Silent Witnesses Read Free Page B

there for six months. He and Pitchfork were not on particularly friendly terms, but they got along well enough.
    Pitchfork took a different tack when trying to persuade Kelly. He told him that he had already given blood for a friend who was scared of getting into trouble because of a previous conviction for flashing and robbery. There was, he said, no chance this friend could have any connection with the murders because he wasn’t even living in the village when they were committed. Now he, Pitchfork, was in trouble because he had done an innocent friend a favor. If discovered, his act of friendship might even land him in prison. The next occasion Pitchfork was due to give blood was January 27. Time was running out for him. He continued to put pressure on Kelly until he eventually agreed to give blood on Pitchfork’s behalf.
    The whole arrangement nearly fell through when Kelly got sick on the day he was supposed to attend the appointment. However, Pitchfork managed to talk him out of bed, and the two of them made their way to Danemill School on Mill Lane in Enderby, where blood was being taken. (Oddly, the schoolwas on the street where Dawn Ashworth had lived.) While Kelly gave blood, Pitchfork waited outside, standing in the shadows so as not to be noticed. Kelly did all that had been asked of him; he signed the consent form and gave both blood and saliva. The job was done.
    By the end of May there had been an amazing 98 percent response to the call for samples. However, of the 3,653 men and boys that had been blooded, only 2,000 had been eliminated due to the laboratory’s unusually heavy workload. By now the murder squad had been scaled down to twenty-four officers, and they had over a thousand people still to contact. Shortly after this, the squad was cut again, to sixteen officers. It was left to Inspectors Derek Pearce and Mick Thomas to fight on the inquiry’s behalf against those who wanted to shut it down completely.
    The breakthrough came, as is often the case, from an unguarded moment on the part of someone involved. One lunch break, Ian Kelly went to the Clarendon pub and met some of his colleagues from Hampshires Bakery. One way or another, the conversation turned to Colin Pitchfork and his inappropriate behavior toward women. During this conversation, Ian Kelly mentioned that he had given blood for Colin Pitchfork once. When he was asked why, he told them about the murder inquiry. Another of the bakers then mentioned that Pitchfork had offered him £200 to take the blood test but that he had refused.
    One of the women there was profoundly disturbed by what she had heard. She asked one of the bakers what they should do about Pitchfork. The reply was simple: “Nothing.” Everyone seemed sure he wasn’t guilty of anything. Besides, it would get Ian Kelly into serious trouble, and nobody wanted that. In spite of this, the woman wouldn’t let the matter drop. She discoveredthat the landlord of the Clarendon pub had a policeman for a son, and she decided that she had to pass the information on, though it was several weeks before she finally contacted the young constable.
    When they received this information, the first thing the team did was compare Pitchfork’s signature on the house-to-house pro forma from the Lynda Mann inquiry with that from his blooding in January of that year. The two didn’t match. On the morning of September 19, Ian Kelly was arrested by Detective Inspector Derek Pearce for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He was taken to Wigstone Police Station to be interviewed. He didn’t hold back, telling the police everything they needed to know and naming Pitchfork as the man he had given blood for. For the first time in many months, the team started to become excited.
    At 5:45 PM the same day, detectives visited Colin Pitchfork’s house. They identified themselves and were allowed inside. They took Pitchfork into the kitchen alone and