Inseparable Bond (4 page)

He lived with
his wife and young daughter in a modest terraced house in
Prestwich, north Manchester, nearby to Tesco’s main warehouse.

Police were
stopping all Tesco trucks, due to the witness’s statements of a
Tesco lorry always in the vicinity of where the girls disappeared
and with so many companies’ vehicles on the roads, detectives were
no closer after interviews with Tesco’s delivery department.

His victims
were attracted by his good looks and after being charmed by Smith’s
invitation, he would tie the girls up to a tree, remove their
undergarments and rape them repeatedly. Once released from the
tree, he would club his victim until their bodies became limp, then
bury them in a shallow grave covered with leaves. The post-mortem
revealed three of the victims had been buried whilst still being
alive, where evidence of their desperation to survive was by the
soil bedded deep under their fingernails as they tried to claw
their way out through the soil, in useless desperation.

Smith also
rented a small flat on the other side of Manchester, of which his
wife had been unaware. Some victims had been lured to this flat for
sex, after falling for his plausible methods and his striking good
looks.

After renting
the flat for only six months, the next tenants, a couple of young
student boys from the nearby college, shortly after their occupancy
they detected a foul smell which seemed to be emanating from a
paper covered kitchen cupboard. Thinking that a rat had found its
way inside and died, they ripped open the cupboard. What they found
made them call 999 immediately. When the police arrived they
stripped the flat. In the kitchen cupboard they found the bodies of
three naked girls, two more bodies were found naked, buried in the
back yard and another under the floorboards in the sitting
room.

Their search
intensified and the police now trailed all Tesco lorries leaving
the depot for the northern counties. Smith was unaware of his
movements being watched as he pulled in to a lay-by near a remote
beach on the outskirts of Bridlington. As he approached two teenage
girls sat on rocks, the police made their presence known and took
Smith to the local police station for questioning.

He was
transferred to the police headquarters in Manchester for further
questioning.

The police
went to Smith’s house to undergo a full examination of the
premises, while his wife stood motionless as they ransacked the
small house surrounded by curious neighbours.

His wife
became hysterical when told of the charges her husband faced and
screamed, ‘Rick is not a vicious or a savage murderer, he’s a kind
and loving husband.’

After two days
of interrogation, Smith still did not admit to his crimes, which by
this time had caused snowballing hysteria amongst the three
counties law enforcement departments which were desperate to pin
all their recent unsolved crimes on Smith. He convinced the
detectives that he had not been aware of any foul smell in the flat
he had rented.

While he was
still in custody, a well-timed breakthrough from the forensics
showed unusual teeth marks on two of the victims.

Evidence from
a dental expert proved that bite marks on the body of one of the
girls matched Smith’s teeth. As one of the girls had lay dying, she
had been brutally bitten on her breasts and buttocks. The other
dead girl had been raped, battered and strangled so violently that
a police witness said at first he thought she had been decapitated.
This was the conclusive evidence the police desperately needed and
he was arrested for the crimes.

When the
verdict was announced in Manchester Crown Court, Smith’s wife
shrieked in anguish and screamed from the public gallery. ‘He is
innocent, he is innocent,’ The presiding judge described Smith as
being ‘the most vicious criminal the Greater Manchester and
surrounding counties had ever seen in the history of his
court.’

He had been
imprisoned in Strangeways five years before Bell’s arrival, so was
well versed to life on the inside and had become a self-involved
loner who was the leader of a small group of inmates, linked by
similar criminal activities.

He was a
tobacco baron who would hoard cigarettes and tobacco under his
mattress and sell it at high rates of interest or against payment
of other goods or services, many being sexual. He had a string of
young boys who were known as ‘runners’ who would enforce payment.
Those who did not pay or offer sexual favours were beaten up. Smith
and other group leaders within the limited economy of a prison
wing, were the outside equivalent to moneylenders or pimps.

Bell had not
slept well through the night, being disturbed by the shouting of
inmates, the constant banging of doors and the rattle of keys from
the screws that patrolled the wing corridor. He climbed down from
his top bunk to see a dull early morning light struggle through the
small barred window and sat on the cold metal toilet bowl, looking
over at Smith as he lay naked, snoring with his foot resting on the
cold slab floor.

A loud rattle
of keys opened the cell door with the harsh voice of a well-built
screw shouting, ‘Out, out, out, come on, Smith and you Bell,
showers.’

Smith woke and
struggled off his bed as Bell dressed quickly, still not a word was
spoken as Bell left the cell to join the stream of other inmates
congregating on the corridor and slowly dragging their feet to the
shower block, with a towel under their arms. Bell arrived at the
shower block to see a multitude of naked men and boys, some in the
shower and the others impatiently waiting for their turn. A young
boy had been cornered in a shower cubical surrounded by naked men.
It was difficult to see what was happening due to the amount of men
blocking Bell’s view, but the screams of the young lad were enough
to make Bell realise that he was being raped while the screws
watched on, smiling at each other without intervening.

The attack
lasted only a few minuets and when the on-looking crowds dispersed,
the young lad squatted in the corner, crying in pain as he clutched
his buttocks.

Bell took his
turn in the middle row of open showers, with groups of inmates at
each side soaping their bodies and some soaping other bodies, while
the row of toilets were full of guys sat on the pans at the
doorless latrines with the array of tones associated with the first
ablutions of the day. The screws had by this time left the block
due to the overpowering stench of excrement and body odour.

Bell dried off
with the occasional glance from the few remaining inmates, and went
down to the food hall to collect a breakfast of powdered scrambled
egg and thin bacon with a piece of dry cold toast and weak tea.

Sitting next
to him was a big fat guy with a rough complexion and thick
glasses

This was
Raymond Cole, the notorious murderer who had been in every
newspaper in the country for his crimes against young boys,
resulting in a similar fate to those who had been at the hands of
Bell himself.

His heavy
thirty stone bulk and sexuality constantly made him a figure of fun
for the other inmates. At 13, his two elder brothers, who continued
the incestuous relationship until he reported it to the police two
years later, had raped him. For reasons he did not understand, he
was blamed for the sordid affair, and forced to live a cloistered
existence, which deprived him of normal relationships as a
teenager. When he left school he took a job at Burtons Menswear as
a sales assistant in his hometown of Bradford, but his nymphomaniac
sex life forced him to leave town where he took a job as a gardener
in a school near Otley.

On meeting a
guy in the local public toilets, Raymond was taken to this guy’s
house near Guisley, who attempted to rape him as soon as they
entered the house.

Fearing the
same fate which his brothers had reduced him too, a scuffle arose
where Raymond strangled and battered his victim to death with a
hammer which was lying on the kitchen worktop. He stuffed the body
in the boot of his car and drove to a remote area of Fewston
Reservoir, where he disposed of the body in the deep water.

The next day,
he was driving to Harewood on the outskirts of Leeds when a young
girl was waiting at the bus stop. He stopped the car to offer the
girl a lift, which she accepted due to the cold wind and heavy
downpour. He drove off the main road and as she tried to leave the
moving car in fear, he attacked her as the car still continued
along the quiet lane. As blood flowed from her mouth, he forced her
into the back seat, ordered her to remove her clothes, and then
violently raped her twice.

He pulled her
out of the car and left her on the grass verge as he drove off. He
turned the car around in a farm lane and unexpectedly headed back
to his naked victim, who was staggering up the muddy grass bank in
search of help when Raymond stopped the car and followed her up the
bank. He strangled her until her body went limp. Convinced he had
eliminated the only witness to his crime, he drove off.

A passing
driver spotted the naked girl and alerted the police and
ambulance.

She recovered
consciousness in hospital and began giving waiting police officers
extremely detailed descriptions of her assailant. Due to the
severity of her wounds she was consigned to a wheelchair for six
months, but her mind was unaffected as she continued to give
evidence at the trial.

For three
years his crime went undetected and in which time he had set
himself up in business, selling frozen packed meats in a back
street shop in Leeds.

He spent most
of his time among the con men and dubious traders at the straggling
markets outside the Central railway station. He became obsessed
with the people inside the station – drifters from all over the
country without jobs or money, homes or hopes, who would huddle on
the platform benches at night to keep warm.

He knew he
could make friends easily and soon realised there were
opportunities for him among the young down and outs, some not more
than twelve years old. They had run away from their homes, often
unable to cope with life and their stern fathers and poverty
existence.

Raymond would
sit for hours listening to their grievances, offering them advice
and winning their confidence. In a city like Leeds, where everyone
was carefully documented, he had discovered a constant flow of
people nobody could trace, they could disappear forever and their
parents and police would be none the wiser.

The wretched
youngsters he befriended were taken to his home for a good meal,
often sexually assaulted, then he would kill them in the most
savage fashion – a bite at the throat and the removal of their
testicles and penis. He would then dismember the bodies, boiling
the meat and throwing the skull and bones in the nearby river.

The police had
been notified by neighbours that a constant stream of young boys
went into his house, but that none ever seemed to come out. They
had overheard sounds of screams, followed by the sound of chopping
and splashing but no evidence of body remains were found in the
premises and the police left, being satisfied that Raymond had
nothing to do with the disappearance of these young boys.

A few days
later, a neighbour was chatting to Raymond outside the back of his
house. As they chatted and joked, a paper covering the bucket he
was carrying slipped slightly, and she noticed the bucket was full
of blood. She said nothing to him or the authorities as Raymond had
to cut up carcasses of meat as part of his trade with his food
business.

Pressure was
building up on the Leeds police force as newspapers had noted that
large numbers of youths arriving in Leeds railway station had
vanished and the city was acquiring a sinister reputation. The
published fears brought out into the open suspicions which many
people had been prepared to keep to themselves; the skull of a
young child, which had been washed-up on the bank of the river was
the final straw.

Now the police
had to deal not with the occasional distraught parent, but with
outraged public opinion due to the latest find by the river.

A customer had
purchased some meat from Raymond’s shop but found it did not
resemble the normal pork she was familiar with. It had a strange,
sweet smell and very tender to the touch but a much darker shade of
pink than her usual purchase.

She ate a
small portion of the pork, but found it inedible and took it back
to Raymond’s shop to complain. He reimbursed her, assuring her it
was fresh pork but not being satisfied with his explanation and
apology, she took the spare piece of pork she had retained at her
house to the local Environmental Health Office.

On
examination, it was unmistakably human flesh and the police were
immediately notified.

The police
returned to Raymond’s house to undergo a full and detailed forensic
job on the premises but as they arrived at the house, he broke down
and confessed, knowing that the piece of pork had brought his reign
of terror to an end. He was immediately arrested, as more and more
human remains were being discovered on the bed of the receding
river, watched by hundreds of people lining the banks.

Once in
detention, the names of the missing boys were read to him, he
refused to answer and kept his head down, staring at the floor.

Nearly fifty
witnesses had to appear in the box, mostly the parents of the
unfortunate youths. There were scenes of painful intensity as a
poor father and mother would recognise some fragment or other of
the clothing or belongings of their murdered son.

The belongings
consisted of a handkerchief, underpants, and a greasy coat, soiled
almost beyond recognition that was shown to Raymond and relations.
He admitted to the court that once he had known of these items and
of the boys who wore them.