Blooding

by Joseph Wambaugh

  It was Mick Mason who then asked, “Was your penis hard?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Can’t remember.”

  Mick Mason said, “How clear is this in your mind? The whole thing? The murder?”

  “Crystal,” Colin Pitchfork said.

  Mick Mason said, “Then what?”

  “They always have room,” Colin Pitchfork explained. “No matter where I were exposing meself. No matter where. They always have room to walk by me. It’s the easiest way. You shock them. They walk by you and then you got your exit route clear, and go where they come from. If she’d have ran back down the path she’d have blocked my exit route. If she’d have ran back screaming on Narborough Road I’d have had trouble getting back to the bike. So I had to stand to one side of the path or I’d have blocked her way and my escape route.”

  “So what did you do next?”

  “Now I know it sounds very familiar,” he said, “but she jumped into the gateway.”

  “Like Lynda?”

  “Yeah! I just moved forward and pushed her toward the gateway. It was the same as Lynda! You’re there again! It was the same, but like, worse. And I thought, No no, don’t touch her. Leave her alone. But then once I grabbed her you’re in a situation that if a girl in Narborough gets grabbed, they’ll immediately go to the Lynda Mann enquiry, won’t they?”

  “Continue.”

  “Well, I still got me wedding ring on. I thought, Shit! I knew I were heading into the same thing. It was a reoccurrence. I had her just round the shoulders and round the mouth when she squealed. I had her from behind cause she turned her back when she jumped toward the gate. I very nearly let go of her but the one side got the better of me. See, I still had the motorbike jacket on. She’d report me and I can’t take it off and just start riding the motorbike without a motorbike jacket on. I moved toward her and she screamed. A loud scream.”

  “What did you do?”

  “As I put my hand on her mouth and half leaned on her, the gate opened on its own. I pushed her into the field and she never said much at all. She submitted more then. I would say even more than Lynda.”

  “The gate opened on its own?”

  “We both went into the field through the gate.… It weren’t on a catch.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She kept saying, ‘Please don’t do it. Please don’t!’ But she never actually fought or anything. Before I got her down, before I actually raped her, I knew there was no way I could go back. I could only go forward. The same feelings were coming back. That I was in a trap again.”

  “What was said?”

  ‘“Shut up the bloody shouting!’ I said. I pushed her away from the gate and she fell over. That was really the first time I’d thought of doing anything to her.”

  “Just at that moment, not before?”

  “You find yourself in an open field. Nobody had actually come to her rescue or anything. There weren’t even a chap walking a dog. When she fell she just got quiet, looking at me. And more than anything I were watching the gate. Just to make sure no one was coming. I think that’s when I began to get the … I guess the only way you can describe it is screaming voices in your head. And it seemed like ages but I’m sure it was only seconds. Like, I don’t want to leave her. Don’t want to go away. Do it again here! But saying, No no no no! And the other side was saying, She’s here. She’s a young girl. She’s laying down in a bloody field in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing easier! It were a confliction.”

  “And what happened?”

  “She said, ‘You’re not going to hurt me, are you?’ She babbled something and said, ‘You’re not going to rape me, are you? I’m a good girl. I go to church.’”

  Mick Mason asked, “And what was your reaction to that?”

  “I said, ‘Oh, bloody well shut up!’ I reached under her back and just pulled her knickers straight off. Once I got them off she half picked them up, then I just rolled on top of her.”

  “And you raped her?”

  “I did it, and got off. She were very calm. She sat up and she said, ‘Have you finished? Can I go now? I won’t tell anybody! Please, I won’t tell anybody! Honest! Just go and leave me alone! Please!’”

  Mick Mason again had to ask it. “And was she petrified?”

  “Yes,” Colin Pitchfork said. “But it was calm petrified. ‘I won’t tell anybody! Just leave me alone! Just go and leave me alone!’”

  Mick Mason said, “Right. So what was going on in your mind at this stage?”

  “Screaming to meself, Shit! You done it now! Not only was the problem that you raped her. But you’ve already got one murder on your hands. After you murder once and murder again you got a better chance of being caught, but …” Then Colin Pitchfork showed Mick Thomas a grin of familiarity and said, “But like you said, Mick, the sentences are not like in America. Two murders are okay. It’s not twice the sentence for two.”

  Mick Mason may have been getting close to his limit. He said, “These voices shouting to you are not going on about prison sentences, are they? They’re not really voices, are they? It’s your innermost thoughts, your conscience telling you what you can do and can’t do, isn’t it? I mean, surely, your conscience is telling you, Don’t!”

  Colin Pitchfork, who’d spent years telling probation officers and psychiatrists what they wanted to hear, said, “Yeah, my conscience is telling me, Don’t. But at the same time it’s saying, She’ll identify you!”

  Mick Mason said, “Okay, so in view of your conscience telling you things, what did you do next?”

  But actually, Colin Pitchfork had never mentioned the word “conscience,” nor even described one, not in any of the interviews he was to give, except when Mick Mason forced the issue.

  The prisoner said, “I left her for a second and let her sit up.”

  “What did she do and what did you do?”

  Narratively leaping from first to second person, and past to present tense, Colin Pitchfork said, “She sat up. And I had got to kill her. You can cover your tracks. You can get away with it if you kill her. She had her back to me after she sat up. Which presented me with the ideal opportunity to do a strangle hold. To get her from behind.”

  “With your hands?”

  “No, with a judo strangle. Different than the simple thumbs on either carotid.”

  Colin Pitchfork then exerted his power and control. After all, this was his life story. Instead of choosing to demonstrate on the “good” detective, he chose the “bad” one, the one who disapproved of him. The prisoner got up and moved around behind Mick Mason and put his arm around Mason’s shoulders and his forearm across his throat. And clasping his right hand across his left elbow, he flexed his left arm, putting pressure on either side of Mason’s throat with the biceps and forearm.

  “Yes, you can see it, can’t you?” Colin Pitchfork said. “It’s instant.”

  Then he sat back down and found it very hard to repress a certain amount of pride. “In fact,” he said, “I learned judo at the Caterpillar Judo Club at Desford.”

  Mick Thomas said, “After raping her did you do anything else sexually to her?”

  “No,” he answered quickly.

  “Did you insert yourself into her bottom?”

  “No,” he said.

  Mick Mason said, “At all?”

  “No!” he said.

  “Carry on, then.”

  “Her jacket had come off when I applied the strangle hold round her shoulder. I started to take a ten-pound note out of her purse to make it look like robbery. Then I thought no, I couldn’t see no point in it. I thought, what with money being tight at home, Carole might find it and say where did I get ten quid from? The only cash we had was used for groceries and petrol.”

  “So you didn’t take it.”

  “Then I realized lots of people walked their dogs on the path, so I moved her body in toward the stinging nettles. I saw a six-foot log. I half dragged her body into the stingers and hedge. I
covered her with the log and threw her jacket down the hedgerow. Then I had a bit of panic.”

  “Why?”

  “I lost me watch. Which I don’t know if you ever found, did you?”

  They had not, but Mick Mason wanted to get back to the dying girl. He said, “What happened when you put the strangle hold on her? Specifically.”

  Colin Pitchfork looked at the older detective and said, “You’ll appreciate how quick it killed her if I just show you the effectiveness. Can I just do it again? On you?”

  Mick Mason said, “No. What was the effect on the girl? How long did it take?”

  “Seconds,” Colin Pitchfork said, again annoyed with Mason.

  Mick Thomas asked, “Did she say anything?”

  “No. She just died.”

  And then, like any reasonably adept sociopath who is confronted with the conscience of others—something he considers a weakness—Colin Pitchfork said, “I know I’m talking about it coldheartedly. I don’t feel that way. She died a damn sight quicker than Lynda Mann. Because with Lynda Mann I didn’t go straight for the carotid artery, cutting off blood to the brain. I can tell you, this is a recognized Japanese way of getting somebody. I been instructed in judo, working on a mat.”

  By then, Sgt. Mick Mason wasn’t interested in Colin Pitchfork’s prowess in judo, or scouting, or cake baking. Mason was getting very near to the end. He said, “The rape was very traumatic. The girl was ripped to bits around the vagina and bottom. Can you explain that at all? She was absolutely ripped to bits.”

  “No, I can’t,” Colin Pitchfork said.

  Mick Thomas said, “Did you realize that the girl was a virgin?”

  “She told me halfway through the rape,” Colin Pitchfork said.

  “Did you have any blood on you?”

  “No.”

  Mick Mason started firing multiple questions. He said, “Did you have any control over what you were doing during this rape? Were you completely carried away? And what were you doing to this girl? Exactly.”

  “I wouldn’t say control over what I was doing,” Colin Pitchfork said. “But I’d say I can relive it second by second.”

  Mick Thomas said, “The medical evidence shows that she was entered per anus as well.”

  Mick Mason said, “Do you understand what that means?”

  Colin Pitchfork was really annoyed now. He said, “Yeah, I know what that means.”

  Mick Mason started getting rhetorical. He said, “You went up her bottom. That’s shown because tissues were ripped inside her. Now, we haven’t thoroughly covered that particular aspect of the murder. It may be that you’re aware it happened, but it’s too distasteful to discuss. But it’s a point that we feel we should clarify with you. To discuss your mental attitude at that moment. That you were in control. The answer you gave suggests that you knew exactly what you were doing, albeit you were going along this natural progression.…”

  The prisoner interrupted him, saying, “I wouldn’t say that I knew what I was doing. Although I can recall it, it wasn’t as though I had the control to stop it.”

  Mick Thomas said, “I’m saying that you were under control in that you knew what you were doing, but couldn’t stop what you were doing. Now if I’ve read you right, you would know if you inserted your penis in that girl’s bottom. Whether because you chose to do it or whether it happened because she was struggling, or you were excited, or whatever.” He tried to placate him by saying, “I mean, nowadays it’s perhaps not as unacceptable as it was twenty years ago. Probably consenting adults do partake in that particular way.”

  But Colin Pitchfork wasn’t buying consenting adults. He said, “As far as I’m concerned, I rolled on top of her and raped her and that’s it as far as I’m concerned!”

  Mick Mason simply could not let go of his need for a sign of contrition. He felt this was the most “evil and chilling” man he’d ever met or ever would meet in his police career. He was trying to do what cannot be done: locate a nugget of genuine remorse in a sociopath. He said, “She must have been in traumatic pain when you were doing this.”

  That simply irritated Colin Pitchfork all the more and he said, “So what’s that mean?”

  Mason said, “It means that the girl as you describe her, and as she’s been described to you, is this straightforward girl. Well, were you using some other means to control the situation but not heighten her trauma too much?”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, with what force were you having to insert yourself, and hold her down?”

  “I wasn’t! I told you she was already down. She was laying down. She wasn’t attempting to get up!”

  Fearing that the prisoner’s cooperation was being jeopardized, Mick Thomas again made peace. He said, “Mick brought that up because obviously you had been hurting her. Now, we’re not trying to rub it in, but when you think about how you’ve hurt somebody it’s reason for you to feel very uncomfortable about telling it. As you know, a woman’s first experience is not the greatest in her life.”

  Colin Pitchfork said sullenly, “I asked her if it hurt and she said, ‘Yes, it hurts me!’ And I said, ‘Just lay still and it’ll be done quicker.’”

  They tried one final time to get a description of the “horrific” vaginal and anal assault described at the postmortem.

  Mick Thomas said, “When the girl’s body was found, it was examined by a pathologist and he was able to say that the girl sustained injuries not consistent with ordinary rape. Which suggests other violence had been used towards her. Can you explain that?”

  “No. Can you be more specific as to what the pathologist actually said?”

  “At the moment I haven’t got the statement here, but what I can say to you is that even though injuries occurred just prior to death, bruising started. And he was able to say that violence was used, other than that connected with more ordinary intercourse.”

  “I can’t really recall any other violence. I say the most violent bit was when she turned her face and I sort of grabbed her round the neck. It’s possible that she may’ve moved my arm across her neck if there was bruising on the side of the face. I can’t remember no over-whelming blows, et cetera.”

  Colin Pitchfork denied concealing the body as completely as they’d found it, recalling only a heap of nettles, a little hay and a log. But since a police photo taken three feet away couldn’t even reveal a body, the bizarre theory would persist with some detectives that perhaps the kitchen porter had found the body, tampered with it, and concealed it more thoroughly. Unlike those in genre murder mysteries, confessions are rarely tidy in real life.

  After he’d concealed Dawn Ashworth’s body, Colin Pitchfork said he’d walked across the motorway footbridge instead of going back down Ten Pound Lane. He’d taken the route that Robin Ashworth had always urged his daughter to take. Before getting to the other side of the motorway Colin Pitchfork had removed his motorcycle jacket so that no one would describe a cyclist walking.

  He’d been entertained by the police inquiry. There was the thing about the kitchen porter on the motorbike. Colin Pitchfork had also been riding his motorbike the day he killed Dawn Ashworth. It was an amusing coincidence, but that’s all. It wasn’t his motorbike they were always writing about, the one parked under the motorway. Colin Pitchfork had left his on a side street near King Edward Avenue. And he certainly hadn’t climbed up any embankment and run across the bloody motorway. The fact is, nothing—not a single lead the police had announced in four years—had ever applied to him.

  Nobody had ever seen him. It was just that easy to rape and murder and stroll away. Just that easy!

  Upon arriving home after murdering Dawn Ashworth, Colin Pitchfork found a small drop of blood on his nylon jacket, two inches down from the left shoulder. He described how he cut a swatch the size of a match head out of the jacket. Then he realized that he’d lost his watch.

  First he told Carole that he’d left the watch at work in his locker. The next day he told her it
wasn’t there, and the only thing he could figure was that he’d lost it while riding his motorbike. He did some worrying that the police would find that watch in the field and show a photo of it in the newspapers, but it never happened.

  He did manage to bring home the food coloring on the afternoon of the murder. After strangling Dawn Ashworth, he baked a cake.

  28

  Homage

  … The psychopath shows a superficially adequate adjustment. He is not anxious or distressed.… He shows no blatant irrational thinking and displays no bizarre behaviors. His initial charm and verbal ability distract attention from his deviant and unfeeling behaviors.

  —RIMM and SOMERVILL

  Colin Pitchfork seemed in better spirits when it was time to be interviewed by Derek Pearce and Gwynne Chambers on other subjects. Even as a listener, Pearce had an energy that generated conversation, and with Chambers there was a sensitive tranquility that was reassuring. The prisoner was so comfortable with these two, he became more grandiose, and laced his speech with macho profanity.

  Colin Pitchfork told Pearce and Chambers that he’d flashed a thousand girls in his lifetime. Ordinarily, he talked in a monotone, but when he told of the flashings he spoke with relish. Pearce decided to test him and asked the prisoner to describe some that could be verified. Colin Pitchfork quickly ticked off three, and each of them did check out. He bragged that he could spot a good-looking bird three blocks away, and could correctly guess things about her at first sight.

  He claimed to have flashed a girl in Cosby, figuring her to be another hairdresser. He later followed her, undetected, right to a beauty salon. He said newspaper girls were easiest because they were so available. He described such triumphs with gusto.