Murder in the Graveyard
By Aled Mawgan
Synopsis Bakewell, Derbyshire 2002
In 1973 in a graveyard in the picturesque market town of Bakewell, Derbyshire, Wendy Sewell was brutally and bloodily murdered. Stephen Downing who was a naive seventeen year old with a reading age of eleven, worked as a gardener in the cemetery. He was taken to the police station, interrogated for nine hours without access to a solicitor and signed a confession he could not read. Forever afterwards and during his 27 years in jail he maintained his innocence, even though he was offered his freedom if only he would 'admit' his guilt. He chose to continue to suffer rather than sacrifice his principles.
Eight years ago the editor of the local newspaper, a former professional footballer called Don Hale, was approached by Stephen Downing's parents. He began to learn of all the evidence, including witness statements, which seemed to show a version of the events of the day of the murder, which contradicted the official version - evidence, which the police had seemed to discount. Who was the man a witness claims to have seen running away from the murder scene? Which men might have had affairs with Wendy Sewell? Everyone in the town seemed to have a theory as to who the real culprits might be. As Don Hale continued his private investigation he was threatened and attempts were made on his life.
This is the story of how one man, operating on his own, fought tirelessly and courageously in order to piece together the evidence - and how his heroism eventually secured the release of Stephen Downing. The reader can follow the trail of clues and discover what the authorities want to hide.
Prologue
I WAS TRAVELLING HIGH in the Derbyshire hills on the A515, which cuts through the lonely, barren landscape like a giant snake as it climbs and plunges through twenty-four miles of deserted moorland.
It was around 7.30p.m., a cloudy, drizzly evening, and the road was empty. For once I had broken my rule about not going to any isolated location, especially at night, and turned out for what I believed was a fire at a lonely farm on the Ashbourne-to-Buxton road. The tip-off had come to me, as editor of the local newspaper, over the phone, a young woman by the sound of her - and the location and details seemed genuine. But I wasn't totally alone, as behind me, on the back seat, was my collie, Jess.
Then suddenly it was right behind me, appearing as if from nowhere, from one of the notorious dips; a huge truck, either a dumper wagon or quarry tipper, with headlights blazing. It seemed unusual because, although the road was well used by quarry vehicles during the day, you rarely saw an HGV at night. I slowed to let it pass, but the driver also slackened his speed, and remained behind me.
Approaching the spot where the fire was supposed to be I realised I had been the victim of a hoax. There was no sign of any fire, not even a whiff of smoke, so I decided to head back home. The road, with a lay-by at the side, widened ahead of me and I opted to turn the car round there. I swung into the lay-by, steering in a wide arc, and almost clipped the huge vehicle as it clattered past. That's the last I'll see of him, I thought, as I changed up into third gear. But then, to my surprise and shock, I saw that the monster, with its roaring engine, hissing air brakes and screeching tyres had performed a spectacular U-turn in my wake.
Again I looked back in my mirror and saw that the darkened cab was slightly illuminated. The driver was apparently speaking into some kind of walkie-talkie or CB radio. It was gaining speed. My dog was softly whimpering, so I reached back and patted her head.
The car almost took off on one of the major dips in the road. It took a second or two to adjust my vision as the headlight beams bounced back off the dark road surface. There was not another vehicle on the road, just me - and my pursuer. I turned left off the 515 at Newhaven and on to the narrow road which would eventually lead to Cromford and Matlock. Still he followed.
I was sweating with fear. It was pitch black apart from the lights of a distant farmhouse, and I knew I must slow down soon. I had decided to cut off the main road to the left, which would take me back down the valley towards the villages of Winster and Elton on an even narrower road. I thought I'd be safe if I reached it.
The lorry was almost in the back seat again and its lights blazed into my mirrors. I jumped out of my skin as its horn, a deep and very loud siren, blared into my ears. Then the impact. A hard bump in the rear, which jolted the car forward.
The horn sounded again and there was another - and another sickening bump. I tried to think quickly. In a minute or so the junction down to Elton would appear on my left.
Suddenly I had an idea. As the fork approached I thought I would try to confuse the lorry driver. I signalled right, then, at the very last moment, jerked the wheel and turned hard left. But I cursed as the lorry driver copied my actions. He clipped a signpost and ploughed over the triangular grass verge, but still followed.
I knew the road would come to another T-junction in less than two miles. My speed was constant, around the 55 mph mark. It was too dark and narrow to go any faster. The horn sounded again, then another bang. As I was pushed away from each shunt, I noticed the driver on the CB radio again. There was obviously someone else involved.
The road junction was fast approaching, less than half a mile away. I could see a signpost in the distance and noticed a large, dark shape in the middle of the road ahead, and it was growing rapidly.
'What the hell is it?' I asked Jess, peering into the blackness. Five hundred yards and closing, three hundred and fifty yards and closing fast.
Then the realisation hit me: 'Christ, it's another truck!' Two hundred and fifty yards - and still travelling at around 55 mph. A tipper truck was parked sideways across the road, totally blocking it. I noticed a shadowy outline of someone standing near the front of the vehicle. He had something in his hand. A spanner: A monkey wrench? One hundred yards and my heart was still racing. 'Where could I go?
As if by a miracle my headlights picked out a reflector on a small gatepost about fifty yards ahead. Maybe there was an open gateway into a field. It was too late for anything else. I touched the accelerator, then immediately hit the brake and yanked the wheel hard left, ramming the car through the open gateway into a rain-sodden field. There was a terrific bang as the lorry hurtled past. Its airbrakes hissed, screeched and locked, but it was too late for it to stop. It skidded on the wet surface and slid into the side of the other truck.
The field sloped crazily downwards from the gate. It was a sea of mud. I gripped the steering wheel with all my might in a desperate attempt to keep control and somehow managed to turn the car round in a large horseshoe to face the gate again. The rear wheels spun wildly, leaving deep ruts in the sodden grass. I kept up the revs, spun back up the field and drove out of the same gate.
I was so stunned by what had just happened to me that I didn't bother to look either way, and roared back down the road. I was saturated with sweat and through my rear-view mirror I could see white smoke and steam pouring from one of the lorries. Jess barked in defiance and, as I turned to offer a comforting hand, I noticed the driver's side mirror was hanging by a thread - as I realised my life had been.
All the way home I was still gasping for breath. One thing I did know for sure. I knew they were trying to kill me, because they had tried to kill me before.
March 1995
Chapter 1
September 1994
IT HAD BEEN one of those days. I had intended to be at work early, but we had forgotten to set the alarm and now the family was in total disarray. Andrew was rushing to catch his lift to Derby University. He was in his final year, reading computer studies, and should have been down at the bottom of Bank Road some ten minutes earlier. Rob, our youngest, at seventeen, was an ambitious youth, who was in his last year at Highfields School, studying for his A-levels. When I told him I would give him a lift to school he brightened up considerably.
Andrew slammed the front door and ran down the steep incline towards Matlock town centre, with a piece of toast in one hand and his jacket and a small case in the other. Kath had gone to unlock the tearooms she had been running in Crown Square for about four years. It was becoming a heavy commitment and she was in the process of trying to sell the business. She left with a list containing a thousand jobs that should have been done the night before. She knew the staff would be on the doorstep and the early morning regulars would not want to listen to any excuses about a cold boiler.
I ushered Rob out of the door and into my car as I straightened my tie. We lived in a Georgian property within a small cul-de-sac, just half a mile from the centre of town. It was a bright, sunny Monday morning and I thought how lucky we were to have a home in such a splendid location. It was a joy to look across the lush green valley first thing in the morning and admire the splendid autumn colours. But winter would soon be here and I was pleased I had bought a house below the snow line.
We had returned from Amsterdam the night before from a short break. In many ways I was delighted to be home. I didn't like being away from the Matlock Mercury for too long. After more than nine years as editor, I was still reluctant to leave anyone else in charge.
I dropped Rob off in a lay-by on Chesterfield Road several hundred yards from his school - so that his friends wouldn't see his dad giving him a lift - and drove back down the steep hill to the Mercury offices just off the main A6 on the road out of Matlock towards Bakewell. Situated a couple of hundred yards from the town centre, our office was a former print works sited in between the Trent bus depot and Twigg's engineering works. It had two large, old-fashioned, red-and-white painted shop windows.
As I turned into the car park, I noticed my own staff had already arrived and parked with care to make sure I didn't block anyone else in. Parking was limited at the Mercury, and places at the front of the building were usually snapped up by my advertising manager and his three reps. Editorial cars were parked around the side.
As you went in through the front door there was a reception counter and front office, with several smaller offices through the back. It was a ramshackle-looking place and reminded me of Dr Who's Tardis, appearing deceptively tiny from the outside but, once you entered, revealing itself to be much larger. The rooms were dark and dingy, cold in winter and hot and stuffy in summer. They always had a rather dank smell and, despite constant attention, the roof still leaked in numerous places. A line of pots and buckets stood ready for the next downpour.
The only natural lighting in the main section came from a row of windows at the back of the building, but they looked out on to a jungle of overgrowth and were virtually useless and often, first thing in the morning, a large tabby cat would perch on the window ledge looking for field mice. The editorial department was in the former kitchen area and part of the old print production works. I had my own small office sandwiched somewhere in between the two areas. I could hear the typewriters clattering away as I opened the back door and saw the reporters going about their business. 'Morning, everyone,' I said as cheerfully as I could manage. I hoped they wouldn't notice that I was already more than ten minutes late.
'Anything special happened since I've been away?'
My trainee journalist, Jackie Dunn, a bright, bubbly Lancashire lass in her early twenties, called across and, with a grin on her face, asked me if the flight had been delayed. Cheeky so-and-so. She then gave me a brief summary of events from the previous week.
Norman Taylor, a retired train driver in his late fifties and now our sports editor, informed me Matlock Town had gained a comer in my absence - no goals, but a comer was better than nothing, wasn't it?
That earned a glare from the far comer of the room, courtesy of Sam Fay, my deputy editor. In his late sixties, he had served with the Grenadier Guards in some of the worst conflicts of the Second WorId War. Sam had retired, but returned on a part-time basis.
I settled down and began to plough my way through the paperwork, asking Sam for a meeting in half an hour or so to discuss stories for next week's edition. In the meantime there were freelance bills to sign, letters to the editor to check, rambling requests from a host of loca! organisations and a pile of photographs to consider.
I was just about to take off my jacket and was fishing for a pen in my top pocket when the small, sliding door in the frosted-glass partition dividing editorial from the advertising department, slid open.
'There's a man waiting to make an appointment, Don. Something about a murder,' said the receptionist. She cupped her hand over the receiver. 'Do you want to take the call?' she asked. 'He says it's something to do with his son, Stephen.' I beckoned to her to put the call through. Immediately the man at the other end of the line started talking nineteen to the dozen.
'Stephen who?' I asked, when I could finally get a word in. 'Downing,' replied the man at the other end of the line. Then, without further prompting, Ray Downing began to tell me about his son, apparently still in jail for a murder he claimed he didn't commit. He said the murder had taken place twenty-one years before in Bakewell, a town about eight miles from Matlock.
I let him have his say. At this point many a national news desk executive on a busy daily paper might have politely, or even brusquely, fobbed him off. 'Mr Downing,' I said.
'Ray,' he interrupted.
'OK, Ray. Look, you don't need an appointment to see me. I'm usually here from dawn till dusk,' It was difficult to take in all the facts on a telephone. 'Yes, 2.30p.m. is fine, Mr Downing - sorry, Ray. Yes. Please bring the papers with you. I don't know what I can do but I'll have a look. Thank you, goodbye.'
I turned to look at my team. 'Something to do with a murder case from 1973. Ray Downing, a local taxi driver and his wife Juanita want to come and see me today. This afternoon, in fact.'
Sam pulled a cigarette from a new packet and lit it. He frowned. 'Don, I'll have to go out for a while this morning. I'll see you later, if that's OK? We'll have a chat about this Downing fellow.' With that he disappeared out the back way in a haze of smoke. I hoped he made it through the door before his fag ash spilled on to the carpet.
There was a knock on the glass-topped editorial door. It was exactly 2.30p.m. 'Mr and Mrs Downing to see you, Don,' said Susan, one of our advertising reps.
'Yes, of course, come through, please,' I said, showing the couple into my office at the rear of the building. I pulled out two chairs and sat opposite them, peering at them over a large wooden table. Ray carried a large pile of documents, which he placed on the table in front of him. I began to shift some papers and moved another of Sam's ashtrays out of the way, tipping its contents into a bin. Ray had a smooth rounded face, which wore a worried expression. I thought he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties. His wife Juanita was about the same age. She had sharp features, seemed rather nervous and was extremely thin. Both were well dressed as if wearing their Sunday best. I had never met either of them before.
Ray immediately explained his reasons for contacting me. He claimed his son Stephen had been jailed in 1974 for the murder of a woman in the town's cemetery the previous year. Ray kept saying he was innocent and said everyone in Bakewell knew he was innocent. '1 can almost certainly tell you who was responsible,' he added. 'N early everyone in the area seems to know who did it.' I was staggered. At this point he did not mention any name.
The Downings’ alleged Stephen had been framed for the murder because the town wanted someone to blame. They claimed he had been forced into confessing to an assault on a young, married woman, which later landed him on a murder charge when the victim died. The woman, Wendy Sewell, was very promiscuous, according to Ray, and had taken several prominent local businessmen as lovers. He suggested a long list of individuals and said they were all well known in the Bakewell area. He believed the powers that be in the town had conspired to protect Wendy's secret life - and themselves, from scandal.
There were, he said, several other characters seen in or around the cemetery on the day of the attack. But potential witnesses had been ignored and some who had spoken out had been warned off. He strongly believed that one particular neighbourhood bobby who 'had it in' for Stephen had gone all out to get a quick confession out of him. His son had retracted this confession thirteen days later, some five months before the trial, but it had been the basis of the prosecution case on which he was convicted. There had been attempts at getting Stephen out on appeal - the first in October 1974, just months after the trial, the second some thirteen years ago in 1981. Both had failed. Ray said a private investigator had worked on the case for the first ten years, but had died some time back.
So far Juanita had let Ray do most of the talking. Now she began fumbling with their paperwork on the table and produced some old newspaper cuttings, which outlined these previous attempts. She explained that the rest of the documents were a wad of court papers, copies of statements from years ago and various reports I might find interesting. Ray cut in and explained that the reason they were here today was because a woman had telephoned them anonymously saying she had sent both me - and the editor of the Star - some fresh evidence that could help clear their son's name.
'The Star?' I asked. 'Do you mean the Sheffield Star, or the Daily Star?'
'She just said the Star.'
'I've just come back from my holiday. I don't think anything's arrived here but I'll go and check,' I told them. I brushed past the couple and made my way back to the main office. 'Anyone know something about a letter concerning Stephen Downing? His parents think some fresh evidence may have been sent here while I was on holiday.' There was no reply. Jackie and Norman shook their heads. Phil was answering a phone call.
'Whatever came in that we couldn't deal with is on your desk now. I don't recall anything about a Stephen Downing,' said Jackie. 'What's it all about?' asked Phil, putting down the receiver. He was a young ambitious reporter and had his long hair tied back in a ponytail.
'Not quite sure, except he's been in jail for murder for over twenty years. The parents are desperate and looking for a lifeline. The murder doesn't ring a bell with me. I'll ask Sam when he comes back later,' I replied.
I returned to my office and told the Downings nothing had been received so far. I said I would call the Daily and Sheffield Star. I had contacts at both places and would let them know.
They thanked me for my time and interest. They left some of their paperwork with me to study. I arranged to see them a day or two later at their own home. We shook hands and I escorted them to the front door. I promised I would read through their paperwork later.
I was intrigued by what I had just heard. The Downings’ were a likeable couple and, without doubt, genuinely believed in their son's innocence. Ray had been intense and full of conspiracy theories. Juanita had, throughout our meeting, said very little, maintaining a dignified, care-worn expression as she listened to Ray's conjectures. I was apprehensive about getting involved, and wanted to keep an open mind, but as a father of two boys who were just embarking on manhood and discovering their independence, I couldn't help but identify with the Downings sorrow at the way things had turned out for their son. I realised with a jolt that my own teenager, Robert, was the same age Stephen Downing had been when sent down for murder.
Sam returned soon after they left. He still had a cigarette in his mouth. 'Did Downing come in, then?' he asked casually.
'Yes, Sam. What do you know about this case?' I enquired.
Sam grabbed my arm and led me back into my own office. 'He's well known in Bakewell,' he explained, once the door was closed. 'Drives people crazy with all this talk about his son's innocence. Runs a local taxi firm and has spent years trying to solve the crime and free his son. Poor sod, can't blame him, though. Stephen was only a kid. A bit simple too, from memory.'
We sat down opposite each other. Sam puffed on his cigarette. I looked for the ashtray I had just emptied. He still had his hat and coat on. He looked for a moment like a detective from a movie. Sam had. been involved with the Derbyshire Times and Matlock Mercury as a journalist for more than forty years. He knew everyone and everything about this area. I explained to him about the family's claim of an anonymous caller and fresh evidence. I waved the bundle of paperwork at him. He didn't seem over-impressed. He had two or three drags on his cigarette. Then he started to talk about the case.
'It's a long time ago but I was on the story leading up to the trial. As far as I can recall, there was a slight feeling of surprise when he was convicted. He was only sixteen or seventeen, I think.'
'Seventeen, Sam,' I confirmed.
'Yes, whatever, I know other names were being bandied about and the murdered woman was well known in the area - if you see what I mean?'
'Not really, Sam.'
'She'd left her husband,' he continued, 'and I think there was some sort of scandal. You know what Bakewell's like? I probably have some old cuttings at home. I think Stephen Downing admitted something, then retracted it.'
I stared back at Sam. He was over six feet tall, slim, with a rather solemn face. He looked uncomfortable, hunched in the visitor's chair. It was often hard to tell his mood. 'I've agreed to go to their house on Thursday. They want to show me some things,' I explained.
'Be careful,' he warned, 'don't get sucked into all this.'
I called Jackie across and told her to bring her notebook. 'Jackie.
Stephen Downing. Arrested for the murder of Mrs Wendy Sewell in Bakewell cemetery in September 1973 - some twenty-one years ago. I want you to go to Derbyshire County Council archives department. Get llle everything you can on this case. The trial was in February 1974 and an appeal in November the same year. Then another review in the early Eighties. Look for cuttings around those dates, any editorial comment, even letters to the editor. Check our own files too. See if you can persuade the court clerk at Nottingham to send us a transcript of the trial. Anything else you can think of. Perhaps you can ask Phil to have a chat with the local bobbies?'
She nodded and dashed across to tell Phil.
I put calls through to Frank Curran, the Midlands reporter for the Daily Star, and Rob Hollingsworth on the Sheffield Star. Neither had seen any anonymous letters relating to the Downing case, but both told me to call if anything interesting turned up.
Chapter 2
I wasn’t native to Derbyshire - I was born in the Glenside Nursing Home in Prestwich, north Manchester, on 31 July 1952, and spent my formative years in that area. My father was an intelligence officer with Monty's Eighth Army in the Second World War who became an accountant on his return to Civvy Street. Charles Hale wanted his two sons to do well in life. When I left Whitefield County Secondary School in 1968 at the age of sixteen and announced I wanted to be a footballer, he was mortified. 'Get yourself a proper job, son,' he told me in no uncertain terms.
But his advice fell on deaf ears. I had signed for Bury's Youth, Junior and Reserve sides two years previously. At that time Bury were in the Second Division of the Football League, and I worked as an apprentice cleaning boots, tending nets and turning out for the reserves on the wing. I was noted for my speed, having won medals for running, and become Lancashire sprint champion.
Sadly, though, my early footballing days were blighted by injury. I soon realised I might have to look for a career outside my chosen sport. I had always enjoyed writing stories and, when at school, had edited the school magazine for two years. I always thought then that a reporter's life might be a fairly pleasant and exciting one. To that end, while earning the princely sum of £7 a week from Bury FC, I began filing several sports reports to the Manchester Evening News, as well as scoring forty-two goals for Bury's Youth, Junior and Reserve sides in the Floodlit League.
In my early twenties my persistent injury problems eventually forced me to abandon any ideas of full-time professional football. I concentrated my energies on journalism, firstly as the Salford and then North Manchester reporter for the Manchester Evening News, and subsequently as a full-time reporter in local radio. At Radio Manchester I became showbiz reporter, then I was recruited by Eddie Shah to become sport and then news editor of the Bury Messenger.
When the Johnston group took over I moved to the Matlock Mercury as editor: a quiet little paper in a quiet little town. My wife Kath, and our sons Andrew and Robert, immediately took a shine to the Peak District. I accepted the appointment immediately - this was my chance to be part of a small rural community, to influence its decision-making and campaign for its residents.
As I walked through the door of the dilapidated building in Dimple Road on 23 September 1985, to be greeted by a small, enthusiastic but apprehensive staff, I had no idea what the future held for me.
I settled down at my desk with one drawer stuck half in and half out, and a folded-up beer mat under one of the legs to keep it steady, unpacked my contacts books and was about to store them away safely when my phone rang. I picked it up and the girl who manned the tiny switchboard put through the first call of my editorship. 'It's the local Women's Institute, Mr Hale,' she said. 'They're not at all happy with last week's report on their whist drive. I'm sure you can sort it out.'
'I'm sure I can,' I said.
Jackie spent every spare moment of the two days following the Downings' visit trawling through old newspaper cuttings from the early 1970s, building up a picture of the Wendy Sewell case. It was to become a familiar pattern in the months ahead . . . hours were spent rummaging through micro-discs at the Derbyshire County Council archives department in Matlock, phoning round several other newspapers and doing background research. She contacted the Home Office to get papers relating to the case or subsequent appeals. I tried to track down relevant forensic or medical reports.
Jackie's initial file of newspaper cuttings was impressive. They gave quite a bit of detail about the victim and her husband, and would provide me with a good foundation before I set aside more time to read the official papers. They related to the original arrest, to the development of the case, the trial itself, the early appeal and further attempts to seek justice over many years.
My other reporters were also eager to join in the investigation.
Murder inquiries made only rare appearances in the columns of the Matlock Mercury, and this one had already grabbed everyone's imagination. I still remember one Friday evening as I was leaving the office for the weekend I had to smile as I passed Phil, my junior reporter, busily photocopying clippings handed over to him by Jackie. It occurred to me that the young lad was not even born when Wendy Sewell met her death, and that Stephen Downing had been in prison for the whole of Phil's lifetime. 'Couldn't it wait till Monday morning, Phil?' I asked. 'Why not get yourself out and enjoy the weekend?'
'Stephen Downing's waited twenty-one years, Don,' he reprimanded me. 'How many weekends has he enjoyed?'
Over the following days I read and reread the old cuttings. The attack in the rural cemetery had not made much impact on the nationals. But the reports and headlines from the county and regional newspapers were fairly consistent.
On Friday 14 September 1973 one said: MURDER BID CHARGE. 'Critically ill in Chesterfield Royal Hospital with serious head injuries is an attractive 32-year-old housewife, who was found unconscious in a Bakewell cemetery just after lunchtime on Wednesday.
Yesterday morning, Derbyshire police said that a young man had been charged with attempted murder and would appear at a special court in Bakewell later that day. The accused· is understood to be 17-year-old Stephen Downing, a gardener from a Bakewell council estate.
The woman, Mrs Wendy Sewell of Middleton-by-Youlgreave, was discovered just after 1.15p .m. She was rushed to Chesterfield Royal Hospital but early yesterday morning had still not regained consciousness. Police are waiting at her bedside.
She was discovered lying face downwards between gravestones in an old part of the churchyard, close to dense woodland. The cemetery was sealed off as police began their investigations.
Fifty CID and uniformed officers were drafted into the quiet market town and the area surrounding the cemetery was combed by tracker-dogs. Det. Supt Peter Bayliss announced that a 17-year-old youth had been formally charged with attempted murder.
Mrs Sewell worked for the Forestry Commission. She left the office just after midday and was seen walking along the 'Butts' in the direction of the cemetery shortly after 12.30p.m. Neighbours said on Wednesday night that Mrs Sewell often visited her mother at Haddon Road, Bakewell, after finishing work.
Before her marriage, Mrs Sewell was a student and lived in Sheffield. She married her husband, David, a physicist with British Rail at Derby, nine years ago. Mrs Sewell is known locally as a pet lover and keeps nine cats in the farmhouse.
A slightly later cutting, dated Friday 21 September, said: Woman dies after attack in cemetery. Stephen Downing (17), a gardener, is due to appear in court following an eight-day remand in custody. The papers for the case have been forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but no information was available this week as to whether the charge would be increased to one of murder. Downing made a two-minute appearance before a special court in Bakewell last Thursday and was charged that he did attempt to murder Mrs Wendy Sewell.
Mrs Sewell was born in Sheffield and studied music at a college in the city. Her family lived there at one time and it was there she met her husband David, who lived in the same district. The couple were married at Crenoside Parish Church in 1964 and moved shortly after to set up home in a bungalow in Wyedale Crescent, Bakewell.
When she first arrived in the town, Mrs Sewell worked at the magistrates' clerks office. She later joined the Forestry Commission as a secretary working at Catcliff House, King Street, Bakewell.
Mr and Mrs Sewell moved to Green Farm, an 18th-century country house in Middleton-by-Youlgreave . The couple have no children. Mrs Sewell shared her husband's interest in vintage cars, and was a keen collector of antiques. She also loved walking and often walked the mile and a half from the bus stop in Youlgreave to her home.
Mr Sewell is employed as a principal scientific officer by British Rail in Derby. Mrs Sewell's mother, Mrs Margery Crawshaw, also lives in Bakewell.
On 22 February 1974, following the trial at Nottingham Crown Court, the Derbyshire Times claimed: YOUTH ON MURDER CHARGE IS FOUND GUILTY Stephen Downing, aged 17, was found guilty of murdering 32- year-old typist Mrs Wendy Sewell in a cemetery in Bakewell, Derbyshire, by a unanimous verdict.
Downing, who was alleged to have bludgeoned his victim with a pickaxe shaft and sexually assaulted her before leaving the body among the tombstones, was ordered to be detained at the Queen's Pleasure. They took only an hour to reach their unanimous verdict last Friday.
Passing sentence Mr Justice Nield told Downing, who worked in the cemetery as a gardener, you have been convicted on the clearest evidence of this very serious offence.
Mr Patrick Bennett QC, prosecuting, had described how Downing had followed Mrs Sewell in the cemetery before carrying out the savage attack with a pickaxe handle. Downing claimed that he had found Mrs Sewell's half-naked body and then sexually assaulted her.
Mrs Sewell, who lived at Green Farm, Middleton-by-Youlgreave, died in hospital two days after the attack from skull and brain injuries. Downing was alleged to have admitted the assault late at night after spending several hours in the police station. He was alleged to have described how he struck Mrs Sewell with the pick shaft on the back of the head and undressed her.
Police officers denied that Downing had been shaken to keep him awake after spending hours at Bakewell police station. His mother, Mrs Juanita Downing, told the jury that her son had never gone out with girls and only had one good friend.
Downing said that blood spots on his clothing got there when Mrs Sewell raised herself on the ground and shook her head violently. He had told the jury that he found the victim lying semi-conscious in the graveyard after going home during his lunch hour, but the prosecution said that his lunchtime walk was only an alibi after he had carried out the attack. Downing had pleaded not guilty to the murder.
Other regional papers carried similar headlines. They also gave similar descriptions of the court proceedings, stating, 'A savage assault by a teenager with a pickaxe handle. She had sustained repeated blows as many as seven or eight to the head - and had then fallen against tombstones. '
Most papers also made particular reference to Judge Nield, who had kept referring to Downing's statement, which was 'signed over and over again and formed the main plank of evidence for the prosecution'.
To all intents and purposes, it read like a straightforward conviction. A confession had been obtained on the same day the attack took place, although Downing retracted this confession five months before the trial. Yet the prosecution case relied heavily on this confession. The trial lasted three days. The jury heard just one day of evidence, and took less than an hour to reach its unanimous verdict of 'guilty'.
I wrote to Derbyshire police headquarters at Ripley, asking if they could release the paperwork, and make available the murder weapon and other trial exhibits for forensic testing. I knew in was even going to attempt to understand this case fully I would have to look at the scene of crime and try to clarify in my mind the various allegations being made by the Downings’, so, on the Thursday, three days after Ray and Juanita first approached me, I set out on the drive along the A6 to Bakewell.
Although Matlock and Bakewell are near neighbours, they are worlds apart. Bakewell is a traditional market town of just under 4,000 inhabitants, when the farmers of the area gather each Monday to buy and sell cattle and keep up with the news in its six old, hospitable oak-beamed pubs, or the bars of the British Legion, Conservative Club and Working Men's Club. It is a community of limestone and grits tone houses, traditional homes of generations of families and traders tied to the working of the land, built on the banks of the River Wye in the heart of the rugged, rolling landscape of the Peak District.
Matlock is a more sprawling conurbation with a population of nearly 10,000, more than twice the size of Bakewell. It is the home of Derbyshire County Council and the Derbyshire Dales District Council, and host to several large factories, garages and offices, although the local mill has long since shut its doors. It is a place where the youth of the area, and in truth the not so youthful, meet up every Friday and Saturday night at the 'Pav', the Victorian pavilion where gentlefolk once carne to take the healing Matlock Bath waters. Nowadays refreshment of a different kind is taken at the packed and lively weekend discos.
Although Bakewell remains an altogether more sedate place, many changes have come to it in the last few years. The cattle market has moved from the centre of town to the outskirts, a supermarket is built on its former market square site and new 'executive' homes, out of the reach of the locals' purses, spread along the banks of the Wye where generations of Bakewell children had traditionally come to feed the ducks. New shops now sell hiking gear and designer clothes, and the numerous little cafes serving the famous Bakewell puddings seem to multiply every year. The peaceful little valleys of the town and its environs, previously known as West Derbyshire, have been trendily renamed the Derbyshire Dales.
The population, like that of many of the Peak District villages, is shifting from native to incomer. The town, with the blessing of the Peak District National Park Authority, has given itself over to tourism. It is difficult to find anywhere to park on weekends or market days. Yet old habits die hard. Bakewe1l still retains its snobbish character. A walk down its sma1l streets bears testimony to its old-established family businesses butchers, solicitors, estate agents, surveyors, grocers, clothiers, the list goes on - which a1l bear name plaques over their small front doorways that have not changed in generations.
One source of bitter rivalry between established tradesmen is the Bakewe1l Pudding. Bloomers, the bakers, and the Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, each lay claim to the true recipe for the sweet, some would say rather sickly, invention. The legend surrounding its origin goes back two centuries when a chef at the town-centre Rutland Arms Hotel was preparing a dessert for a special guest one evening and accidently mixed the wrong ingredients together. The resulting disaster turned into a great success when the VIP declared the botch-up to be delicious. The chef made a note of his mistake, wrote down the recipe and it was passed down through generations of town chefs. But who has it now? One thing everyone agrees on is that its name is the Bakewell Pudding, not the Bakewell Tart.
Bakewell even has its own hunt, surely the ultimate countryside institution. What's more, Prince Charles has been known to ride out with the Bakewell Hunt during his visits to Chatsworth House, the stately home of the Dukes of Devonshire some three miles away. Matlock can't match that.
The hunt kennels are right next door to Lady Manners School, itself something of an institution, built at the very top of the town in open fields beyond the cemetery and the council estate where the Downings live. Lady Manners was bequeathed to the town in 1636 by Grace, Lady Manners, of the Vernon family of nearby Haddon Hall, to 'provide good learning and Christian religion for the children of Bakewell and Great Rowsley'. It is a state school, which has always liked to consider itself run along public-school lines. House buyers with children ensure that their potential purchase falls within the 'Lady Manners catchment area'. It has become a selling point with estate agents. It is considered a 'nice' school, with history, founded by a titled family. Matlock, which had a perfectly good secondary school, can't boast that.
Within three short miles of Bakewell are as many families of the landed gentry. As well as the Devonshire’s at Chatsworth and the Duke of Rutland at romantic, medieval Haddon Hall, formerly the home of the Vernon family, there are the Davy-Thornhills at Stanton Estates. This family's wealth is founded on an ancestor's invention in the early 19th century, the Davy safety lamp once used down every coal mine in Britain. The family own vast acres of land to the south-east of Bakewell. As recently as thirty years ago they also owned almost every home, pub, bam and outside toilet in the village of Stanton-in-Peak.
In the 'old' Bakewell of the Sixties and Seventies, where Stephen Downing grew up, there remained an almost feudal class system, a tiered structure .of society, which people raised in urban conurbations would find almost impossible to comprehend. Beneath the landowning families were the professional classes and gentlemen fanners, the stalwarts of the Bakewell Rotary Club and the magistrates' bench, solicitors and owners of established businesses or small factories in the surrounding areas. Many lived in the town itself, some in the 'posher' outlying villages like Ashford-in-the-Water, barely a mile from the town centre. Beneath them were the village bobbies and fanners, shopkeepers and garage owners, employers of a dozen or so men in one trade or another, a type of man who kept the local Masonic lodge going. At the bottom of the pile were the 20th-century equivalent of the feudal 'serfs', farm labourers, factory hands, estate workers, quarrymen hewing the Derbyshire stone from the surrounding hills. They lived in the pebbledash council estates tagged, as if in embarrassment, on to the end of each small village street and, in the case of Bakewell, out of sight at the top of a steep hill on the outskirts of the town opposite the municipal cemetery.
In such a house lived Stephen Downing, in a loving family home and simply unaware of the formidable social barrier separating the haves from the have-nots. When they had come to see me, Ray and Nita had brought a photograph of their son, aged seventeen, shortly before his arrest. It showed a smiling, slightly chubby youth, his face topped by a mop of unruly hair, wearing flared loon pants and platform shoes. I wondered how he'd appeared to the older, more conservative inhabitants of a place still clinging to its image of old market town respectability in the face of the swinging Sixties and liberated Seventies.
In the relatively short time I had been at the Mercury, too short to be accepted as a real 'local', I had nevertheless spoken to enough people to get a picture of what the town must have been like at that time. In old archive photographs from the Mercury library, the new streamlined Capris and Triumph Stags from Ford and British Leyland appear on the streets but, despite these big-city trappings, the world of the young and old began and ended in the peaceful little valleys of Bakewell and its environs. The car had then not completely taken over and people had a greater reliance on public transport in their everyday lives. During the week the local buses, run by Hulley's of Baslow and the Silver Service line from Darley Dale, had busy timetables. Every seat was taken to ferry the workers from villages and hamlets over the hills - scarred only by the quarries, whose stone had built their homes and guaranteed local employment.
While husbands remained the main breadwinners, the wives like Nita Downing - earned extra money doing part-time jobs. They fitted them in between seeing the children off to the village school in the mornings and rushing to catch the bus back from Bakewell Square in the late afternoon in time to get the tea ready for when everyone got home. Most people knew each other, and a stranger in town stood out like a sore thumb.
The 'townies' came from Sheffield or Chesterfield, which for generations, had been distant glittering metropolises in the minds of the youth of Bakewell and its surrounding villages. At weekends and Bank Holidays there would be an invasion of the city 'yobbos' in their late teens and early twenties with drunkenness, rowdiness and fighting with the local lads the inevitable outcome. The same would happen on Mondays, Bakewell market day, when opening hours were extended and all-day drinking ensued. The old farmers who had come in from a radius of thirty miles to sell their cattle could hold their ale, not so some of the younger farm hands or the 'townies'. Bakewell magistrates' court was always full at its weekly Friday session, most addresses of defendants given as somewhere in Sheffield. 'These townies are a bad influence on our kids,' said the locals.
No one notorious was born in Bakewell and the resources of its little constabulary had seldom been stretched beyond its limits, at least not by the activities of the townspeople. It had never featured high in the league of crime statistics of Derbyshire police and, before the autumn of 1973, no one could remember any of its inhabitants ever being charged with murder. Yet, as things were to turn out in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Agatha Christie might have been inspired to dispatch Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot to this particular part of the English countryside. Stephen Downing became the first of the townsfolk to feature in national-newspaper headlines for alleged serious wrongdoing, a young man accused of the most serious offence ever committed in that beautiful spot on the map.
That day in September 1994, as I drove to see Nita and Ray, it struck me how incongruous a brutal murder must-have seemed in this town of picture-postcard prettiness. I imagined the shock waves reverberating through this tight little community, followed quickly by shame that something like this could happen in this town of solid respectability. Bakewell must have felt its rural idyll had been shattered. Was it still hiding more secrets than the ingredients of a pudding recipe?
I turned sharp left up the hill from the Square, up King Street and then left into Yeld Road, leading to the town's cemetery and the adjacent council estate where the Downing family still lived after all these years. The semi-detached house on Stanton View was just a few minutes' drive from the centre of town. It was a large and well maintained corner site some couple of hundred yards from the cemetery gates. To reach it you had to turn right off Yeld Road into a cul-de-sac, down a small lane just wide enough for one car to pass along, until it opened out into a parking area. From the Downings' house the cemetery was out of view.
I met Ray outside his home. He had just returned from a taxi job and I declined his offer of a cup of tea to go with him straight to the cemetery and have a look around.
This was the scene of crime. I was surprised at just how close it was to the Downing home and how it was situated next to a very busy estate. It was hard to imagine that such a gruesome murder had been committed in broad daylight so close to dozens of houses - and in such a public place. I mentioned this to Ray. He agreed. He said that when I had time to read all his paperwork thoroughly I would see that children had been seen playing in and around the cemetery during their lunchtime break from school. There was also, he said, a window cleaner nearby, neighbours talking by the main gates and outside their homes adjoining the top side of the cemetery, and people on their way to and from town.
I explained that at this stage I needed to keep an open mind and just wanted to check out the scene of crime for myself before studying his paperwork in depth, and talking through his evidence and allegations.
The cemetery was built on a steep hill overlooking the town. It was entered by main gates at the end nearest the council estate. Immediately on the left was the gatekeeper's lodge and to the right of the gates a telephone box. On entering, the panorama to the left over Bakewell was obscured by woodland adjoining the bottom side known as Catcliff Woods, a dark and secluded area popular with courting couples. From here, the hill sloped away in the direction of the town. On the top side, to the right, was a high hedge separating the cemetery from a row of houses known as Burton Edge. Their bedrooms overlooked the cemetery, which was sunk into a bowl beneath the level of the hedge and the houses.
The cemetery was about 450 yards long, with two main drives running parallel along its length. One went straight down the centre, while the other ran along by Catcliff Woods and was known as the lower path. Both were straight and tarmacked. The old, weathered gravestones hewn out of local gritstone, now blackened and moss covered, were at the end nearest the gates. Some of these old edifices had been vandalised and a few headstones were toppled or leaning at acute angles. About two-thirds of the way along were the more recent graves, with a Garden of Remembrance containing cremation urns at the farthest end some several hundred yards away and surrounded by a hedge.
Ray led me down to the left and along the lower path to where Wendy Sewell had been attacked. He showed me where Stephen had said he found her, lying on the path next to an old grave. The headstone bore the inscription 'In the Midst of Life We Are in Death'. It was the grave of Anthony Naylor who had died in 1872.
It was extremely close to Catcliff Woods, the grave backing on to a very low old drystone wall, which marked the cemetery boundary, and I realised how easy it would have been for someone to have just disappeared into the thick undergrowth beyond. As I peered into the dense foliage I noticed a secluded pathway heading back slightly to the left in the direction of town_ Alternatively, if the attacker had hopped over the wall and headed right, he or she would have come out the other side of the woods into open, hilly farmland with little chance of being seen.
I tried to picture the scene twenty-odd years or so before and wondered if much had changed. There were several large bushes interspersed among the gravestones and very close by between the two paths was an old church-like building. We had passed it on our right as we approached the grave. It was rather dilapidated and had obviously seen better days. Ray told me it was known as the consecrated chapel to distinguish it from a similar building some 150 yards further along which was an unconsecrated chapel used as a workmen's store.
We continued our walk along the lower path where Ray pointed across the old gravestones towards the centre path. 'Now here,' he announced, 'is where Wendy moved to.'
'Moved?' I asked, puzzled.
'Yes,' he continued, picking his way through the imposing stones. 'After Stephen found her, he went to get help. When he returned, she'd moved.' He stopped between the two paths by the grave of Sarah Bradbury. Amazingly I noticed it, too, bore the inscription 'In the Midst of Life We Are in Death' and, like Anthony Naylor, its occupant had died in 1872. I was pondering these coincidences when Ray interjected, 'She was just here.'
'But how?' I asked, wondering if a battered, dying woman could drag herself the twenty or so yards between the two tombstones. 'Well, there's a question!' said Ray. 'No one's ever really answered that one. It never came up at the trial and the police never seemed to query it.'
He then indicated in the distance the unconsecrated chapel, the store where Stephen and others had worked as council employees. We crossed over more graves to the centre path and walked towards the second chapel. It, too, was a run-down building, at the far end of the centre drive. The Garden of Remembrance lay some eighty yards behind it. Between the store and the far boundary of the cemetery were many interconnecting pathways offering quiet areas of reflection. We walked to the far perimeter. There was a gate and beyond it an area of rough wasteland. A junior school was in the same direction and could be clearly seen from the gate. Beyond that, slightly to the right, were dozens of other semi-detached homes and, to the far left, just open fields and countryside sweeping down to the Wye valley below.
We turned back and headed towards the main gates. On the way I was drawn again to the scene of the attack. I kept looking across at the spot some twenty yards away to which Wendy was said to have moved. I tried to put the case into some sort of perspective as I half listened to Ray. He was mentioning names I had never heard of, people who were meant to have been seen in the area. I made a promise to myself to start delving into the paperwork he had left me.
After we left the cemetery, we made an immediate turn right into the Butts, the main steep walkway which ran adjacent to the cemetery for about thirty yards with a beech hedge separating the two, and then continued down into the centre of town. It was the route taken by the victim as she approached the cemetery during her lunch hour. It was also, Ray explained, the same section used by a number of key witnesses. Again he started talking animatedly and yet more names tumbled out. I began to get the impression that the cemetery had been as crowded as Piccadilly Circus on the day in question. But I knew I could not get too sucked in to Ray's version of events until I had had a chance to clarify my own thoughts.
We made our way back to the Downings' home. En route Ray insisted on showing me the local shop, which he said played an important part in the reconstruction of the story. He said Stephen had made a detour there first, after leaving the cemetery on his way home that lunchtime.
I had made a rough diagram highlighting all the landmarks Ray had pointed out, although their full significance was not yet obvious to me.
The kettle was whistling on the stove as we climbed the three stone steps and entered the Downings' home via the back door into the kitchen. Juanita was preparing a cup of tea. She had been looking out of the kitchen window and had seen us coming. 'Thought you'd have been back before now,' she exclaimed.
'There's a lot to see,' Ray replied. 'Mr Hale wanted to see everything. '
'It's Don, Ray. Call me Don. This Mr Hale sounds like a bailiff.' Ray laughed. 'Don't mention bailiffs. There's one around here that we don't care for - isn't that right, Nita?'
She laughed. It was obviously some in-joke.
'And I'm Nita to you.' His wife smiled, handing me a mug of tea.
We sat down round the kitchen table. It was a true family home full of mementoes and photographs. One familiar face, though, was constantly missing from meals around the kitchen table. Their only contact now with their son Stephen was on infrequent visits to a distant jail somewhere down south.
I asked Nita where she had got her exotic name, as Juanita did not sound like your average Derbyshire lass. She laughed and explained that she had been adopted at the age of three and had hardly any memories of her natural parents. Her adoptive parents had decided not to change the unusual name given to her by her birth mother. She had been brought up in the Bowring Park district of Huyton-with-Robey in Liverpool. Many years later she had attempted to discover her roots, but by the time she managed to trace her mother the woman had died. So the origin of her Latin-sounding name remained a mystery. In any case, she said, she had her own family now. A good husband - the young RAF man she married in 1954 and a boy and girl. She was proud of them all.
'So is Stephen your eldest?' I asked.
'He's our only son,' Ray told me, 'born on 4 March 1956, at our family home. Exactly three years later to the day, when we moved to Holywell Flats, Nita gave birth to our daughter Christine.'
Nita asked if anyone wanted another cup of tea, but I declined.
Talk of Stephen had obviously reminded Ray of something. He disappeared for a second or two, then emerged with a large basket. 'This is Stephen's clothing from the day of the attack,' he said, tipping out a bundle on to the table.
It took me by surprise as Stephen's old jeans, his T-shirt and working boots, together with rings, a watch, and a leather wrist strap almost landed on my mug of tea. I instinctively pushed my chair back a few inches.