by TIM HICKS & CHRIS CLARK

~~~~~

For some time now, both authors have been investigating the murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans in Llangollen, North Wales in June 1990. They have concluded that Trevaline could have been abducted and murdered by serial killer Christopher Halliwell, who they also believe is also responsible for the murder of Claudia Lawrence, abducted from York in 2009.

Halliwell is currently in prison on a full-life sentence for the 2003 murder of Becky Godden-Edwards and the 2011 murder of Sian O’Callaghan.

Following on from their article Halliwell: The North West Clusters in which the authors analysed a series of murders in the North West of England and linked Trevaline’s murder to them, this is the third part of an article in which the authors analyse the various investigations that have taken place into Trevaline’s murder and the reasons why they failed.

The first part can be accessed here: http://nyenquirer.uk/blue-coral-fiasco-1/

The second part can be accessed here: http://nyenquirer.uk/blue-coral-fiasco-2/

(Ideally, both instalments should be read before proceeding).

The NYE has taken up this case because Trevaline’s siblings and her son are all now dead. So there is no one to uphold her right to justice with North Wales Police (NWP) The Trevaline Evans case leads into the authors’ analysis of the similar failings in the North Yorkshire Police (NYP) Claudia Lawrence investigation, which will be covered in the next article.

Operation Blue CORAL: Response to fresh information originated by Merseyside Police in 2021

Halliwell has been linked to crimes in the Merseyside Police area, see map here. 

In 2021, there was media comment originating from Merseyside Police that Halliwell had been working in North Wales. Tim wrote to NWP raising the possibility that Halliwell could be responsible for crimes in the NWP force area. It became clear that NWP was unaware of this possibility, showing that Merseyside Police Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB) had not notified NWP that a dangerous serial killer was operating in their force areas. It also appears that no senior Officer, detective or the NWP FIB had picked this up from following the media.

In the standard intelligence cycle of:

1. Direction
2. Collection
3. Processing
4. Analysis
5. Dissemination

. . . there was a failure to disseminate intelligence by the Merseyside Police FIB (MIF33) and a failure to collect intelligence from open sources by NWP Officers at all ranks and by the NWP FIB (MIF34).

Following my enquiry, NWP liaised with Merseyside Police and then issued this statement:

“Detective Superintendent Steven Williams confirms that there are no known links to any criminality in the north Wales area.”

Although, in fact, it now transpires there were strong grounds to suspect Halliwell’s involvement in the murder of Trevaline Evans. Specifically, that her murder fitted with Halliwell’s known modus operandi and a man fitting his description had been seen outside her shop (MIF35). It appears that Detective Superintendent Williams did not review HOLMES before coming to the above determination (MIF36).

The FMIT again failed to re-interview the witnesses who saw a man resembling Halliwell outside the shop, leading the authors to conclude that the review to consider Halliwell as a suspect performed by the FMIT was superficial, or indeed no review was conducted (MIF37).

Operation Major: 2016 – 2023

One of the major reforms introduced in the Police Service following the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry was that a Chief Police Officer will be appointed to oversee any investigation involving more than one force. This is to prevent individual forces following its own lines of enquiry in isolation, to ensure that the investigation is properly co-ordinated and that intelligence is shared.

This 2022 Mirror article quoted a Wiltshire Police spokesperson as saying:

“Since Christopher Halliwell was arrested for the murders of Sian O’Callaghan and Becky Godden-Edwards in 2011, Wiltshire Police has continues, where relevant to work with other forces across the country to ensure information is shared with them which may be pertinent to their investigations.

More widely since 2016, the Force has run a distinct operation –Operation Major, which has looked to nationally coordinate across forces information concerning Christopher Halliwell. “Wiltshire Police has now commissioned an external review of Operation Major, to ensure all reasonable lines of enquiry have been pursued to date.”

The quote from Wiltshire Police confirms that no Chief Police Officer was appointed to supervise the national investigation into Halliwell from his arrest in 2011 until 2016. So there was no national coordination of the antecedent investigation into Halliwell, or oversight of the investigations by individual forces like NWP (MIF47) during this period.

It was clear from Tim’s correspondence with Chief Constable Blakeman that NWP was not pursuing lines of enquiry relating to Christopher Halliwell and his possible involvement in the murder of Trevaline Evans.

So in February 2023, Tim wrote to Chief Constable Pritchard of Wiltshire Police, which leads Operation Major, asking him to intervene by ordering Chief Constable Blakeman and Chief Constable Winward of North Yorkshire Police (NYP) to pursue lines of enquiry into Halliwell into the murders of Trevaline Evans and Claudia Lawrence. This is the same Detective Chief Superintendent Pritchard who was so severely criticised by the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) over Operation Kala and failures to properly investigate Halliwell for the murder of Becky Godden-Edwards (Operation Manilla).

Chief Constable Pritchard ignored Tim’s email, thus indicating that Operation Major was not, in fact, taking any active co-ordination role in investigating Halliwell and had failed (MIF48).

It appears that the Police Service is ignoring this requirement to appoint a Chief Police Officer to lead national investigations and has learned nothing from the Yorkshire Ripper investigation (MIF49). The authors are unable to identify how many other multi-force investigations have proceeded without the essential requirement for co-ordination and supervision by a Chief Police Officer, allowing individual forces like NWP to do what they want.

Operation Blue CORAL: 2023 response to the “In the Footsteps of Killers” programme (1)

In February 2023, Channel 4 broadcasted an investigation by Alaska TV on Trevaline’s murder, which featured the UK’s leading criminologist Professor David Wilson and Tim.

The programme can be seen here. Please take the time to watch it before reading further.

The programme traced the witness who saw a man that looked like Halliwell behaving suspiciously outside Trevaline’s shop. The witness was interviewed by actress Amelia Fox. When shown a copy of Halliwell’s photograph, the witness confirmed it was a definite likeness. Had detectives from FMIT done this in 2011, it would have resulted in Halliwell being designated as a suspect and possibly charged and convicted.

To try and capitalise on the publicity generated by the programme and move the investigation on, Tim Wrote to NWPs Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman suggesting that FMIT examined:

• The items of women’s clothing recovered from Halliwell’s trophy cache at Ramsbury, Wilts, to see if any of it belonged to Trevaline.
• A series of sketches by Halliwell, on the basis that he buried bodies and was  obsessed with the Moors Murderers. Horseshoe Pass is very similar to Snake Pass where they buried their victims and photographed the graves. Tim suggested that like Brady, Halliwell kept trophies of deposition sites, but drew them rather than photographed them and one of them may reveal the deposition site for Trevaline’s body.
• A 200m radius from the point where the camper van was seen parked at Horseshoe Pass and conduct a thermal ground search of this area to try and identify if Trevaline was buried there.

Tim also asked for a media statement covering the content of the programme, if Halliwell has been designated as a suspect and if he was to be interviewed in prison about the murder of Mrs Evans, or confirmation of how FMIT had eliminated Halliwell as a suspect.

Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman

Rejected Halliwell as a suspect before NWP had even interviewed the key witnesses

Chief Constable Blakeman responded on 1^st March 2023, as follows:

“We can confirm that all of the points listed above have been carefully considered and reviewed by FMIT. All reasonable lines of enquiries were raised and overseen by our Senior Investigating Officer. You will appreciate that we cannot share details of our investigation with you. However please be assured that all enquiries conducted have now concluded and exhausted.

[At this point FMIT had not even interviewed the witness who saw the man near Trevaline’s shop and at Horseshoe pass (MIF38), or his colleague (MIF39). So it is impossible for Chief Constable Blakeman to claim that “all enquiries conducted have now concluded and exhausted” (MIF40)].

We thank you for your views around Mr Halliwell however he is not being treated as a suspect.

[Chief Constable Blakeman provides no justification for this decision, which has been taken prematurely even before the new witness has been interviewed and his evidence assessed]

You have asked whether we as a Force would be making a comment in response to the television programmes and articles. We will not be making a comment to the media.

[One of the best ways of progressing cold cases is through media comment and appeals. Yet instead of allowing media professionals from the NWP Corporate Communications Unit to work with the media and capitalise on the publicity and public interest generated by the programme, Chief Constable Blakeman personally intervened to take personal control of media relations. A field she is not qualified in (MIF41). Chief Constable Blakeman has imposed what is effectively a news blackout on NWP, preventing the investigation from benefitting from the fresh publicity, which in turn could lead to new witnesses generated by the fresh publicity (MIF42)]

You have also requested that this investigation be reviewed by a Senior Officer from another Force. We are satisfied that the investigation, over the years has been reviewed internally by experienced and Senior Detectives, and subject to external oversight.

We are confident that therefore we can confirm that no such review will be taking place and no request for an external Force to do so.”

[Any cold case review must consider and identify failures in pervious investigations. This has to be performed independently, by a fresh team of detectives so they can do this impartially. Some of the detectives that participated in the investigations into trevaline’s murder may still be serving in the FMIT and have an obvious conflict of interest (MIF43). Hence the reason it is essential there is an external review by another force in the normal way, to prevent any contamination of the investigation by confirmation bias.

Because the NWPs FMIT performs both its major investigations and its cold case reviews, it does not have the required degree of independence to impartially assess the quality of its previous investigations. This is a structural failure within NWP (MIF44).

It is clear from the facts narrated in this article that FMIT bungled the investigation into Trevaline’s murder from Day One. The authors have identified fifty three Major Investigative Failures. Chief Constable Blakeman’s confidence that “the investigations has been thorough and to a high standard” is obviously untenable. It must be a concern that she intervened to prevent new lines of enquiry being investigated in case it revealed failings that would be damaging to the reputation of her force. (MIF45).

It must also be a concern that Chief Constable Blakeman appears to have taken this decision unilaterally, without reference to Wiltshire Police’s Operation Major, which is charged with coordinating the antecedent investigation into Halliwell (MIF46)]

Operation Blue CORAL: 2023 reaction by NWP to a complaint by Tim

Concerned that an opportunity to progress the investigation was being missed, Tim wrote to Police & Crime Commissioner for North Wales, Andy Dunbobbin, who is the official charged with holding NWP to account on 5^th March 2023. Tim submitted a complaint about the way NWP had failed to follow up on any of the information revealed by the recent media coverage.

On 13^th April 2023, Chief Constable Blakeman’s staff officer contacted Tim and asked for the contact details of the witness that was featured in the programme, which of course Tim provided. While on the one hand, the authors are pleased that after thirty-three years, FMIT was going to interview a key witness, it is deeply unsatisfactory that one of them had to submit a misconduct complaint against the Chief Constable, to force NWP to follow up all lines of enquiry on a murder investigation (MIF50).

Such is the interest in this case in Wales that there is clearly a duty on Chief Constable Blakeman to keep people informed of progress on the investigation, instead of imposing a news blackout on her force. To date, the authors have had no further information from Chief Constable Blakeman confirming if the witness was interviewed, what the outcome was or any media comment at all, which is contrary to the College of Policing requirement for open and accountable policing (MIF51).

Chief Constable Blakeman has already confirmed that Halliwell will not be considered as a suspect, even before the new witnesses has been interviewed. It therefores obvious that even if he is interviewed this will not lead to any positive development because NWP is just going through the motions.

Operation Blue CORAL: 2023 response by the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner in North Wales to a complaint by Tim

Although it is clear that the investigation has been catastrophically bungled from day one, Mr Stephen Hughes, Chief Executive Officer within the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner in North Wales rejected Tim’s complaint. A failure of oversight (MIF52).

When Tim appealed this decision, Police and Crime Commissioner Dunbobbin simply backed up Mr Hughes and rubber stamped his determination. Another failure of oversight (MIF53).

Summary

It is possible Halliwell was in Llangollen; Mrs Evans fits with his victim preferences, her abduction fits perfectly with Halliwell’s modus operandi and a man resembling Halliwell was seen in the area behaving suspiciously.

Both authors are of the opinion that all the various investigations into Trevaline’s murder since 1990 were bungled. In their opinion, there is certainly enough evidence now to declare Halliwell a suspect in the murder and to interview him in prison. However, it appears Halliwell has been arbitrarily excluded as a suspect because:

• FMIT is obsessively focussed on Richard Evans, to the exclusion of all other suspects.
• Chief Constable Blakeman is determined to protect its reputation by not admitting to past failures.

The authors would observe that in policing, sometimes things can go wrong. When this happens, the duty of a Chief Constable is to be open-minded, to assess the case impartially and, if there have been mistakes, to admit to them – then try to rectify them.

Chief Constable Blakeman’s response has been to deny the possibility of any failing at all in her force’s investigation, to impose a news blackout and to prohibit any re-examination of the case. She has been supported in this policy by the Police & Crime Commissioner, who is supposed to hold the Chief Constable and her force to account.

The authors believe that the murder of Trevaline Evans may still be solvable, but only if the investigation is removed from NWP and all the evidence is impartially examined by experienced detectives from another force.

[Maps by FAD]

Coming next: “Claudia: New evidence”

Right of Reply

If you are mentioned in this article and do not agree with the views expressed in it, or if you wish to correct any factual inaccuracy, please let me know using the letters@nyenquirer.uk email address and your views and a correction will be published, if appropriate.

Appeal for Information

Christopher Halliwell had a slim athletic build and spoke with a slight Swindon accent. He is pictured in the lead illustration in 2011, two years after the murder of Claudia Lawrence. You can see and hear him in the video here.

Did he offer you a lift in his minicab?

Did you know of Christopher Halliwell’s father, Alan Keith Halliwell, who is believed to have lived in Huddersfield, York, Ampleforth and/or Oswaldkirk and who previously served in the RAF at Swindon and other locations?

Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• Staying in a bed-and-breakfast or hotel along the A19,or  in Darlington, Middlesbrough, Scarborough, York or the North York Moors area?
• Fishing along the River Dee?
• In Llangollen
• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• In York driving a red rover?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirk?
• In Middlesbrough?
• In Huddersfield?
• In Merseyside driving a white D Reg van?
• At Aughton Park?
• In Manchester?
• In Sheffield?
• Did he drive you from Swindon to Sheffield or York University?

Please email letters@nyenquirer.uk. All enquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence.

by TIM HICKS and CHRIS CLARK

~~~~~

For some time now, both authors have been investigating the murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans in Llangollen, North Wales in June 1990. They have concluded that Trevaline could have been abducted and murdered by serial killer Christopher Halliwell, who they also believe is also responsible for the murder of Claudia Lawrence, who was abducted from York in 2009.

Halliwell is currently in prison on a full life sentence for the 2003 murder of Becky Godden-Edwards and the 2011 murder of Sian O’Callaghan.

Following on from their article Halliwell: The North West Clusters, in which the authors analysed a series of murders in the North West of England and linked Trevaline’s murder to them.

This is the second part of an article where the authors analyse the various investigations that have taken place into Trevaline’s murder and the reasons they failed.

The first part can be accessed here and should ideally be read before proceeding further with this article.

The NYE has taken up this case because Trevaline’s siblings and her son are all now dead and there is no one to uphold her right to justice with North Wales Police (NWP), and because the Trevaline Evans case leads into the author’s analysis of the failings in the Claudia Lawrence investigation.

Operation Blue CORAL: 2010 Investigation

The case was re-opened, but no progress was made. Again, the FMIT did not interview the two witnesses who saw the man behaving suspiciously near Trevaline’s shop (Major Investigative Failure (MIF23 and MIF24), or try to trace the van (MIF25). Indicating that all the information had not been entered into HOLMES, or that HOLMES was ignored (MIF26).

To put the impact of not using Holmes in context, it is necessary to consider the case of Suzy Lamplugh, who disappeared in Fulham, London in 1986. HOLMES was not available at the time and the investigation failed.

In 2010, it was re-opened for a cold case review. The 2010 investigation started by putting everything onto HOLMES, which identified that there had been a series of attempted abductions in Fulham, which in turn led the investigation to serial killer John Cannan.

Had HOLMES been properly utilised by NWP in 1990, the authors believe that it would have significantly improved the investigation, ensured that these and other witnesses were followed up, possibly leading to a resolution of the case.

Operation Blue CORAL: 2011 Investigation

This investigation was limited to considering the serial killer Robin Ligus as a suspect and correctly excluded him.

Operation Mayan and the 2011 antecedent Investigation

In 2011, Christopher Halliwell was arrested for the murder of Sian O’Callaghan and Becky Godden-Edwards. Details of Halliwell, his lifestyle and his modus operandi were circulated to all forces by Wiltshire Police’s Operation Mayan. This was accompanied by his photograph, information on his modus operandi and a request that they consider if he could have committed any murders in their force area.

This should have triggered great interest from NWP. Trevaline disappeared on a weekend during the summer holiday tourist season and Halliwell had many reasons to come to Llangollen:

• Halliwell was known to enjoy narrow boating. The Llangollen Canal connects to the Shropshire Union Canal and then into the English Canal system. Trevaline’s route from home to her shop would have taken her past the road and bridge over the River Dee that led to the Canal Basin, which is 5 minutes’ walk from the shop.
• Halliwell was known to enjoy fishing and the River Dee has excellent fishing.
• Halliwell’s itinerant lifestyle could have brought him to Llangollen. It is one hour twenty minutes’ drive from Aughton Park and three and a half hours drive from Swindon. If he was working in North Wales, he could have stayed over for the weekend to go sightseeing.
• There were unconfirmed sightings of Trevaline near the River Dee at about 14.35 and then another a few minutes later of her walking along a footpath away from the River. Was she discretely meeting someone away from the shop while he was fishing at the River Dee. Was that man Halliwell?

[See Map, here]

Trevaline’s murder also fitted perfectly with Halliwell’s modus operandi.

• In the period 1982 – 1985 Halliwell had several jobs and used them to reconnoitre houses to burglarise them for antiques. He may have picked up a working knowledge of antiques from these crimes. Although he had no similar convictions after his release from prison, this does not mean that he had reformed and stopped committing burglaries. It may be that he was still burglarising houses for antiques, but was not detected. Trevaline had a sign in the shop saying she would buy and sell anything. This would give Halliwell a reason to visit the shop to sell stolen antiques. The authors suspect that Trevaline had a large amount of cash on her because she intended to meet someone to pay for antiques. This may have been Halliwell. Chris remembers:

“Antique theft is a specialist crime and a key aspect of it is disposing of the stolen property. This generally has to be done through a fence, or by travelling long distances to sell off the stolen property to legitimate dealers. As an example, in Norfolk, we had a serious problem with a gang from Brighton going door to door purporting to buy and sell antiques, then returning a few days later to burgle those houses they had identified knowing that it would not be traced back to crimes committed as far away as Norfolk. 

In the 1970’s I investigated a series of brace and bit burglaries in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. They transpired to have been committed by the notorious Donald Nielson, also known as “The Black Panther”. As well as being an armed robber and kidnapper, was a prolific burglar, committing hundreds of burglaries from 1965 onwards, varying his modus operandi and operating far from his home in Bradford. He was only identified as the burglar after his arrest in 1975.

I therefore find it credible that Halliwell could have still been committing burglaries to steal antiques and sell on after his release from Dartmoor in 1987 and was not detected. Particularly if he was fencing the items he had taken far away from the area he stole them from.

Having been convicted of burglary involving antiques in Wiltshire and the surrounding area, Halliwell will have realised that if there were any burglaries in that area, he would very quickly become a prime suspect, resulting in his house being searched, inevitably leading to his arrest and a return to HMP Dartmoor. This would have discouraged him from returning to burglary in Wiltshire and would have forced him to commit burglaries much further away from his normal operating area.

I therefore consider it possible that Halliwell could have been in Wales to sell antiques he had stolen in a different part of the country. He may also have been in Wales to burgle premises that had antiques in them, while he was on holiday or working there.”

• Trevaline’s credit cards were left untouched. Credit Card fraud is a separate form of theft, requiring a different skill set to pull it off successfully. Halliwell has no history of credit card fraud, indicating that he would be unlikely to steal credit cards, for fear of being detected when he used them.
• Trevaline’s body has never been found which is consistent with Halliwell’s modus operandi. We know from the murder of Becky Godden-Edwards that he was very skilful at sighting a grave in a rural area, where it would not be discovered. A local witness saw a man with a van, who resembled Halliwell behaving suspiciously outside Trevaline’s shop and at a local beauty spot –Horseshoe Pass- that was remote and on a hill, so it would be easy to roll a body down the slope and then conceal it. Exactly as Halliwell did to Sian O’Callaghan’s body.
• Trevaline was skilfully and efficiently abducted in daylight in Llangollen without anyone witnessing a struggle or any of her possessions found at the scene. This would point towards abduction by persuasion -not force- by a practised abductor. This is consistent with Halliwell’s abductions of Becky Godden-Edwards and Sian O’Callaghan. When he was a taxi driver Halliwell had a reputation for being well spoken, charming and persuasive with passengers. He was certainly capable of striking up a conversation with a woman and persuading her to get in a car with him on a pretext of giving her a lift, or taking her to view some antiques.
• Trevaline’s clothes were never found. It is therefore possible that some items were taken as a trophy, which is a classic Halliwell indicator. Perhaps some of her clothing was recovered from Halliwell’s trophy cache in a lake at Ramsbury, Wiltshire where he went fishing.
• Trevaline looked like Sian O’Callaghan and Claudia Lawrence, who in turn had a resemblance to Halliwell’s mother, who he hated. Just the sight of a woman who reminded him of his mother threw Halliwell into a rage. She therefore fitted Halliwell’s victim preferences.

This all indicates Halliwell as a good suspect whose modus operandi fitted the murder of Trevaline Evans.

However, he was ignored by the FMIT (MIF27), which failed to re-interview either witness that saw the man outside the shop and show him a photograph of Halliwell, to see if it was Halliwell (MIF28 and MIF29). The authors believe that this was because the FMIT was affected by confirmatory bias and obsessively focussed on Richard Evans as a suspect to the exclusion of all other suspects (MIF30).

This illustrates the importance of cold case investigations being impartially reviewed. Because FMIT conducted both the initial investigation and the cold case investigation, the case has never been reviewed independently (MIF31).

Operation Kala 2022: Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation into the Wiltshire Police investigation into the murder of Becky Godden-Edwards Operation Manilla between 2011 and 2014

Bedfordshire/Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire Police Professional Standards Department investigated the Wiltshire Police investigation into the murder of Becky Godden-Edwards from 2011 until 2014, on behalf of the IOPC, which was codenamed Operation Manilla.

Operation Kala found that significant opportunities to convict Halliwell -who had been convicted for the murder of Sian O’Callaghan- for the murder of Becky Godden-Edwards were missed during a flawed investigation, (report here) for which the then Detective Chief Superintendent Kier Pritchard had responsibility.

This indicates that the antecedent investigation was not properly managed and coordinated across all forces by Wiltshire Police, which ensured that NWPs FMIT was not subject to any external scrutiny (MIF32).

Operation Blue CORAL: 2019 investigation

In 2019, FMIT searched under the bar of the Rhuddlan Golf Club Clubhouse looking for Trevaline’s body. Article from North Wales Live with more information here.

This would indicate that FMIT was still following the theory that Richard Evans had murdered Trevaline and disposed of her body in Rhuddlan. Nothing was found.

Maps by FAD

Coming next: The Operation Blue CORAL Fiasco (Pt.3)

Appeal for Information

Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• Fishing along the River Dee?
• In Llangollen
• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• In York driving a red rover?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirk?
• In Middlesbrough?
• In Huddersfield?
• In Merseyside driving a white D Reg van?
• At Aughton Park?
• In Manchester?
• In Sheffield?
• Did he drive you from Swindon to Sheffield or York University?

Please email letters@nyenquirer.uk. All enquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence.

by TIM HICKS & CHRIS CLARK

~~~~~

For some time, both authors have been investigating the murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans (pictured above) in Llangollen, North Wales in June 1990.

Their investigation has revealed police corruption and a catalogue of inexcusable investigative, intelligence, organisational, media operations and governance errors by North Wales Police (NWP) and other forces, which they believe prevented her murder from being solved. They have concluded that:

1. The investigations into Trevaline’s murder from 1990 to the present day were catastrophically bungled.
2. That had the investigation been conducted competently, Trevaline’s murder could have been solved.
3. Trevaline could have been abducted and murdered by serial killer Christopher Halliwell. Who they also believe is also responsible for the murder of Claudia Lawrence, who was abducted in York in 2009.
4. The murder may still be solvable.

Halliwell is currently in prison on a full life sentence for the 2003 murder of Becky Godden-Edwards and the 2011 murder of Sian O’Callaghan. He was a virulent misogynist from 1979 onwards aged 15. When he was in prison between 1985 and 1987 he boasted to a cell mate that he had already killed one woman and wanted to become a serial killer.

In their article Halliwell: The North West Clusters, the authors analysed a series of murders in the North West of England and linked Trevaline’s murder to them. In the three articles in this series, the authors analyse the various investigations that have taken place into Trevaline’s murder and the reasons they failed.

Trevaline’s Disappearance

Trevaline was aged fifty-two, married and ran an antique shop in Llangollen, North Wales. She and her husband Richard (pictured above, right inset) lived in Llangollen and had a Bungalow at Rhuddlan to which they were refurbishing and intended to retire.

On Saturday 16^th June 1990, she vanished.

Trevaline is pictured in the lead illustration, along with a picture of her shop in Llangollen and the note on the front door the shop “Back in two minutes” left in the window on the day of her disappearance.

When Trevaline failed to return home, members of her family entered the shop and found the front door locked with the note still on the front door. Her handbag with her credit cards, car keys, coat and other items were still in the shop. Her powder compact was open on the counter. At that point she was reported missing.

The Initial Investigation: 1990

NWP concluded immediately that Mrs Evans had been abducted and the NWP Force Major Incident Team (FMIT) led the investigation. It established that Trevaline left the shop at 12.40pm. She was seen near her home at Market Street, Llangollen at 2.30 p.m., which is the last confirmed sighting of her alive. There were two other sightings of her that afternoon next to the River Dee, but they may not be accurate.

Despite an intensive search in Llangollen, of the River Dee and the nearby Shropshire Union Canal, and interviewing every householder in Llangollen, no trace of her, her clothes or the large amount of cash she had on her was ever found.

NWP concluded that Trevaline had been abducted and murdered but did not declare it as a murder, preferring to run the investigation as a missing persons enquiry. (Major Investigative Failure (MIF1). This meant the investigation did not comply from the normal standards of murder enquiries for documentation, management or external reviews (MIF2).

The case attracted huge public and media interest. NWP made appeals for information and the case was covered on the BBC TV programme Crimewatch UK twice. The Crimewatch reconstruction can be viewed here. It starts at 30 minutes and skilfully reconstructs the facts of her disappearance. Please take the time to watch it before reading further.

As with the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, the extensive media coverage generated an enormous number of leads and pieces of information to the Incident Room at Llangollen Police Station. One of these was a man who said he had seen a man with a camper van acting suspiciously at a local beauty spot called Horseshoe Pass and near Trevaline’s shop. The description of this man resembled Christopher Halliwell, who was unknown to the police for this type of crime at that time. The witness was interviewed by detectives at Llangollen Police Station, who ignored his evidence and did not follow up on either the description of the man or the van (MIF3), or interview his workmate who had also seen this man (MIF4). Had an appeal been put out locally for the van there is no doubt that it would have been traced. This was to emerge in 2023 as a catastrophic failure.

This was arguably the largest and most complex investigation that NWP had ever undertaken. NWP is a small county force with only a very small detective branch. To put this in context, in 2023 it had 309 detectives of whom only 12 served in the FMIT. North Wales is primarily rural and does not have any large urban centres. Consequently NWP detectives were not as experienced as detectives from the larger Metropolitan forces such as Greater Manchester, Merseyside, or the Metropolitan Police etc. and had very little experience of running large, complex, national investigations. Despite this, NWP did not request extra manpower from neighbouring forces. (MIF5). Nor did it request an external review from a senior detective from another force. (MIF6).

In 1986, following the failure of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation a new computer system called Home Office Large Major Enquiry System (HOLMES) was introduced to all forces. It was fully operational by 1988 and was intended to ensure that all leads were followed up and that Incident Rooms were not overwhelmed with huge amounts of information, as happened in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation.

However, HOLMES requires a central specialist team of operators and NWP may not have had the manpower to run a HOLMES incident room. Because FMIT ran the Trevaline Evans investigation as a missing person enquiry, not a murder investigation, it may have used this to evade the requirement to use HOLMES, preferring to run the investigation using card indexes which failed so spectacularly in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation (MIF7). This may be why the information from the witness was ignored and the van not traced. The authors have no doubt that other leads from the public were also subsumed in the card indexes and not followed up (MIF8).

During the Crimewatch program NWP issued appeals for four men to come forward and be eliminated. Trevaline had been seen several times in the company of one particular man, so NWP issued a photofit of him which was circulated widely and shown on Crimewatch UK. It was obvious that he was the prime suspect.

The photofit was instantly recognised locally as Trevaline’s innocent brother, Phil.

Every member of Trevaline’s family should have been identified and interviewed in the first days of the investigation. However, this did not happen (MIF9). As a result of this failure, Phil was prematurely designated as a suspect (MIF 10) and a huge amount of effort was wasted trying to trace a prime suspect who was entirely innocent.

Rather than admit that the suspect was of a member of the family and therefore irrelevant, NWP issued a statement that the photofit was “inaccurate”, although in fact it was a very good likeness. This ensured that NWP was able to evade admitting that it had designated the wrong man as a prime suspect on national television and bungled the investigation, and gave the impression that the man in the photofit was still a suspect, although in fact he was not. This was a failure of media strategy. (MIF11)

A second Crimewatch UK program broadcast in October 1990 also covered Mrs Evans’ disappearance and can be seen here at 10 minutes. This revealed that NWP wanted to interview two other men who were seen with Trevaline.

The other five men were ever traced. The investigation eventually wound down. All subsequent investigations by NWP into Trevaline’s murder were conducted by officers from FMIT and the case was never subjected to impartial scrutiny by officers from a different team of detectives from NWP, or from a different force (MIF12). In short, FMIT was marking its own homework.

From 1990 to 2001, NWP maintained Trevaline as a missing person, not a murder victim. This ensured that her case would not appear as an unsolved murder, which helped to keep NWP’s unsolved serious crime figures low.

This also meant that the case was excluded from antecedent investigations by other forces (MIF13) and appears to have been forgotten.

Operation ENIGMA: 1996 -1998

Operation ENIGMA was a cross-force investigation involving twenty-six Police Forces to identify potential links between unsolved murders of sex workers or women that could have been mistaken as sex workers, to identify if they had been committed by a serial killer.

Details on Operation ENIGMA are scarce, but it is believed to have reviewed 207 unsolved murders of women from 1986 onwards. It found that 72 of them (35%) needed further investigation, demonstrating just how inadequate police investigations of prostitute killings (“Fish and chip” murders in police parlance) were. It identified 21 potential clusters of unsolved murders that had links and could have been committed by up to four serial killers.

Operation ENIGMA recognised that some serial killers of sex workers also attacked women who were not involved in any way in sex work, so non sex workers were also included in the investigation. The serial killer Alun Kyte (“The Midlands Ripper”) was linked to the murder of two prostitutes after raping a woman who was not a sex worker in Weston Super-Mare in 1997.

In their article Halliwell: The North West Clusters, the authors used route package and cluster analysis to link Halliwell to the murder of Trevaline Evans and a series of prostitute murders and disappearances in the Manchester and Merseyside between 1988 and 1998. All are within a 40 mile radius from Aughton Park where Halliwell had lived and have common characteristics with Christopher Halliwell’s modus operandi.

[See Table, here]

There is very little doubt that some or all of these cases were considered by Operation ENIGMA. The authors believe that Halliwell may be one of the four serial killers that Operation ENIGMA identified as operating in the Midlands and Merseyside, which are only a short distance from Llangollen.

[See Map, here]

Both Trevaline Evans and Manchester prostitute Helen Sage disappeared. However, because FMIT had recorded Trevaline as a missing person, not a murder victim, it was never considered by Operation ENIGMA (MIF14). Likewise, because Greater Manchester Police (GMP) was also manipulating its crime figures by recording the disappearance of Helen Sage as a missing person, her murder was also excluded from Operation ENIGMA (MIF15).

The policy of misclassifying murder victims as missing persons pursued by NWP and GMP withheld information from Operation ENIGMA. This prevented it from considering and linking these two crimes, which in turn undermined its effectiveness and may have prevented it from detecting Halliwell (MIF16).

If this is so, this will have helped Halliwell stay under the radar and go on to murder other women.

The authors are unable to estimate if there have been other instances of NWP and GMP concealing murders as missing persons enquiries, or if other forces follow or have followed this policy, the number of murders involved, or the impact this has had on other investigations.

Operation Blue CORAL: 2001 investigation

In January 2001, NWP re-opened the case under the codename Operation Blue CORAL. It was again conducted by FMIT, which covers both NWPs major investigations and cold case investigations. As part of this, Trevaline’s status was changed from a missing person to a murder victim on 8^th January 2001.

The new investigation did not pursue the other five men who were identified in the 1990 Crimewatch appeals (MIF 17). Instead the FMIT detectives arrested Trevaline’s husband Richard in June 2001. This requires further analysis.

About 61% of women killed by men in the UK are killed by a current or ex-partner. Source: BBC. This has led to a presumption within the Police that when investigating the murder of a woman, the most likely suspect must be the husband or boyfriend and it is therefore appropriate to automatically arrest him.

There had been speculation that Trevaline and Richard had been having marital difficulties and that Trevaline was having affairs. However, no man has ever been identified as her lover. During the 1990 Crimewatch program, NWP described Trevaline as happily married and Richard Evans appears to have been eliminated as a suspect at the time.

There are plenty of marriages that have marital difficulties or where one or both parties are unfaithful to each other, which either resolve themselves over time into happy marriages, or result in a divorce in the normal lawful way. Therefore this is not enough on its own to justify a reasonable suspicion that Richard Evans had murdered Trevaline. Nevertheless, NWP arrested him in 2001.

Richard’s alibi was that he was in Rhuddlan working on the bungalow at the time of Trevaline’s disappearance, as normal. Unfortunately he did not have any witness to confirm his presence at Rhuddlan, which is only about an hour’s drive from Llangollen.

The FMIT did not interview the two witnesses that saw the man behaving suspiciously near Trevalines shop (MIF18 and MIF19), or try to trace the van (MIF20). Had all the information been entered into HOLMES, then he would have emerged as an open actions and HOLMES would have required that his evidence was followed up, the van traced and the action closed. It therefore appears that all the information produced by the original 1990 investigation was not fully entered onto HOLMES, or the information was not properly assessed (MIF21).

HOLMES was probably ignored, because FMIT was obsessively focussed on Richard Evans as the prime suspect and ignored all other lines of enquiry and suspects (MIF22). This is a type of investigative failure called confirmation bias, which is defined as “the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values”.

Confirmation bias destroyed the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, because it focussed prematurely on the Ripper being a Geordie and then excluded all other suspects. HOLMES was intended to prevent this occurring again, but all lines of enquiry unrelated to Richard Evans appear to have been ignored by FMIT.

Predictably Richard was released without charge.

[Maps by FAD]

Coming next: The Operation Blue CORAL Fiasco (2)

Appeal for Information

Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• Fishing along the River Dee?
• In Llangollen
• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• In York driving a red Rover?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirk?
• In Middlesbrough?
• In Huddersfield?
• In Merseyside, driving a white D Reg van?
• At Aughton Park?
• In Manchester?
• In Sheffield?
• Did he drive you from Swindon to Sheffield or York University?

Please email letters@nyenquirer.uk. All enquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence.

by CHRIS CLARK & TIM HICKS

~~~~~

Introduction: “The East Lancs Ripper”

For many years there has been media comment on the possibility that a serial killer, dubbed “The East Lancs Ripper” and who remains undetected, had operated in East Lancashire in the period 1988-1998.

This man has been alleged to be responsible for the unsolved murders of Linda Donaldson, Maria Christina Requena, Julie Finlay and Vera Anderson. Manchester Evening News (MEN) report on the “East Lancs Ripper” here.

There has also been media comment that the suspicious disappearances of Helen Sage, Georgina Moore, Pauline Curry and the murder of Julie Jones may be connected to these murders. (MEN) report here.

New information has been revealed in the “In the Footsteps of Killers” documentary on the 1990 murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans in Llangollen, North Wales, in which Tim participated (here). Following on from this, the authors have re-reviewed these cases.

The authors eliminated three of these cases from the series in an article published in 2018.

• Vera Anderson

Vera Anderson was found with her throat cut in her car in Penketh near Warrington on the 25^th of August 1991. The modus operandi of this crime was very different to those of the other cases. In 2022, Cheshire Police arrested a 70-year-old man from Widnes and a 61-year-old woman from Warrington for Vera’s murder, but they were released without charge.

• Georgina Moore

Georgina Moore was a divorced mother of two who disappeared from Wigan in 1998. She was reported as missing but was traced and found to be alive and well.

• Pauline Currie

Pauline Curry was a hairdresser and single parent, who disappeared from Lowton, near Leigh in November 2006. She was also traced and found to be alive and well.

The authors are nevertheless satisfied that the remainder of these cases are linked and form a cluster of attacks for which serial killer Christopher Halliwell (pictured above left), is a strong suspect. They also believe that Halliwell could be a suspect in the “Angel of the Meadows” murder and  have now linked the murder of Trevaline Evans to the “East Lancs Ripper” series.

Christopher Halliwell

Halliwell is currently in prison on a full life sentence for the 2003 murder of Becky Godden-Edwards and the 2011 murder of Sian O’Callaghan. He was 47 when he murdered Sian O’Callaghan. It is rare for men to start killing at that age. Most serial killers start in their late teens and early twenties.

Halliwell was a misogynist from the age of 15. When he was aged twenty-one to twenty-three (in between 1985 and 1987), he boasted in prison to a cell-mate that he had already killed one woman and wanted to become a serial killer.

During the course of its investigation into Halliwell, Wiltshire Police discovered three “trophy caches” of sixty items of women’s clothing which it is suspected were taken from his victims. These were:

• A pond at Ramsbury, Wiltshire where they recovered Sian O’Callaghan’s boots (SO’C: D3).
• Buried near the pond they found Becky Godden-Edwards’ cardigan (BG-E: D4), fifty-eight other items of women’s clothing and a shotgun.
• Halliwell’s garage where they recovered a pair of knickers that did not belong to his wife or his daughter. The implication being that they were from a more recent, but unknown victim and were being stored in the garage prior to being transported to the cache at Ramsbury.

Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher, who arrested Halliwell has been quoted as saying:

“Buried around the pond were more items of women’s clothing. I wondered, did they belong to the six other victims I suspected Halliwell of killing? But I had my maths wrong.

Around the pond were not six other items of women’s clothing. There were 60.

 Halliwell might have been far more prolific than even I had feared.”

Daily Mail coverage with his remarks in full here.

In 1977 alone, Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe murdered at least five women. So in the period following his release from prison in 1987 to his arrest in 2011, Halliwell could have murdered many more women than those for which he was convicted.

Serial killers prefer to operate in areas and follow routes they are familiar with because:

1. They are more confident and comfortable in familiar surroundings.
2. They know the patterns of behavior locally, which reduces the possibility of detection while they are committing a crime.

To assess the possibility of other crimes having been committed by a serial killer, it is necessary to identify the areas he was familiar with. Then compare his modus operandi to unsolved crimes in those areas.

Halliwell’s geographical area of operation

Halliwell led an itinerant life style. He enjoyed driving and travelled widely to work in many jobs, including window-cleaner, builder, ground-worker, chauffeur, taxi-driver and bin-man, and to pursue his hobbies of narrow-boating and fishing. He regularly used prostitutes and visited ‘red light’ districts.

Halliwell lived in Dalbeattie, Scotland, several addresses in Swindon and at Aughton Park near Liverpool. He is known to have stayed and worked in North Wales as a window fitter. He may also have stayed with his father in Huddersfield. According to one witness, he also lived in York and worked there as a minicab driver or a builder.

Consequently Halliwell’s geographic knowledge and area of operations was enormous. He certainly knew Lancashire, Liverpool, Manchester, Yorkshire and North Wales. This has led the authors to potentially link Halliwell to:

• A cluster of murders within a 40 mile radius of Aughton Park in Lancashire.
• A cluster of attacks in North Yorkshire, which are to be covered in a separate series of articles.

Halliwell’s modus operandi

The authors have analysed Haliwell’s modus operandi, based on the murders  of Becky Godden-Edwards and Sian O’Callaghanfor which he was convicted.

Becky Godden-Edwards

Becky was a heroin addict and paid for her abduction through prostituting herself at Swindon’s Manchester Road red light district (RLD). Halliwell was a regular client and was obsessed with her. She was last seen getting into Halliwell’s cab outside a nightclub on East Street, Swindon, (Abduction Point BG-E: AP) in January 2003, while arguing with him.

When he was arrested, Halliwell took detectives to the exact location of Becky’s grave in the corner of a field in Eastleach (BG-E: D2), in the Gloucester Constabulary force area. Even though it was nondescript and he had buried her there eight years before. The implication being that he had visited the grave several times over the years to obtain pleasure from the memories it brought him.

Becky’s clothing had been removed. Her hands, feet and head were missing and Halliwell never revealed where he had buried them (BG-E: D3+), or the location where he dismembered her body (BG-E: D1). The cause of death could not be determined.

Sian O’Callaghan

Halliwell worked in Swindon as a minicab driver. In the early hours of the morning of 19^th March 2011 he contacted his control room and told them he was clocking-off and going home. He then drove around Swindon, looking for a suitable victim.

Sian O’Callaghan (pictured above right), aged 22, was walking home from a nightclub on High Street Swindon and was spotted by Halliwell (SO’C: AP). She had facial similarities to Halliwell’s mother, (who he hated), had a slight build – which meant she could be easy to overcome. This all fitted his victim preferences. He pulled up in his green Toyota Avensis with a minicab sticker on the side and offered her a lift. Sian got in and Halliwell killed her shortly afterwards by stabbing her in her head and neck with a knife. Her body was later found to have been undressed and showed signs of strangulation and blunt force trauma to the face and head.

[See Map, here]

Halliwell took Sian’s body to the Savernake forest (SO’C: D1) and concealed it there, later visiting it four times. When he realised that the police were searching the Savernake Forest in the Wiltshire Police force area, he moved Sian’s body to the White Horse at Uffington, Oxfordshire, in the Thames Valley Police force area (SO’C: D2). He removed the body from the boot of his car and rolled it down an embankment into undergrowth, which completely concealed it from the road. He had obviously preselected the deposition site at Uffington and it was perfect for this purpose. The operation probably took less than two minutes.

Forensically aware, Halliwell later cleaned the rear seat of his car and burned the seat covers.

The Map

[See Map, here]

This summarises some of this information and shows that Halliwell moved both bodies in short journeys of between 11 and 19 miles in rural areas, at night. This reduced the possibility of being stopped by the Police in a traffic stop, being picked up on CCTV or being seen by other drivers or residents.

Halliwell was forensically aware. He changed cars regularly and destroyed forensic evidence whenever possible. He concealed Becky and Sian’s bodies with great skill. He was physically strong, had been a builder, grave-digger, and ground worker and could probably dig a shallow grave in an hour or so. Had he not taken detectives to the gravesites, their bodies would never have been found. The absence of a body is therefore entirely consistent with Halliwell’s modus operandi. The implication of this is that Halliwell must be a suspect in the disappearance of any woman in an area that Halliwell was known to frequent or operate in.

When he was working as a taxi driver, Halliwell was smartly dressed, clean and tidy in appearance, quiet spoken and persuasive. He had no difficulty persuading women to get in his vehicle.

The authors believe that he deliberately varied his modus operandi, and abducted victims in one force area, then deposited the body in another, to complicate the police investigation and make it more difficult to link his crimes

Table 1

[Link to Table 1, here]

This compares Halliwell’s modus operandi against the murders in the North West and Yorkshire clusters. As can be seen there is a clear correlation.

The North West clusters

[The map here shows]:

• The route packages Halliwell would probably have used when living at Aughton Park, working in North Wales and returning to Swindon.
• The two abduction clusters in Manchester and Liverpool, and a deposition cluster along the A570, A580 and A579. Containing the key sites for the “East Lancs Ripper” murders of Helen Sage, Linda Donaldson, Maria Christina Requena, Julie Finlay, Julie Jones and additionally, the “Angel of the Meadows” case.
• The key points in the murder of Trevaline Evans, which are linked to the “East Lancs Ripper” murders by the associated route packages.

Considering the individual cases:

Linda Donaldson 

Linda Donaldson was a prostitute from Liverpool who was last seen at 11pm on Monday 17^th October 1988, by a Merseyside Police vice squad officer close to the Albert Dock RLD waiting for clients. Detectives deduced that she was enticed into a car by a client.

At noon the next day, an elderly couple discovered Linda’s body along a remote stretch of road at Lowton, a village in Greater Manchester. Linda’s body was concealed on the other side of a hedge, in a gully. A post-mortem examination would later conclude that she had died from multiple stab wounds.

The pathologist concluded that the woman was dead before many of the injuries had been inflicted, including trying to remove her breasts, which were never found and trying to remove her head and arms from her body. The murder weapon(s) and Linda’s clothes were not found.

Linda’s body had been washed down before it was dumped, probably to remove any forensic evidence. She was killed somewhere else and then dumped in the field.

Crimewatch UK programme on the murder here.

Trevaline Evans

Trevaline Evans disappeared from her antiques shop at Llangollen North Wales in June 1990. Her murder is included in the North West Cluster because Halliwell could have travelled to Llangollen to go fishing or travelling on a narrow boat, using the route packages from Aughton Park to North Wales and from North Wales to and from Swindon. The key indicators are:

• Halliwell had a striking facial resemblance to Sian O’Callaghan and Claudia Lawrence, which in turn meant she resembled Halliwell’s mother.
• Llangollen is a centre for fishing and narrow boating.
• Halliwell is known to have worked as a window fitter in the North Wales area.
• A man resembling Halliwell was seen acting suspiciously near her shop.
• Halliwell had served a prison sentence for burglary in which he specialised in stealing antiques. He may have been trying to sell stolen antiques to Trevaline.
• Trevaline disappeared.

A recent television documentary in which Tim participated (here) gives the full facts and the latest information.

Trevaline’s murder is to be covered in detail in the next article in the series.

Maria Christina Requena

Maria Christina Requina (aged 26) was a prostitute who worked the Minsull Street RLD in Manchester. She disappeared on 1^st January 1991.

Her dismembered body was found in five bin-bags by two youngsters fishing on the shores of Pennington Flash, off Slag Lane, on the 6^th of January 1991. Maria had been stabbed to death, decapitated and her body cut up with power tools before being wrapped in a mattress cover and thrown into the lake. Her clothes and the murder weapon had been removed from the scene.

The Mirror report with more information here.

Julie Finley 

Twenty three year old Liverpool prostitute Julie Finley was last seen alive about 11.00pm on Friday the 5^th of August 1994, at the rear of the Liverpool Royal University Teaching Hospital, close to both the Albert Dock RLD and the Liverpool end of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. She was witnessed talking to ‘an unknown white man, of average height and build, and aged in his 20s to 30s‘. A general description that nevertheless fits Halliwell.

She was found by a cyclist at lunchtime on Saturday the 6^th of August 1994 in a field off the Rainford bypass. She had been strangled. There was no sign of her clothing at the scene and she had been murdered elsewhere.

A few hours before Julie’s body was discovered, a witness told police he saw someone matching her description arguing with a man at about 12.30am on Saturday, 6th August 1994 outside the Wheatsheaf Public House, situated only 50 yards from where her body was found. The unknown man was attempting to force this young woman into a white Transit van. Halliwell was driving a D-registration white van at the time.

Shortly after Julie’s murder, a woman calling herself Tina called police and told them that on the night of her murder, Julie said she was going to meet a taxi driver from Prescot. This man may have been a regular client. Halliwell is known to have worked as a taxi driver and was a regular client of Becky Godden-Edwards. Prescot is 6.5 miles from the deposition site at Rainford By-Pass.

Twenty people have been arrested in connection with this crime over the years, but no-one has been charged.

Liverpool Echo report with more information here.

Helen Sage

Helen Sage was a single mother who was devoted to her six month old daughter. She was forced to prostitute herself to make ends meet and was last seen in Manchester’s red light district in August 1997.

Helen was at one time suspected of being the Angel of the Meadows murder victim, but was eliminated.

Helen is still classified as missing, although the authors both believe she has been murdered. GMP commented. Detective Sergeant Clare Carr, from GMP’s Cold Case Unit, said:

“At the time of Helen’s disappearance a number of hypotheses were explored to establish what happened to her. 

As with cases of this nature, this is normal procedure to make sure that every outcome is considered to try and find that person.

Helen’s disappearance is not currently being treated as murder as there has never been any physical evidence to suggest she was killed.

Of course, if any new information came to light we would review this.”

The proposition put forward by GMP above that after twenty six years with no proof of life that Helen is still alive clearly beggars’ belief. It is quite obvious she has been murdered and her body concealed:

• Helen was a devoted to her baby. It is highly unusual for mothers to abandon their children and this is normally the key indicator of a “no body” murder, which GMP isignoring.
• There was no reason for Helen to disappear.
• Helen’s only source of income was prostitution, yet has never come to the attention of the police since her disappearance.
• Prostitutes have to get into a car with an unknown man. This left Helen vulnerable to abduction and then murder at a remote crime scene. It is therefore impossible to detect physical evidence of crime at the pick-up point, because no crime is c omitted there. The crime occurs afterwards and consequently the crime scene in these cases is far away from the place the victim was last seen, secluded and undetectable by the police. In the case of a prostitute murder, the absence of any physical evidence does not rule out the possibility of murder.

The Helen Sage case is the same as the disappearance of Becky Godden-Edwards, which was only resolved eight years later when Christopher Halliwell led Wiltshire Police to her grave. There was no physical evidence of crime in that case either. The absence of physical evidence should not be used as the sole elimination criteria to automatically prevent the re-classification of Helen Sage’s disappearance as murder.

The conclusion is inescapable that Helen has been murdered and GMP is classifying her as a missing person to manipulate its crime figures to conceal an unsolved prostitute murder and avoid expending effort on a “fish and chip” murder. A classic case of misogynistic police attitudes to prostitutes.

Julie Jones

Julie Jones was a 32-year-old prostitute and mother of two, who worked the Whalley Range and Minshull Street RLDs in Manchester.

Her naked body was found under bushes at Shudehill Manchester on the 13^th of July 1998, six days after she was reported missing. Like Linda Donaldson she was wrapped in a carpet. She had suffered crush injuries to her chest. Her clothes were never recovered.

MEN report with more information, details of the reward of £50,000 and the police appeal here.

The “Angel of the Meadows”

In 2010, builders found the body of an unidentified woman in an area known as Angel Meadow, central Manchester. She became known as the “Angel of the meadows”.

The body was wrapped in carpet, which probably came from a Ford Cortina. The carpet was burned, indicating an attempt to destroy forensic evidence, which is consistent with Halliwell. The post-mortem established she had been beaten to death and had a fractured neck, collarbone and jaw. The body had been stripped, some clothes were found nearby and she may have been sexually assaulted. She had probably been murdered between 1977 and 1988.

Initially there was speculation that the body may have been Helen Sage, but she was quickly ruled out. Despite extensive enquiries, the identity of the victim was never discovered. GMP interviewed murderers Ronald Castree, Peter Tobin and the “Rotherham Shoe Rapist” James Lloyd in connection with the murder.

The authors have included the “Angel of the Meadows” case in this analysis because Halliwell travelled widely and could have been in Manchester. The body had similar injuries to those of Sian O’Callaghan and had been buried. An attempt had been made to burn evidence. Like Sian O’Callaghan, footwear was removed from the scene.

The fact that the victim has not been identified may indicate that the body was brought in from outside of the city, or that the “Angel of the Meadows” was of no fixed abode or a prostitute.

MEN article with more information here.

The deposition cluster

Analysis of the deposition cluster is revealing. It is linear along 12 miles from the A570, A580 and A579.

Insert: The A570/580/A579 Linear Deposition Cluster Map

It is unclear when Halliwell was living at Aughton Park and working in North Wales, but because of his itinerant lifestyle, use of prostitutes and interest in fishing and narrow boating, it is entirely possible that he could have been familiar with all the abduction points and deposition sites in the clusters.

Other than Trevaline Evans, all the victims were of slight build, meaning that they would be easy to overpower.

Halliwell had an interest in fishing and narrow boating. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal goes from close to the Albert Dock RLD in Liverpool, passes Rainford and then on to the Pennington Wharf Marina at Leigh, where it becomes the Bridgewater Canal. The Bridgwater Canal then joins the Rochdale Canal which lead into the City Centre of Manchester. The Whalley Range RLD is 2.6 miles from the Rochdale Canal, the Minshull Street RLD is 100 yards from it. The Shudehill/Angel Meadows deposition site is 0.4 of a mile from the Rochdale Canal. Halliwell may have gone fishing at Pennington Flash while living in the Liverpool area or while his canal boat was moored at Pennington Wharf Marina.

If Halliwell used the RLDs in Liverpool and Manchester while he was at Aughton Park, he would have been familiar with these RLDs and the routes to and from them, including the, A570, A580 and A579.

Linda Donaldson was abducted in Liverpool in the Merseyside Police force area, but her body was dumped in the GMP force area. As with the murders of Sian O’Callaghan and Becky Godden-Edwards, this indicates an intention to complicate the investigation by crossing force boundaries.

Linda Donaldson’s body had been washed down to remove forensic evidence. This is entirely consistent with a forensically aware offender, such as Halliwell.

Maria Christina Requena’s body had been dismembered and wrapped in bin bags, which is consistent with the murder of Melanie Hall in Bath, that Halliwell has been linked with.

Three deposition sites were in rural areas, within 19 miles of the abduction point, which is entirely consistent with Halliwell’s modus operandi.

We know that Halliwell visited the sites of Becky Godden-Edwards grave and Sian O’Callaghan’s body, probably to obtain perverse sexual gratification. The pond at Ramsbury he used as a trophy store is a fishing spot which gave Halliwell a reason to visit it and loiter there. Halliwell may have deposited bodies and trophies close to the canal network so that he could visit the sites for the same purpose. Pennington Flash has good fishing. Halliwell worked at various jobs including bin man. There is a Waste & Recycling Centre about two miles from Pennington Flash.

The Intake Lane body search

According to this Daily Mirror article Merseyside Police re-opened the investigation into the murder of Julie Finlay in 2020 with Halliwell as a suspect. In November 2020 they conducted a search near Intake Lane, which is within 3 miles of the Rainford Bypass and 4 miles of Aughton Park. It is unclear if these two events are connected, but Merseyside Police issued this media statement:

“Officers were responding to reports suggesting a body had been historically buried on the land. An extensive search of the area has been carried out over the past seven days but nothing has been located.

The search was not linked to any historical Merseyside Police investigations.”

It is unclear who the victim is or where he or she was murdered, other than it wasn’t Merseyside. Although the body was presumably transported there from another force area, had been concealed and was searched for at one end of the deposition cluster. There is not enough evidence to link it to Halliwell.

Apart from Julie Finlay, so far as can be ascertained, Halliwell has never been considered as a suspect in any of these murders. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and Merseyside Police have never formally linked any of these cases.

It would therefore appear that either a) the deposition of three or four bodies along a short stretch of road is coincidental, or b) the murders were committed by the same man.

Halliwell is a very strong candidate.

Maps by FAD

Appeal for Information

Anyone with information which could help the investigation team should contact Merseyside Police @ CrimestoppersUK, or via its social media desk @ MerPolCC, call 101, or the GMP Cold Case Review Unit (remainder) on 0161 856 5978, or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

If you think you can add to our analysis, please contact the NYE using our email address: news@nyenquirer.uk. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence.

UK Police Force Boundaries Map

by TIM HICKS

~~~~~

Introduction

On Thursday 16^th February at 10.00, Channel 4 broadcasted a programme in their “In the footsteps of Killers” series in which Emilia Fox, criminologists Dr Graham Hill and Professor David Wilson examined the case of Mrs Trevaline Evans (pictured above right), who left a note saying “back in two minutes” on the door of her antiques shop in Market Street, Llangollen, in 1990 – and disappeared. The programme can be accessed here.

It reveals new information on Trevaline’s disappearance that indicates serial killer Christopher Halliwell (pictured above centre) is a strong suspect for her murder.

Taxi driver Halliwell (58) is currently serving a full life term for the murders of Becky Godden-Edwards (20), in 2003, and Sian O’Callaghan (22), in 2011, in Swindon, Wiltshire.

NYE helps generate new evidence

In my last article (here) I commented:

“I was very happy to be asked to participate in the programme and enjoyed working on a piece of cutting edge journalism with David and the team from Alaska TV.

I think the programme has moved the investigation into Trevaline’s murder on and put Christopher Halliwell firmly in the frame as a strong suspect.

Trevaline’s murder has implications for the investigation into the disappearance of York Chef Claudia Lawrence.”

[Claudia is pictured above left]

 This has transpired to be absolutely accurate. The program generated interest in the national press and many local outlets:

• The Sun
• The Mirror
  
• North Wales Daily Post
• Swindon Advertiser

The program and the above articles have revealed new evidence that should be of interest to a number of Forces.

North Wales Police (NWP): Trevaline Evans

A man who strongly resembled Halliwell was seen close to Market Street the day before and on the day of Trevaline’s disappearance, with a camper van. This was reported to NWP at the time, but they were never able to trace the van or the driver. So this suspect was never eliminated.

I asked NWP for a media statement confirming if it would be designating Halliwell as a suspect and interviewing him in prison and it refused to comment, or respond to any of my correspondence. So I have, in effect, been proscribed for raising Halliwell as a suspect.

The position of NWP therefore remains that:

“there are no known links [of Halliwell] to any criminality in the North Wales area”.

Even though Trevaline’s murder is entirely consistent with Halliwell’s modus operandi and victim preferences, he worked in North Wales and may have been outside her shop on the day she was murdered.

South Yorkshire Police (SYP)

A witness has confirmed that she saw Halliwell at the Tinsley Marina in Sheffield, South Yorkshire – one hour’s drive from York – in 2009, the year Claudia Lawrence disappeared. He said he was staying on a rented narrow-boat to do some fishing. This fits perfectly with Halliwell, who was a fisherman and a narrow-boat enthusiast.

I forwarded this information to SYP asking that their Cold Case Team be informed that Halliwell – a dangerous serial killer – was operating in their Force area in 2009 and suggested they review unsolved attacks on women in South Yorkshire in the period 2009 – 2011, to see if he could be a suspect in them. This was intended to assist SYP.

I also asked for a media statement confirming if there have been any unsolved attacks on women in the SYP Force Area and if Halliwell has been considered as a suspect in any of them. SYP’s Corporate Communications Unit confirmed SYP had this information, but refused to comment and told me to submit a Freedom of Information Request.

North Yorkshire Police (NYP): Claudia Lawrence

The same witness confirmed that:

• She saw Halliwell again at her work place in North Yorkshire in 2011. He was armed with a concealed double-sided sheath knife. He said he was staying locally and thinking of re-locating to York.

• Halliwell told her he knew the University area around York from working there as a minicab/taxi driver. He asked her to call him Chris. He was touting for business and left a card behind (for the staff notice-board) with the name Christopher.

• She also sighted Halliwell in the car park at the Kilburn White Horse near Thirsk in March 2011.

The following additional reports linking Halliwell to Claudia’s murder have emerged:

• Halliwell is alleged to have tried to entice a woman into his car at about 06:00am in the morning after she finished her shift at Rowntree’s in York, shortly before Claudia disappeared.

• The NYE has had an unconfirmed sighting of Halliwell in Scarborough, which is a sea-fishing centre and would fit with his interest in fishing.

• One of our readers, Arrin Stoner from Los Angeles is a YouTuber who specialises in reviewing cases which are CCTV based. He has sent the NYE enhancements of the CCTV images issued by North Yorkshire Police of a man they want to identify who was seen outside Claudia’s house the day before her disappearance and in the morning of her disappearance (here).

Halliwell had distinctive facial features a big receding hairline that reflects light. Big ears and lips, prominent nose and sunken eyes. These features fit him perfectly for recognition from low light enhanced CCTV images. The images are grainy (which is typical for enhanced CCTV images), but there appears to be a remarkable similarity between the man in the enhanced images and Halliwell.

I am not a CCTV forensic analyst and I freely admit that I could be wrong about the images. So I forwarded them to North Yorkshire Police with Arrin’s contact details and asked them to follow up with him. Arrin has confirmed he has not received any contact from NYP. I also received no response and it appears that this new evidence generated by the NYE has been ignored.

When I wrote to Chief Constable Winward suggesting that Halliwell was designated as a suspect in this murder and interviewed in prison over it, I also received no response. So the position of NYP therefore remains:

“There are no known links between Halliwell and the Claudia Lawrence Case.”

Even though her murder fits perfectly with Halliwell’s modus operandi and victim preferences, there is evidence that he was working in York as a minicab driver and he may have appeared on CCTV outside her house.

Wiltshire Police

Wiltshire Police is the lead Force on the antecedent investigation into crimes committed by Halliwell. It is also ignoring correspondence on this new evidence.

The Police response to media coverage

In cold cases, the key element to progressing them is often media coverage. Any media coverage of a cold case is therefore always in the public interest and the best interests of the Police investigation, because it may generate new information and/or new witnesses.

So you would think that the Police would be grateful for the extra media attention generated by the NYE. Particularly as it has apparently produced new information.

However, the NYE has been faced with a wall of silence from all four Forces, which appear to have jointly closed ranks to ignore new evidence and proscribe the NYE.

Why is this?

Police politics and Halliwell

In 2001, NWP arrested Trevaline’s husband Richard for her murder, but – humiliatingly – had to release him without charge. If NWP now designates Halliwell as a suspect, it will be confirming that it arrested an innocent man and bungled four of the five investigations into Trevaline’s murde – causing damage to NWP’s public reputation.

Likewise, NYP has arrested six men in connection Claudia’s murder and sent files on four of them to the Crown Prosecution Service, which declined to press charges. If NYP now designates Halliwell as a suspect, it will confirm that the previous investigations were bungled, which will of course cause severe reputational damage.

Hence, I believe that the reason the Chief Constables of both NYP and NWP are ignoring all evidence and lines of enquiry that point to Halliwell as a suspect in the murders of Trevaline Evans and Claudia Lawrence.

They appear to be putting the reputations of their own Forces above the right of the victims to justice and the need of their families for closure.

The impact of being accused of a murder is devastating to the men concerned, especially as the Police usually release their names to the media and they become known locally. This is a tactic used by the Police to increase the pressure on suspects.

Trevaline’s husband, both her brothers and her son are all now dead. There is no family left to fight for justice for her and NWP appears to have abandoned the investigation. I can only hope that this article will help generate more information and retrospectively rehabilitate the reputation of Richard Evans.

Failure of the Antecedent Investigations

Halliwell was a serial killer who was resident in Swindon in the Wiltshire Police Force Area. Both the senior detectives from Wiltshire Police that investigated Halliwell have said they have no doubt that he has committed other murders. It appears that Halliwell was murdering women from at least 2003 onwards, possibly from as early as 1984, but was only detected by Wiltshire Police in 2011.

The antecedent investigation that started in 2011 to identify his other victims was closed down prematurely. Another antecedent investigation was allocated a £40,000 budget, which is not enough to perform anything like a thorough review. Mirror investigation here. In the author’s view, this indicates Wiltshire Police’s complete lack of interest in properly investigating Halliwell and identifying the full number of women he murdered.

The more that comes out about Halliwell, the more people will ask why Wiltshire Police failed to detect him earlier. If indeed it is confirmed that Halliwell murdered Trevaline, it will show that he was an active serial killer from at least 1990 onwards and was operating across the UK. This will expose a catastrophic failure by Wiltshire Police to detect him earlier or to properly investigate the full range of crimes he committed.

Wiltshire Police’s Chief Constable was severely criticised for missing significant opportunities in the original investigation. Guardian article here. The reality is that Christopher Halliwell was committing Femicide across the UK with impunity and the failure to arrest him earlier represents a catastrophic failure of the entire British police service.

Hence perhaps why the force prefers that the possibility that Halliwell is responsible for a series of other murders including -but not limited to- those of Trevaline Evans and Claudia Lawrence is not actively pursued. To quote Claudia’s brave mother Joan:

“Something has always bothered me about Halliwell and leaves me feeling very uneasy. The police may not have proved he had anything to do with my daughter’s disappearance, but they haven’t disproved it either.”

The Daniel Morgan principle

Daniel Morgan was murdered in Sydenham, South London in 1987. There were six failed investigations into his murder by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). It was alleged that Police corruption had played a part in both his murder and the failure of the MPS to identify his killers.

To address public concern, the Home Secretary established the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel. Its 2021 report found that the MPS had focussed not on bringing the perpetrators to justice, but on protecting its own reputation by concealing evidence of corruption and bungled investigations. It made this observation:

“Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”

Having been proscribed by four Police Forces, it is clear that the NYE is asking questions the Police Service does not want out in the open. This is called holding the Police to account. It is what journalists are supposed to do.

Undeterred, the NYE will continue its investigation.

The KEY question

NWP, NYP, Wiltshire Police and SYP were all provided with an initial draft of this article and given the opportunity to comment, but none of them chose to do so.

This defensive response which is obviously intended to conceal police failings from the public in such serious cases, when we are supposed to have open and accountable policing is unacceptable. It raises the KEY question:

“If indeed Halliwell is not a credible suspect. Why can’t Chief Constable Blakeman and Chief Constable Winward respond openly and justify their decision not to question him?”

NYE Appeal for Information

Whenever we run an article on a cold case, the NYE always runs an appeal for information, to try to progress them by keeping these cases in the public eye and generating information.

Christopher Halliwell is pictured above. He had a slim, athletic build and spoke with a slight Swindon accent. You can see and hear him in the video here, trying to negotiate immunity for admitting to other crimes.

Trevaline Evans

Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• In North Wales?
• Fishing along the River Dee?
• Working as a builder

Claudia Lawrence

Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• Fishing at Sand Hutton Gravel Pits?
• In York?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirk?
• In the car park at the Kilburn White Horse?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• On the North York Moors?

Did he offer you a lift in his minicab in York?

Did you see him in Darlington?

Did you see Christopher Halliwell staying in a bed-and-breakfast or hotel along the A19, in Darlington, Middlesbrough, Scarborough, York or the North York Moors area.

Did you know of Christopher Halliwell’s Father Alan Keith Halliwell (born 7^th July 1941), who may have lived in Huddersfield, York, Ampleforth or Oswaldkirk and who previously served in the RAF? He died in Huddersfield in April 1992.

Please contact the NYE using the letters@nyenquirer.uk address.

On Thursday the 16^th of February at 10.00pm, Channel 4 will broadcast a programme in their “In the footsteps of Killers” series, in which Emilia Fox and the UK’s leading criminologist Professor David Wilson investigate famous unsolved murder cases, looking for new leads that the original investigations may have missed.

In the programme, Professor Wilson, criminologist Dr Graham Hill and Emilia examine the case of Mrs Trevaline Evans, who left a note saying “back in two minutes” on the door of her Llangollen antiques shop in 1990 – and disappeared.

The case has been covered by the NYE and our coverage can be seen below.

http://nyenquirer.uk/evans-heron/

The programme reveals new information on the disappearance, which North Wales Police have classified as a murder. It includes an interview with NYE Crime Reporter TIM HICKS, who has worked with NYE contributor and retired Police Intelligence Officer Chris Clark on investigating serial killer Christopher Halliwell.

They have conducted extensive research into a number of unsolved murder cases and disappearances, discussing the possibility that they are connected to Christopher Halliwell.

Tim Commented:

“I was very happy to be asked to participate in the programme and enjoyed working on a piece of cutting-edge journalism with David and the team from Alaska TV. I think the programme has moved the investigation into Trevaline’s murder on and put Christopher Halliwell firmly in the frame as a strong suspect. 

Trevaline’s murder has implications for the investigation into the disappearance of York Chef Claudia Lawrence. I will be covering these in a follow up article once the programme has been broadcasted. I hope all our police readers will take the time to watch the programme.”

This shows the quality of the NYE’s investigative journalism, how widely the NYE is read and how highly it is regarded. The NYE is very proud that its particular brand of investigative journalism has brought more media attention to this case, which Tim believes is still solvable.

Evelyn Foley’s review of “The New Millennium Serial Killer” by Chris Clark and Bethan Trueman which covers the various murders that Halliwell was convicted of can be read below.

“In the footsteps of Killers: Trevaline Evans” Thursday the 16^th of February 2023 at 10.00pm, Channel 4.

Book Review: The New Millennium Serial Killer

by TIM HICKS & CHRIS CLARK

~~~~~

Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron: Was it Halliwell?

Part 4: A Tale of Two Forces

Introduction

The NYE has been investigating serial killer Christopher Halliwell, who is currently in prison serving a full life sentence having been convicted of the brutal murders of Miss Becky Godden-Edwards in 2003 and Miss Sian O’Callaghan in 2011 in Swindon.

Both Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher who arrested Halliwell and Detective Superintendent Sean Memory who succeeded Fulcher as the Senior Investigating Officer into Halliwell’s crimes have stated that they believe that Halliwell has other victims. This is an entirely logical deduction. Serial Killers do not suddenly stop, unless they die, are incarcerated or too old or ill to carry on.

Recently, the authors have investigated two of the UK’s great murder mysteries. The June 1990 disappearance of Mrs Trevaline Evans in Llangollen, North Wales and the brutal murder of Mrs Ann Heron in August 1990 near Darlington, which remains Durham Constabulary’s only unsolved murder.

Their analysis has led them to believe that the same car was used in both crimes and that Christopher Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in both murders, which are covered in these three articles and include the Crimewatch reconstructions.

• Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron. Was it Halliwell? Part 1
• Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron. Was it Halliwell? Part 2
• Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron. Was it Halliwell? Part 3

The case was also covered locally by the North Wales Daily Post.

This coverage will have aroused interest locally in the case, which is very well-known, and may lead to further witnesses coming forward with information to North Wales Police (NWP).

The authors contacted NWP and Durham Constabulary advising them of their concerns and had two very different responses.

The NWP response

The NWP response from the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) Detective Superintendent Mark Pierce:

“The information provided is being carefully reviewed and if lines of enquiry are identified they will be pursued”.

Detective Chief Superintendent Gareth Evans, Head of North Wales Police CID said: 

“A case such as this is never closed; it remains under review with any new credible evidence being examined. We continue to ask anyone with any information which might help the family of Trevaline Evans understand what happened to her, and can help our investigation to share that with us.”

The Durham Constabulary response

On the 7^th of August 2021 the authors wrote to Durham Constabulary with copies of the above NYE articles suggesting that Christopher Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Heron and suggested the following lines of enquiry to Durham Constabulary.

Clothing found at Ramsbury Wiltshire

During the investigation into Christopher Halliwell, Wiltshire Police found a stash of women’s clothing at a River at Ramsbury, Wilts. This is thought to be a trophy store of clothes taken from his victims that Halliwell would obtain perverse gratification from visiting.

The authors suggested that this clothing is reviewed, to ascertain if Mrs Heron’s bikini bottom is among the items recovered.

Sketches found at Halliwell’s home in Swindon, Wiltshire

During the investigation into Christopher Halliwell, Wiltshire Police found twelve sketches Halliwell had done of areas of outstanding beauty. He had a modus operandi of crossing force boundaries to bury the bodies of his victims. It has been suggested that they are sketches of deposition sites of his unknown victims.

The authors suggested that the sketches are reviewed to establish if any of them are of locations at:

• Darlington area, Durham.
• North Wales.
• Aughton Park, Lancs.
• The North York Moors.
• Scaling Dam, North Yorkshire.
• Kilburn White Horse, North Yorkshire.
• Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.
• Backwell, Somerset.
• Cotswolds, Wiltshire/Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire.
• Mam Tor, Derbyshire.

Movements of Christopher Halliwell.

Christopher Halliwell apparently lived at Aughton Park, Lancashire. He led an itinerant lifestyle, travelling widely.

The authors suggested that Halliwell is interviewed in prison to ascertain if possible what his movements were in the period that he was resident at Aughton Park, if he was in Durham, and that the murder of Mrs Heron is put to him as a crime that he is responsible for.

Murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans

The authors suggested that the same vehicle may have been used in the murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans two months before the murder of Mrs Evans and that this should be coordinated with the NWP investigation.

The response from Durham Constabulary could not have been more disinterested. On the 9^th of August I received this standard response from the Durham Constabulary media department

A Durham Constabulary spokesman said:

“The murder of Ann Heron has been thoroughly investigated and subject to constant review over the last 31 years, including the use of new investigative techniques with the advancement of forensic technology.

“It is still the ambition of Durham Constabulary to convict the person responsible for Ann’s murder.  At this time there is no new evidence that identifies new suspects, but we remain open minded.”

The vehicle evidence that the same car was used in the murder of Mrs Heron and the murder of Mrs Evans in Llangollen two months earlier is new evidence, as is the suggestion that Halliwell is the killer. The lines of enquiry outlined above cannot have been investigated in two days. Further, the investigation into the murder of Mrs Heron should have been co-ordinated with North Wales Police, which does not appear to have happened.

It appears to the authors that Durham Constabulary has dismissed the information sent to it without even assessing it. Inevitably this indicates that Durham Constabulary has either given up and closed the investigation, or is ignoring any new evidence that points away from Mrs Heron’s husband as the killer.

Chief Constable Jo Farrell

Ignoring new lines of enquiry that Christopher Halliwell should be a suspect in the murder of Ann Heron.

So why is there this lack of interest by Durham Constabulary in pursuing new information that indicates Halliwell as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Heron?

This BBC article here from April 2021 narrates how the family of Mrs Heron are also dissatisfied with its investigation. Essentially they allege that Durham Constabulary is completely focussed on Mrs Heron’s husband as the killer to the exclusion of all other suspects. This is entirely consistent with the authors experience of this force and if so, it is a very serious failure of leadership, which bears out the criticisms made by Mrs Heron’s family.

However, there is another bigger issue behind this question. The answer lies in the question posed in the lead illustration.

Did Halliwell kill more women than Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe?

The answer to that question in the author’s opinion is, almost certainly, yes.

The conventional wisdom is that Peter Sutcliffe’s first murder was in 1975 and he committed thirteen murders and seven attempted murders until he was arrested in 1981.

The author’s research indicates that Sutcliffe murdered many more than thirteen women, but to avoid controversy, for the purpose of this article, the authors will stick with the accepted figure of thirteen murders between 1975 and 1981 for use as a comparison.

Christopher Halliwell was born in 1964 and lived initially in Swindon before moving to Scotland in 1974, where he trained as a butcher. He returned to Swindon in 1982 and was imprisoned in Dartmoor between 1985/6, and 1987 for car theft and burglary.

When he was in prison, he boasted to another prisoner that he had murdered his girlfriend and made enquiries about how many murders you needed to commit to be a serial killer. Upon release in 1987, he did not come to the attention of the police until he was arrested in 2011 for the murder of Sian O’Callaghan.

It therefore appears that Halliwell had already murdered at least one woman prior to 1985/6 and that he was intent on becoming a serial killer when he was released in 1987. That would indicate that he was an active serial killer for over twenty five years. During this period we know he killed Becky Godden-Edwards in 2003, but no other victims have emerged.

Halliwell was a very capable serial killer. He was ruthless, forensically aware, capable of planning, surveillance aware, changed cars regularly, physically fit and able to quickly conceal a body by burying it from his work as a groundsman and grave digger. His itinerant lifestyle, hobbies of fishing and narrow boating, and his work as a builder, roofer, window cleaner, window fitter and driver took him all over the country, to different force areas.

The key difference between Halliwell and Sutcliffe is that seven of Sutcliffe’s convictions were for attempted murder, where his intended victim survived. Meaning that he only had a 65% ‘success’ rate; 35% of his victims survived and reported his attacks to the Police.

So far as is known, no one has ever survived an attack by Halliwell, no doubt because of his physical strength and proficiency with a knife from his training as a butcher. Hence the reason no survivors have described him to the Police and why he escaped detection for so long.

So the conclusion is inescapable that Christopher Halliwell was murdering women all over the country from 1987 until his arrest in 2011. Assuming he killed one victim a year, that is a total of 26 (including the girlfriend murdered in the period 1982 – 1985/6.

However, Sutcliffe’s most active year was 1977 when he murdered Irene Richardson, Debra Schlesinger, Patricia Atkinson, Jane MacDonald and Jean Jordan. So it is very possible that Halliwell had far, far more victims than twenty-six.

Why the British Police Service is reluctant to investigate cold cases generally and Halliwell in particular.

There are a number of reasons why a Chief Constable will order his force not to investigate a cold case. These are:

• The Chief Constable prefers to utilise his CID Officers on more recent crime which affects the crime figures and therefore his force’sefficiency rating, and his own reputation.
• Cold cases are notoriously difficult to solve and are both labour and forensic science intensive. This makes them more expensive to run, with a higher likelihood of failure. So Chief Constables prefer to ignore them.
• In some cases, it is clear that the perpetrator is dead, or is in jail for a full life term, having ben convicted of other drimes. So the Chief Constable feels there is no practical point in pursuing any investigation. The unsolved cases in which both Peter Sutcliffe and Christopher Halliwell are implicated are examples of this. This approach by the police ignores the victims right to justice and the feelings of his or her family.
• Media attention on a cold case can result in the failings of the original investigation being exposed, resulting in criticism of the Chief Constable, his force and his officers. The recent case of institutinalised corruption in the Metropolitan Police’s bungled investigations into the murder of Daniel Morgan is a classic example. The refusal of Chief Constable Winward to allow the murder of “Hope” to be investigated by North Yorkshire Police is another.
• The Force is manipulating its crime figures and does not want to admit that it has an unsolved murder on its books, preferring instead to hold out that the victim is missing, when in fact she has been murdered. The refusal of Greater Manchester Police to admit that Helen Sage has been murdered, preferring instead to ignore the evidence to the contrary and perversely hold out that she is missing, is a perfect example.
• The force is relentlessly and obsessively focussed on one suspect -usually the husband or boyfriend-  to the exclusion of all others. The Durham Constabulary investigatoin into the murder of Mrs Heron may be an example of this. Having arrested a suspect, the emergence of another suspect potentially leaves the force open to public criticism, misconduct allegations and civil action for wrongful arrest, further reinforcing its determination to focus on the original suspect to the exclusion of other suspects.

Chief Constable Farrell has been sent a draft copy of this article and has refused to comment. At a time when public confidence in the police is at an all-time low, her refusal to address the above issues serves only to further undermine public confidence in the police.

However, with murders where Christopher Halliwell is a suspect, there is another additional issue.

When Peter Sutcliffe was arrested and the failures of the investigation by West Yorkshire Police were exposed, there was a furore of criticism of the Police. No Chief Constable wants to admit that Halliwell was murdering women across the country with impunity for over twenty-five years. Or that he was not in any way inconvenienced by the Police and killed far, far more women than the Yorkshire Ripper. If this was to emerge, it would trigger a similar wave of public outrage and criticism of the Police service.

Hence perhaps the reason that although Halliwell is known to have been a serial killer for many years, he has never been convicted of any other murder than the two necessary to give him a full life term, or even named as the prime suspect in a murder.

So how many victims did Halliwell have?

This is to be examined in a new book by Chris Clark and Bethan Trueman to be published on the 1^st of September. It will be reviewed in the NYE.

Further information can be found in this Swindon Advertiser article here.

Faced with the failure of the Police service to identify the full range of Halliwell’s offending and all of his victims, the authors and the NYE will continue their relentless efforts to identify the unknown victims of Christopher Halliwell.

by CHRIS CLARK and TIM HICKS

~~~~~

The murders of Mrs Trevaline Evans and Mrs Ann Heron

Mrs Trevaline Evans was aged fifty two, happily married and ran an antique shop in Llangollen, North Wales. On Saturday the 16^th of June 1990, she vanished. North Wales Police (NWP) has declared her disappearance as a “no body murder”.

The full story including the Crimewatch reconstruction is covered in this NYE article: Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron. Was it Halliwell Part 1

Less than two months later on Friday the 3rd of August 1990 Mrs Ann Heron aged forty four was murdered. She had been sunbathing in a bikini the front of her home -an isolated property situated just outside Darlington. Her body was found by her husband Peter at about 6.00 p.m.in a pool of blood in the lounge. She was naked from the waist down, her bikini bottom was never found. The autopsy established that her throat had been cut with a weapon like a Stanley knife or a cut throat razor. There was no sign of forced entry. The front door was open, the house had not been ransacked and nothing had been stolen.

The full story including the Crimewatch reconstruction is covered in this NYE article: Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron. Was it Halliwell?

In the above two articles, the authors put forward their view that serial killer Christopher Halliwell (Pictured in the lead illustration) – who is believed to have been living at Aughton Park, Lancs at the time – should be considered as a suspect in both murders.

The Role of the Media in Cold Cases

The media have a duty to act benevolently for the benefit of the community and to work closely with the Police to assist them in investigations. This is particularly true in cold cases, where Media coverage is one of the three key factors in progressing them. (The other two are advances in forensic techniques and changes in loyalties among the perpetrator(s), and his friends, leading to one of them becoming an informant). Accordingly the media must do everything it can to keep the case in the public eye, to support the Police investigation by generating additional interest and information.

The best form of media for this is local media, because it is seen as part of the community, is more approachable and has a different readership to national media.

Operation Scholar: A good Case Study on the role of the Media in Cold Cases

This is covered very well by the award winning journalist Martin Bright in this documentary on his investigation with retired detective Liam McAuley into the suspicious disappearance of Surrey schoolgirl Ruth Wilson at 14.32. (Guardian article here, Daily Mail article here).

The Surrey Police Media Relations Department understands the importance of continuing media coverage of cold cases. It very helpfully issued this statement to the NYE on the case:

Surrey Police continues to carry out annual reviews into Operation Scholar, the investigation following the disappearance of Ruth Wilson, aged 16 from Betchworth in November 1995. This includes a detailed re-investigation between 2018 and 2019. 

Surrey Police continues to keep an open mind about what is behind Ruth’s disappearance. At this time there is no further evidence to support any one particular line of enquiry about what has happened to Ruth.

If you have any information that could assist our investigation into Ruth’s disappearance, please contact us through the webchat on our website www.surrey.police.uk, send us a direct message through our Facebook or Twitter pages, or call 101.

The murder of Trevaline Evans: Local media coverage

In the case of the murder of Trevaline Evans, the main local media outlet in North Wales is the Daily Post, which has consistently worked to keep the case in the public eye. The reporter on the case is Steve Bagnall, an experienced journalist, with a meticulous eye for detail.

Steve also ran an article raising the possibility that Halliwell may be the killer of Trevaline Evans. Article here.

The lead force on the Halliwell investigation is Wiltshire Police, so typical of his methodical approach, Steve contacted North Wales Police and Wiltshire Constabulary for a media comment. Wiltshire Police confirmed to the Daily Post that it is open minded about Halliwell being responsible for the murder of Trevaline Evans and Ann Heron:

“Although we are not currently investigating any offences alleged to have been committed by Halliwell, at the time of his arrest, all forces were notified of the circumstances of both murders [Becky Godden-Edwards 2003 and Sian O’Callaghan 2011] and importantly, the facts that were known at that time.

This is in line with good investigative practice and is recognised by Senior Investigating Officers across the country as appropriate action to take. 

Furthermore, engagement with the National Crime Agency throughout ensured that the investigation which secured Halliwell’s conviction was shared with other organisations accessing the NCA services for homicide enquiries and this close liaison remains ongoing.

We intend to continue this transparent approach with other forces and sharing of best practice.” 

He then ran a follow up article, which can be read here.

Steve’s article contains an appeal for information and is a classic example of good local journalism serving the community by keeping the case in the public eye. Hopefully generating interest and additional witnesses, to help further the investigation.

The murder of Trevaline Evans: NYE follows up

The authors forwarded their article on the murder of Trevaline Evans to North Wales Police and wrote to them suggesting the following lines of enquiry.

Withheld

The authors are withholding this information because they do not want to cause distress to Mrs Evans’ family.

Clothing found at Ramsbury Wiltshire

During the investigation into Christopher Halliwell, Wiltshire Police found a stash of women’s clothing at a River at Ramsbury, Wilts. This is thought to be a trophy store of clothes taken from his victims that Halliwell would obtain perverse gratification from visiting. The authors suggested that this clothing is reviewed to ascertain if any of it belonged to Mrs Evans.

Sketches found at Halliwell’s home in Swindon, Wiltshire

During the investigation into Christopher Halliwell, Wiltshire Police found twelve sketches Halliwell had done of areas of outstanding beauty. He had a modus operandi of crossing force boundaries to bury the bodies of his victims. It has been suggested that they are sketches of deposition sites of his unknown victims.

The authors suggested that the sketches are reviewed by officers of North Wales Police to establish if any of them are of locations in North Wales, Aughton Park in Lancashire, The North York Moors, Scaling Dam or the Kilburn White Horse in North Yorkshire, Blenheim Palace, Backwell in Somerset, the Cotswolds, or Mam Tor in Derbyshire.

Murder of Ann Heron

The authors believe the murder of Mrs Evans may be linked to the murder of Mrs Ann Heron in Durham. Mrs Evans disappeared on the 16^th of June 1990; Mrs Heron was murdered less than two months later on the 3^rd of August 1990. In both cases a light blue four door vehicle was seen and featured prominently in both enquiries.

The image below is from the Crimewatch reconstruction of the murder of Mrs Evans showing the vehicle and a man who resembled Halliwell outside her antique shop.

The image below is from the Crimewatch reconstruction of the murder of Mrs Heron, showing some makes of car the police believe could be the one seen speeding away from the scene of Mrs Heron’s murder.

Please note that all five cars are four-door saloons and that both teams of detectives have independently identified that both cars were exactly the same colour.

If Mrs Evans’ killer did use the car featured in the Crimewatch reconstruction, he would not have known that his vehicle had been seen and described to the police until the September 1990 broadcast of Crimewatch covering the murder of Mrs Evans. So he had no need to discard it until then, i.e. after the murder of Mrs Heron.

In summary, the connections between Halliwell and the two murders are:

• Both attacks took place on a holiday weekend in the summer, at rural locations near fishing sites.
• Halliwell had a reason to be in the area for the purpose of fishing, sightseeing or work.
• The descriptions of both vehicles are very similar and constitute an evidential link between the two crimes.
• Both attacks were on women on their own in daylight.
• Both attacks may have been connected to the theft of antiques.
• Halliwell fits the description of men seen in the vicinity of both crimes.
• Both attacks fit perfectly with Halliwell’s modus operandi.
• Darlington is two and a half hours drive from Aughton Park. Llangollen is one hour twenty minutes’ drive from Aughton Park. So if Halliwell was living in Aughton Park, Llangollen and Aeolian House were within easy striking distance for him.
• Darlington is three hours’ drive from Llangollen. So if he was living/staying/working in the Darlington/County Durham area, Llangollen would also be within easy striking distance or vice versa if he was working in North Wales in the summer of 1990.

We suggested that this is examined jointly with Durham Constabulary.

Movements of Christopher Halliwell

Christopher Halliwell apparently lived at Aughton Park, Lancashire, and, according to media reports, worked in North Wales. Both Detective Superintendent Sean Memory and Detective Superintendent Fulcher who investigated Halliwell are quite clear that he was a serial killer and had other victims than the two he was convicted of murdering. If indeed he was working in North Wales it must be a credible concern that he may have committed other attacks there.

The authors suggested that Halliwell is interviewed in prison to ascertain if possible what his movements were in the period that he was resident at Aughton Park and that the Trevaline Evans murder is put to him as a crime that he is responsible for.

The response of North Wales Police

The authors received this media statement from the NWP Senior Investigating Officer (SIO)Detective Superintendent Mark Pierce:

“The information provided is being carefully reviewed and if lines of enquiry are identified they will be pursued”.

Both authors are very pleased that North Wales Police is looking into the possibility that Halliwell should be a suspect in the murder of Mrs Evans and is willing to exploit media coverage.

North Wales Police conducted a very thorough investigation in 1990, which included a very effective and successful media operation. Because Llangollen is a tourist destination, the media operation was conducted on a national level and successfully attracted witnesses from as far away as Scotland.

The case is of immense public interest in Wales and it is clear that NWP has never given up on its efforts to arrest the murderer.

The authors believe that Christopher Halliwell is a strong suspect for the murder of Trevaline Evans. But recognise they could be wrong. It could be that someone other than Halliwell murdered Trevaline Evans.

If so, then he could still be alive and well, and living locally, posing a serious ongoing threat to women in the area.

That is why it is essential that the media continue to raise the case in the hope of producing fresh evidence and resolving this case.

North Wales Police Appeal for Assistance

Detective Chief Superintendent Gareth Evans, Head of North Wales Police CID said: 

“A case such as this is never closed; it remains under review with any new credible evidence being examined. We continue to ask anyone with any information which might help the family of Trevaline Evans understand what happened to her, and can help our investigation to share that with us.”

Halliwell: The wider picture and the North Yorkshire connection

Halliwell murdered Becky Godden-Edwards in 2003 and Sian O’Callaghan in 2011. Both Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher, who arrested Halliwell, and Detective Superintendent Sean Memory, who succeeded Fulcher as the SIO into Halliwell’s crimes, have stated that they believe that Halliwell has other victims.

Halliwell was a very capable serial killer. He was ruthless, forensically aware, capable of planning, surveillance aware, changed cars regularly, physically fit, highly proficient with a knife from his training as a butcher and in quickly concealing a body by burying it from his work as a groundsman and grave digger.

It appears irrefutable that Christopher Halliwell was operating nationally and undetected for many years. Based on admissions Halliwell made to a cell mate In HMP Dartmoor in about 1985 or 1986, the authors believe he killed his first victim in the period 1982 – 1985. The authors believe it is entirely possible that he could have killed many more victims than Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.

His itinerant lifestyle, hobbies of fishing and narrow boating, and his work as a builder, roofer, window cleaner, window fitter and driver took him all over the country.

The authors have had sighting reports of Halliwell in North Yorkshire and he has been suggested as a suspect in the murder of Claudia Lawrence.

It is essential that the media and the police work together to try and identify Halliwell’s movements and the full range of his crimes, so cold cases can be resolved and some relief brought to the victim’s families.

NYE Appeal for Assistance

Whenever we run an article on a cold case, the NYE always runs an appeal for information, to try to progress them by keeping these cases in the public eye and generating information. This is in the public interest and can assist the police. We will finish with our usual appeal for information:

Christopher Halliwell is pictured above in the lead illustration. He had a slim athletic build and spoke with a slight Swindon accent. You can see and hear him in the video here taken while he was in custody.

Did you see Christopher Halliwell?

Trevaline Evans

• In North Wales?
• Fishing along the River Dee?
• At an antiques shop or fair?

Ann Heron

• In Darlington?
• Fishing along the River Tees?

Claudia Lawrence

• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• In York?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirke?
• On the North York Moors?
• In the car park at the Kilburn White Horse.
• Did you know of Christopher Halliwell’s Father, a man called Alan Keith Halliwell who might have lived in Huddersfield, York, Ampleforth or Oswaldkirk, who previously served in the RAF?

Vicky Glass and Donna Keogh

• In Middlesbrough?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?

East Lancs Ripper murders

• At Aughton Park?
• In Merseyside/Liverpool?

Please contact the authors using the letters@nyenquirer.uk address.

Trevaline and Ann: Was it Halliwell? (Pt 2)

by CHRIS CLARK & TIM HICKS

~~~~~ 

Introduction

Many readers will be aware that the NYE has been investigating serial killer Christopher Halliwell, who was convicted of the murders of Becky Godden-Edwards, aged 20 in 2003, and Sian O’Callaghan, aged 22 in 2011, at Swindon, Wiltshire.

In Part 1 of this article, the authors described how Chris analysed new witness information developed by our colleagues from the Mirror that Halliwell had worked in North Wales, to connect him to the disappearance of Mrs Trevaline Evans in North Wales in June 1990.

Part 1 of the article covering the murder of Mrs Evans can be read here.

As a result of this analysis, Chris has also linked the murder of Mrs Evans to the murder of Mrs Ann Heron near Darlington two months later in August 1990. The author’s investigation has:

1. Led to an evidential link between both crimes, revealed here for the first time by the NYE, on an exclusive basis.
2. Identified four new lines of enquiry for the murder of Mrs Evans.
3. Identified three new lines of enquiry for the murder of Mrs Heron.
4. Eliminated a man who has been held out in the media as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Heron.

The Murder of Mrs Anne Heron

In their article Halliwell the River Tees Murders, the authors put forward the theory that Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Ann Heron aged forty-four in Durham on Friday the 3rd of August 1990.

The Crimewatch UK program broadcast in October 1990 covered Mrs Heron’s murder at the beginning of the programme. It also covered Mrs Evans’ disappearance (at 10 minutes) and can be seen here. Please take the time to watch it before reading further.

Mrs Heron had been sunbathing in a bikini the front of her home – an isolated property situated just outside Darlington called Aeolian House – in a place that was visible from the A67.

Mrs Heron’s body was found by her husband Peter at about 6.00 p.m.in a pool of blood in the lounge. She was found naked from the waist down. Her bikini bottom was never found. The autopsy established that her throat had been cut with a weapon like a Stanley knife or a cut throat razor. There was no sign of forced entry. The front door was open, the house had not been ransacked and nothing had been stolen. The post mortem established that the time of death was at about 5.00 p.m.

A blue Vauxhall Astra was seen parked at Aeolian House and a ‘sun-tanned’ man in his early thirties was seen leaving Aeolian House in a blue four-door car.

Why the authors believe Christopher Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Ann Heron

The authors believe that Christopher Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in this murder because:

Access to the area

• Halliwell was a keen fisherman and travelled widely. One mile to the south east of Aeolian House on the A67 there is a very popular fishing venue at Middleton St George Water Park. Darlington Anglers Club is based at Cleasby and has approximately nine miles of river fishing coarse fish which includes Pike, Bream and Carp. The River Tees is known for its Brown Trout, Grayling, Salmon and Coarse fish. The club water is situated in the middle reaches of the River Tees. Its river space stretches from High Coniscliffe in the North, down to where the River Skerne meets the River Tees at Croft, to the south of Darlington. Cleasby is five miles to the west of Aeolian House on the A67 then the A66. Croft is about another mile further on. So he could have been in the area to enjoy a weekend of fishing, or be on holiday in the area. If so, the crime scene would have been within easy travelling distance for him. He may even have previously reconnoitred it.
• Halliwell lived in Swindon, Northampton, North Yorkshire, Liverpool, Aughton Park near Ormskirk, Lancs and also worked in North Wales as a roofer or window fitter and travelled widely. Halliwell worked as a bin man, grounds man, grave digger, driver and builder all over the country. His itinerant lifestyle means he could have been in County Durham at the time.
• Darlington is three hours’ drive from Llangollen and two and a half hours’ drive from Aughton Park. So if he was living in Aughton Park or staying/working in Llangollen, Darlington would be within easy striking distance.

Victim preferences

• Halliwell attacked lone females. Mrs Heron was visible from the road and on her own in an isolated large house in the afternoon, when her husband was probably at work. Making her vulnerable and attractive to Halliwell as a victim.
• Halliwell’s mother was a misandrist who abused him as a child. As a consequence he hated her and would become enraged if he saw a woman that looked like her, because of the awful memories it brought back for him. His second known victim Miss Sian O’Callaghan looked like his mother. Mrs Heron has a similar appearance to Miss O’Callaghan and particularly to his other known victim Miss Becky Godden-Edwards.
• 

Left to Right: Miss Becky Godden Edwards, Christopher Halliwell and Miss Sian O’Callaghan

NB: the facial similarity between the victims and Mrs Heron shown in the lead illustration

• Mrs Heron was an attractive woman with a slim build, as were Miss O’Callaghan and Miss Godden-Edwards.

Modus Operandi

• Halliwell had started his criminal career as a burglar, raiding isolated properties for antiques. He used his work to reconnoitre the properties and identify if there were any antiques there worth stealing. His work as a window cleaner of window fitter gave him the perfect opportunity to carry on with this modus operandi. Aeolian House as a target dwelling fits this aspect of his criminal history perfectly. It is possible that Mrs Heron went into the property leaving the door open, he entered the property to steal antiques, encountered Mrs Heron and murdered her as an opportunistic crime. He may even have previously reconnoitred the property.
• Halliwell was well dressed, clean, tidy and a persuasive speaker. If he had been passing and seen Mrs Heron in a bikini he may have tried to talk his way into the house and then conducted an opportunistic attack.
• Mrs Heron’s body was partially undressed with her genitalia exposed, indicating a sexual motive, as in the murders of Miss Sian O’Callaghan and Miss Becky Godden-Edwards.The authors suspect the murderer was disturbed possibly by the phone ringing or Mrs Heron’s dog, which prevented him from going further and committing rape.
• The murder weapon was taken away and never recovered, as in the murder of Miss O’Callaghan.
• Mrs Heron’s bikini bottoms had been taken as a trophy. A classic Halliwell indicator. Here the authors speculate, but the bikini bottom may be one of the items recovered by Wiltshire Police from Halliwell’s trophy store in a lake he used to go fishing at, at Ramsbury, Wiltshire.
• No forensic evidence of any sort was found. Halliwell had a small library of books on forensic science and was forensically aware. He took great pains to ensure he left no forensic evidence.
• Cutting someone’s throat is a ruthless, brutal and gory act, indicating a man that was proficient with a knife, had used one to kill before and may have enjoyed using a knife on a woman. It is also efficient, instantly rendering the victim incapable of resisting. Similarly, Halliwell murdered Sian O’Callaghan with a knife by very efficiently severing her spinal cord; again instantly rendering her incapable of resisting. Halliwell had been a butcher and was a fisherman used to gutting and filleting fish. He was proficient in the use of a knife and enjoyed inflicting pain on women. So the cause of death fits Halliwell’s known capabilities and modus operandi perfectly.
• Whoever murdered Mrs Heron came to Aeolian House armed with a Stanley knife or a cut throat razor. Weapons that are easily concealable and could be carried on him safely and comfortably, while sitting in a car. Halliwell was carrying a knife he was able to conceal on himself comfortably while he was sitting in his car and bring it into action instantly when he murdered Miss O’Callaghan.

Description

• The authors believe the man seen speeding away from Aeolian House is the murderer. A surprising number of victims of homicidal cutthroat suffer very little bleeding apart from post-mortem drainage. If the incision is wide and deep, so that the jugular veins are cut, and especially if the Victim is upright, air immediately fills the right atrium of the heart and the circulation ceases -this process is called air embolism. This would explain why there were no bloodstains on the man seen driving off from Aeolian House.
• Halliwell fits the description of the man seen leaving the crime scene by a witness. Halliwell had dark hair and photographs show him tanned. If he was on holiday or working in the area in August, he may have been facially tanned from time in the open working or fishing. He was twenty six or twenty seven in August 1990, not quite early thirties. However, this discrepancy could be due to an error by the witnesses.Who after all, only had a fleeting glimpse and was concentrating on his driving and the car.

Appeal for information

Anyone with information on the murder of Mrs Heron should contact Durham Police on 101.

The connections between the murders of Mrs Evans and Mrs Heron

Mrs Evans disappeared on the 16^th of June 1990; Mrs Heron was murdered less than two months later on the 3^rd of August 1990. In both cases a light blue four-door vehicle was seen and featured prominently in the enquiry.

The image below is from the Crimewatch UK reconstruction of the murder of Mrs Evans showing the vehicle and Man 4 – who resembled Halliwell – outside the antique shop.

The image below is from the Crimewatch UK reconstruction of the murder of Ms Heron, showing some makes of car the police believe cold be the one seen speeding away from Mrs Heron’s murder.

Please note that all five cars are four-door saloons and that both teams of detectives have independently identified that both cars were exactly the same colour.

If Mrs Evans’ killer did use the car featured in the Crimewatch UK reconstruction, he would not have known that his vehicle had been seen and described to the police until the September 1990 broadcast of Crimewatch UK covering the murder of Mrs Evans. So he had no need to discard it until then, i.e. after the murder of Mrs Heron. In summary, the connections between Halliwell and the two murders are:

• Both attacks took place on a holiday weekend in the summer, at rural locations near fishing venues.
• Halliwell had a reason to be in the area for the purpose of fishing, sightseeing or work.
• The descriptions of both vehicles are very similar and constitute an evidential link between the two crimes.
• Both attacks were on women on their own in daylight.
• Both attacks may have been connected to the theft of antiques.
• Halliwell fits the description of men seen in the vicinity of both crimes.
• Both attacks fit perfectly with Halliwell’s modus operandi.
• Darlington is two and a half hours drive from Aughton Park. Llangollen is one hour twenty minutes’ drive from Aughton Park. So if Halliwell was living in Aughton Park, Llangollen and Aeolian House were within easy striking distance for him.
• Darlington is three hours’ drive from Llangollen. So if he was living/staying/working in the Darlington/County Durham area, Llangollen would also be within easy striking distance or vice vursa if he was working in North Wales in the summer of 1990.

Elimination of Michael Benson as a suspect in the murder of Ann Heron

There has been a suggestion that the violent armed robber Michael Albert Benson (deceased) may have murdered Mrs Heron. Northern Echo article here. Crimewatch UK coverage of Benson from December 1990 here at 10 minutes.

The authors have analysed this theory carefully. They entirely agree that Mr Peter Heron had nothing to do with his wife’s murder, they have ruled Benson out as a suspect. Their reasoning is as follows:

Access to the area

• Benson’s identification as a suspect is based on him being responsible for two attacks on women in Durham on the 18^thof July 1990, two weeks before the murder of Mrs Heron. According to this hypothesis, this attack puts Benson as operating in proximity to Darlington, which is about twenty five miles away from Aeolian House. In fact, there is no evidence that Benson was the man that robbed two women in Durham on the 18^th of July 1990. Other than having dark short hair, Benson does not fit the descriptions of the attackers or the photofits issued of them at the time. He was five foot eleven inches, slim and aged 40, whilst the attacker was five foot nine inches tall, stocky and aged 30. Further the Durham attacks were foot based in an urban environment, while the attack on Mrs Heron was vehicle mounted in a rural environment.

• At the time Benson was “on the run” and according to the Crimewatch coverage was working all over the country in security. Benson’s base area was Leeds or Southampton, not Darlington or Durham. There is no credible reason advanced for why Benson should specifically visit Darlington or Durham, in preference to any other place in the UK.

Modus Operandi

• Benson was a violent robber, but nothing was stolen from Mrs Heron or the house.
• So far as the authors can ascertain, Benson had no known history of sexual offences against women.
• Benson had no history of taking trophies from his female victims.
• If Benson was earning money from security work, he would have no reason to rob two women of £35.00. Indeed the secret of his success in evading the police from 1990 until his death in 2011 would seem to the authors to be, that he maintained a low profile and did not come to the attention of the police through petty crime. So the attack at Durham is contrary to his modus operandi while he was “on the run”.
• Cutting someone’s throat is a ruthless, brutal and gory act, possibly indicating a man that enjoyed inflicting pain on a woman. Particularly as there was no reason to kill Mrs Heron. So far as the authors can ascertain, Benson did not have any history of this type of offence against women.
• Benson’s weapon of choice was a firearm. Although he did use a carving knife which is primarily used for stabbing to rob three people, the authors can find no record of him ever using a small folding/retractable blade which is used for slashing or cutting.
• Whoever murdered Ann Heron was proficient with a knife and had probably used one to kill before. The authors can find no record of Benson ever stabbing anyone. The authors therefore consider it is highly unlikely that he had the experience to expertly cut a woman’s throat with a knife.
• Whoever murdered Ann Heron came to Aeolian House armed with a Stanley knife or a cut throat razor. A weapon that can be conveniently and safely carried while sitting in a car. So far as the authors can ascertain, Benson has no history of travelling while armed with a knife. Further, carrying a knife on your person carries a huge risk of being arrested for possession of an offensive weapon. Something that being “on the run”, Benson would be anxious to avoid.

Vehicle

• Witnesses describe seeing a Ford Sierra, not a Ford Orion.
• Benson was driving a Ford Orion, which did not feature in the above montage provided by Durham Police.
• The witness that saw the vehicle leaving from Aeolian Housewas a taxi driver. He would have probably have described the colour of the car accurately and he described it as mid blue not the dark metallic blue of the vehicle that Benson was thought to be driving. This is such a glaring difference, that the authors are satisfied it rules out Benson’s dark blue Orion from the enquiry.

Appeal for assistance

Anyone with information on the murder of Mrs Heron should contact Durham Police on 101.

Did you know of Christopher Halliwell’s father, a man called Alan Keith Halliwell who might have lived in Huddersfield, York, Ampleforth or Oswaldkirk, who previously served in the RAF?

Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• Fishing along the River Dee?
• In York?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirk?
• In Middlesbrough?
• On the North York Moors?
• In Huddersfield?
• In Merseyside?
• In Northampton?
• At Aughton Park?
• In Manchester?

If you prefer to talk to a journalist anonymously, then please email letters@nyenquirer.uk. All enquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Durham Police was provided with a draft of this article and asked for a comment, but did not provide one by the time of publication.

The NYE Christopher Halliwell series

The NYE is the only media organisation that has conducted an in depth ongoing investigation into Halliwell. Links to our articles are below. They constitute the most up to date and continually updated source of information on Halliwell available to the public.

If you enjoyed this article, you may want to read the others in the series:

1. The breaking of Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher. By Tim Hicks
2. Book review: “Catching a serial killer” by Stephen Fulcher. By Tim Hicks
3. Christopher Halliwell and Peter Sutcliffe compared. By Chris Clark & Tim Hicks
4. Christopher Halliwell how many victims?By Chris Clark & Tim Hicks
5. Christopher Halliwell: The Secret Murders.

• Scotland 1.
• Is Halliwell the “East Lancs Ripper”?
• The other Northern and Midlands cases.
• Have you seen this man?
• The River Tees Murders.
• Halliwells undetected victims.
• Police media operations against the NYE’s Halliwell investigation. Part 1: Wiltshire Police, 2. North Yorkshire Police and 3. Cleveland Police).
• Police media operations against the NYE’s Halliwell investigation Part 2: (4. Greater Manchester Police. 5. Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner).
• York: Did Halliwell murder Claudia Lawrence? 1: Operation Cabin Part 1.
• York: Did Halliwell murder Claudia Lawrence? 2: Operation Cabin Part 2.
• York: Did Halliwell murder Claudia Lawrence? 3: Operation Essence Part 1.
• York: Did Halliwell murder Claudia Lawrence? 4: Operation Essence Part 2.
• The Swindon and Bristol cases.
• InsideOut Justice. Who murdered Linda Razzell?

7. Re-assessments based on fresh evidence or comment.
   • Scotland 2: Caroline Glachan re-assessed
   • Manchester 2: The murder of Helen Sage re-assessed
   • Bristol 2: Jacky Waines AKA Linda Guest re-assessed
   • Claudia: Halliwell antecedent investigation re-assessed
   • Sharon Harper re-assessed
   • Julie Finlay re-assessed. Fulcher and the NYE vindicated
   • Rachel Wilson murder solved
   • Trevaline Evans and Anne Heron: Was it Halliwell? Part 1
   • Trevaline Evans and Anne Heron: Was it Halliwell? Part 2
8. Christopher Halliwell the documentary.
9. Detective Superintendent Fulcher the TV series.

Their analysis has given rise to some startling developments and new lines of enquiry, never published before. Regrettably, because of the amount of material related to these two crimes, the article has had to be published in two parts.

Part 2 of this article will be published shortly.

Trevaline Evans & Ann Heron: Was it Halliwell? (Pt 1)

by CHRIS CLARK & TIM HICKS

~~~~~

Introduction: New witness evidence traced by the Daily Mirror

Many readers will be aware that the NYE has been investigating serial killer Christopher Halliwell, who was convicted of the murders of Miss Becky Godden-Edwards aged 20 in 2003 and Miss Sian O’Callaghan aged 22 in 2011, at Swindon, Wiltshire.

In August 2018, the NYE published this article Is Halliwell the East Lancs Ripper? in which the authors asserted that Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in a number of unsolved murders in the North West of England.

One of these murders was the murder of Miss Julie Finley, which Chris raised with both Merseyside Police and the Avon & Somerset Constabulary/Wiltshire Police joint Major Investigation Team in September 2014; some seven years ago.

In March 2020, our colleagues on the Daily Mirror traced a key witness who came forward with important new evidence linking Halliwell to her murder. As a result, Merseyside Police started a review of Miss Finley’s murder, with Halliwell as a suspect.

In our article Halliwell: Fulcher and NYE vindicated the authors assessed the impact of fresh witness evidence identified by our colleagues on the Mirror.

According to these Mirror articles here and here, the new witness evidence is that:

• Halliwell lived at Aughton Park, Ormskirk in 1994, four miles from the deposition site where Miss Finley’s body was dumped.
• He worked as a window fitter or roofer in North Wales before returning to Swindon on weekends to work as a taxi driver.
• Halliwell was driving a D registration white van at the time. A woman seen fitting Miss Finley’s description was seen being forced into a white van at the deposition site.

This evidence has been verified by a second witness.

Merseyside Police has a particularly proactive and helpful media unit that works well with new media. It provided the NYE with the following media statement, which contains an appeal for information:

STARTS

Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Wilson said:

We can confirm we are investigating a new line of enquiry in relation to the murder of 23-year-old Julie Finley in August 1994.

A new witness has recently come forward with information and has been spoken to by detectives.

Julie’s body was found in a carrot field off the St Helens bound carriageway of the Rainford by-pass by a cyclist at lunchtime on Saturday, 6 August 1994. She had been strangled and there was no sign of her clothing at the scene. There was also no indication that where she was found was the scene of the murder.

We continue to appeal for any information which can help her mum, Pat, and the rest of her family find some closure after all these years and would ask anyone with information to contact Merseyside Police via our social media desk @MerPolCC, call 101, or CrimestoppersUK, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.”

ENDS

In November 2020, Merseyside Police searched land near the Rainford by-pass and released the following statement to the NYE:

POLICE PRESENCE – INTAKE LANE, BICKERSTAFFE

We can confirm Merseyside Police officers have today, Thursday 26^th November, finished a search of land near Intake Lane on the border of Bickerstaffe and Rainford. 

Officers were responding to reports suggesting a body had been historically buried on the land.

An extensive search of the area has been carried out over the past seven days but nothing has been located.

The search was not linked to any historical Merseyside Police investigations.

Which would seem to indicate it was not connected to the murder of Miss Finley. The authors will continue to monitor the case.

Background: Chris investigates

Chris is a retired Intelligence Officer from Norfolk Police who now specialises in the investigation of cold cases.

Chris had previously looked at the disappearance of Mrs Trevaline Evans in North Wales in June 1990 and assessed it as having all the classic indicators of an attack by Christopher Halliwell in a rural area of outstanding beauty with access to fishing and canal boats, which would be attractive to Halliwell. The crime probably involves abduction by persuasion, which was Halliwell’s forte.

Chris had also investigated the murder of Mrs Ann Heron in 1990, which again has very strong Halliwell indicators.

Following on from the new evidence discovered by the Mirror, the authors started a fresh investigation into both crimes. Their investigation has:

1. Led to an evidential link between both crimes, revealed in Part 2 for the first time by the NYE, on an exclusive basis.
2. Identified new lines of enquiry for the murder of Mrs Evans.
3. Identified new lines of enquiry for the murder of Mrs Heron.
4. Eliminated a man who has been held out in the media as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Heron.
   

The North Wales connection.

The witness information developed by the Mirror has revealed that Halliwell was working in North Wales. This raised a concern with the authors that he may have committed murders in the North Wales Police Force Area. In their article Halliwell: Fulcher and NYE vindicated published in March 2020 the authors wrote: 

“Halliwell worked as a builder, groundsman and gravedigger. He successfully concealed the body of Becky Godden Edwards for several years by burying her. Ormskirk is only an hour’s drive from North Wales. This aspect of his modus operandi means that here could be cases of women that have gone missing in North Wales or Merseyside, who may have been murdered by Halliwell and buried in either force area. As with Miss Becky Godden-Edwards, they may not even have been notified to the police as missing.” 

Tim contacted North Wales Police raising the possibility that Halliwell may be responsible for crimes in the North Wales force area. In response to this media enquiry from the NYE,

North Wales Police commented: 

“Detective Superintendent Steven Williams confirms that there are no known links to any criminality in the north Wales area.”

Now, Steve Bagnall of the North Wales Daily Post has discussed the case with the authors and ran an article on the case on Saturday, raising the possibility that Halliwell may be the killer – article here. Commenting, Tim Hicks said:

“This is a classic case of good cooperation between local journalists to try and progress a cold case investigation by keeping it in the public eye.”

The disappearance of Mrs Trevaline Evans

Mrs Trevaline Evans was aged fifty-two, happily married and ran an antique shop in Llangollen, North Wales.

On Saturday the 16^th of June 1990, she vanished.

Mrs Evans is pictured in the lead illustration, along with a picture of her shop in Llangollen and the note left in the window on the day of her disappearance.

Police established that Mrs Evans left a note on the front door of her antiques shop “Back in two minutes” at 12.40pm. Mrs Evans was seen near her home at Market Street, Llangollen at 2.30 p.m., which is the last time she was definitively seen alive. There were two other sightings of her that afternoon next to the River Dee, but which may not be accurate.

When Mrs Evans failed to return home, her family attended at the shop and found the front door locked with the note still on the front door. Her handbag with her credit cards, car keys, coat and other items were still in the shop. Her powder compact was open on the counter.

North Wales Police concluded almost immediately that Mrs Evans had been murdered. Despite an intensive search in Llangollen, of the River Dee and the nearby Shropshire Union Canal, and house-to-house enquiries with every householder in Llangollen provided no trace of her, nor were her clothes ever found.

The Crimewatch UK reconstruction of the crime (broadcast in September 1990) can be viewed here. It starts at 30 minutes and skilfully reconstructs the facts of her disappearance. Please take the time to watch it before reading further.

During the program, North Wales Police issued appeals for four men to come forward

So they could be eliminated from their enquiries:

1. Man 1: Aged in his thirties wearing modern dress. He was seen talking to Mrs Evans on Thursday the 14^thof June two days before she disappeared.
2. Man 2: Aged about sixty-five, with white hair, casually dressed in an aquamarine jumper and paisley tie. He was also seen talking to Mrs Evans on Thursday the 14^thof June with Man 1.
3. Man 3: Aged in his 30s, brown hair going grey, stockily built,about five foot ten inches in height, smartly dressed wearing a dark suit or blazer. He was carrying a briefcase in his left hand. In the days before her disappearance, Mrs Evans was seen several times in the company of a man who was a stranger to everyone who saw them together. On all these occasions, the two appeared to be having intense conversations. On the night before she vanished, Mrs. Evans reportedly had a “heated” talk with this man behind her shop. Unfortunately, this man has never been identified, leaving his role – if he had one – in Mrs Evans murder a mystery. North Wales Police issued a photofit of this man which was circulated widely.
4. Man 4: A man wearing a Mackintosh with wide lapels leaning on his car outside the shop at about 6.00 p.m. on the day Mrs Evans disappeared.The shop door may have been open.
5. Man 5/6: The Crimewatch UKprogram broadcast in October 1990 also covered Mrs Evans’ disappearance and can be seen here at 10 minutes. This revealed that two ladies from Scotland had rung in to confirm they had seen Mrs Evans in a wine bar with a grey haired man. A couple from Bradford revealed that they had been in Mrs Evans’ shop shortly before she disappeared and saw her in an intense conversation with a grey haired man.

None of these men was ever traced. However, because of the passing nature of Mrs Evans’ trade, it is possible that none of these men had anything to do with her disappearance. It is also possible that the same man could be Man 1, Man 3, Man 4 or some combination of them.

It is clear that North Wales Police conducted a very thorough investigation, which included a very effective and successful media operation. Because Llangollen is a tourist destination, this was conducted on a national level and attracted witnesses from as far away as Scotland.

In January 2001, North Wales Police tried to exploit new forensic techniques to obtain new evidence and then arrested Mrs Evans husband the following June, but he was never charged with any offence.

The Photofit Picture

Some discussion of the photofit picture is necessary at this point.

The photofit picture can be seen at 38.39 minutes in the Crimewatch programme. However, North Wales Police eventually assessed this sketch as “inaccurate”.

The authors cannot understand how having interviewed a witness and given him or her access to a forensic artist, the photofit can be dismissed as inaccurate, when it was obtained from an eyewitness and no improved or updated photofit was issued. The authors have therefore nevertheless assessed Halliwell’s appearance against the man represented in the photofit, using the photographs of Halliwell shown below:

Halliwell in a suit – 1991

Court sketch:

Artist’s impression of Christopher Halliwell in 2011, in a similar pose to the Crimewatch artist’s impression.

Note hair and eyebrow colour, prominent nose, facial lines and jaw line.

The pictures below were taken when Halliwell was in his forties. His hair had started to recede, but he had not put on weight, so his facial features and body would be much the same as in 1990.

Halliwell bore a good resemblance to the photofit. Particularly his hair and eyebrow colour, jawline, nose and facial lines.

Why the authors believe Christopher Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in the murder of Mrs Trevaline Evans

The authors believe that Christopher Halliwell should be considered as a suspect in this offence. Their reasoning is as follows:

Similarity of Halliwell to the witness descriptions of Man 1, Man 3 and Man 4

The authors have identified the following similarities with the descriptions of “Man 1”, “Man 3” and “Man 4”:

• When he was a taxi driver Halliwell had a reputation for being smartly dressed. His wedding photograph above demonstrates that he could dress smartly.
• Halliwell’s height is five foot ten inches, the same as Man 3.
• Halliwell’s work ensured he was muscular and he had a stocky build, as shown in the photograph below.
• Halliwell was twenty six or twenty seven in June 1990 and his hair was not greying. This discrepancy could be due to a witness error. Otherwise he would fit the description of “Man 1” and “Man 3”.
• “Man 3” was carrying a briefcase in his left hand. Halliwell is known to be a left handed smoker, indicating that he is left handed.
• Halliwell perfectly fits the description of “Man 4”.
• As discussed above, Halliwell’s facial features are very similar to the photofit issued in 1990 by North Wales Police of “Man 3” shown in the Crimewatch UK reconstruction above at 38.39 minutes.

Attraction of Halliwell to Llangollen

Mrs Evans disappeared on a weekend during the summer holiday tourist season. Halliwell had a series of reasons to be attracted to Llangollen:

• Halliwell was known to enjoy narrow boating. The Llangollen Canal connects to the Shropshire Union Canal and then into the English Canal system. Mrs Evans’ route from home to her shop would have taken her past the road and bridge over the Fiver Dee that led to the Canal Basin, which is 5 minutes’ walk from the shop.
• Halliwell was known to enjoy fishing and the River Dee at Llangollen is very well known for the quality of its fishing.
• If Halliwell was working in North Wales during the week, he could have stayed over in North Wales for the weekend to go sightseeing.
• Halliwell enjoyed driving and travelled widely. He is thought to have lived in Swindon, Northampton, North Yorkshire, Liverpool and Aughton Park near Ormskirk, Lancs.
• Halliwell worked as a binman, groundsman, grave digger, driver, window cleaner, window fitter and builder all over the country. His itinerant lifestyle means he could have been in North Wales at the time.

In summary, it is possible Halliwell was in Llangollen on a narrow boating holiday, working there, or staying in a B&B while going fishing, or just visiting on holiday or for the weekend.

Access to the area

• Llangollen is one hour twenty minutes’ drive from Aughton Park and three hours’ drive from Darlington. So if Halliwell was living in Aughton Park, or living/staying/working in the County Durham area, Llangollen would be within easy striking distance.

Christopher Halliwell in his forties

Modus Operandi

• In the period 1982 – 1985 Halliwell had several jobs and used them to reconnoitre houses to burglarise them for antiques. He may have picked up a working knowledge of antiques from these crimes. Although he had no similar convictions after his release from prison, this does not mean that he had reformed and stopped committing burglaries. It may be that he was still burglarising houses for antiques, but was not detected. Chris remembers:

“Antique theft is a specialist crime and a key aspect of it is disposing of the stolen property. This generally has to be done through a fence, or by travelling long distances to sell off the stolen property to legitimate dealers. As an example, in Norfolk, we had a serious problem with a gang from Brighton going door to door purporting to buy and sell antiques, then returning a few days later to burgle those houses they had identified as having antiques. They would then return to Brighton and sell off the stolen property, knowing that it would not be traced back to crimes committed as far away as Norfolk.

In the 1970’s I investigated a series of brace and bit burglaries in Kings Lynn, Norfolk. They transpired to have been committed by the notorious Donald Nielson, also known as “The Black Panther”. As well as being an armed robber and kidnapper, was a prolific burglar, committing hundreds of burglaries from 1965 onwards, varying his modus operandi and operating far from his home in Bradford. He was only identified as the burglar after his arrest in 1975.

I therefore find it credible that Halliwell could have still been committing burglaries to steal antiques and sell on after his release from Dartmoor in 1987 and was not detected. Particularly if he was fencing the items he had taken far away from the area he stole them from.

Having been convicted of burglary involving antiques in Wiltshire and the surrounding area, Halliwell will have realised that if there were any burglaries in that area, he would very quickly become a prime suspect, resulting in his house being searched, inevitably leading to his arrest and a return to HMP Dartmoor. This would have discouraged him from returning to burglary in Wiltshire and would have forced him to commit burglaries much further away from his normal operating area.

I therefore consider it possible that Halliwell could have been in Wales to sell antiques he had stolen in a different part of the country. He may also have been in Wales to burgle premises that had antiques in them, while he was on holiday or working there.”

• According to the Crimewatch reconstruction Mrs Evans had a sign in the shop saying she would buy and sell anything. She did this frequently from local people, visitors that were passing through and dealers. She was proactive and would invite passers-by into the shop to look at the antiques. If Halliwell was in Llangollen this would have given him reason to pay attention to the shop, to sell stolen antiques there.
• Halliwell may have entered the shop to perform a reconnaissance with the intention of burgling the shop later.
• Both Detective Superintendent Fulcher -who arrested Halliwell – and Detective Superintendent Memory who conducted the subsequent antecedent investigation into Halliwell were very clear that he had been operating as a serial killer for many years prior to his arrest. They were also completely satisfied that there were certainly other murders he had committed and had not been identified as a suspect for. Most serial killers start killing in their early teens and late twenties. While he was imprisoned in HMP Dartmoor in 1985/6 – 1987 for the antique burglaries, aged twenty three, he asked fellow inmate Ernest Springer “How many do you need to be a serial killer?” and “Have you ever thought of strangling your girlfriend?’. He also made reference to a girlfriend that he had killed, indicating that he had started killing prior to conviction. So it is obvious that he had already started operating as a serial killer long before Mrs Evans disappearance in 1990.
• Mrs Evans’ credit cards were left untouched. Credit Card fraud is a separate form of theft, requiring a different skill set to pull it off successfully. Halliwell has no history of credit card fraud, indicating that he would be unlikely to steal credit cards, for fear of being detected when he used them, leading to his arrest for murder.
• Mrs Evans body has never been found which is consistent with Halliwell’smodus operandi. He had been a builder, grave digger and groundsman and was able to dig a grave and bury a body quickly. We know from the murder of Miss Godden-Edwards that he was also very skilful at sighting a grave in a rural area, where it would not be discovered.
• Mrs Evans was abducted in daylight in Llangollen without anyone witnessing a struggle or any of her possessions found at the scene. This would point towards abduction by persuasion -not force-  which is consistent with his abductions of Becky Godden-Edwards and Sian O’Callaghan.
• Mrs Evans’ clothes were never found. It is therefore possible that some items were taken as a trophy, which is a classic Halliwell indicator. Here the authors speculate that items of her clothing may be among the items recovered by Wiltshire Police from Halliwell’s trophy store in a lake he used to go fishing at, at Ramsbury, Wiltshire.

The question should also be asked at this point, if it wasn’t Halliwell, what other man was there operating in North Wales at the time that had a history of murdering women and concealing their bodies and a knowledge of antiques?

Financial Profiling

The authors suspect that the reason Mrs Evans had a large wad of notes on her in the shop on the Saturday morning, was because she intended to meet someone that weekend to pay him for antiques. This may be the person she was waiting for on the Friday evening, indicating that he failed to show.

Remainder of this section withheld to prevent causing offence to Mrs Evans’ family.

Contact/Trigger Points

When he was a taxi driver Halliwell had a reputation for being well-spoken, charming and persuasive with the passengers. He would certainly have been capable of striking up a conversation with a woman and persuading her to get in a car with him on a pretext of giving them a lift, or taking them to view some antiques.

Halliwell could have had contact with Mrs Evans from a chance meeting arising from:

• An apparently innocent conversation about buying or selling antiques at the antique shop.
• Striking up a conversation with Mrs Evans while fishing on the River Dee at 14.35 when Mrs Evans may have been there.

Or from an arranged meeting:

• According to the Crimewatch reconstruction, there was an unconfirmed sighting of Mrs Evans near the River Dee at about 14.35 and then another a few minutes later of her walking along a footpath away from the River. Both sightings are unconfirmed. If indeed it was Mrs Evans, it is possible she was going to meet someone away from the shop unobtrusively at the River Dee.
• Withheld to prevent causing distress to Mrs Evans’ family.

Part 2 of this article will be published shortly.

Appeal for information

Christopher Halliwell was sighted in Scarborough. Did you see Christopher Halliwell:

• Fishing along the River Dee?
• In Llangollen
• Fishing at Scarborough?
• Fishing at Whitby?
• Fishing along the River Tees?
• Fishing at Scaling Dam?
• In York?
• At Ampleforth?
• At Oswaldkirk?
• In Middlesbrough?
• In Huddersfield?
• In Merseyside?
• In Northampton?
• At Aughton Park?
• In Manchester?

If you prefer to talk to a journalist anonymously, then please email letters@nyenquirer.uk. All enquiries will be treated in the strictest confidence.