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The Search

The Community fights back

There’s a local officer working at Machynlleth that evening and so when the emergency call comes through, a police woman is at the scene within about seven minutes.She’s met by a traumatised family and anxious neighbours fearful of what’s happened to April - and what might happen to their children. The officer tries her best to extract a clear account of the abduction in order to tell her communications centre - all while trying to calm a community facing its worst fear: the taking of one of its own.This is the scene Jazmin finds after running home from her youth club. She comforts herself by thinking:“This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”Her neighbours start their own ad hoc search parties and begin knocking on doors around the estate.It’s now 8 o’clock. Dark is closing in. Torches are brought out to check alleys and garages.And as the search through the streets, homes and estate grows, the word goes out on social media......Our April is missing...Have you seen her?

very little time

The search is co-ordinated and led from the local leisure centre by Detective Superintendent Andy John. He organises the search parties and finds a huge number of volunteers ready to go anywhere. Nearly everyone helps in the search. “Nearly all of ‘Mach’ turned out...we had friends from further apart...even people we didn’t know – they came.”Coral Jones, April’s Mother “There was a man and he’d come all the way from Manchester that evening just to help - he was asking us ‘Where do you want me to go?’ And we were like, ‘Well, if you stay with local people at least you know where you’re going.’Ceri Herbert, Family Friend The search spreads from the estate, into the neighbouring hills, country lanes and forest trails. April’s sister Jazmin is told not to join these searches.“I wasn’t really allowed to go out into the mountains with the other people, just in case you did see something. So...because I didn’t want to go home and just sit there...waiting, I thought the best thing I could do, go out with my friend, put posters up in bus stops, shops, lamp posts.” April’s mother Coral can’t sit at home either. So someone drives her round in her own car so Coral can help in the search.Her worst fears as a mother have come true.And now the weather is turning against the search. It’s wet, cold and dark.Some of the search teams work right through the night.“Some of the search teams and stuff were ordered to stop and go back because they were exhausted. They wouldn’t stop.”Paul Jones, April’s FatherNationwide, it becomes the largest ever manhunt.Within the first day, over a 1000 calls are logged to a national hotline. “We knew from previous research that if April had been abducted or kidnapped...we knew that we had very little time to play with in terms of finding April safe and well.”Andy John, Det. Superintendent, Dwfed-Powys Police 

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Crime File

Fourteen Years Later

There were no sort of enemies, there were no major boyfriends who would do this. They had nobody to pin it on.

Richard Lamplugh, Suzy’s brother

With no body, no motive and no suspect, the Lamplugh’s, seeking closure on their ordeal; decide to go to the High Court to obtain a ruling that Suzy can officially be declared deceased. In February 1994 it’s granted. Now their grieving can begin. It takes a further six years for the police to reopen their investigation and look once more into Suzy’s disappearance. As it remains one of the highest profile unsolved cases in police history, they are hopeful that advancements in forensics may shed some light.

In 2000 Jim Dickie is appointed the Senior Investigating Officer and given the task of reading through the case-files. It’s a large but crucial task. There’s one name that came up in the initial 1986 enquiry, which keeps cropping up. John David Guise Cannan. 

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The Discovery

John Kerr: “Are you alright?”Valerie Storie: “No. I’ve been shot.”

At 6:45am a farm labourer sees Valerie and alerts John Kerr, an Oxford student carrying out a road census.He finds Valerie. She’s not only still alive, she’s talking. Valerie asks John to tell her parents he’s found her. She’s worried they’ll be concerned that she didn’t return home.He flags down a car that rings for an ambulance and returns to her:

“...it seemed to me the right thing to do was to ask her questions straight away, and find out what had happened, just in case...she didn’t last.”John Kerr

Valerie tells John everything from the .38 gun the man used to a description of the killer:

“She said that he was a bit taller than she was, and she said, ‘I’m 5’ 3’, and he had large, staring eyes, and light, fairish hair.”

Hanratty’s hair at that time was dyed black. John took notes of everything she told him on the back of the census forms on his clipboard.When the police arrive a man with a peaked cap approaches John:

“He said, ‘What did you do?, and I said, ‘Well, I talked to her, and made some notes.’ ‘Oh’, he said, ‘have you got them?’; I said, ‘Yes, they’re here.’ He said, ‘Well, you’d better let me have them.’ So I unpinned them from the clipboard...and gave them to him.”

The notes are never presented as evidence in the subsequent trial. Their whereabouts are still a mystery.

Valerie’s transferred to an intensive care ward. Her blood stained clothes are given to a police exhibits officer. A piece of her underwear is marked as Exhibit 26.

Valerie survives. But she is paralysed from the waist down.Michael Gregsten’s mother has to identify her son in situ at the crime scene.His face has ‘been blown off’.

The Morris Minor used as a getaway vehicle is seen later that day:

“It was seen by two gentlemen...being driven at speed and erratically and very badly...when the car cut them up...they pulled up next to it at the traffic lights, and got a good look at the driver. I think they shouted a fair bit of abuse at him as well!”John Eddleston

And later that evening Michael’s Gregsten’s 1956 Morris Minor was found abandoned behind Redbridge Tube station in London.

“The police had also discovered a gun wrapped in a soiled handkerchief in the back seat of a bus...the gun was loaded...(the) ammunition matched the type of bullet that had been used in the A6 murder. So within 48 hours, the police have got the Morris Minor, and they’ve also the murder weapon.”David Wilson

But both the car and the .38 Enfield revolver have been wiped clean of prints.

“The police put out an appeal, through the newspapers mainly, to ask hotel keepers, boarding house keepers, people who do bed and breakfast, if they’ve had anyone staying with them about this time who’s been behaving suspiciously. A gentleman comes forward to say he’s had someone staying at his hotel who fits the vague description that’s been published, and hasn’t been out of his hotel room for five days. The police call on this gentleman, and find out that he is Peter Louis Alphon.”John Eddleston

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The Confession

Detective: How would you entice the child into the car then?...Jebson: ‘Excuse me, little Miss, don’t I know you?’“Don’t think so.”What’s your name?“Barbara...Mary...Carol...Susan...” ...whatever.‘Oh, your so and so’s little girl. I know you. Do you want a lift?’“Yes please.”As we’re driving away...’Do you want some sweets?’“Oh yes please”......so you go into shop with her and pick her up sweeties.Detective: Yeah.Jebson: You come out. She has already been paid.Detective: Right...Payment in advance. Is that what you’re saying?Jebson: Yeah. Payment in advance....Ron Jebson describes his method and justification for child rape in a police interviewJebson seems able to give seeringly honest and factually accurate statements in one breath, and then fantastical imaginings in the next. Some believe it is one of his many coping mechanisms for the horrors he’s committed.He and detectives will get through many, many cigarettes before Jebson gives them the truth.And he seems to enjoy discussing his previous crimes against children:“We’d never had anybody who’d been so explicit and who was obviously out to shock and make us complicit in his world. And to see if we got some pleasure, perversely out of what he was telling us.”Detective Chief Inspector Declan DonnellyWhat Jebson didn’t know was the police had a criminal psychologist aiding them. He said that Jebson would only confess if they went through Jebson’s layers of fantasies. When Jebson tells them of his recurring dream, the psychologist says that Rosemary’s face is a cover for other attacks.But detectives have to be very careful. Whenever they hint to Jebson that he may be responsible for the double murders of Susan and Gary, he reacts angrily. At one point, he rips off the microphone attached to him for recording and demands to go back to his cell.What lets them delve further is by talking about the shelters and hides that Jebson had built in the woodlands as a child. These were fundamental fantasy features for Jebson. Once back on safe ground with the detectives, he would talk for ages and in great detail about building them. He expertly talks about which branches to use, willow, and how to tie them to the ground to make an arch:Detective: When you’re in the hide, are you that little boy again?Jebson: I’m that little boy again.Jebson reveals a split personality. There is ‘little Ron’ and ‘big Ron’:Detective: The Enfield kids have got ‘little Ron’s hallmarks all over them.”Jebson: It still ain’t ‘little Ron’.Detective: I don’t want ‘Big Ron’ to interfere with ‘Little Ron’here...c’mon...In August 1998, with no new evidence, the case is being wound down. Then on Monday 24 August Jebson calls Edmonton Police Station. He says he wants to confess.During the four hour confession, Donnelly says Jebson is “virtually emotionless” as he recounts the killings:“I am an animal. I will screw any little girl. I don’t care who she is or whose daughter she is.”It is unlikely that Jebson has the sort of conscience to instigate his confession. Otherwise, he would have been unable to commit his offences repeatedly. Some have suggested Jebson was trying to impress what he counted as his peers, his fellow imprisoned paedophiles:“...there’s a hierarchy amongst the sex offenders. I slightly get the impression that he was trying to impress those other predatory paedophiles about the extent of his offending behaviour.”David Wilson, criminologist and former prisoner governorJebson states that he knelt on Susan’s chest when he strangled her. Susan’s body has been exhumed and subjected to further tests – Gary’s has been cremated - Forensic examination confirms her stomach was crushed and that the bleeding in her ribs was caused by blunt trauma. This is consistent with Jebson’s confession.For some, the truth is even more painful than the not knowing:“He had sex with him and strangled him whilst he was having sex with him. That, that, that was his sort of thing. That’s what he did to children. For me it’s been worse since I actually knew. I knew he’d been murdered. But I couldn’t cope with knowing that he’d been touched by somebody.”Beryl HanlonDonnelly takes Jebson back to the copse where Susan and Gary had been found. At the edge of the copse, at the site of his killing, he details his crimes:“I came up, up here, and I parked the car...I saw this open gateway...we went across these fields and saw this copse. Inside the copse my aggressive nature started showing. Susan didn’t want to play. Nor did Gary. Gary sat there not knowing what to do. So I had Susan’s jeans down and unders. I was sitting on her stomach...middle of nowhere, no one can hear their screams. After I finished with Susan, Gary said he wants to go home and I said you’re going nowhere and he went for me so I hit him. I then raped him. I stayed there having me fun...until 2, 3 o’clock in the morning...They were both dead...i put them close together...and left...I was a bad evil Ron that night.”But ‘bad evil Ron’ Jebson was too scared to actually enter the copse again.He is superstitious.He believes that the spirits of Susan and Gary are in there waiting for him.

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Crime File

Angus Sinclair - Breakthrough

“We always knew with fair certainty that two men had been involved.  First of all two men had been seen with Helen and Christine in the pub.  Secondly killing these two young, fit girls was not a job that one person could undertake” Tom Wood But forensic scientist Lester Knibb couldn’t find the evidence to prove that theory. The development of DNA profiling only seemed to scientifically suggest what common sense said couldn’t have happened – that only one man was able to separately rape and strangle two young women.  “The very early DNA profiles we got were for one man and of course when we got the profiles of that one man...I remember sitting in the office...sitting back thinking, only a matter of time you know...because (at) that time the DNA databases were starting to be produced throughout the world.”Tom Wood, Former Det. Chief Constable, Lothian & Borders Police But even the one profile they had, didn’t match. It seemed inconceivable given the brutal nature of the crimes that person hadn’t offended before. It was 2004 before the next breakthrough. New technology allowed the profiling of the Y chromosome. This meant they could now match profiles of men who were related to each other, such as fathers, sons, brothers and uncles.But in order to extract this profile, they would require a piece of evidence to have been kept from the crime scene for 27 years.Thankfully, that’s exactly what Lester Knibb had done.A small square of material from Helen Scott’s coat was still sealed in the freezer in the back of his lab.“So I took a small extract from some of the original staining.  I tested them for the enzyme acid phosphatase, which is something which is present in high concentration in semen and that gave a positive result.” Armed with this, detectives were able to begin searching for the Y chromosome. But it also revealed what detectives had suspected all along: The presence of another killer. “...there were two male DNA samples on that piece of coat that had been kept all those years.  One that we’d known about and one that was so faint that only modern technology would bring to the fore.”Allan Jones, Former Det. Superintendent, Lothian & Borders Police When the second sample was put into the database, a name came back...Angus Robertson Sinclair. 

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Crime File