And the most horrifying moment was his description of Dawn sitting up, having a conversation, almost joking with him, after all the things he’d done to her. Only to die piteously when she thought she was going to be spared. The Ashworths were utterly devastated by that testimony, and grateful to learn that detectives usually hear such self-serving stories from rapists. They were thankful when the judge read from the pathology report that Dawn had been close to death when the killer viciously violated her.
Carole Pitchfork, sitting next to a policewoman, leaned forward in court to get a look at Barbara Ashworth who was accompanied by Robin and Supt. Tony Painter.
Barbara had a feeling that the plump young woman must be Colin Pitchfork’s wife. She asked Tony Painter and he verified it.
Barbara’s emotions were rampant. She couldn’t believe that Colin Pitchfork hadn’t been marked during Dawn’s murder. Dawn had been so proud of her nails. Carole must have known, must have at least suspected, must have shut her eyes. Or maybe not. Barbara just didn’t know. Not knowing could be the cruelest, sometimes. Except for the outrage. To survive one’s murdered child. The infinite outrage.
To Barbara Ashworth, Dawn’s wristwatch was sacred. She’d never gotten Dawn’s clothes back because they were used in forensic tests, but she did get the watch. Barbara had worn it to Australia, always keeping it set to English time, and had worn another with Australian time.
Barbara said of the watch, “It had never stopped and it kept perfect time, and maybe it sounds macabre, perhaps it’s sick, but that watch lay there with her for those two days.…”
So when the mother of Dawn Ashworth sat in that courtroom and looked at him, she touched the watch frequently.
It was staring at him and having him look straight back at her, without contrition, that made her suddenly cry. Like all the others, she was searching for something in him but did not find it. He looked nothing like the spiky-haired punker she saw in her nightmares. His receding hair and beard were the color of farmhouse eggs. His face was chubby and expressionless.
Standing there in the dock he could occasionally look sardonic, yes. But he was really so ordinary. So banal.
Colin Pitchfork’s sentencing had been slotted in on a busy day. He went in at 11:50 A.M. and they adjourned for lunch at 1:00 P.M. They reconvened at 2:15 and continued until 3:00. And then it was over. Yes, it was decidedly anticlimactic.
And it was a pity that the psychiatrist didn’t choose to describe him as a “sociopath” instead of a “psychopath” in his report, because of the misunderstanding that accompanies the latter. Everyone connected with the case seemed to confuse the word with “psychotic.” Even the journalists made the mistake, writing copy like “Only when brave Liz grabbed hold of the car’s steering wheel in an attempt to force it off the road did Pitchfork snap out of his psychopathic trance and agree to take her home.”
Both the television and print media showed pictures of Colin Pitchfork at his wedding, sporting a silk topper, his brows arched with a saw-toothed grin, all hinting of a latter-day Mr. Hyde. There were many references to his “sickly grin” or “dead eyes,” and endless allusions to “evil.” Almost everyone, it seemed, preferred original sin to clinical definition.
And everybody was distressed by his indifference, though it was totally consistent with the tendency of sociopaths not to respond to threatening events as normal people do. The physical indicators of stress and apprehension just weren’t there, which explains why sociopaths are unfit subjects for polygraphs.
So while the defense lawyer spoke of a haunting, and the judge talked of treatment, the fact remained that Colin Pitchfork may have understood instinctively that he could no more alter his makeup than he could alter his genetic fingerprint. In his interview with Derek Pearce and Gwynne Chambers he told them he hoped to study accounting while in prison. He wasn’t dismayed by a prison term. He said, “I’ll simply be changing a larger world for a smaller one.”
The judge and the defendant’s barrister implied that a third act could be written. But for the sociopath there is no third act.
30
Hindsight
Lykken (1957) demonstrated that psychopaths do not develop the fear necessary to avoid a noxious stimulus.… They simply do not learn well from punishment, an observation that indicates imprisonment will not change their behaviors and personal traits.
—RIMM and SOMERVILL
… Little is really known about possible organic factors that might be involved in the psychopath’s impulsive behavior. Until the etiological picture is clarified, systematic therapeutic procedures will be difficult to develop.
—SUINN
When it was over, the British media offered lots of the tabloid quotes for which there are no equivalents in the rest of the world. Such as: “Behind his sickly smile was the evil mind of a killer,” or “His deviant mind was to plummet to new depths.”
Carole Pitchfork was bitter about the press coverage. One story claimed that the life of the hitchhiking girl was spared because Colin Pitchfork had suddenly realized supper was ready and he had to rush home to a wife who was a strict disciplinarian. This, even though the crime had occurred at one o’clock in the morning when Carole was on a camp-out with the kids.
Eddie Eastwood was interviewed by the television news and claimed that after seeing Pitchfork and Kelly, he realized he’d played darts on Christmas eve in a Whetstone pub with the two of them. But police found this very unlikely. Both Colin Pitchfork and Ian Kelly said they’d never been together outside of work, except during the blooding scheme.
As to his feelings about Colin Pitchfork, Eddie said, “I’d like him to be in front of me, so I could bleed him dry very slowly. Hanging is the only way to deal with this monster.”
Kath said, “He must never be allowed to walk the streets again. He should hang. With this new DNA genetic fingerprint there is no chance of a person being later proved innocent after he’s been hanged. There is no excuse anymore.”
The television reporters wanted an interview with the Ashworths but the Ashworths declined. However, an old interview, given long before Colin Pitchfork had been captured, was intercut with footage dealing with his sentencing.
The old segment showed the Ashworths when they were still working with the police, attempting to pique the conscience of the killer’s family. In that old interview the reporter asked, “Is it conceivable that you might forgive the man, in your own heart?”
There was a very long pause on that videotape before Barbara Ashworth could swallow and say, “I have to. Because otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life being very bitter and twisted. And I don’t think you can go on like that.”
During that old interview Robin said, “I don’t feel any hate or wish for any revenge for the murder of Dawn, because it’s not going to do any good, whatever I feel. It’s not going to do any good.”
In February, 1988, when the new show was aired, the announcer told his viewing audience, “The parents of Dawn Ashworth have no bitterness toward the man who robbed them of part of their lives, only forgiveness.”
So the Ashworths saw themselves on TV offering absolution to Colin Pitchfork. They’d suffered every other indignity, now humiliation.
As to how they truly felt, Robin said, “If the genetic test can prove guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt, I don’t see why they don’t reintroduce the death penalty.”
One month after Colin Pitchfork was sentenced, the Leicester Mercury polled its readers on a proposed return to capital punishment, and one reader in ten responded. The respondents felt a need for the Lord of Death with icy breath. Ninety-six percent wanted to bring back the hangman.
There was a fair amount of hindsight and second-guessing to be found in news reports, and Chief Supt. David Baker faced a grilling about alleged “blunders.” Journalists wanted to know why, given Colin Pitchfork’s flashing background, he’d never been brought in for serious interrogation, and how an altered passport could slip past t
he police. Baker explained that Colin Pitchfork hadn’t even lived in the village when he’d killed Lynda Mann, and there’d been thousands of people giving blood and presenting all sorts of identification to harried detectives. He ended by saying he could offer no guarantees when dealing with deceptive criminals.
There had been a critical editorial asking why Colin Pitchfork had never been photographed and fingerprinted during his earlier brushes with the law when he’d been charged with flashing offenses. Baker said that in years past the police had not routinely photographed and fingerprinted minor offenders. The law had always treated flashing as a nuisance crime.
At the end of the day, it had to be said that nothing would have changed even if there had been photos and fingerprints taken in Colin Pitchfork’s early flashing career. Latent prints had not been found at the scene of the Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth murders. And it was unlikely that a prior photograph would’ve been pulled from his file to await his arrival at the blooding.
Moreover, the girls he’d assaulted in 1979 and 1985 and 1987 probably would never have picked out his mug shot among those of hundreds of Leicestershire sex offenders, since in one episode he had grown a full beard and the other two happened in the dead of night. In any case, an arrest for an earlier assault would not necessarily have diverted Colin Pitchfork from violence. He had always been more opportunistic than compulsive, this sexual sociopath.
Chief Supt. David Baker said that he was satisfied with the way his men had conducted both murder inquiries with untiring self-sacrifice. Despite the clamor for a return to hanging, David Baker still wasn’t sure about capital punishment. He worried as to whether some killers truly had the capacity for criminal intent as defined by law.
As for the other senior officers, Chief Supt. Ian Coutts, the Scotsman who’d commanded the Lynda Mann inquiry, said one evening at police officers’ mess, “I’m not exceptionally religious, but I believe God had a hand in this DNA business.” Supt. Tony Painter, commander of the Dawn Ashworth inquiry, completed thirty years of service in February, 1988, and retired.
The bakery outlet manager came to the police station amid fanfare. The police brass had decided she would be awarded half of the £20,000 reward for having reported Ian Kelly’s pub chat to the police. The other half was not awarded.
There had never been an investigation like it, and the future of genetic manhunts was now being studied by lawmen from all over the world. The revolutionary murder hunt for the footpath killer had resulted in the blooding of 4,583 young men, the last being Colin Pitchfork of Littlethorpe, whose DNA pattern did indeed provide a perfect match to the genetic signature left by the slayer of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth.
The older son of Colin Pitchfork missed his father. Carole explained his absence by saying, “Daddy had to go away. He can’t come back but he loves you a lot.”
When the child asked why his daddy had to go away, she said, “For doing something bad.”
“Like breaking a window, or something?” his son asked.
“No,” she explained, “something really bad. Like hurting somebody, or something.”
When the child painted pictures he’d often say, “This one’s for Daddy.”
Carole often wrote letters for the boy and sent the paintings to her husband, but she never wrote to him on her own. Colin Pitchfork in turn composed picture stories for the children, stories that Carole would not share with any adult. He drew maps and animals indigenous to various countries, and he’d tell a brief story about that country, such as one about Eskimos and a whale as big as a double-decker bus. At the end there’d be questions: How big is a whale? What does a whale eat? Carole would read the stories aloud.
Carole’s failure to visit or write to her husband caused trouble with her mother-in-law who said, “You ought to go see him.”
“If he was my son, I would,” she told his mother. “I respect you and you must respect me.” But finally Carole lost her temper, after which they had a very strained relationship.
Carole had become a part-time youth worker for the county council. It was financially and emotionally draining, raising her young children all alone. And sometimes there was too much time to think.
“It’s like somebody being dead,” Carole said. “Or perhaps like being at a seance, because letters come in the letter box, as if from another world. It’d be better if he was dead, then you could grieve and get over it and it’d be finished.
“His parents want to see him free before they die. But I feel dread at the thought that someday, years from now, he’ll knock. Yet other times I forget he’s gone. Whenever I’m at home and hear a motorbike, I expect him to come in the door.”
After all the smoke had cleared, the last sixteen members of the murder inquiry had a party at a local pub. Derek Pearce presented the others with personal gifts that related to intimate moments during the long inquiry. One of them had gotten a bit tipsy during a mid-inquiry do and had tried to scoop a fish from the aquarium of a seafood restaurant. Pearce presented him with a fishbowl and a live goldfish to commemorate the event. Another, who’d suffered an eye injury during one of their more raucous parties, was given the fresh eye of a bullock.
Gwynne Chambers’s old passport was redone with a picture of the back of John Damon’s head and the signature “Colin Pitchfork.” It was presented to the cop who’d been fooled by Ian Kelly.
They knew there would never be another case so important in their careers. Many of them reported a letdown, of feeling bored and unsettled after returning to ordinary police work. The intensity was missed. Some of them became quieter and more serious.
The goldfish ended up with John Damon, who kept it as a pet and named it Colin.
By mid-1988, United States lawmen had gone mad over genetic fingerprinting, and variations called DNA typing or DNA fingerprinting. There were criminal cases involving genetic fingerprinting prosecuted in Florida, Oklahoma, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington—all with positive results—and large companies in Maryland, California and New York were doing genetic fingerprinting analysis. There were frequent network television reports as well as newspaper and national magazine stories about one criminal case or another having been solved by the new forensic miracle.
The American Civil Liberties Union was studying whether computer data banks, or even voluntary DNA testing, raised constitutional issues, as well as whether DNA information could be used to persecute AIDS carriers, or even for DNA fishing expeditions.
Despite the contentiousness of the American people and their elephantine legal system, one thing seemed certain: The technology discovered by Dr. Alec Jeffreys was able to withstand the scrutiny of molecular biology scientists. Genetic fingerprinting was here to stay. A new industry had been born. Its future and possibilities seemed unlimited. Experts predicted that someday an American citizen’s bloodprint would be as accessible as his Social Security number.
During his eight-month suspension while he awaited trial, Pearce didn’t spend much time cooking for police friends, because suspended officers were forbidden to associate with other policemen. He spent more time socializing at his favorite pub which was seventeen miles from home. A pub with no other police patrons.
He had a lady friend whom his police mates had never seen. There were rumors that she’d suffered some sort of serious injury, and that Pearce had taken care of her, even going so far as to urge her to accept private medical treatment at his expense. None of his former colleagues on the murder squad expected to meet her. If this one ended up flying east they’d never know about it. Humiliation would not be added to heartache.
Now that he was stripped of his rank and authority, Pearce could no longer hide his insecurity behind an aggressive, abrasive façade. So he substituted secrecy, and had a genius for keeping the world at bay. Always a telephone hater, he became harder to reach than Marlon Brando. No one was quite sure what he did to keep the larder stocked and a roof over his head, but he seemed to manage and to stay busy a
t unspecified tasks for unspecified associates. Perhaps he felt more of a pariah than he would ever admit, especially to himself.
Just as he couldn’t be a good patient for a doctor, he couldn’t be a good client for a lawyer. He’d never consider mitigating circumstances. On the night of the alleged assault on the policewoman, he’d just come from the meeting at Tony Painter’s house at which the entire inquiry faced the prospect of shutdown. Everyone else on the murder squad admitted feeling anger, frustration, resentment. In a word: stress.
Pearce couldn’t accept that. He insisted, “I never suffer from police stress. I need it!”
His idea of admitting personal weakness was to say, “They call me arrogant because I don’t suffer fools gladly.”
Pearce’s barrister and his solicitor probably realized that they might have to go to trial against a most hostile witness, one capable of doing terrible damage to their client. The witness named Derek Pearce.
During the course of the trial, Derek Pearce’s solicitor cautioned him about his apparent contempt for the proceedings. Even the judge remarked that the defendant showed a “cavalier attitude.” Nevertheless, on July 5, 1988, after a five-day criminal trial, a jury retired for only forty-eight minutes before returning a verdict of not guilty on all counts.
Derek Pearce was reinstated to the police force and all internal disciplinary proceedings were dropped. The deputy chief constable said that the matter of back pay was “negotiable,” and Pearce said that charges should never have been brought. He was to take a short leave and then be transferred to uniform duties “to be kept out of the public eye.”
Chief Supt. David Baker’s secretary told Pearce that when Baker got word of the acquittal he danced around his desk and ran off to find and congratulate his willful young inspector. Pearce vowed he’d be back in CID working for David Baker as soon as he’d done sufficient “penance.”
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