RG: You’re saying that’s what happened?
AF: No, I’m saying that could have happened. Frankly, I don’t remember either way.
RG: Your DNA wasn’t just identified in one location, DI Fawley, or only on her hands. It was all over her body.
AF: No. Absolutely not. No way –
DK: Including, and most significantly, in her genital area.
RG: In addition, post-mortem examination of that area located a single pubic hair. A hair that did not originate from the victim. It’s a male hair. And it came from you.
* * *
Alex Fawley sits in the garden, pretending to read, hearing the search team moving through her home. The low voices, the footsteps back and forth down the front path. She won’t let herself imagine the ogling neighbours, the old dears ‘just popping out for a pint of milk’ to get a better gawp.
The only CSI person she’s met is Alan Challow, at one of the St Aldate’s Christmas drinks, but there’s no sign of him today. He’s probably too embarrassed. She knows she would be. The person who seems to be in charge is an Asian woman. She’s calm and professional and thorough, but there’s something in the dark eyes behind the mask that Alex doesn’t want to see. Right now, sympathy is more than she can stand.
The back door opens and the scrawny DC comes down the garden towards her. He could do with a haircut. Every time he flicks it out of his eyes she has to bite her tongue.
‘Mrs Fawley?’
She glances up and then back at her book.
‘I’m sorry to bother you but could I just ask you a few questions?’
She looks up at him again, shading her eyes against the sun. ‘What about?’
‘Just some basic factual stuff. What time your husband got back on Monday night – things like that.’
She wants to send him packing, tell him to mind his own bloody business, but she’s not stupid. She knows that will only make it worse. And the one thing she really can’t face is being taken down to St Aldate’s. Sweating in the back of a squad car, stared at, feeling the size of a whale.
‘I think,’ she says heavily, ‘that you should get yourself a chair.’
* * *
[THEME SONG – AARON NEVILLE COVER VERSION OF ‘I SHALL BE RELEASED’]
[JOCELYN]
I’m Jocelyn Naismith, and I’m the co-founder of The Whole Truth, a not-for-profit organization that campaigns to overturn miscarriages of justice. This is Righting the Wrongs, series 3: The Roadside Rapist Redeemed? Chapter four: Plaster
You might be thinking ‘Plaster’ is an odd title for this episode. But as far as Gavin Parrie is concerned, it’s only too horribly relevant.
Before we go any further I should warn you that this episode includes details some listeners may find distressing.
We heard in the last episode how the Roadside Rapist’s third victim, Alexandra Sheldon, went on to marry one of the lead detectives in the case, DS – now DI – Adam Fawley. In our view, this is perhaps the single most important factor to be considered when assessing Gavin Parrie’s alleged guilt.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. First of all, we need to retrace our steps a little.
On the evening of 16th October 1998, Louise Gilchrist was on her way home from her job at a doctor’s surgery in Cutteslowe when she was dragged into undergrowth and brutally raped. And barely a month later, the fifth victim, a 19-year-old trainee midwife, was attacked on her way home from the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, sustaining horrendous injuries.
The time between the attacks was getting smaller, and the violence was getting worse. The Roadside Rapist was escalating.
[ALISON DONNELLY]
‘I mean, I’d heard about the Roadside Rapist – everyone had. But that was in Oxford. Abingdon was miles away. No one thought it could happen to us.’
[JOCELYN]
That’s Alison Donnelly. She’s the only one of the surviving victims who’s been prepared to talk in public about her ordeal. She was only 21 at the time.
[ALISON]
‘I was walking home down Larborough Drive, just a few doors away from my flat. It’d been raining all afternoon so the gutters were overflowing, and when I stopped to cross the road a big truck came past really close and sprayed water all over me. I guess I was distracted for a minute. That’s when it happened.’
[JOCELYN]
Alison never heard the man coming up behind her. The man who thrust a plastic bag over her head and dragged her off the street into the undergrowth.
[ALISON]
‘I was trying to struggle but I couldn’t see – the plastic was sticking to my face. Then I felt him dragging me through the bushes and bundling me into the back of a van. There was plasticky stuff on the floor. I’ve never been so terrified in my whole life. I thought he was going to kill me.’
[JOCELYN]
We know now that the attacker drove Alison more than ten miles to a car park on the Oxford ring road.
[ALISON]
‘He dragged me out of the van and across some asphalt – I could feel it under my feet. Then he threw me down on my back and tore off my underwear and raped me. Then I felt him pull away and stand up and then his footsteps walking away. I just lay there, holding my breath, praying he wouldn’t come back.’
[JOCELYN]
But those prayers were not going to be answered.
[ALISON]
‘A few minutes later I heard footsteps again, coming closer, and then he was grabbing me and throwing me over on to my face. It was so painful – I’d never had sex that way before. He seemed different now – rougher. Crueller. He must have known how much he was hurting me but he didn’t care. I thought he was punishing me for it being over so fast before. He had his hand on the back of my neck, pushing me into the ground, and I couldn’t breathe, but when I tried to struggle he started to beat my head against the concrete. And this time, it wasn’t over quickly.’
[JOCELYN]
Alison suffered a fractured skull and lost the sight in one eye. Her injuries were horrific.
[ALISON]
‘I must have blacked out at some point because when I came to there were flashing lights and police and an ambulance.’
[JOCELYN]
Alison was rushed to the JR hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery. It would be five weeks before she was well enough to go home, and she faced months of rehabilitation. Meanwhile, and for the first time, Thames Valley had a lucky break. There was something embedded in the soles of Alison’s shoes, which could only have come from the back of the van.
It was a substance called calcium sulphate. Plaster dust. It was the police’s first real clue. And it would prove to be critical.
Nor was that the only development in the case. One of Alison’s flatmates remembered seeing a white van parked down their street several times in the days before the attack. It was the first indication that DS Adam Fawley’s theory was right: the rapist really could be stalking his victims.
It was important progress, but it didn’t come in time to save Lucy Henderson, who was to be his seventh and last victim. On 12th December, she was attacked on her way home from work, bundled into a van and driven to an abandoned industrial site where she was savagely raped. Once again, plaster dust was found on her shoes.
[ALISON]
‘After what happened to Lucy the police asked me if I’d do a reconstruction so they could put it on Crimewatch, and I said yes, because I wanted to do everything I could to help. But it was horrible – like reliving the whole thing all over again.’