrest. Also, the chances were he would have seen me on Crimewatch.

  Hutchinson had children of his own – four in total. I’d wondered how a man who had done something like this had felt able to bring life into the world, knowing that he’d taken one. Still, it was the fact that his son had been arrested that had led detectives to Hutchinson’s front door, and that had ultimately brought about his own downfall – that and his boasts in a letter to the police that he’d never be caught. But now he had.

  He was like an animal caught in a trap and I had no sympathy for him. I wanted him to burn in hell.

  After the hearing, I stayed in Nottingham again for a couple of weeks. Although my heart was now in Greece, I wanted and needed to be here for Colette, but, eventually, I caught a flight back home.

  It was a cool day in December when the telephone rang. I picked it up to see Kevin’s name flash up on the screen.

  ‘Jacqui,’ he said, ‘he’s changed his plea to guilty.’

  The call came quite out of the blue and was totally unexpected. I was astonished – after all these years of cat-and-mouse, the coward that was Paul Hutchinson had finally decided to plead guilty, ultimately admitting to the world what he’d done.

  ‘Right,’ I said, as I allowed the news to sink in.

  ‘So you might need to come back,’ Kevin warned.

  ‘No problem,’ I insisted. ‘I must be there.’

  ‘OK,’ he replied. ‘He’s admitted his guilt to his solicitor but they can’t do anything formally until he’s seen his barrister, which will be next week. So I’ll phone you next week. Wait for the phone call and then you’ll have to come over because I know how important it is for you to be here.’

  ‘Of course, I want to be there,’ I agreed.

  I explained to Kevin about my fear that, if Hutchinson kept pleading not guilty, all it would take would be a jury of do-gooders to be fooled by his lies. This man was clearly callous and devious, otherwise how would he have walked the streets for so long? I was terrified that he’d somehow wriggle off the hook, even though I knew that the prosecution case against him was watertight.

  I’d also heard that he’d been bragging in prison that he had had killed Colette – he was still using her murder as some sick trophy. It was as if he felt that, by saying it, it would somehow elevate him in criminal circles. That it would make him notorious, someone to be feared, avoided ev
en. That it might keep the other prisoners away from him, keep him safe at night.

  But whoever it was that he bragged to saw right through him. They went straight to the governor, who called the police. They contacted Hutchinson’s solicitor who then went to see him, and that’s when he admitted it. Not only did the police have his DNA and Colette’s blood on the towel, as well as his unique fingerprint on the taunting letter, but now they also had this new revelation. Hutchinson had hung himself on his own inflated sense of self-importance and now it was time for him to suffer the consequences.

  Once his barrister had been to see him and heard the same confession, the Crown Prosecution Service applied for an earlier court date.

  Days later, on Friday, 18 December 2009, Kevin phoned me urgently.

  ‘We’re due to appear in court on Monday the 21st,’ he said. ‘You need to get yourself here for then.’

  I worried where I would stay, as my mum was visiting my brother Michael down south, and Mark was away for the weekend. No one was around and I felt like a ‘Billy no-mates’. Panic began to rise inside me. But, as usual, Kevin came to my rescue. He offered to put me up in a hotel if need be, but also urged me to call Michael, to let him know about the new court date.

  I felt an enormous sense of relief wash over me. Kevin knew how long I’d waited for this day. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart. After I’d put the phone down to Kevin, I called Michael and things went from there.

  It was a close call but I caught a flight to England the very next day. I threw a few essentials into a holdall and jetted off right away. The flight seemed to take longer than usual. Of course, in real time, it hadn’t, but now I was operating and living minute to minute and the seconds ticked by so slowly. I wandered around Athens airport as if I was in some kind of dream. I’d been angry that Hutchinson hadn’t admitted his guilt in October, but now he had and it was a massive relief.