Now, finally, the child could be removed from the exposed grass bank. With reverence and respect – and doubtless with thoughts of their own children and grandchildren never far away – the assembly of men watched Lesley Molseed as she was lifted on to a black polythene sheet. As her body was lifted, it was evident that rigor mortis was well developed in the limbs, although hypostasis1 was only faint. As Lesley was turned, they saw that she had bled from the nose and her facial features were distorted and flattened from their prolonged contact with the ground. There was no blood soiling at the back of the head, nor of the fleecy white lining of the interior of the hood of her raincoat. A small cut was visible to the left of the front of the raincoat, and there was a stab wound beneath. The front of the child’s clothing was heavily blood-stained, as was that which covered the back of her shoulders, where blood had seeped into the right-hand side of the clothing due to the position in which the body had lain. These early indications lead to a hypothesis that Lesley had been repeatedly stabbed where she lay, and left to bleed to death. She had been alive when brought to this desolate place, and her life had ebbed away in lonely isolation, her screams only partially drowned by the high-pitched whistling of the winds which swirled through the peaks and vales of the moors.
Then she had been left. The skin over the left hand was macerated, being sodden, white and wrinkled. The skin of the lower limbs was slightly grey, and a few fly eggs were found in the hair close to the left ear. These features, and the rectal temperature, indicated that the body had been exposed to the elements for some time, although a more precise time of death would only become clear after the post-mortem, and a more careful analysis of the temperature readings already taken.
After Lesley’s hands and feet were encased in plastic bags to preserve any evidence which might cling to them, the black sheet was wrapped around the body, which was then placed into a coffin-shell and carried off the bleak moors with solemnity and dignity. Whatever vehicle had carried her on her last journey in life, she was now to be moved by a hearse which was waiting in the lay-by below. Her next journey led to the Halifax Royal Infirmary.
Removed from the wind and rain of the moor to the hospital mortuary, the child is received by Mr Seward, the mortuary attendant. He is experienced, and treats each corpse given to his charge with equal care and reverence. But his experience extends to victims of crime and, knowing that this child was said to be such a victim, he is instantly aware that his care of the body must extend beyond the norm. He knows from previous post-mortems in murder cases that the body is itself a source of evidence, and that whilst he must prepare the body for viewing by the relatives, so as to cause as little distress as possible, he has a second, but equally important, role in ensuring that any movement of the body will not contaminate or cause the loss of any evidence. These dual roles clashed at this point: whilst he had previously prepared bodies with extensive head or facial injuries so as to minimise the trauma to the relatives carrying out the identification, he was unable to do so with Lesley, whose face, although uninjured, was heavily stained with blood. That blood-staining would doubtless be of concern to the scientists, and so the best Mr Seward was able to do was to lay her body out in the black plastic sheet, now covered with a purple velvet cloth.
Mr Seward was assisted by Sergeant Appleyard, the coroner’s officer, who performs a number of functions for the coroner. One such function is to ensure that an accurate identification of the deceased has taken place at an early stage. And so, the child is identified. April Molseed is brought by police officers to Halifax, the journey littered with her questions which those officers were unable to answer: were they sure it was Lesley? How had she died? Had she been sexually assaulted? These officers do not have the answers. Indeed, at this point, no one does.
Now Lesley is left to the scientists. Now is the white, sterile phase. The tiny child reduced to ‘the deceased’ whilst the cause of her death is sought. A grim and gruesome task in any case, made the more pitiful by the victim’s age. A necessity, both for the detection of the criminal and for his prosecution, to know that she did not die from natural causes, to know the nature of the attack, the number of wounds and of blows, to know (if possible) the time and place of death, to know whether there has been indecent interference. Mercifully not. To draw from the child any clue which may yet help justice to be done.
Professor Gee and the forensic scientists work, methodically and in accordance with regulated and established procedures, under the watchful eyes of ACC Craig and DCS Oldfield. The participants agree an order in which to proceed, a necessity when some type of examination might secure one form of evidence whilst destroying others.
The first step is an examination of the body’s external surfaces by Detective Chief Inspector Swann, a fingerprint expert, but he finds nothing upon the child and soon leaves, taking with him a set of the child’s own fingerprints for use in comparison against any found in a culprit’s home or car (although Lesley’s prints were never found on any exhibit in the eventual case).
Then the child is undressed, and each item of clothing is handed to Sergeant Godfrey who, assisted by Detective Constable Robert Shore, bags and labels each garment separately. Lesley is wearing precisely the same clothing that she was wearing when she left home.
The forensic scientists are provided with samples of Lesley’s hair, both plucked and cut, and with finger-nail scrapings, and they then leave, to continue their work back on the moors, while they wait to receive all exhibits at the laboratory, where their own tests would be conducted. Samples would be taken from the body by Professor Gee in the course of the post-mortem, for later use by the professor and by the forensic scientists.
Finally Professor Gee is alone with the body. He will carry out his extensive examination whilst ensuring that he makes detailed notes, for in the information which the post-mortem will yield it is hoped to find, not merely the time of Lesley’s death, but also the motive behind her death and the cause and, perhaps, some clue which might assist in the bringing to justice of the person responsible.
The external examination revealed the body of a thin, small, brown-haired girl, some four feet in length and weighing forty pounds. There was slight blood soiling of the skin at the front and back of the trunk and over the face. When this was removed post-mortem staining was found to be faint, pinkish in colour and mainly present at the front of the body, with some areas of pressure pallor in the skin over the knees. Rigor mortis, though confirmed had by this time begun to pass off. The effect of exposure to the elements, visible in the exposed parts of the body, by reason of a dark-grey coloration, particularly to the left hand and the thighs, was also confirmed.
The eyes appeared normal although the pupils were unequal, the right being larger than the left. The absence of petechial haemorrhages2 in the lids or on the eyeballs enabled the professor to exclude strangulation or asphyxiation as the cause of death. The ears and nose were normal, whereas the mouth was slightly soiled by blood with the tip of the tongue protruding between the teeth, and although the teeth themselves showed several caries, none was loose or displaced, indicating that the face had not been subjected to violence.
The chest carried an old, healed, oblique surgical scar on the right side of the chest, some seven inches in length, with a second and similar scar on the left side, both reminders of the surgical treatment for Lesley’s heart complaint.
The external genitalia were normal, with no blood soiling and no evidence of injury. The hymen was intact and the anus normal. The child had not been raped nor subjected to any penetrative sexual attack.
Professor Gee found twelve stab wounds: one to the left front chest, one to the right front of the neck, one to the back of the left ear and nine to the upper part of the chest, at the back, principally on the left-hand side, all within an area measuring six inches by three inches.
As Professor Gee measured the dimensions, the angles, the tracks of entry of each stab wound, was he already constructing a scenario of blows driving the child to the ground, then the killer’s orgy of violence as he stabbed her in the back. He might say it was violent, for several wounds had faint areas of bruising of a half-inch diameter. Were these bruises caused by the impact of the hilt of the knife against the child’s body? It is not a scientific term, but the