Murder Anomalies #1: Victoria Hall and Jeanette Kempton

 This is the first of a series of short articles which are really part of a thinking process towards a conclusion not yet reached. (Rather than starting with a conclusion and then trying to force the facts to fit it.)

Ever since Steve Wright was convicted of the five Ipswich Prostitute murders in 2006, people have wondered aloud if he might also have killed Victoria Hall (who lived in the same village as Wright) in 1999. But this theory has only been entertained by the police from 2019, when they received more information, after releasing covert CCTV footage from the precise site where Victoria's body was found. The police had (for those twenty years) never released the exact location, because it was some distance from the road and therefore not something that a person suffering from idle curiosity was likely to locate without a lot of random wandering. What they wanted to see, was who went straight there. There were people who knew exactly where to go, and in the month following the discovery of Victoria's body, they did. "People" is a plural and that's the first part of the anomaly. If the location was known only to the killer and that was someone who worked alone, how come there was more than one visitor (in more than one vehicle) to the location?

Another part of the anomaly was that Victoria was apparently tracked all the way from the nightclub in Felixstowe, which she left at 1AM on the 19th of September with her friend, Gemma, to a point in Trimley St Mary within yards of Victoria's home, where they finally parted at 2:20AM after walking all the way.

There's a workload issue for one man doing that tracking, just as there is with one man carrying Victoria's body and arranging it, as it was found, in a running stream channelled through a ditch. (It's not just a field drain.) And, as suggested above, more than one man seemed to know the exact spot.

Steve Wright has also been nominated as a suspect in the murder of Jeanette Kempton, who disappeared in South London in January 1989 and was found near Wangford in Suffolk about two weeks later. Given that this involves a journey straight up the A12 from South London, where Steve Wright was living and working up to 1988, to Suffolk where moved back to when he got into trouble and lost his job, he's not an unreasonable suspect at all. Except that workers on the country estate where her body was found, associated two different suspicious vehicles (a hire van with tinted rear windows and a somewhat ropey white car) with the case and the police didn't conclusively trace either one. (An untraceable hire van must take some doing!) Again, multiple vehicles suggest multiple perpetrators.

Jeanette's body was too decomposed to establish her exact time of death, but the pathologist was able to say that she'd suffered a head injury about forty-eight hours prior to death. That suggests a two-day period of captivity and, again, there's a workload issue with that for one man acting alone. And how does anyone hope to establish an alibi if they are absent from their normal setting for two days? You'd need a large-enough group for everyone to turn up where they were expected to turn up, whilst keeping the victim under control. It's a bit hard to calculate the number needed, but it's obviously more than two.

At no point up to and after the moment Steve Wright was charged with the Ipswich Prostitute Murders did the police, or prosecution counsel, suggest or say anything which could be taken to imply that he acted alone and to this day they still haven't! Indeed, at the moment that Steve Wright was so charged, another unnamed suspect was in custody, where he remained, the author believes, until the following afternoon.

And at least three of the Ipswich Prostitute Murders present similar workload issues as Victoria's murder, in that the body was artistically arranged in a problematic location with flowing water. (That is almost certainly why the police have resisted any suggestion that Steve Wright acted alone, even though accepting that premise would spare them an awful lot of work and resources.)

Again, whilst a forensic psychologist who'd worked on the Ipswich Prostitute Murders was convinced that Steve Wright might well have had something to do with a similar cluster of prostitute murders in Norwich, Norfolk police say that not only do they have a DNA profile that is not his, but they have more than one DNA profile that's not his. This has been used to "prove" the psychologist wrong, but all it really proves is that there was more than one man involved in killing prostitutes in Norwich, a possibility that Suffolk Police continue to hold open for ALL the murders that Steve Wright has been convicted of so far.

{One last thought, which takes us a long way from Suffolk. One of the detectives who investigated the disappearance and probable murder of Claudia Lawrence in York, ended up wanting to charge pretty well ALL the customers from her local pub who'd been interviewed by the police, with withholding information or making false statements. He wasn't allowed to, but the fact that he wanted to is telling.}

Anyone who has read this far will now understand why the author isn't yet ready to come to any conclusions, other than the obvious one: there's something here that defies understanding with the currently-known facts. Steve Wright is absolutely not innocent; the issue is more one of how many others might be involved and why on Earth would several people (one assumes all males, but that really is an assumption) cooperate to do something so vile?

The Farshoreman: New Novel Published

When touching an interplanetary space probe sparks young women's dreams of touching the stars, an adventure in spacecraft building begins and flourishes despite pandemics, spies and stalkers.

The Farshoreman is available as a Kindle E-book and Paperback on Amazon.

Link for users of Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B47FLBDS

Link for users of Amazon.com:   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B47FLBDS

Users of other Amazon domains can search Kindle Books for:

The Farshoreman by Matthew K. Spencer

The base prices in the UK are £3.00 for the Kindle E-book and £9.75 + delivery for the paperback. Prices in other countries are derived from this, but in some cases, especially Australia, the paperback may be disproportionately more expensive than the E-book. 

And on Smashwords and Affiliates!

The Smashwords Edition, with its own distinctive Katie Hounsome Cover Art, is available from Smashwords and its affiliates. The base price has been set to $3.81 to match the Amazon base price of £3.00

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1291276

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-farshoreman/id6445158728 

ISBN numbers:

Smashwords ISBN: 9781005315016

Paperback    ISBN:  9798837658099

These may help when ordering either format from some retailers, such as Barnes and Noble.

 

NB: The author does not mean to criticise the BBC's proposed price increase; rather he is trying to lead the BBC by example hence the e-book price reduction from £5.00 to £3.00 or $3.81 as of the 4th of December 2023. The paperback price is dependent on the printing costs.

The author's books will also be participating in the Smashwords end of year sale for 2023.

Book Review of the Library of Heartbeats by Laura Imai-Messina

 

Book Review of the Library of Heartbeats by Laura Imai-Messina

(Translated by Lucy Rand)

* * * * *

(This review is based on a free review Epub from the publisher via Net Galley UK.)

A lyrical real-world fable set in modern day Japan.

An artist brought up by a widow who edits his reality to spare him from tragedy learns to face life without his mother, and, it turns out, his son, when he befriends a little boy. Man and boy bond (when they know they must part) on a journey to the “Library of Heartbeats” where the unique heartbeats of people from all over the world are stored in a beautiful building on a small Japanese island, where visitors can listen to any heartbeat in the archive and record their own, with any message they like for those who might one day hear it, or leave no message but the heartbeat itself. Along the way, they learn that imagination and friendship can not only deal with tragedy and purge needless guilt*, but enhance reality and make life so much better and well worth living.

*perhaps the truly guilty experience no guilt themselves, but this fable sees no guilt in anyone.

The Library of Heartbeats by Laura Imai-Messina is published in the UK by Bonnier Books on the 4^th of January 2024.

Album review of Super. Sexy. Heartbreak by Mary Spender

This is a low-resolution version of the album cover

 

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This is a very well-crafted debut album by a talented musician who has spent a lot of time and effort building her reputation, skills and confidence via live performances and her popular YouTube channel. Streaming services, however, have been politely declined in favour of offering her audience a tangible product of lasting value. Musical production values are high by any standard, let alone a self-produced debut by a singer-songwriter with no big name or big-money backing. The CD booklet contains a good, themed original Art-Noveau-style illustration for each song. Big money would never have invested this much love and care on anything! It wouldn’t actually have invested the money either.

All of which is highly commendable, but is the music itself any good?

Well, yes, it is all is. I found the drum beat on track 4 “Do You Wanna Play” a trifle annoying but I still enjoyed the track. Mary’s voice is rich and enticing. Perhaps that voice is sometimes given more support than it needs, though?

Track 1, “You Can Have Chicago” is a “big” number by which I don’t mean either “loud” or “lengthy” but rather setting a style for the whole album which I think will find fans on both sides of the Atlantic.

Track 2, “Getaway Sun” is a quieter bus trip. (The bus, evidently, was NOT a Bristol LoDecca!)

Track 3, “One Kept Secret” has a more elaborate structure rather than a more elaborate arrangement, something which several of the following tracks share.

Track 4, has been discussed above. It’s nice, but it might be at least as nice without the drum just keeping time.

Track 5, “Make me an Offer” is gentler.

Track 6, “Church Bell” is my favourite and the mix here is suited to the style and feel of this album. It might be even better with a simpler folkish arrangement and a more Catalonian feel than American? That wouldn’t fit on this album, but might make a nice single or YouTube offering at a later date.

Track 7, “Wake Up To You” is fine, too.

Track 8, “Drop, Drop, Slow Tears, Drop” features the instrumental skills of Ariel Posen as well as Mary’s vocals and writing.

Track 9, “One to the West Coast” is another “big” number.

Track 10, “I Blame Myself” sounds nice, but the lyrics actually READ as if Mary had a near miss with a manipulative sociopath!

Track 11, “I’ll Stay Quiet” winds things up gently.

Super. Sexy. Heartbreak. By Mary Spender is available directly from the artist’s website from, I believe the 4^th of October 2023, at:

https://maryspender.teachable.com/p/supersexyheartbreak

Review copyright (c) by Matthew K. Spencer 1^st of October 2023.

Book Review of Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming

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Cracking third spy thriller in a popular series.

(This review is based on a free review .pdf from the publisher via Net Galley UK)

This is a well-written and thoroughly-researched novel about the Rwandan Genocide and its aftermath.

Set mainly in Senegal, London and to some extent New York and Paris as well as other locations, this is a story about how an attempt to deliver justice for the victims of the nightmare of 1994 becomes a smaller nightmare in its own right, in 1995, leading to a significant accomplice escaping justice and being used by a (French) traitor to help him build a huge fortune by laundering money for terrorists. 28 years later, an opportunity arises to put things right, but not without more danger and a further terrible sacrifice. The concluding adventure sequence delivers justice in a satisfying way, but the leading character is left on the cusp of seizing personal disaster from his professional triumph. (This makes the reader wish that someone would hit him briskly on the shins with a cricket bat, but it no doubt sets the scene for the next volume in the series.)

The French government (especially in 1994, but also that of 2023) does not come out of this at all well and it’s very hard to argue, from the evidence in the public domain, that this is in any way undeserved. The DGSE are portrayed as making the CIA look like boy scouts and that might not be too far off the mark, either.

The central premise of the BOX 88 series, though, is a joint Anglo-American intelligence agency acting below the radar. In any kind of real-world practice this might be a recipe for internecine warfare rather than successful cooperation. In actual fact, there was a vitally-important joint UK-USA photo-reconnaissance organisation during WWII, which a Colonel Roosevelt (the president’s son) recommended, on the eve of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, be wound up because the Limey-faggot RAF was in charge! And it is unlikely that BOX 88 could operate “below the radar” in a world where a US Senator on the intelligence and foreign relations committee can be found in possession of a closet full of unexplained gold bars and carrier-bags of banknotes!

But, as a literary device, the Anglo-American BOX 88 with America as by far the senior partner allows the DGSE to be the not-quite enemy in a way that would be enormously offensive to a large swathe of pro-EU opinion if BOX 88 were British! Which is all good fun.

Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming is published by Harper Collins on the 26^th of October 2023.

Book Review of The Bone Chests by Cat Jarman

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Using old bones and science to answer historical questions and, perhaps, ask new some ones.

(This review is based on a free review .pdf from the publisher via Net Galley UK.)

This book tells the story of Wessex, Mercia and then England in the five centuries or so leading up to the reign of William Rufus, through modern attempts to literally unscramble bones mixed up by an act of sacrilege another five centuries after that, in THE English Civil War. Along the way, reference is made to other English civil wars and numerous Viking raids, occupations and two actual conquests. Which by itself shows how much more complex our history is than our general understanding of our own history.

As well as showing us what science can tell us about the fairly distant past, this well written and well-researched work shows us which kinds of historical question science cannot answer: science can tell us whether a traditional account or even a contemporary record is possibly true and it can sometimes tell us when it definitely isn’t true. But that isn’t the same as knowing what really happened in any detail not evident in the long-term consequences of an historical event.

Whilst nearly all of the evidence cited here was found in Winchester, the case cited to best exemplify the limitations of forensic science as well as its power comes from the discovery of the bones of King Richard III under a car-park in Leicester. Because, even though the DNA evidence (popularly supposed to be the gold standard of forensic evidence in modern criminal cases) is actually a bit open to question, pretty well ALL the circumstantial evidence favours the bones discovered in Leicester being those of Richard III, not least the fact that the body was more or less exactly where one researcher had already predicted it might be (and the first place she looked), based on years of work with available records. The body was on its own, it had been buried with no reverence whatsoever, the deceased had suffered from the right sort of long-term skeletal health problems and had died in battle not wearing a helmet and suffering more than one potentially-lethal injury. Possibly several enemy soldiers had gone for the same man at the same moment, which suggests that either they were running out of targets, or he was the target that would end the war!

Despite all that, this work does tell us which Saxon and Norman-era legends and myths might well be actual history and gives some clues as to which might well be fabrications. What it does NOT do, is apply the same patient methodical analysis to the Civil War-era accounts of the desecration of the bone chests and Winchester Cathedral, upon which the whole narrative is hung. That’s not so much a failing as an opportunity for further study and further questions:

If you chuck bones that are between two and five centuries old at stained-glass leaded lights of any quality, do those bones retain anything like the mass and density (“ballistic coefficient”) to actually wreak anything like the destruction claimed?

If men inside the cathedral break the windows by any means whatsoever, how does the glass end up mingled with the bones, also inside the cathedral?

Parliamentary soldiers systematically and habitually desecrating OTHER cathedrals and churches hurled (and shot) much more effective projectiles than very old, almost certainly lightweight and friable human bones!

Wouldn’t a more likely scenario have been something more like the Parliamentary soldiers doing what they had some considerable practice at doing: smashing the windows and doors in from the outside in order to concentrate the broken glass in the space used by (kneeling, if non-Puritan) worshippers before coming inside to see what else needed to be smashed?

How likely is it that the bone chests were actually the LAST thing the Parliamentary soldiers set out to desecrate (definitely the hardest objects to reach, not immediately obviously important), thus explaining why their officers became impatient and called a halt before ALL the bone chests were broken up and their contents thrown around inside the cathedral to mingle with the broken glass?

Might the old and friable bones have done so little damage that soldiers simply got bored with throwing them at things which didn’t break in a spectacular way? Or had they already broken every available glass object by other means?

Using old bones to answer long-standing questions is applied science.

Real science is using the evidence (old and new) to ask new questions.

The Bone Chests, Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons, by Cat Jarman is published by William Collins on the 14^th of September 2023.

 

Book Review of Steel Girls at War by Michelle Rawlins

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(This review is based on a free review .pdf from the publisher via Net Galley UK.)

A city, workplace community and families under the stress of war.

If the previous titles in this series seemed a bit rose-tinted, it’s perhaps because the opening months of WW2 actually were a bit rose-tinted. Dire pre-war predictions of massive civilian casualties hadn’t yet come to pass (and in the UK they never quite did) but the phoney war lulled many people into no longer expecting anything really bad to happen -and then, of course, it did. This book in the series covers the summer of 1940 when the really bad stuff happened and it didn’t look as if Hitler would ever be stopped in his tracks. (NB: even winning the battle of Britain didn’t immediately change this perception, no matter how it’s presented in the feature film of that campaign.)

This story is about what it was like for real people on the receiving end of both real bombing raids and the more shapeless threat of invasion and conquest that lay behind them. And it’s well told:

A woman already driven to the point of collapse with worry about the fate of her husband, missing in France, learns that he’s now in hospital in Portsmouth: one of the cities now being bombed. The psychological impact on the man in question of his frying-pan to fire experience being well described. Another woman and her daughter are coping with a husband and father still traumatised by his experiences in the first world war. Food is short, unless you have somewhere (and the time) to grow your own.

Other characters are still loving and hoping and to some extent this is what allows those in a worse situation to feel a bit of hope themselves.

The author sets out to show how destructive selfishness, even excusable selfishness, can be in high stress, high-risk situations and that, I fear, is a lesson we all need to learn, because the coping mechanisms of nineteen-forties British society have largely been suppressed and dismantled in the present day.

If, in the earlier books in this series, the levels of neighbourly love and community spirit seemed absurdly high to the modern reader, the summer of 1940 was when those “absurdly” high levels of neighbourly love proved to be just barely enough.

Steel Girls at War is published in the UK by HQ on the 31^st of August 2023