Next was an elderly lady by the name of Elizabeth Beckett. At eighty-three years old, she was an old age pensioner with three children and eight grandchildren. Over her lifetime she had been an influential woman, as she had taught for forty years. She came to a grisly end, with her limbs being chopped off, and forensics identified the murder weapon as an axe. Someone had actually chopped her legs off and left her to bleed to death before burying her. This occurred in 1991.
Another pensioner was found, but this time it was a man by the name of Fred Lesley, also a respectable member of the community. At seventy-eight, he had been a football coach and youth worker for most of his life. He was married with five children and fifteen grandchildren. He was the only victim to have been found in a box. He had been killed in 1994, and the killer simply placed him in a box while tied up. After cutting his teeth out, the box was nailed shut and buried, leaving him to suffocate.
Finally, the body of a twenty-two year old man was found. He’d been missing since 1996, a student training to be a surgeon by the name of Christopher Eggles. He had a very promising career ahead of him, plus a girlfriend, and they were even considering getting married and having children. He was last seen leaving the university. His car was found in Minot forest, a few miles away from where his body was discovered. The car had crashed into a tree, but there had been no trace of him whatsoever. He had been choked to death, probably by a rope. The forensic scientists were not positive, but thought he had been tied up and hanged from a tree nearby.
After having finished reading the files on each victim, I sat back a moment, stunned a little. Was this really happening? How could anybody in the world do any of these things to a fellow human being? And what kind of person would do all of them? I almost cried, but I knew I had to get my head together and focus on the case, putting my emotions aside for now. After all, that was what solved the last case for me. I knew that this case would be a tough one, as no DNA evidence was left anywhere on the scene, so I was dealing with an intelligent person, no matter how twisted or psychotic they were.
I started looking for potential connections between the victims, if any. I knew from the start that each victim was completely different. They were a variety of ages, and their personalities and jobs were all different. Even the way they all died was different, except for the fact that they all had their teeth pulled out. They all lived in different areas in Minot, and they all led different lives, so how could it be possible that the killer could be acquainted with each of them? What did all of these people have in common? It was going to be tough, so I decided to sleep on it, if I could.
Chapter 18
I woke up the next morning not knowing where to go or what to do next. I had a rough night, as I was awake for several hours in bed, thinking about the murderer and who it could be, like I always do. I was trying to create a profile in my mind of this psychopath—the suspect was probably male, had a very disturbed past, and was reasonably intelligent. I could not think of anything else at this point. What possible motive could there be for murdering all these innocent people? Perhaps there was no motive—perhaps it was all driven and inspired by the excitement of killing a human being.
I arrived at the station, and Patricia approached me.
“Tammy, there is someone here who wants to speak to you.” she said, pointing to a woman who appeared to be in her fifties.
I walked over to the woman, and it was clear to me she was a relative of one of the victims. Her eyes were red and she had obviously received some traumatic and devastating news, although she probably expected that news already, deep down.
“Hello,” I said, approaching her as kindly and in as friendly a manner as I possibly could.
“Are you the one working on the Kieran Bradley case?” she asked.
It suddenly hit me. She must have been Kieran Bradley’s mother, the one who was killed when he was fourteen.
“I am,” I replied, trying not to show my emotions too much.
“Well, I need to talk to you about something,” she said.
“Take your time,” I told her, allowing her to sit down and talk to me somewhere private, in the soft interview room.
“So, what is it you want to talk to me about?” I asked her, after offering her some coffee. She refused, saying she just wanted to get this conversation over with.
“I might have some information to give you about the murders,” she said. “There were eight more, weren’t there?” she asked.
“There were eight in total,” I replied.
After hearing that, she gasped, and her hand ran down her fragile face. She was bewildered at the fact that her son had died at the hands of a psychotic serial killer.
“Were they all young boys?” was her next question.
“No, ma’am,” was my straight answer. “There were also men and women, and the victims were of different ages. Some were old, some were young, and others were middle-aged.”
“So why did he pick my son?” she said, trying not to shout or be too loud.
“I’m trying my best to get to the bottom of that, I really am, but for now I need as much information as I can possibly get,” I replied, trying to keep the poor woman as calm as possible.
“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “I’ve got an idea about who the killer might be,” she said.
“Go on,” I said, becoming rather excited.
“Well, the killer might… just might… be Ian Green.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s that strange man who used to live near us. I don’t know where he lives now.”
“And why do you think he’s the killer, ma’am?”
“Well, I remember back to a conversation with my son. It was one of the last conversations we had…” The woman, clearly distraught, put her face in her hands.
“Take a moment, ma’am.”
“It was a normal day, and I drove Kieran to school in the car. Before he got out, he talked to me about Ian Green. He pointed him out and at that time Ian was talking to some young children. He must have been in his twenties back then! Anyway, Kieran started saying things about him.”
“He said, ‘That’s the one who talks about killing people all the time. He’s always talking about how he would want to die, and if he were to kill someone, he would torture them and bury them alive.’”
“I told him there was clearly something wrong with that man and asked him what he was doing around the school. I told him there was clearly something seriously wrong with that man and asked why he was even around there. He was clearly too old to go to school!”
“Kieran said that the teachers had shooed him away a few times, but he kept coming back and nobody really knew why.”
“What happened next, ma’am?
“Kieran then got out of the car, and as he went into school Ian turned around and watched him. As the door closed, he turned back to his conversation.”
I was writing notes down at this point. I had finally gotten a new lead.
“Why didn’t you come forward about this before?” I asked her.
“I forgot all about the conversation really. I was more concerned about Kieran’s welfare, wondering where he could be. At that time, I didn’t seem so sinister, but now looking back, I just wish I would have done something. At least I know now, and the forensics people or somebody told me that there was no sign of sexual abuse, so at least he didn’t die that way, even if he was—”
She then proceeded to break down and I tried to comfort her, though feeling completely ill-equipped as I usually did in these conversations.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m getting so upset again now, after all these years.”
I then escorted her to the door and promised to keep her updated.
Not ten minutes later a police officer arrived in the station with a man in handcuffs. The man looked like he was in his forties.
“Detective Williams, I’ve just caught th
is guy hanging around the field where the bodies were found. I thought you might be interested in talking to him.”
“Thank you officer, just who do we have here?”
“Says he is Ian Green,” said the officer. I stood there staring as my jaw dropped.
.
Chapter 19
The policeman was right—I was very interested in hearing what this man had to say. I had no idea who he was, beyond what Mrs. Bradley had shared, but first I wanted to know why he went to the field where the bodies were found. Could he possibly know something about the murders? Or perhaps he was even the killer himself. I knew I was getting too excited for that, but then again, why go there when the field is in the middle of nowhere? He had obviously seen on the news that eight corpses had been found in a field in Minot, so he must have known.
The man himself, Ian Green, looked like he was in his forties, although he did have grey hair and was very scruffy-looking. He had a short beard, and it was clear to me that he had not had a good wash in several days. He was obviously quite poor, probably from the housing project. From what Mrs. Bradley told me, this man was undoubtedly insane, and he looked at me with a rather guilty face. He seemed to be depressed. I wondered if he was the same horror and death fanatic as he used to be. There was only one way to find out.
“Would you like to follow me into the interview room?” I asked him, escorting him there.
“I need my pills at dinner time,” he said.
“What?” I asked him.
“I need my anti-depressants.”
I looked at the clock. It was after twelve now, so I assumed he was late to take his medicine.
“Alright, Ian,” I said. “I’ll get somebody to go and get your pills, so you need to tell me where you live.”
Ian told me his address quite nervously. I knew he had something to hide—there was something in that house that made me worried. I hoped and prayed there would not be any more dead bodies in there. I asked Graham and Miranda if they could go to the house, and since they had nothing more interesting to do, they went.
Meanwhile, I started the interview with Ian Green. I hoped this would be a real lead into the case, as I was more determined than ever to apprehend the person responsible for these ghastly crimes.
“So, Ian,” I began, “do you mind telling me why you went to the field that day?”There was no answer. I tried asking again. He breathed, as if he was about to say something, but he did not.
“There must be a reason why you went there,” I asked him.
“I’m not up for talking right now,” he said, talking to me with his face to the floor.
“Okay,” I replied, trying to be nice and build some trust with him. “I’ll get you some coffee or something, and then we can talk?”
“I would like to have my pills,” he said.
It took fifteen minutes for Graham and Miranda to return to the police station with the tablets. While Miranda was giving them to Ian, Graham pulled me aside.
You didn’t find anything then?” I asked him.
“We didn’t find any dead bodies,” Graham replied, “but it is not good.”
“What’s in there?” I asked him, desperate to hear the answer as the suspense was killing me.
“We went into his bedroom where the medicine was,” he said, “and we found these strange drawings on the wall.”
“What was on these drawings?”
“There were dead bodies, people being tortured, and people being murdered.”
“Good God!” I cried. “We are dealing with a psychopath!”
“Oh no. I’m afraid you are,” replied Graham, returning to his own work.
I returned to the interview room, wondering what was going through this man’s mind. By now, Ian had taken the tablets several minutes ago, and so he was ready to talk—the drugs, or the routine of taking them at least, had definitely calmed him down.
“So, Ian,” I said, starting over. “Can you tell me now why you were hanging around in the field?”
“Yes, I will tell you now,” he said. “It’s because I was told to go there.”
“By who?” I said, thinking that he was lying.
“I received a phone call. It was a man. He told me to go to the field.”
“And when did you receive this phone call?” I asked, knowing that I could check the phone records later.
“I don’t know the exact time.”
“Did this person say who they were?”
“No, they just said, ‘go to the field tomorrow morning,’ and they put the phone down.”
“Did you not think to tell the police?”
“No,” was the simple answer he gave me.
I was beginning to tire of the interview already, so I decided to move on to something else.
“Do you like the idea of killing people, Ian?” I asked him.
Ian was silent again.
“I know the answer to that, Ian,” I said, “because my colleagues have already been to your house, you know, to get your pills, and they found these unusual, sadistic drawings.”
“That doesn’t make me a killer,” he said.
What he’d just said intrigued me.
“Why did you just say that?” I asked him, not knowing the response.
“Because I know you think I did it!” he yelled, getting up as if he wanted to attack me.
“Calm down now!” I said, raising my voice myself.
“I’m telling you I am not the killer! I did not kill those people!”
“Did you watch the news the other day?” I asked him.
Ian nodded, his face facing the floor again. He sat down and looked depressed again. I then made the decision to talk to him about his family.
“What was your upbringing like?” I asked him.
“My upbringing?”
“Yes. What were your parents like? Did you have any grandparents, or brothers or sisters?”
“Yes. I had all of those,” Ian replied, still not looking at me.
“What were they like?”
Ian looked at me for a second, and then decided to open up.
“My father used to beat me,” he replied, “and my mother was an alcoholic. Some days I would go hungry, and the only food I had in a day I got at school, or if I was lucky enough I found some money somewhere to go to a shop. They treated my little brother, Evan, the same.”
I was not expecting that reply at all, but there was more.
“My grandparents used to sit and laugh while my father beat me up almost every day. Evan used to be so scared that he hid under the table. My sister would laugh at me as well. She went out most of the time. She must have been brought up that way, too. And then there was my aunt. She was the most caring of the lot, but she did never did anything to stop them—she just blocked it out of her life.”
“Were there any other family members?” I asked.
“There was Nathan, who was my mother’s brother. He left when I was a baby, and never spoke to us again. I remember, when we were teenagers, Evan telephoned him, but he just hung up. I suppose he was treated the same way as the rest of us and was just glad he got out.”
Ian stopped talking, leaving me to think. Who on Earth were these people? I knew I had to put my emotions to one side, and focus on the case.
“Right. Well, Ian,” I said to him. “Odds are I am going to end up arresting you for the murders one day soon, and you will be under arrest until we release you—if we release you. You will be looked after in the cells.”
“You’re wrong!” he cried. “I did not kill those people! I’m innocent!”
That was what they all said, but that didn’t matter. I knew there was a small chance that Ian Green was not the killer, but it was very unlikely. As I arranged for an officer to take him back home, I thought to myself that I needed to resolve this soon and get him behind bars before he got someone else in his sights.
While I didn’t have enou
gh evidence to keep in him jail while the investigation progressed, I did have enough to convince my boss to arrange 24 hour surveillance on him so we didn’t lose him.
As I went back to working the case, I noticed something fairly quickly, and after a little more research found something very intriguing. I looked for photographs of each of Ian’s family members, and compared them with photographs of the victims. It was then that it hit me. I realized that each family member bore an astonishing resemblance to one of the victims. For example, Eve Roberts strongly resembled Alison Green, Ian’s sister. I knew then that I probably had the killer, but I also knew that further research had to be done in order to convince a jury.
Chapter 20
I sat back and thought for a moment—Ian Green. Was that the name of a psychotic serial killer? Was he even the killer at all, or was this whole thing a red herring and therefore a waste of valuable time? I was determined to get to the bottom of it, no matter what, and although it looked as though I was coming to the end of the case already, it did not feel like it. In the other cases I had solved, whenever I was close to solving it, I felt something inside. I just had this sensation that I was right, but this time, I just did not feel it. Perhaps it was because the case was far too depressing, the sheer volume much more depressing and twisted, but I knew the job had to be done, since justice was on the line, and lots of it.
So, first I set out to research Ian Green’s relatives. In the interview, he had mentioned his parents, his grandparents, an aunt, an uncle, a brother and a sister. That totaled eight people—the same number of victims there were in the field. My theory for now was that Ian Green had imagined killing his abusive family while killing these innocent victims. Perhaps that was his way of releasing his anger. He would have wanted to kill his parents because of the abuse, his grandparents because they supported the abuse, his aunt because she turned a blind eye, his sister because she did not care, and his uncle because he knew about the abuse, yet did nothing about it. However, there was still one big question that stood out—why would he want to kill his little brother? What did he ever do?
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