Finally, the Very Reluctant Donor knocked and the cops opened the door. “It’s no good at all!” he cried. “I’m trying me hardest and I can’t do it!”
The cops huddled again and a few silly ideas were tossed around, but DC John Reid had a thought: “Would a book help?”
“Oh, yes! Ever so!” said the Very Reluctant Donor. “With pictures?”
So a detective was sent to the custody room to see if they could locate a good one, with pictures. Somehow the message got garbled and a magazine was brought to them called Locomotives and Railway Time Tables. And it wasn’t even a current edition.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Reid said in frustration.
“No, no! Give me another go!” the Very Reluctant Donor cried, and went back inside the room for a very long time.
He eventually knocked on the door, emerged, and proudly extended his palm. Resting on his filthy fingers was a specimen card bearing a filthy little glop of something or other that made Reid want to retch. It had taken the Very Reluctant Donor exactly thirty-two minutes to stand and deliver. He seemed humiliated by the fact that so much work had brought forth such little product.
He explained it by saying, “See, before I left home I did one for you, ever so much better! But I forgot to bring it with me!”
Some of those who refused to be bloodied did so because they had what they believed were definite alibis. One of those offered to produce several friends he’d been with at the time of Dawn Ashworth’s murder.
The newspaper picked up on the issue and Chief Supt. David Baker was forced to issue a statement saying, “There is no reason to suspect him any more than anyone else.”
A Midlands television panel presented a debate and examined a larger question: “Does mass screening for murder pose as big a threat to civil liberties as it does to killers?”
An attorney for the National Council for Civil Liberties, a guest on the show, thought it did. He said, “The police letter claims that the test is voluntary, but it implies that if you don’t telephone for an appointment there’ll be a knock on your door.”
The television reporters went out onto the streets of the villages where the snow was piled in one-foot drifts, and interviewed young men. Most thought that the test was worthwhile, with certain reservations. The last young man interviewed spelled out the reservation.
He said, “Their person ain’t gonna go in, is he? The one that’s done it?”
Another worry of the civil liberties lawyer concerned what the police would do with the DNA information. Government proponents of the mass screening had pointed out that the Police and Criminal Evidence Act required that samples be destroyed if proved to be negative.
“They might destroy samples of blood but not destroy the information taken from the samples,” the civil liberties lawyer said.
When Supt. Tony Painter was interviewed he reiterated that there was no undue pressure on young men, that the tests were completely voluntary. He promised to “stay within the guidelines.”
The civil liberties attorney countered that the Home Office had no guidelines for this kind of mass screening, that genetic fingerprinting was so new nobody had considered its larger implications.
Then he talked about a “national bank of DNA” and said, “If we’re going to do things like this we could end up fingerprinting everyone at birth! It smacks of Big Brother. We need a privacy act to safeguard us.”
Some of the young men in the studio audience agreed, and resented answering the police questions that accompanied the test. One of them disliked being asked to report in the first place, since he hadn’t even lived in the village during the first murder.
Thus, he presented the same argument that workers in Hampshires Bakery had heard from Colin Pitchfork.
One of the regular doctors who did the blooding was an old chap who couldn’t see very well and who liked his drink, and was a bit shaky from liking it so well. The cops noticed early on that if a doctor missed a vein four or five times someone might get queasy. More than five stabs, and they could get ready to call the ambulance.
If a polite young man came in and said, “I have this old army photo you can borrow,” or “It’s perfectly okay to take a photo,” they’d send him to one of the younger doctors.
If he came in and said, “I don’t see why I should have to put up with this!” he was directed to the old doctor.
John Damon, the Duke Wayne impressionist, was sent out one evening to pick up an Asian donor who’d agreed to come in. As the cops well knew, the Asians wouldn’t go anywhere unless the whole family went, so Damon used the “Asian ghetto car” for this one—“the biggest car in the world.”
Sure enough, when he arrived at the donor’s house he was told, “Taking wife.”
Damon said, “Yeah, yeah, I was expecting that. There’s plenty room.”
“Kids got to come if wife come,” the donor said.
“Okay, mate, bring the kiddies,” said Damon.
“Brother-in-law come.”
“Now wait just a …”
“Mother come,” the donor said. “And mother’s brother come.”
“How about your bleedin grandfather?”
“No grandfather. Auntie. Auntie come,” the donor said.
Pretty soon they were all in the car piled on each other’s laps. “The bloody car looked like a motorboat with the lights pointing in the air!” Damon said later.
While en route the donor said, “Police car no good. No automatic. My car got automatic.”
“I’m ever so sorry you don’t like the car,” said the cop.
“Radio no good,” the donor said. “Get music on radio. No music? I got Datsun. Good car. Automatic. Good radio. Got fag?”
“Yeah, I got fag.” Damon gave the donor a cigarette.
“Brother-in-law want fag,” the donor said. “Wife want fag.”
“Everybody want bleedin fag!” Damon said. “Here, take the lot!”
Before arriving, Damon noticed that the kid next to him had wiped his nose on the seat. When he got the family to the blooding, with everyone smoking his fags, demanding Polaroids of the kids, complaining about the stale tea, Damon scraped the snot off his coat, went straight to an interviewing detective, pointed at the half-blind doctor, then to his donor, and said, “Hurt him!”
Another time, John Damon, who’d had prior experience wrestling maniacs, was detailed to pick up three former patients from Carlton Hayes Hospital: two in Coalville, one in Ibstock. While driving the three men toward the blooding center late in the afternoon, he became uncomfortably aware that the passengers’ conversation was growing more stressful with each mile, as they got nearer to being bloodied and nearer to their former place of confinement.
He thought he’d try to take their minds off it. The detective who’d made the last run had left a stack of tapes in the car, so Damon said, “Anybody care to hear some music?”
Without waiting for an answer he grabbed a tape at random and shoved it into the player. It was music from Monty Python’s “The Idiot Song.” Thirty seconds after he punched the button a voice sang: “Fee fi fo fum! I smell the blood of an a-sy-luuum!”
The passengers grew silent. Damon’s hand crept toward the off switch.
Since most donors didn’t have good identity cards and had to be photographed, the police needed a trainload of Polaroid film for photo identifications. Often they took Polaroids of the kids to keep them amused while the old man was being bloodied. They posted one in the incident room of Derek Pearce baby-talking an infant who wasn’t all that amused by the bearded nanny.
Sometimes a donor objected to a Polaroid even more than to the needle. One evening a prison officer’s son came in with his mother. She was irate that they insisted on the photo and didn’t accept her word that the lad was her son.
A detective later carried the photo to a neighbor in Littlethorpe who did indeed verify the young man’s identity. The detective thanked the neighbor for being of assistance.
>
“Glad to help,” Colin Pitchfork told the policeman. “Cheers, mate!”
24
Anniversary
The psychopath is a hedonist, a pleasure seeker. Self-pleasures and satisfactions are very important to him.
… If a fancy or whim passes through his mind, it becomes quickly converted to action. Possible negative consequences of his acts do not concern him. Rather, he has a need for stimulation and acts recklessly, thoughtlessly taking risks, sometimes harming others, and not thinking about future consequences.
—RIMM AND SOMERVILL
By the bloody month of May, the murder squad had bloodied 3,653 men and boys, yet only 2,000 had been eliminated, due to the workload under which laboratory technicians labored. The police had by then received an incredible 98 percent response for the voluntary testing. Yet it seemed that one donor kept leading to another, and they always learned about new ones.
They ultimately decided to bloody everybody, regardless of alibis. Police estimated that they had about 1,000 more men to contact, and they were down to twenty-four officers.
Aside from police work Derek Pearce had one passion: cooking. Mick Thomas and Phil Beeken—and a few others who genuinely appreciated his efforts—used to drop by for his stuffed trout, or his chicken in wine sauce stuffed with leeks and Stilton, or prawns in brandy and cream sauce with lots of garlic. He went to great lengths with his salads, putting little teeth in the radishes, and feathering the tops of spring onions so they’d hang over just so. The presentation mattered as much as the taste to this perfectionist.
Pearce’s kitchen, which he’d built himself, was spacious, with lots of cupboards full of spices. He was keen on Indian dishes, kept twenty kinds of curry ingredients, and was always eager to marinate chicken in yogurt with tandoori sauces. Pearce prided himself on having several delicious and sightly meals that he could “whack up quickly” if a friend popped in.
Sometimes after a great meal, and wine, and drinks after dinner, he could even relax enough to lower his defenses. On those fleeting occasions when Derek Pearce alluded to his ex-wife he’d unwittingly reveal himself. In that he was so often described as “abrasive” it was surprising on those relaxed occasions to hear him say shyly, “I know I’m not good-looking, and I’m very hard for a woman to live with.”
It was rather touching because he obviously meant it, perhaps explaining the full beard. Yet his self-assessment wasn’t accurate. Without the theatrical beard—more important, without the look of driven intensity—Pearce could be called attractive. His features were regular and strong. He had good, dense dark hair and expressive eyes. His nose was well shaped, with a slight character-giving bend. He had a boyish smile, was a glib, enthusiastic talker and was very popular in the secret pubs he shared with no other cops.
Though he couldn’t stand to be at rest, he claimed never to suffer from stress.
“Give me a problem,” he said, “and you’ve given me life! I have to burn off part of me so I can put my head down on a pillow at night. Four games of squash don’t help. I need problems to solve.”
Pearce lived with acrophobia so severe that he felt unreasoning terror on stepladders and even open-air buses. Sometimes he’d talk about it. During those telling glimpses, one could conclude that the fuel powering Derek Pearce was pumped from a well of insecurity, causing the behavior that made them say, “You either like him or you don’t.”
Pearce certainly had never endeared himself to lady friends when he said things like “No matter how much I care for a woman, I’d rather go to work.”
He was so defensive he kept his emotions combat-ready, occasionally making preemptive and unprovoked sorties on the world around him. Yet the man who was so difficult to live with hated to be alone.
Those colleagues who liked him seemed instinctively to understand that his insecurity was at the heart of his conduct. Those who didn’t like him … well, there were many of those, some in high places on the police force.
A fellow detective on the murder squad said of Pearce, “When Derek’s not fully occupied he gets in a bit of bother. He needs a lot of outside pressure or he gets bored and then he gets himself into dodgy places.” He was to get himself into a decidedly dodgy place.
During the Lynda Mann inquiry a female police trainee caught his eye, when he watched her walk. She was then only seventeen, but two years later she joined the force and was assigned to Braunstone Police Station, under the jurisdiction of South Division CID. This put her technically under the jurisdiction of Derek Pearce. The fifteen-year difference in their ages, and the difference in their police ranks, made a romantic relationship a bit dicey.
On an evening in May 1987, Derek Pearce and Insp. Mick Thomas were called to the home of Supt. Tony Painter to discuss staffing levels. At the end of that meeting Pearce made a decision to visit the young policewoman at her Braunstone flat. It would rank among the worst decisions of his life.
One of Pearce’s thirty-five-year-old lady friends tried to explain it to him. She said, “You can’t mess with a twenty-one-year-old’s feelings the way you do with mine.”
Pearce looked enough like a repertory company Petruchio that maybe he decided to play the role in earnest on that May evening. The local newspaper carried the story:
POLICE ENQUIRY INTO OFFICERS’ ROW
A disciplinary enquiry has been launched by Leicestershire police after an incident in which a female officer was hurt during a row with a detective inspector outside her home.
Distressed neighbours called the police to the incident in Braunstone. When they arrived they found Det. Insp. Derek Pearce and WPC Alison McDonnell arguing.
WPC McDonnell, who has lodged a complaint against Det. Insp. Pearce, is understood to have suffered minor injuries to her face, and the front door of her home had been damaged. A complaint has also been lodged by the owner of the house, WPC Elizabeth Pell.
A spokesman for Leicestershire police confirmed today an incident took place leading to disciplinary proceedings. Neither officer was being suspended while enquiries were made.
He said the incident happened more than three weeks ago. Mr. Pearce, who is aged 36, and divorced, is one of the leading officers in the investigations into the murders of schoolgirls Dawn Ashworth and Lynda Mann. Dawn was found dead in Enderby last August, not far from the site of Lynda’s murder in November 1983.
WPC McDonnel, aged 21, is based at Braunstone Police Station and was featured in the Leicester Mercury two years ago when—just seven weeks into her police career—she helped deliver a baby.
Neither officer could be contacted for comment today.
Referring to the quirky charm of Derek Pearce, one of his men said, “He was the kind who could grab a handful of daffodils and make antagonistic people respond to him.”
But this time there were no daffodils. Criminal charges were initiated. Pearce wouldn’t talk about the case at all, except to say he was innocent.
He continued to work on the murder inquiry, though in a rather more subdued fashion, while the internal investigation into his own case was quietly under way. Pearce was a valuable commodity, especially in this critical stage of Dawn Ashworth II.
In early June, a seventeen-year-old girl from Oadby spent the evening with friends in Wigston Centre. She got into an argument with her boyfriend, left him, and decided to walk home. It was just after midnight when a blue car pulled up beside her.
The driver said, “Where you going, m’duck?”
She looked inside and asked, “Are you going to Oadby?”
I’d only had three hours’ sleep the night before, but I had to go out that night. Carole was gone with the kids on a Saturday night camp. When I got on a high like this I had to drive around. Sleep and fatigue just didn’t matter. You become superhuman! So at midnight I went out for a wander. I drove through the center of Wigston and saw a young girl saying good night to another girl and a bloke. She walked off, and I drove round the block and come up to the roundabout and out
comes her thumb! I thought, “Fuckin hell, Colin! This is your lucky night, ain’t it?”
“I’m going up the A-Six,” he said. “Any help?”
“Oh, superb!” she said, and hopped in.
“What’s your name, m’duck?” he asked.
“Liz,” she answered.
I knew she was no older than eighteen, blond and full of bounce. Lives with Mum and Dad. Been out with friends for the night. Just the type!
She secured her seat belt and they rode for a few minutes, but Liz started getting very nervous. He was expressionless and didn’t speak anymore. She hadn’t liked his menacing grin.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“What?”
“You said Oadby was on the way to where you were going.”
“No,” he said. “No.”
They were driving to the center of Oadby then, to the junction of the main A6 road.
“That’s the turning there!” she said.
But he silently drove past it.
“There’s a turning here!” she said. “Go back!”
Still he didn’t reply.
“I want to get out!” she cried.
He slowed for a second, but only to change gears, then he sped off, heading for the countryside.
They passed a pub and she screamed, “There! Turn in!”
But he was driving down a dark country lane.
Suddenly she grabbed the steering wheel and he had to hang on and mash the brakes!
“We’ll crash!” he yelled as the car skidded to a stop.
“I thought you wanted it!” he said, while she sobbed hysterically. “I thought this is what you wanted!”
“All I want is to go home!” she wailed.
He started the car warily and turned around in a field entrance. His whole demeanor changed. He said quietly, “I’ve had a drink or two, you see.”
“I can drive if you’ve been drinking!” she sobbed.
He put his hand on her knee and said, “I’ve not hurt you yet.”
When they got near the A6 he pulled over and quickly opened her door. But he held on to the handle. “Give me a kiss then,” he said.
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