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Suspect Evidence

Leading investigative journalist Bob Woffinden highlights what he considers to be a miscarriage of justice case that has disturbing implications regarding ‘prison grass’ evidence.

Some people who end up in prison are career criminals. Gordon Park (pictured) is a career schoolteacher who would never have expected to find himself in Strangeways prison, having been convicted of one of the more high-profile crimes of recent years.

Park was enjoying a cycling holiday in Gascony, south-west France, with his third wife when his son, Jeremy, telephoned. He had some unexpected news: the body of Carol, Park’s first wife, who had been missing since 1976, had been found at the bottom of Lake Coniston.

In circumstances such as those, two developments can be absolutely taken for granted. The first is that the crime will become known as “the lady in the lake” case; every hack reporter and every PC Plod has read Raymond Chandler. The second is that the murdered woman’s husband will be Suspect Number One.

The inevitability of the latter could hardly have escaped Gordon and Jenny, his third wife (whom he’d known for 45 years, but had not married until 1993). Even as they packed up and made the long drive back to England, they could see television pictures of their home near Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, being searched by police.

They got back late on a Saturday evening, 24 August 1997. Gordon thought he’d get in a good night’s sleep before presenting himself at the local police station the following morning. He wasn’t allowed that luxury, however; police arrived at 8.00am to arrest him. Park was charged with the murder and remanded to Preston prison until, after two weeks, his lawyers succeeded in getting him bail.

Then a strange thing happened. The charges were dropped through lack of evidence. Gordon and Jenny were free to resume a normal existence, albeit one in which the matter of Carol’s unresolved death cast a long shadow.

Suddenly, in January 2004, Gordon was re-arrested. He was charged and this time the case went to trial. Twelve months later, at Manchester Crown Court, he was convicted of Carol’s murder.

Gordon and Carol were married in 1967 and had two children, Jeremy, born in 1970, and Rachael, born in 1971. However, the marriage was not a success. Carol had a number of lovers, with one of whom she set up home on the other side of the country. She then initiated a custody battle over the children. Remarkably, she lost; Gordon was deemed the more responsible parent as it was she who had left and he who had continued caring for them. Carol subsequently returned. When she disappeared again in July 1976, no one in their social circle in Barrow regarded it as either surprising or uncharacteristic.

One of the most remarkable factors in the entire case is that – tragically – Carol’s sister Christine had also been murdered. Her killer was convicted in 1968; but by 1976, when Carol disappeared, he was already at liberty again (such were the terms of a life sentence in those days).

After Christine was murdered, Gordon and Carol had adopted her daughter, so when Carol went missing, Gordon was actually looking after three young children who were on their long summer holiday. In these circumstances how, the defence asked, could he have carried out the murder and the disposal of the body?

It was not a question of memories having failed after almost 30 years; there was a police inquiry that summer, at the time of Carol’s disappearance, which had uncovered nothing suspicious. By the time of the trial in 2004-05, however, Park’s defence was seriously hampered by the fact that police papers from that inquiry had been lost.

Carol was known to have been in Barrow on the Friday, 16 July. On the Saturday, when she disappeared, Park said that they had arranged to take the children on a day trip to Blackpool, but she complained of a headache and stayed at home. That morning, she was subsequently seen by a neighbour; and another witness saw an unfamiliar car turn up the drive to the Parks’ house. Later that day, a woman who knew Carol saw her at Charnock Richard services on the M6. It looked as though Carol could have been disappearing of her own free will.

There was scientific evidence at the trial, relating to rocks and to knots (the body had been tightly packaged and weighted down, which was why it had been undiscovered for 21 years), but all of it was highly controversial.

However, that two-week period which Park spent in Preston prison turned out to be critical. Two prisoners gave evidence that Park had confessed to them. Prison ‘grass’ evidence must always be suspect; it was particularly so in this case since it had evidently not been available when the original murder inquiry was conducted in 1997. It was not until three years later that one of the prisoners reported Park’s alleged confession. The police then began to construct their case against Park. This was then bolstered by the evidence of a woman who came forward in 2004 who said she remembered seeing something being thrown overboard from a boat in 1976. Her description of the boat, however, did not match that of a boat that Park had then owned. (The defence argued at trial that Park had in any event sold it by the time of Carol’s disappearance.) Park had no criminal record and indeed seems to have been regarded as an innocuous man. At trial, the judge referred to his “non-violent disposition”.

Nevertheless, the Manchester jury found him guilty. His family, however, continue to believe in him. Jeremy and Rachael, whose mother was so cruelly killed, trussed up and dumped in the lake, have appointed a fresh legal team who are putting together grounds for appeal. Jeremy has also set up a “freegordon” website. As I write, it records that his father has now spent one year nine months and 20 days in prison.

* Bob Woffinden has taken up and helped to rectify a number of high-profile cases of miscarriage of justice and has written books on miscarriages of justice and the case of James Hanratty, whose innocence he still hopes, one day, to be able to prove.

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