Country Murder
| Author | B. E. Hotson |
| Published date | 01 October 1982 |
| Date | 01 October 1982 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X8205500411 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
B. E. HOTSON, Q.P.M.
Assistant Chief Constable,
Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
COUNTRY
MURDER
Village life is said to be slow, measured and very predictable.
Everyone knows everyone else and strangers are easily recognized.
Complications can occur, however, when main roads bisect sleepy
villages, leisure centres for water sports are within easy reach and the
only places for holiday visitors to buy forgotten items such as
toothpaste and razorblades are the few village shops which still stock
everything for the countryman's needs.
To an investigating officer the above pattern can be
both
an
advantage and a handicap when life is not only disrupted, but ended,
bythe
most violent of crimes - murder - which is all the more
emotional when it involves a child. Such was the scene on Cup Final
Day, 1968, in a sleepy Cambridgeshire village some 50 miles from
London which was, and still is, bisected by the Al trunk road along
which thunder thousands of motor vehicles from all parts of Europe
and further afield.
It
was late on Saturday night when the alarm was raised because a
young boy had not returned home. An immediate search found his
cycle on the edge of a building site but the body was not found until
after daybreak on the Sunday morning. Death was due to
strangulation, but no weapon could be found or any injury which
might assist the investigation other than a small bruise to show that
pressure had been applied.
As with most murder inquiries the investigation could not start
until hours after the crime had been committed and as the body was
in an isolated spot surrounded by vegetation, well away from any
habitation, it was essential that even the smallest clue should not be
overlooked.
Police inquiries were commenced
but
it was some sixweeks before
an arrest could be made. In
that
time every movement of every
occupant of the village, together with the movements of all visitors,
were established, recorded, checked and double checked. The crime
was eventually cleared through the actions of country policemen,
using their special knowledge of the locality and its customs, all of
whom were more
than
willing to co-operate with the inquiry team.
The first task was for the pathologist, (but later the forensic
experts), to establish the time of death. Nature, as everyone knows, is
unpredictable; temperature changes overnight coupled with
vegetation between the body and the ground ruled out the usual rule"
of-thumb estimates of heat loss. A further factor, namely that of
370 October 1982
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