While Hoban’s abilities as a detective were considerable, his critics could point to his relatively narrow experience in terms of large-scale policing. As one of the biggest constabularies in the country, the new West Yorkshire force would provide plenty of opportunity for qualified men to move up the promotion ladder. All things being equal, Hoban should have been one of those. But his detractors, all of whom came from the old West Yorkshire force, believed his driven personality was a major barrier to him obtaining higher rank. Some accused him of self-aggrandisement, always pushing himself forward – anxious to have his photograph taken for the Yorkshire Post or the northern editions of the national press; or keen to offer himself for interviews on television. From Hoban’s viewpoint, communicating with the public was a big part of the job. He was well known throughout Leeds as the city’s top detective, and he used this image to speak directly to the man or woman in the street, in the hope that they might come forward with some vital clue. A few very senior but quite impartial colleagues saw his administrative weakness as a major flaw.
Some senior West Riding detectives had worked closely with both Hoban on the regional crime squad based at Brotherton House in Leeds and the new ACC (crime) George Oldfield, the senior detective in the West Riding force. They viewed Oldfield, a former wartime Royal Navy petty officer, as the better team player. ‘Dennis was a seat of his pants operator, always a bit fly and capable of going off at tangents. He had a single objective – to catch criminals, and at that he was brilliant. But a modern police force needs people with a broader perspective.’
This professional criticism of Dennis Hoban was a reflection of the different cultures of policing in the bigger towns and cities. It also reflected different methods of tackling serious crime. The West Riding’s operational procedures for solving murders were radically different from those in operation within Leeds before the 1974 amalgamation. The old West Riding force had a paper-led system which was time consuming in the short term but in the long term garnered evidence in statement form from witnesses which would in a protracted inquiry prove crucial in mounting a successful prosecution. Prior to amalgamation, most provincial borough and county force murder inquiries involved bringing in a senior detective from Scotland Yard, because historically the Metropolitan Police was the only force in the country with wide experience of dealing with homicides. County forces tended to adopt the Metropolitan Police way of doing things. The bigger cities, like Leeds, Bradford and Manchester, had the manpower and experience to run murder inquiries without help from the Yard. Each had its own system for tackling murders. The Manchester force took very few statements in a major crime investigation until they were needed for court proceedings. In Leeds, Hoban operated a similar system. Like a general on the battlefield, he was in charge of strategy. He relied on his middle managers to keep him briefed on those lines of inquiry most likely to yield results. He never immersed himself in detail until it was absolutely essential, and as a consequence rarely needed to read reams of paperwork.
Most murders in Britain are solved quickly because there is some domestic involvement such as the victim being known to the killer. In Leeds, Hoban could throw a hundred officers into a murder inquiry and blitz the local area in terms of finding crucial evidence. Over time in Leeds, this method proved very efficient because it found the link between the victim and the killer. Hoban solved nearly all the fifty murders he had tackled, but by the time he was moved to force headquarters at Wakefield, the killer of McCann and Jackson still totally eluded him. He realized that the man who killed these two women had struck at random. They had simply been unlucky victims. In terms of solving murders, finding killers without a personal motive was a nightmare for everyone – the public as well as the police.
One senior officer from outside Yorkshire reckoned that Hoban was the best detective he ever met: ‘He had that great amalgamation of all those qualities that it takes. He had an ability to pick, which is very important. He had an ability to listen to you even though he might not agree with you. He made you feel comfortable in his presence. He had all the qualities you require in a man who is trying to do that job. He has confidence in his team, to let his team deal with the dross and to say to him: “Here you are, boss – this is the one you should look at.” Not for him to be in the sea of what is going on but to be looking at the one aspect really likely to produce a result. He had the ability to pick people round him who were really good and that is a great quality in any senior policeman: “Can you pick the people who’ve got qualities you haven’t got that can support you well?”
‘Dennis Hoban was a very pragmatic, hands-on murder investigator. A lot of people say he overplayed the PR, but I personally don’t believe that. Crime detection is about the senior detective being good at PR. There are all those members of the public out there who can help you, yet you have only a few men to make inquiries, so that mobilization of the public is very important, and Dennis did it.’
In Hoban’s view, public support was at its most crucial in murder inquiries. As a detective, he had too often seen the results of the sudden impulse to kill. As a father, he was absolutely strict with his own sons and he despaired of the way young people were surrounded by violence, seeing it almost as an illness of society: ‘The trouble is that youngsters today see violence all around them, every day. It’s becoming the norm. They see a man getting hit over the head with an iron bar on a television programme, and the man shakes his head and walks away. But it’s not like that in real life. What can and does happen is that the man probably ends up with a steel plate in his head, brain damage, deafness or blindness. He loses his job and his family can break up. I have come across many a criminal who, when faced with the reality of his crime, has had a change of heart. The criminal should be made to pay for his crime. I am a believer in the deterrent effect of hanging, I believe it works.’
Each year Leeds saw, on average, ten homicides, most of them solved because of some link between killer and victim which Hoban’s team managed to uncover. The difficulty came when no such link was found. Most colleagues who knew Hoban well felt he had an extraordinary knack for solving murders and getting the best out of his men, often working on hunches which proved amazingly accurate. He rarely pulled rank, because he didn’t need to, and he displayed remarkable qualities of leadership because he earned the respect of his troops as both man and detective. His key ability was to weigh up the suspect psychologically, a knack which proved him right time and time again. These hunches were the result of years of experience, observation and a deep understanding of people. He always gave credit to the team who worked for him, leading from the front, showing a sense of humour and often pushing himself for forty-eight hours at a stretch, particularly with serious crimes like murders, where he knew you had to crack it early while people’s memories were still fresh.
A perfect example of his approach came in the early 1970s when he masterminded a murder inquiry and threw every resource he had at the problem for thirty-three days. Within a few minutes of the body of Mrs Phyllis Jackson, a fifty-year-old mother of two, being found brutally murdered at her home in Dewsbury Road, Leeds, a master plan for homicide investigations was put into operation. A vehicle equipped with a radio went to the murder scene to act as a control point and a hundred detectives were drafted in immediately. There was evidence she had been raped.
The answer would most probably lie close to the victim and her lifestyle – find the motive, then find the link to the killer. A murder incident room was opened at the police HQ in Westgate. One vital clue emerged from the post-mortem. Mrs Jackson had been strangled, then stabbed with a knife which probably had a serrated edge. A massive search began that included bringing in the army with mine detectors, which made for great photographs and local television news footage that Hoban knew would keep the murder in the public eye. Corporation workmen searched the drains, and every conceivable place where a fleeing killer might have hidden the murder weapon was searched. Much of this was standard in an unsolved homicide,