Lifer. 45 Years in Her Majesty's Prisons

LIFER

45 Years in Her Majesty’s Prisons

Joy Grant Hicks

©Joy Grant Hicks

Copyright ©Joy Grant Hicks 2013

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

Cover credits JOY HICKS LIFER

Cover design: Pam Altschwager

Cover image: © iStockphoto.com/milosluz

About LIFER

Roger John Payne, a young married bank clerk, was arrested in February 1968, in Maidstone, Kent, England for the murder of his wife’s friend. At his trial, no motive was offered by the prosecution, no witnesses put him at the scene nor were his fingerprints found there. The prosecution relied on forensic evidence in the form of fibre and blood samples and his conviction was the first in England on forensic evidence alone, evidence which would probably be insufficient today. The sentence was Life. Payne vehemently maintained his innocence, claiming that police had fabricated the forensic evidence. Those were the days before DNA and careful maintenance of a crime scene.

With a keen intelligence and a strong interest in the law, Payne studied A Level Law in prison, and twice in the 1970s took the Home Office to court on issues of natural justice for prisoners. He represented himself in one of these cases, receiving high praise from the Judge, as well as considerable coverage in the press and law journals. Although he lost both cases, history has vindicated him, with changes being introduced to address the issues he had raised.

In 1991, after Payne had been in Leyhill Open Prison for three years with an impeccable prison record and successful periods of outside work and home leave, the Parole Board recommended release. However, the then Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, used his veto to overturn that decision. Protests from Payne’s employer, friends and the prison staff made no difference. In despair, he made the plan that he would fail to return from one of his Home Leaves, a plan he carried out meticulously.

The Prison Service announced that he was ‘no risk to the public’, in spite of that being the Home Secretary’s reason for vetoing his release, and the police made little attempt to find him. The next three years saw Payne unlawfully at large, living as Thomas Fairfax, ‘a gentleman of independent means’, in Lydney, Gloucestershire, joining the local Conservative Party Association and the congregation of the local Church of England and mixing with the upper echelons of Lydney society. There were some tense moments when he thought he had been discovered and some amusing incidents as he came to grips with the problems of living with a false identity. These were the happiest years of his life but they came to an abrupt end in December 1994, with an early morning knock on the door.

Why has this man spent 45 years in prison when many men sentenced to life are released after less than half that time? The author cannot answer that question, but the story of Thomas Fairfax illustrates some significant issues in the justice system today, not only in the UK. The role of psychiatrists and psychologists in determining the future of prisoners; the consequences of maintaining innocence; the separation of the justice system from political influence – these are some of the issues which are raised in this story of a very unusual lifer.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About LIFER

1.  The Bride Murder

2.  Prime Suspect

3.  Investigation

4.  Trial

5.  Appeal

6.  Family and Friends

7.  Legal Matters

8.  Payne v.  Home Office

9.  Long March to Nowhere

10.  No Reasons Given

11.  Voices Crying in the Wilderness

12.  Dead Ends

13.  Ladies' Man

14.  Open Prison

15.  A Gentleman of Independent Means

16.  The Door Closes

17.  No Risk to the Public

18.  A Little Piece of Heaven

19.  Paradise Lost

20.  Snakes and Ladders

21.  Circularity

22.  A Difficult Case

23.  Deadlock

24.  Annus Horribilis

25.  Obstacle Course

26.  Oral Hearing

Acknowledgements and Sources

Chapter 1

The Bride Murder

1968

The murder of Claire Josephs on Wednesday 7 February 1968 had all the elements guaranteed to titillate the popular press: the victim, an attractive young woman, twenty years old, married the previous September, was found by her husband in the bedroom of their home, dead from knife wounds in the neck. There was no apparent motive: money in the flat was left untouched; there had been no sexual assault. Nobody had seen or heard anything.

Bernard Josephs, known as Joe to his friends, did not arrive home from his work as a cashier at Barking, Greater London, until about 8.00 p.m. on that Wednesday evening. His friend, John Delaney, was to be married the following Saturday and he and Claire were to be guests at the wedding. In honour of the forthcoming nuptials, John, Bernard and a few friends stopped on the way home at a public house, the Crooked Billet, for a celebratory drink. It was quite common for them to call in for a drink on the way home from work but this time there was a definite purpose. As the wedding was to be in Wales, it would not be possible to have the traditional Stag Night drinks on the Friday night. The plan was that Bernard and John would travel to Wales on the Thursday morning and Claire would follow on Friday morning. Claire had phoned Bernard at work late that afternoon to ask what time he would be home, and he had told her he expected it would be about 8.00 p.m.

It was indeed about 8.00 p.m. when John Delaney dropped Bernard off outside the flats at Deepdene Court, Kingswood Road, Shortlands, Bromley. Unusually, there were no lights on in the Josephs’ flat. Bernard let himself in, switched on the lights, noticed that the curtains were drawn to a small gap and that there were signs that Claire had been home but the flat appeared to be empty. A little anxious, Bernard searched the flat and soon was horrified to find his wife’s body face down on the floor in their bedroom. She was wearing the cerise dress she had worn to work that day and over it her blue raincoat. The flat was undisturbed, with no sign of forcible entry, nor was there any blood to be seen, except on close examination, on and under Claire. One of her slippers lay in the lounge, the other in the bedroom. In the kitchen, a recipe book was open at a recipe for a lemon souffle and the mixing bowl of an electric mixer, switched off at the wall, had some of the ingredients already in it while others lay on the bench ready. One cup and saucer, on the left of the sink, had been used, the dregs of coffee in the cup, while on the window ledge was a plate containing half a dozen biscuits.

Not all of these details were immediately noticed by the young husband, whose first impulse was to ring his parents and Claire’s. Both couples came quickly, the Parvins, Claire’s parents, arriving first. In his testimony later, Claire’s father, Roland George Parvin, Company Director, was to say that he saw his daughter’s body face down, with blood beneath it and that the raincoat she was wearing had been pulled down a little on her shoulders, revealing the fact that the central zip on the back of her dress was undone for six to eight inches. The Josephs arrived soon after, and it was only after they had all entered the flat, taken in the horror of the scene and the fact that Claire was clearly dead, that Mr Parvin took over and called 999, the emergency number, summoning the ambulance and police. Somebody also called the family doctor. Mrs Josephs pulled a blanket from the bed to cover Claire’s legs.

The ambulance man, Arthur Ernest Ingold, 48 years old and with about twelve years experience in the work, was the first to arrive. In his statement, he said that it was the only case he had attended where the victim was dead when he arrived. He said that the body was in the bedroom, lying face down, and clothed in ‘a dress and raincoat of light material. The clothes were in perfect order, not disarranged as shown in the photograph.’ He turned her over to check her vital signs and saw the wound on her neck.

At 8.25 pm Dr Sheridan, the family doctor of Bernard and Claire as well as of the senior Josephs, arrived. Dr Sheridan could not tell how long Claire had been dead. He saw blood on the face, neck, throat and hands and also that the obvious source was a wound to the throat. The doctor observed no signs of a struggle. Her clothing was a little disordered but he would later say in court that it was ‘less disordered than appears in the photographs.’ He noted that the bed was not disarranged but that the bedspread or coverlet was folded back. He remembered seeing the blankets, sheet and pillow on the window side of the bed. When giving evidence in court later, Dr Sheridan mentioned that there were about nine people in the room when he arrived, and that a relative had asked him if the throat wound was self-inflicted. He had given a non-committal reply at the time.

At about 9.15 p.m. Detective Superintendent John Cummings from Catford Police Station arrived to head the investigation. The statement he later wrote indicated that by the time he arrived, Claire’s body was lying on her back, with her left slipper by her feet. He noted extensive blood staining on the left side of the chest, face, throat and matting of the hair on the left side. There was ‘an extensive wound of the front of the throat.’

He went on to describe the murder scene, noting that the bed and mattress were slightly disturbed and that one blanket lay in the corner of the room beyond Claire’s feet, but apart from this there was little evidence of disturbance. There were several banknotes on the bedside table and a pair of almost new shoes at the left of the dressing table.

In the small hall, Detective Superintendent Cummings found a blood-stained handkerchief and a clothes airer with some washing on it. (Later, in court, the words ‘still damp’ would be added.) Two bottles containing silver coins were found in a small bedroom.

In the lounge, the other slipper lay by the wall between the kitchen and the lounge doors. A handbag was on the floor at the back of the settee. He described the kitchen thus:

In the kitchen a mixing machine was on the working top at the right of the sink near the corner plugged into a wall point. The machine had been switched off at the point and in the bowl was a souffle mixture. There were whole eggs, butter and egg whites, in a cup, around the machine. On the left of the machine was a recipe for a lemon souffle.

On the left of the sink was a cup and saucer containing coffee and on a matching plate on the sill, six biscuits taken from a packet which had been broken open. The kitchen stool was in front of the coffee cup and cutlery drawers. The oven was switched off and not set.

At some time that evening, Bernard Josephs examined the flat to try to determine what, if anything, had been taken. The only thing he could say was missing was a scallop-edged bread knife which had been a wedding present.

As the police investigation tried to piece together Claire’s movements that evening, her mother-in-law was able to say that, at 5.35 p.m. that day, she had telephoned Claire but there was no reply. Assuming that her daughter-in-law was not yet home from work, she tried again ten minutes later and this time Claire answered. They had a conversation lasting ten to twelve minutes, during which they discussed the lemon souffle which Claire intended to make.

Bernard told the police of his movements after leaving work and his discovery of his wife’s body at about 8.00 p.m. He said that when he left the flat that morning, there had been no washing in the hall on the clothes horse. Regarding the cup with dregs of coffee in it, he said that Claire rarely drank coffee and never for breakfast.

Claire had recently commenced work at Knightsbridge Publications and was driven to and from work each day by a workmate, Rosemary Jane Scorey. Miss Scorey would usually pick Claire up at 8.50 a.m., but in her testimony later, she would say that on Wednesday, February 7, she picked her up at 9.05 a.m. She said that she knew Claire had a telephone conversation at about 4.00 p.m. and that she gave her a lift home as usual. On that day, as she often did, she also gave a lift to a young man from the studio at Knightsbridge Publications, whom she drove as far as West Wickham Station. It was about 5.35 or 5.40 p.m. when she dropped Claire at the junction of Hayes Lane and Kingswood Road., about three minutes walk from Deepdene Court.

• • •

On the evening of the murder, police set up a road block check point outside Deepdene Court, in an effort to gain information about any vehicles seen in the vicinity from about 5.30 to 8.00 p.m. On that evening and on the following day, they also interviewed other occupants of the flats and the immediate neighbours in Kingswood Road. Newspaper appeals to the public in the following days asked for anyone who had been in the vicinity at the relevant time to come forward and in particular anyone who could give details of any cars seen in the area.

A woman who lived in a neighbouring flat in Deepdene Court told police that she had seen a white sports car parked opposite Deepdene Court in Kingswood Road from about 4.45 p.m. to about 6.00 p.m. on the day of the murder. She believed that this was confirmed to the police by another motorist stopped by the police in the road block check point.

Another neighbour who was interviewed by the police on the day of the murder reported that she had heard a car drive off at considerable speed at about 7.20 p.m. Her friend, of Cumberland Road Shortlands, saw this same car nearly in collision with a car with L-plates, at the entrance of Deepdene and Kingswood Roads. The learner driver had to swerve to avoid a collision. She had reported this incident to police in the days immediately after the murder.

On Friday, 9 February the Evening Standard carried this paragraph:

The police are anxious to trace the owner of a white sports car – believed to have a soft top. It was seen parked near the flat in Deepdene Court, Kingswood Road Shortlands, where Mrs Josephs was brutally murdered as she prepared dinner for her husband, Bernard.

Inquiries suggest that it does not belong to anyone who lives at the flats.

The following day the Daily Telegraph had another angle:

Woman ‘Saw Killer on Balcony’

A woman has told police investigating the killing of Mrs Claire Josephs, 21, in her flat at Shortlands, Bromley, on Wednesday that she saw a man on the balcony outside the flat at about the time of the murder. He was apparently trying to find a way out of the flat without using the door.

Last night, police helped the woman to recall the incident. One detective, with a personal radio, went onto the balcony and was directed into various positions by Detective Superintendent John Cummings, who is leading the hunt.

The woman said she saw the man at about 7.25 p.m. The pathologist put the time of the death of Mrs Josephs at 7.15 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

According to the Evening News of the same day, ‘the woman’s identity was kept secret for fear that the killer may strike again.’

The killing was described as ‘apparently motiveless’. Police were developing theories as to why Claire Josephs had been killed. They visited newly married couples, checking one theory that the killer followed up local newspaper reports of weddings:

They believe he may have turned killer after plaguing local brides with telephone calls or doorstep visits.

They want to know if any other newly-weds in the area have had mysterious callers or can describe suspicious callers.

On Monday 12 February Superintendent Cummings was reported to be ‘having a massive rethink about the murder’. This involved compiling a list of all the guests at the wedding of Claire and Bernard the previous September. Mr Joseph Josephs, Bernard’s father, was a prominent member of the local ratepayers association, and Mr George Roland Parvin, Claire’s father, was a company director, and the wedding at Christ Church, Beckenham, had been a large one. By interviewing the two hundred guests, police hoped to learn of any ‘insanely jealous ex-boyfriends’ whose jealousy may have led to murder.

Exhaustive efforts were made to find the murder weapon. Residents in the vicinity of the murder were asked to search their gardens for a long knife with a serrated blade. Dogs were used and Royal Engineers from Maidstone were called in to use mine detectors in the search. The River Ravensbourne was to be dragged, reported the Daily Telegraph. However, their efforts were fruitless. No murder weapon was ever found.

Meanwhile, the police had been busy collecting evidence from the murder scene. Fingerprints were taken and fibres collected. The coffee mug from which it was thought the killer had drunk was taken away for forensic testing and the Christmas cards which Claire had kept from the previous festive season were taken, to see whether they could provide any leads.

It would not be long before one of Claire’s friends would wish she had never sent her a greeting for Christmas 1967.

Roger Payne before his arrest

Chapter 2

Prime Suspect

In late 1964 Claire Parvin was working on Saturday mornings as a sales assistant at a dress shop in Beckenham, on the south-eastern side of Greater London. In mid-1965 this position became full-time. It was here that she met Mary Esson, another young sales assistant in the dress shop. Their friendship was one of those that often happen in workplaces: they enjoyed each other’s company, laughed and gossiped, sometimes ate lunch together, shared ‘in jokes’ about other staff members and customers. It did not extend to socialising out of work hours.

In September 1965, Mary Esson quit her job at the dress shop, going to work instead at LSA Travel Agency, also in Beckenham. It was here that she met Roger Payne, a tall, slim, good-looking young man of twenty-three. They fell in love and became engaged in February 1966. At around this time Roger left LSA Travel to become a representative for the Maidstone Caravan Company.

Since Mary had left the dress shop, she and Claire had lost touch for a time, so it was a complete surprise to Mary when, a week or two after Roger left, Claire came to work at LSA Travel. She stayed only a few months, leaving in July 1966, but she would sometimes phone the Travel Agency to talk to her former workmates including Mary.

The wedding of Mary Esson and Roger Payne took place at noon on 8 October 1966 at St John’s Church, Shirley, Surrey. Mary recalled later that Claire was among a small group of her friends who, although not invited guests, came along to stand outside the Church, see the wedding party and wave and smile their good wishes. Roger Payne apparently was unaware of this group and was to say later that he had never met or seen Claire Parvin until after his marriage.

Mary and Roger Payne went to Morocco for their honeymoon and returned to live in Harrietsham, a village seven miles east of Maidstone in Kent. As a result, Mary gave up her employment at the Travel Agency. She heard no more from Claire until the summer of 1967, when she received a letter with news of Claire’s approaching marriage to Bernard Josephs. Claire wanted some information about wedding arrangements and about houses and flats in the Maidstone area, as she and her fiancé were considering coming to live in that area. Mary answered the letter and in the following months the young women corresponded further. Claire never visited the Paynes at Harrietsham but shortly before Claire’s marriage, Mary visited her at her parents’ home in Beckenham. On this occasion, Roger phoned her there to ask if she wanted him to pick her up, which he did. He did not come inside.

On 30 September 1967, Claire Parvin married Bernard Josephs. It was, in some minds, a ‘mixed marriage’, he being Jewish and she Catholic. Mary and Roger were not guests at the wedding but sent a congratulatory telegram.

Claire and Bernard moved into the flat at Deepdene Court on 25 October 1967. Claire and Mary had little opportunity to meet in the next few months but had not lost contact. At Christmas Claire sent a card with a letter, telling Mary of their holiday abroad and the new flat and giving her their new address. Mary, in turn, sent a card from herself and Roger and looked forward to an opportunity in the new year to see Claire again and visit the new flat. Claire put the card aside after Christmas, with all the others they had received on this, their first Christmas of married life.

Mary’s opportunity to visit Claire came on Sunday 7 January 1968. Roger was planning to visit his mother, as usual on a Sunday evening, at Carshalton, Surrey. Mary sometimes accompanied him on these visits but on this occasion, she felt like an evening of chat with a friend. A phone call to Claire assured Mary that she would be in that evening and would be happy for Mary to come and visit. Roger drove Mary to the flats, dropped her at about 6.00 p.m. and continued to his mother’s home, arranging to be back to pick Mary up but no definite time was arranged. As usual, he took their long-haired Dachshund with him to his mother’s house.

Mary was not the only guest at the Josephs’ flat that evening. A young woman named Trudy Clapp and her boyfriend were also there. They left after some time, however, giving Claire and Mary a chance to talk and catch up on their news. Bernard was there but watched television most of the evening. Mary found his manner disconcerting. In her later statement, she said:

Her husband was watching television all evening. He did not seem very friendly. He just about managed to speak and then only when he was spoken to, and at one point he told myself and Claire off for talking.

Roger arrived at the door at about 10 p.m. to pick Mary up, bringing the dog with him. He was invited in and Claire offered him a drink. Mary recalls that it was Coca-Cola, which she and Claire were also drinking when Roger arrived. Claire took Roger’s coat and laid it across the chair and table, the chair being pushed right under the table. At Mary’s suggestion, Claire took Roger on a guided tour of the flat. Although she had already been shown round, Mary joined the tour, accompanied by the dog on his lead. Bernard was still watching television but exchanged a few words with Roger. At about 10.30 Mary and Roger took their leave. It was the last time Mary would see her friend.

• • •

When the police took the Christmas cards away from the Josephs’ flat, no doubt along with address books and other correspondence, it was with the aim of checking the friends and acquaintances of the young couple to see whether any leads might emerge. One of the first steps was to check the names against their lists of people with police records. This search almost immediately bore fruit, when a name on one of the Christmas cards matched that of a man who had two previous convictions, one of which had resulted in him being sentenced to three months in prison from March to June 1965. That man was Roger Payne. He immediately became their prime suspect.

• • •

Roger John Payne was born at Kingston on Thames Hospital, London, on 7 December 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. Perhaps for this reason, his mother was left to her own devices for a long time while in labour. Certainly the birth was not straightforward. Eventually her brother, Douglas, who, according to Roger had always had ‘a short fuse’, rang the hospital to demand why the baby was taking so long to be born. After this, the baby was delivered by forceps. He was baptised on 1 March 1942 in All Saints Church, Newhilton, Surrey.

His mother’s name prior to her marriage was Irene Condida Johnson. In the nineteenth century, her great-grandfather had gone with his regiment to the West Indies, where he had married a native West Indian woman. According to family tradition, she was either the daughter of a freed slave or a plantation owner’s daughter, born ‘on the wrong side of the blanket.’ Photos of Irene’s family show that some of her forebears were very dark-skinned (‘quadroons and octoroons’.) Roger remembered that his grandfather was very dark and that family legend had it that, when his mother was young, dark and very pretty, she was often mistaken for an Indian princess.

On 15 June 1940, Irene married John Payne (known as Jack), a chartered accountant. Roger was the only child of the marriage. He and his father never had a loving relationship and Roger’s memories of his father are all unhappy. Years later he wrote:

Even my earliest recollections are of a tyrannical father physically abusing both my mother and myself. (It is all the more reprehensible that he was a professional man – a chartered accountant – who gave all the outward appearances of respectability). His tyranny extended to all areas of human activity, but especially the domestic.

The young boy was not allowed to open any cupboard nor enter any room, including the toilet, without first seeking parental permission. Irene found this treatment of her beloved son unbearable so on 10 November 1949, when Roger was eight years old, she left her husband, taking her son to live with her parents at 48 Lindsay Road, Worcester Park.

Roger was happy living with his grandparents, as he later wrote:

My grandfather worked, almost to the day he died, as a carpenter and joiner at Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children in Carshalton, Surrey, to where he would cycle to work each day from Worcester Park. He and my grandmother— who had worked before her marriage as a seamstress sewing gas mantles— were to have six children, only two of whom…survived infancy, the rest perishing from a wasting disease called marasmus. I loved both grandparents. While he was strict with me, my grandfather was fair—in contrast to the father I had left behind—but his life was blighted by too great a liking for the bottle and a penchant for gambling (of which, as a child, I was but barely aware, save for the arguments those twin evils engendered ‘twixt him and my grandmother, overheard by me as I lay in bed trying to go to sleep). My grandmother tended to spoil me, a fact which also sometimes added to the friction between her and grandfather.

Roger attended Cheam Common Rd Primary School in Worcester Park and the Worcester Park Methodist Sunday School. On his twelfth birthday, he was presented with a Bible with a sticker inscribed: ‘From Worcester Park Methodist Sunday School. Presented to Roger Payne on his twelfth birthday. From the teachers and officers. In that same year, he received a book prize at the Sunday School ‘for gaining Honours in the 1953 Scripture Examination.’

When Roger’s maternal grandfather died in 1951, it was left to Irene and her mother to rear the boy without any male influences. In 2004 he wrote:

The prevailing wisdom at the time I was sent away to boarding school was that it was a ‘bad’ thing for a boy to be brought up in a household of women…My grandmother learned of this psychological mumbo-jumbo when attending a meeting of her local (Worcester Park, Surrey) townswomen’s guild, at which a guest speaker mentioned that Bridewell Royal Hospital, aka King Edward’s School, Witley, enjoyed a very high reputation for educating children from ‘broken homes’, which is how I came to be sent there.

Whether this decision was based on ‘mumbo jumbo’ or not, it was to have a far-reaching influence on his life. In 1953, his first year at King Edward’s School, Witley, the school celebrated its four hundredth anniversary and the new Queen was crowned. These two important events in that year meant that all the students were presented with a commemorative history of the school. This book was called Goodly Heritage 1553–1953, and Roger’s copy was inscribed:

Presented by the governors of King Edward’s School, Witley, in the four hundredth year of its foundation

to

R.J. Payne

on the occasion of the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second June 2 1953.

A quotation on the flyleaf of the book explains the source of the title. It comes from Psalm 16, verse 6: ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.’

Certainly, Roger’s years at the school were spent ‘in pleasant places’. King Edward’s School sat four hundred feet above sea level in one hundred acres of playing fields and woodlands. Its facilities at the time included spacious technical workshops, science laboratories, a domestic block with a housecraft flat, and a gymnasium and swimming baths. The Chapel had a magnificent organ and there was a new library, a music school and a Hall.

The reason why a boy from a family of limited means was able to attend such a school is to be found in the history outlined in Goodly Heritage, which showed that the school was established for the improvement and education of ‘the unfortunate, the deprived and the rascal’.

The first admission of girls was in 1952, an initial intake of thirty-six, the number increasing over the years till numbers of boys and girls were equal, before the end of the decade. A percentage of the pupils were the children of clergy and missionaries serving overseas. A further percentage came from families which, through bereavement or separation, were ‘single parent’ families. This was not long after the end of World War II, and children of men killed in that war were included in the enrolment. The writers of Goodly Heritage claimed that the school’s enrolment represented ‘socially and educationally a microcosm of England.’ In that, it was different from most of the public schools of England, which tended to be far more limited in their socio-economic representation.

• • •

Roger Payne always spoke proudly of his public school education. In spite of the school having a more broadly representative student body than other public schools, it nevertheless had the cachet which attaches to a boarding school that has control over its pupil intake and the benefit of a long and proud tradition. It brought him into contact with people he would otherwise not have met, from a wide range of backgrounds and it gave him a definite polish, evident in his manners, speech and confidence. His intelligence meant that he was successful. Although he did not outshine his peers academically, he nevertheless did well enough to please himself, his teachers, his mother and his grandmother. He received the Lord Mayor’s Prize for Handwriting, a Parker 51 fountain pen, which was presented by the Lord Mayor himself.

Roger was confirmed on 30 May 1957 at King Edward’s School and took his first communion on 2 June. The traditional Church of England services he experienced there instilled in him a lifelong love of the language of Cranmer’s Prayer Book and a horror of later attempts to modernise the service. A Christmas card from this period, kept by his mother, shows choirboys, singing as they ascend the steps to a church — possibly the school Chapel — holding aloft a lantern. The caption reads ‘In Excelsis Deo.’ Inside, the photo is accredited to the King Edward’s School Photographic Club. Roger has written, in neat, immature (but clearly prize-winning) handwriting: ‘From Roger. xxxxxxxxx Hope you are all right in hospital.’

Life at Witley followed the pattern familiar even to those of us who did not attend an English Public School but who have vicariously enjoyed its pleasures through the pages of children’s literature: cricket matches, Evensong in the Chapel, the Carol Service, Open Days, fun in the dormitory.

In his first year at Witley Roger was taken, along with the entire school, to a cinema in Godalming to see the film of the conquest of Everest, which had happened on 29 May 1953, just before the Coronation. In 1957, when Roger was studying for his ‘O’ Levels, he went on a school trip to France. Years later, he wrote to a friend, who had written telling him of a recent trip to Paris:

I have only been to Paris once, apart from changing trains there en route for the south, and that was in 1957, when I spent a week at the Cité Club in the seventeenth arrondissement, not far from the Parc Monceau. The date will tell you that I was a schoolboy then, and it was as one of a party of fellow boarders that I went there for a ‘cultural break’ while studying for my ‘O’ Levels. We ‘did’ all the usual places—the Bois, Louvre, l’Opera, Les Invalides, Concorde, Tour, l’Arc, Madeleine, Montmartre and Notre Dame etc.—with days at Versailles and Chartres…While in Paris, we also took in an opera, ‘Carmen’, at the Opera Comique, during the performance of which I am ashamed to say I fell asleep.

During his years at Witley, Roger saw his Mother and grandmother quite often. They had moved, two years after the death of his grandfather, to 63 Dorchester Rd., Worcester Park. Witley is not far from London, so he was able to go home for some weekends and for holidays. As far as Irene was concerned, her son was the centre of her world and she did all she could to make his life happy. She took him on bus trips to places such as Bournemouth, which he remembered fondly. They also had holidays in various seaside resorts. In 1971 he wrote:

As a child, I used to greatly prefer a caravan holiday to the stiffness and formality of a hotel or boarding house, and indeed the last holiday I spent with my mother, as late as 1964, was spent in a caravan at St. Austell’s, Cornwall.

Many years later, reflecting on his education, Roger Payne wrote:

Although I was packed off to boarding school when I was eleven, I do feel that in some ways, the privileged education I received for the next five years somehow gave me the resources and sufficiency to withstand what has since happened to me. And I know that, even in such a place as this, the learning I received has enabled me to be of service to those less fortunate than myself, whose education has been almost non-existent.

• • •

It was in the six years immediately after he left school that Roger Payne ran foul of the law, leading to him becoming a person of interest to the police investigating the murder of Claire Josephs.

His first job was with an insurance company when he was seventeen. The other young men with whom he worked were all products of the state school system and seemed to be far more wordly-wise than Roger. Although Witley was co-educational, rules were strict and boys and girls were not permitted to spend time alone together. Roger’s life with his mother and grandmother was very protected. His knowledge of sex was limited to what he had picked up in conversation with his male friends. This was not particularly unusual in the 1950s but among his workmates at the insurance company, Roger felt himself to be hopelessly inexperienced. He wanted to gain some experience of sex so that he could join in the workplace conversations but was unsure how to go about it. Lacking guidance and wise example, he chose the wrong way.

In July 1959 when Roger was seventeen, an incident occurred at the house of an old school friend. Roger was a frequent and welcome guest at the house and at one time, had been allowed to keep a key to the front door. His friend’s sister, Cathy, knew him well. On this occasion, however, he should not have been there. He knew there was to be a party in the house that evening in the absence of the parents and that a young woman with whom he was slightly acquainted would be staying overnight. She was Phyllis B, a friend of Cathy’s. As teenagers do, friends had told Roger that Phyllis might be interested in him. They had been swimming together at Brockley Park but he felt that she regarded him with ‘sexual disdain’, as he put it later. Roger had spent that day in Eastbourne with his friend, who had told him of the party. So in the early hours of the morning when he knew the guests had left, he went to the house. He had a plan to gain the sexual experience he wanted. When he arrived, the household was asleep. Significantly, he had armed himself with a knife and an unloaded air pistol. The statement given to police at Wallington Police Station on 7 July 1959 tells his version of events:

I went round the back, it was the obvious place to go, I think. One of the back windows was wide open and I got a bit frightened. I didn’t know whether to go in or not. In the end, I got in the back window, through the dining hall, up the stairs. Both of their doors were open (both girls, Cathy and the other girl who I know as Phyllis).

I went into Phyllis’s room. I was very frightened and I stood there an hour without doing a thing. She kept turning over, you know rolling over in her sleep. Then she rolled over and I was thinking ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do it’. I took the gun which I had in the back of the scooter and the knife. They were in my pocket at the time, sir. She rolled over, it was only a small room, and I thought she was looking at me so I got this piece of rag which I had, put it over her mouth as I thought she was going to cry out and wake everybody up. I can’t remember exactly what I said so I took the knife out of my pocket and threatened her I suppose, in a sort of way. She saw the knife anyway. Since I’d gone so far I thought I might as well go the rest of the way, since she’s seen my face, so I got in bed next to her and made her go to the other side of the bed, it’s only a small bed kind of thing but I couldn’t go through with it. I had gone with the idea of petting kind of thing. I did say to her that I might have raped her but I hadn’t got it in me. Actually she said ‘I don’t think you would have raped me, Roger, you’re not a beast.’ She said before that ‘You haven’t got it in you.’ I reached over the bed and switched on the light. The gun had fallen out of my pocket onto the bed. She picked it up. It made it rather ridiculous at the time. Then Catherine came in. I thought she would have started swearing kind of thing but she took it all calmly and went back to her room. She didn’t like it obviously.

Phyllis sat up in bed shaking quite a bit so I tried to calm her down but she said she’d be all right when I’d gone. I started cursing myself for being such a fool. She said ‘Forget it’, so I said ‘I can’t just forget it like that and neither can you. That kind of thing stays with you the rest of your life.’ I then said ‘What shall we do, hush it up or bring it out in the open and slosh it for six?’ Phyllis didn’t say a thing. She kept shaking, that’s all.

Catherine said from her room ‘You’d better go now, Roger.’ After a while I got out of bed and I went into Catherine’s room. I said ‘What shall we do about it?’ I’m not too certain about this part actually. I started saying what a fool I’d been again, so I wandered out of her room, that’s Catherine’s. I stood on the landing for about a minute. I went back into Catherine’s room again. I was very surprised the way she took it, she took it very calmly. So I asked her what she was going to do. She said ‘Forget it’ and started talking about the party the night before. She asked if Id told her mother who was there, particularly about a fellow named Colin, if I’d told her mother he’d been there. So she said ‘You’d better go now, Roger’ after I’d told her I hadn’t told her mother. She said ‘If you don’t say anything about the party I’ll keep quiet about what’s happened.’

I went out of the room and went back to Phyllis and said I was terribly, terribly sorry. She didn’t reply but I left the room with the impression that from her earlier remarks where she said ‘Forget it’ that the terrible incident would be forgotten. I went downstairs where my shoes were (I’d left those off before going upstairs) and I was downstairs for two or three minutes putting my raincoat and things on and then Catherine began to come down, well she came right down actually, and said ‘You can’t stay here, you’d better go now’. I was a little bit longer fixing my raincoat. I went to the front door with Catherine following me but I couldn’t get it open because it had got one of those burglar-proof chain things and Catherine came from behind and opened it and as I was going out I started cursing myself again, kind of thing. As I went out of the door Catherine gave me a half a pat and half a push on the back. She said ‘Forget it’, again and closed the door. Then I walked to the gate and walked very, very slowly down the road. I got on the scooter and came back home.

Phyllis thought I’d got some chloroform on the rag and she said so, but I told her there wasn’t. I’ve got some at home but I didn’t have any on the rag.

I did go to Phyllis’s work tonight to say I was sorry but another boy was there. It was no good saying I was sorry, sir, I wanted to ask her what I could do about it.

No doubt Catherine and Phyllis talked about this incident after Roger left. It seems they made no decision to involve the police. The next morning Phyllis went to work in London as usual. During the day, she told some friends about the incident of the previous night and they urged her to report it to the police. Phyllis, initially reluctant, was finally convinced that she should do so and late that day went to the local police station and filed a report. She had misgivings, however, and went back a week later to withdraw the complaint, but was persuaded by the police not to do so. Roger Payne was arrested on the same day that she reported the incident, and spent a week on remand at Wormwood Scrubs Prison before being bailed to appear at Surrey Assizes on a charge of ‘Entering a dwelling house by night with intent to commit a felony.’

On 17 November 1959, a few weeks short of his eighteenth birthday, Roger Payne appeared before Surrey Assizes at Kingston. Roger described later how his mother had come to his aid:

My mother, who was at that time employed by a firm of solicitors in Shaftesbury Avenue, privately funded the entire costs of instructing leading counsel, Mr Sebag Shaw, QC (now Lord Justice Shaw), to represent me at the hearing. It was agreed I should be pleading guilty to the charge of having entered a dwelling-house by night with intent to commit a felony. I was taken with my mother to a conference in Mr Sebag Shaw’s chambers where the instructing solicitor, Mrs M Barnett, asked Mr Shaw whether or not it would be advisable for me to be examined by a psychiatrist. Mr Shaw, replying in the negative, observed that there was nothing unusual about a young man wanting to get into bed with a girl. If the year had been 1979 and not 1959, and if I had not been so over-awed by the sense of the occasion, the plush chambers, and Mr Shaw’s lofty reputation, I might perhaps have possessed the courage to enter a word or two of personal dissent.

Roger was convicted and put on probation for three years. It is significant that the charge contains no mention of a sexual intent. The charge and the probationary sentence make it clear that it was a fairly minor offence in the eyes of the court. However, it had an immediate impact on Roger’s employment. He was working as an accounts clerk at the National Parcels Insurance Company in Russell Square, London, a position he had gained on leaving school. He had won early promotion to the Claims Department, where he was given a degree of authority. However, his arrest had been mentioned in a small item in an evening paper and was seen by a sharp-eyed fellow employee, who reported it. Roger was retained by the firm but redeployed to a position of less responsibility.

The long-term effect of his arrest would be even more significant. It gave Roger Payne a criminal record and, regardless of the wording of the charge, would be regarded as an offence against a woman.

• • •

The second offence occurred five years later. In the meantime, Roger had been working steadily and had managed, with the help of his mother, to put a deposit on a house. He was paying off the mortgage, again with the help of his mother and by ‘moonlighting’ , working part-time in the evenings in the licensed trade, at several public houses all owned by the same man, in and around London. The house he had chosen was a new semi-detached three bedroomed house with a good-sized garden in Harrietsham, a pretty village in Kent. He had been the first to select a house on the new estate and had selected the one with the biggest garden. He wanted room for children to play.

This was not just the forward planning of a young man hoping at some future time to meet the right woman, settle down, and have a family. In fact, the young man had already met the woman he believed to be the right woman for him, had fallen in love and hoped to marry her. The problem was, however, that she was already married and had three young children.

By 1964 he was no longer working at the National Parcels Insurance Company. He had had, in the meantime, a couple of jobs and now had a position with SEGAS, the South Eastern Gas Board, which he found very congenial. He was a showroom assistant, which involved dealing with the public in a range of ways, from selling appliances to dealing with the payment of gas bills. His interpersonal skills and what he called his ‘verbal dexterity’ came into full play, and made him decide never again to take a job ‘shuffling paper’.

It was during this period that he met a young woman named Doreen, who worked at the Co-op, next to the gas showroom. She was five years older than he, very attractive and far more sexually experienced. It was not long before she and Roger were going out together. Too late, Roger learned that she was married with three children. Her husband was a merchant seaman who was away for ten weeks at a time on the Capetown / Mombasa run. This naturally left time for the relationship between Roger and Doreen to develop, which it did. At first, the car outings with the three children, to such places as Chessington Zoo, Hindhead and Frensham Ponds, might have been innocent enough, two lonely people enjoying companionship. However, it soon became a full-blown affair, to the point where Roger and Doreen began to live together, with Doreen’s three children. Roger took a flat at East Molesey, near Hampton Court, in a block with a tennis court and swimming pool and the children changed