Innocents. Jonathan Rose

1000s) had been recorded in the incident room indices, and a further 7,000 people had been interviewed at the road checks near the scene or in house-to-house enquiries on the estate; 10,070 actions had been raised in the course of the investigation, the majority of which had been completed, and 4,917 statements had been taken. Hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, dry cleaners, local firms and vehicle taxation offices had also participated in the enquiry process, but by the end of 1975, the only outstanding enquiries were the untraced Morris 1000, the white car seen by Emma Tong, and the elimination of six people who were regarded as being strong suspects, although without any evidential basis existing for that suspicion.

      As the enquiries on the Lancashire side of the Pennines were clearly nearing completion, a decision was taken on the grounds of cost efficiency to transfer the incident room to Harrison Road Police Station, Halifax. Detective Chief Inspector Little was charged with the transfer of all documentation and Detective Inspector Cooper would manage facilities and telecommunications in Halifax.

      It is no criticism of Mr Dibb, Mr Holland, Mr Outteridge or any of the many officers, who had invested hard hours’ work into the investigation, to say that as 1975 was drawing to a close, the prospect of catching the killer of Lesley Molseed did not appear to have improved by a single evidential iota. All that had come forward, from discussions between detectives and scientific staff, was a belief (and it was no more than a belief) that they could be looking for someone who was infertile or with a low or negligible sperm count.

      It is quite clear that the incidents of 3 and 4 October and of 5 November represented the beginning of a transitional phase in that investigation. Whilst the police carried out their forensic tests and their examination of motor vehicles; whilst DCS Dibb was taking to the air in a helicopter to trace possible routes taken by the killer, and (more importantly) to add impetus to the publicity machine which was yielding a massive response from the public; and whilst that same officer was appealing to inmates in British jails to give information which might lead to the one type of offender loathed and despised by all ‘normal’ criminals, the transmogrification from the psychological profile reading ‘mentally deranged with sexual deviations’ to identifiable suspect was brought about by the alleged commission of relatively trivial sexual or quasi-sexual offences, and was due in large part to the efforts of the 12-year-old child Maxine Buckley and her mother Sheila.

      As we have seen Maxine Buckley made a number of statements to the police. In her first, dated 4 October, she spoke only of the incident of that day. She said that she thought she had seen the man before, and would recognise him if she saw him again. Her second statement was dated 9 October, and dealt with both the Friday (third) and Saturday (fourth) incidents, although she did not think that the same man was involved. The man on the fourth was of a much heavier build. She said that she thought that she had seen this second man before in the area between Vavasour Street and Crawford Street.