Lazy British political police again

Because of their non-investigation, the murderer will now never be found. If someone had spoken ill of homosexuals, however, there would have been a big investigation immediately

When Pauline Holcroft got to her feet in a coroner’s court last week to ask her daughter’s former boyfriend if he had anything to do with her death, she was completing a heroic seven-year journey. Rachel Whitear, a 21-year-old university student, was found dead, apparently from a heroin overdose, in May 2000. The manner of her death was riddled with questions, including whether she had been alone when she died and even whether heroin had been involved at all. But it has taken all this time for Holcroft to be in a position to get some answers.

I know what an ordeal it has been for both Pauline and her husband Mick, who is Rachel’s stepfather, because I was indirectly responsible for a lot of it. In the spring of 2003 I met the Holcrofts to discuss the anomalies behind both Rachel’s death and the initial investigation into it by Devon and Cornwall police, an inquiry that has now been proved to have been pitifully inadequate. As a result of our discussions I wrote an article that resulted in a reinvestigation being conducted under the auspices of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Rachel’s name and face had become public property a year earlier when her parents authorised the release of an educational video entitled Rachel’s Story. The film -- to be shown in schools -- told of Rachel’s battle with heroin addiction and was intended as a salutary warning to children. But the video, and Rachel, became a point of discussion because of the inclusion of a single, excoriatingly powerful image.

By allowing the videomakers to use a police photograph of Rachel’s kneeling body, purple with the onset of decomposition, the Holcrofts wanted to grab people’s attention and underline their message of a promising life cut tragically short.

The Holcrofts’ story was one to strike fear into every parent. As a child, Rachel had seemed the ideal daughter, a talented pianist with a can-do, sunny outlook. Her problems began when she fell in love with Luke Fitzgerald, a drug addict of whom, not surprisingly, her parents disapproved. Under his influence, Rachel got into heroin and the spiral that ended in death began.

While Fitzgerald was always unemployed, Rachel was always working or studying. But though she knew he was a destructive influence, she could never bring herself to say goodbye ? until just prior to her death when she had an epiphany. She had stopped taking heroin, left Fitzgerald a Dear John note and moved into a new bedsit, without giving him the address. For the first time in years her mother felt hopeful about the future ? only to have those hopes cruelly dashed.

The photograph of Rachel that the Holcrofts released, hoping to shock others into the reality of drugs, also opened up a Pandora’s box of questions about exactly how she died. There was, for instance, the mysterious fact that the syringe in her hand had the stopper replaced, together with the highly unusual positioning of her body (most overdose victims are found in the foetal position). The blood tests at the time of her death had, confusingly, found insufficient heroin to have killed her. No postmortem was carried out -- it was later discovered that the authorities considered it a waste of taxpayers’ money as this was just another junkie’s death ? and an inquest seven months after her death recorded an open verdict.

Fitzgerald had given contradictory statements to police about his last contact with Rachel. At first he only admitted to seeing her the day before she died when they argued about money on the beach at Exmouth, the town where Rachel had lived with him. But at Pauline’s insistence, he had been questioned again and he revealed having seen her fleetingly in the street the next day, when she gave him 20 pounds.

The Wiltshire police reinvestigation, led by Detective Chief Superintendent Paul Howlett, began in 2003: soon Fitzgerald and his brother Simon were arrested on suspicion of Rachel’s manslaughter after officers heard from witnesses that they might have been involved in covering up her death and making it appear that she overdosed alone.

However, Luke Fitzgerald was an unenlightening interviewee, Howlett found, giving the answer that he “couldn’t remember” to most of the police’s questions. Both he and his brother were later told that no charges would be brought for lack of evidence, but there was soon another traumatic element of the reinvestigation for the Holcrofts to deal with.

The police wanted to exhume Rachel’s body from the peaceful rural Herefordshire cemetery where it was lying in order to carry out a much-delayed postmortem. When Rachel’s coffin was opened, officers were amazed to find that not only had there been no postmortem but she had been buried in the same clothes in which she had died -- a blue and white nightshirt and cream cardigan. The lack of due diligence was breathtaking.

New tests showed heroin had indeed killed her. The question was, who had given her the heroin? Did she take it, or was she injected by someone else? Despite the lack of enough evidence to bring criminal charges against anyone, the dogged Howlett felt a new inquest should be convened to at least give a cause of death for Rachel. He had to apply to the High Court for permission, in the teeth of opposition from the local coroner’s office, which had failed Rachel so spectacularly six years before.

So last week the Holcrofts finally had their day in court. Fitzgerald, someone the Holcrofts had not seen for many years, would finally present himself for questioning. It was something Pauline both looked forward to and dreaded: she was to question Fitzgerald herself as she could not afford to hire a lawyer to do it for her.

I have spoken to Pauline and Mick dozens of times over the past four years and I feel I know their characters fairly well. Mick is naturally pugnacious, Pauline of a more nervous disposition. Many times she would ago-nise over whether they were doing the right thing in continuing to pursue the answers they lacked. She quailed sometimes before the difficulties she faced, but she continued, borne onwards by the feeling that she owed it to her daughter to find out how she died. For that reason I have always considered her to be a genuinely heroic figure.

So it was that she faced down Fitzgerald at the coroner’s court in Exeter last Tuesday, nervous but outwardly composed. By then the inquest jury had already heard electrifying evidence from a former girlfriend of Simon Fitzgerald. She said Simon had told her his brother had injected Rachel with the fatal dose and then called him to help cover his tracks. Simon Fitzgerald, who declined to attend the hearing, denied her evidence. The court was also told forensics experts had found the scene “highly suspicious” and believed it bore all the hallmarks of having been faked by someone.

Luke Fitzgerald’s answers to Pauline’s questions were, predictably, unrewarding. His answer to most questions was that he simply had no recollection. His use of heroin, now a thing of the past he emphasised, had robbed him of much of his memory. At one point Pauline asked Fitzgerald if he had loved her daughter. The question flummoxed him with its poignancy. “I’m not sure I knew what love was,” he said, pathetically.

On Friday the jury gave their verdict: the new forensics evidence had satisfied them that Rachel had died of a heroin overdose, but they were unable to decide whether she, or someone else, had injected it. Although Rachel was now finally graced with a cause of death, the ultimate verdict on her death remains inconclusive.

The Holcrofts may now decide to pursue legal action against Devon and Cornwall police for negligence, and conceivably they could even attempt to sue Fitzgerald. But whatever happens in the future, Pauline will always know she did the right thing in refusing to let her daughter go to her grave without various people being called to account.

The day after Pauline squared up to Fitzgerald I spoke to the Holcrofts at length on the telephone. “You would have been proud of her, Daniel,” was the first thing Mick said to me. And I was.

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