Killer Women (8 page)

Karen watched it all in a trance. It just did not seem real. It wasn’t really happening. Finally, they were getting the revenge they so dearly wanted. But it did not feel the way she expected it to. Karen felt numbed, not excited any more. Barbara pulled with all her might and tightened the knot holding the noose in place. Then she pulled the chair from right under her love rival and watched as Vivienne’s head twisted upwards. The rest of her body crumpled on to the greenhouse floor but her head and neck remained locked to one side. For a few seconds, spasms of life twitched through Vivienne’s body. Her head raged from side to side furiously. But that only made her death come quicker. It tightened the grip on her throat.

Barbara and Karen watched quietly as Vivienne gave up her fight to live. Barbara actually felt elated by the murder. It was as satisfying as the sex she had contemplated with that corpse just a few minutes earlier.

But now there was the matter of the body. It had to be removed.

No one gave Barbara and Karen so much as a second glance as they pushed the wheelbarrow along the crowded streets. They had only covered 200 yards from their house so far, but it felt more like 200 miles to the aunt and her niece.

None of the boys they passed coming home from school that evening could have guessed that underneath a potato sack in the barrow was the randy housewife who had seduced so many of their pals. Vivienne would not be inviting any more of them around again.

As Barbara and Karen reached the corner of Heathway, they turned the barrow slightly to the right to avoid an old lady and the unmentionable almost happened. Vivienne nearly ended up on the pavement. It was a close thing. They felt the corpse shift position as they turned the corner and suddenly the barrow began to wobble. They envisaged scenes of utter horror as the body fell on to the street.

But it never happened. Barbara managed to
regain control over the barrow and avoid it turning over. Then Karen noticed Vivienne’s hand dragging alongside the barrow. She turned to see if anyone had noticed. There was not a sign of recognition from anyone. They were all in too much of a hurry to get home from school and work to notice two women pushing a corpse through a suburban street.

Karen carefully and discreetly pushed the hand back under the potato sack and they continued their journey. She had not questioned the sense in Barbara’s plan to dump the body. It was the right thing to do. What she did not realise was where Barbara was intending to leave it.

‘You must be fucking mad, Babs.’

Karen Miller was astounded. She could not believe that Barbara would be this stupid. Of all the places in all the towns in all the world, this was the one venue that would bring the police running to their front door within hours if not minutes.

For Barbara had decided to dump the strangled body of Vivienne Elliot in the woman’s very own front garden. ‘Just fucking do it!’

This was an order not a request from Barbara to her niece. Karen obeyed. Together the two women heaved Vivienne’s stiffening body along towards the side entrance of the house. One of them struggled to open the side gate, while the other kept the body slumped upright. With one last shove they
threw it on to the ground between the two detached houses. It was still late afternoon. There were lots of people everywhere, but no one saw Barbara and Karen, Vivienne’s body or even the wheelbarrow they hurriedly raced back home with.

George and Gladys Miller were in fine spirits when they arrived back at their home in Heathway just half an hour later. They had been visiting another daughter in Norwich and it had turned into a happy family reunion. And, since Barbara had not been invited, it was a peaceful occasion not marred by the usual squabbles that always seemed to follow their wayward daughter wherever she went.

But on their return home even George had to admit he was pleasantly surprised by Barbara that afternoon. She was giving the house a well-deserved spring clean.

There was, of course, an ulterior motive. Their little home had seen quite a lot of life, sex and death that day. First, there was the love-making with Jackie, then there was the plotting with niece Karen to kill Vivienne – and that was followed by the murder itself. Barbara would have to do a hell of a lot of scrubbing to clean out that house!

George and Gladys were blissfully unaware of all the horrors that had occurred just a few hours earlier. They were so relieved to see Barbara doing
something to help around the house. Usually, she did absolutely nothing.

‘Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad.’

She seemed like a different person. So cheery. So full of life. So vibrant. This was not the Barbara they knew. But her elderly parents never stopped to ask why she was so happy. They only thought about it later.

Outside the gates of the local primary school at about this time, a little girl was looking distraught. All her friends had been collected but still there was no sign of her mummy.

Veronica may have been just five years of age but she was the spitting image of her mother Vivienne Elliot. It was eerie really – they could have been twins if the 27-year gap had not existed. The little girl even had the same sort of specs as her mum.

‘Where do you think your mummy has got to?’

The teacher was very concerned. Vivienne was always very good about being there to pick up her daughter. Some parents were downright uncaring, but not Vivienne. She may have had a racy
reputation
around town but her parenthood was never in question.

They waited another fifteen minutes but still there was no sign of Vivienne. The teacher had no option but to ring Veronica’s granny. Something could have happened to her for all they knew.

Iris Ives was puzzled. It just wasn’t like her daughter to be unreliable when it came to collecting Veronica. As she picked up the youngster, she felt an odd feeling of impending doom coming upon her. Something was wrong. Something was badly wrong.

There was no answer at the door to Vivienne’s house. Iris was confused. She had to be home. Where else could she be? She had to be home.

She tried again but still there was no reply.

‘I’ll go round the back, Granny.’

Iris thought nothing of letting little Veronica dash around to the side gate to the semi-detached house.

Her eyes followed her little granddaughter’s route and then stopped dead.

There on the ground were a pair of legs sticking through the side gate.

‘Mummy. Mummy. Mummy.’

Iris knew it was her the moment Veronica began screaming. She dragged her hysterical granddaughter away from the corpse. It was way too late to save her.

Twenty minutes later, police acting on a tip-off from Vivienne’s relatives knocked on the door of the Miller house and arrested Barbara for murder. Her niece Karen was charged with being an accessory.

Barbara told police, ‘She was stirring it between me and my boyfriend. She deserved to die.’

The reality was a far more complex tragedy of life and death.

In July 1988, at the Old Bailey, Barbara Miller, aged 30, was jailed for life after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Karen Miller, aged 19, admitted conspiracy to commit common assault and assisting to remove the body. She was given three years’ probation.

After the case, Barbara’s father George said, ‘My heart bleeds for both of them. They have had such a raw deal in life. I just hope to goodness they can get the help they need in the future.’

Some people had all the luck.

She was just 21-years of age. Thick, dark hair cascaded over slender shoulders. Pert breasts that were the envy of all her girlfriends. Shapely thighs with just the right degree of curve to attract any
red-blooded
male’s attention. Even her ankles were neat and nicely rounded, especially when she was wearing a pair of two-inch heels. Everyone agreed – Gail had
the sort of good looks all girls long for.

Even her upbringing in the respectable Buckinghamshire hamlet of Farnham Common gave her a definite edge on most girls of a similar age. It wasn’t that she came from such a wealthy background, but the civilised tone of life in such a peaceful place had definitely rubbed off on her.

‘She had a certain magnetism,’ was how her old school pals used to describe it. Lots of friends tried to persuade her to enter the local beauty pageant. But Gail said she was too shy and modest to exhibit her body like some piece of meat in a marketplace.

Her friends also said that the beautiful brunette could be pretty cold and cunning when she wanted to get her own way. Gail was without doubt a very determined young woman – and she was on the lookout for the right man to fall in love with. Many of her friends reckoned that was precisely why she decided to go on a Mediterranean cruise at such a young age.

Cruises usually consist of middle-aged or elderly couples, plus a sprinkling of spinsters and widows hopefully pursuing some romantic fantasy or other. Not surprisingly, the stunningly attractive Gail stood out like a sore thumb.

She loved the special attention heaped on her by the lustful crew of predominantly under-35-year-old men. She could feel their eyes watching her every
movement as she lay sunbathing on the deck in her revealing bikini. She found it all rather flattering. It was the first time in her rather protected life that she had been exposed to men en masse. Just so long as they only looked and did not try to touch, she was perfectly happy to lap up the attention.

Cruise rules regarding crew members romancing passengers are fairly rigid, and none of the randy sailors ever actually tried to put their lustful thoughts about Gail into practice. So when she got talking to a rather pleasant man called Graham Jones in the ship’s lounge one day, it seemed only natural to accept his offer of dinner that evening.

Jones was just 23-years old at the time, but his age soon seemed at odds with his experience of life. He had seen the world in every sense of the word. But the moment he clapped eyes on Gail he knew he had to have her.

As they sat opposite each other in the ship’s dining room, enjoying the most romantic of
candlelit
meals, he found himself lost for words a lot of the time.

Quite simply, he was instantly besotted by Gail. He could not stop his mind from working overtime.

Unfortunately his means of conversation dried up as a result.

Gail, for her part, was equally fascinated by Graham Jones. He seemed the perfect catch. Only a
couple of years older than her, but mature with it. His handsome, rugged features reminded her of her father – and that can often be a crucial thing for an impressionable young woman. There is something solid and reliable about a man who looks like your father.

She did not mind the silences between the mouthfuls of food. She knew there was already something really special between them. It was that unique spark of recognition that can only occur between two strangers destined to be together.

Gail felt his hand reach over and grasp her slender fingers on that dining room table. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the tingle of romance flowing through her mind. This was going to be the sort of cruise that dreams are made of. Beautiful flat ocean. Gorgeous sunsets. And, most important of all, a handsome romantic man to take back to Britain.

Ten years later, the memories of that incredible cruise were just a distant flicker in Gail Jones’s memory. True, she had married her good-looking cruise-time romeo. And they had started a family. But Graham Jones had gone the way of so many husbands burdened by the pressures of supporting a wife and children. Quite simply, the romance had completely disappeared from their relationship.

Graham was more concerned with providing a
good home and enough cash to live a good life. The trouble was that in pursuit of that dream, he had allowed his still-very-pretty wife to become bored and lonely as the family trekked across England while he went from job to job.

He described himself in his CV as a trained
time-and
-motion engineer. Gail never really understood what that actually meant. But she was sure of one thing – her husband’s ability to keep his young family on the move all the time was unquestionable. It was also rather tedious. They never settled long enough in one place for her to make real friends in the neighbourhood where they lived. That often led to long, lonely days at home with the two kids. She couldn’t get a job because they were too young to go to school, but she desperately needed something to do with her life. It was a classic dilemma experienced by housewives the world over – but that did not make it any easier for Gail Jones to accept.

She began to feel increasingly bitter towards her husband. Why couldn’t they settle in one place? What was it about him that made him such a wanderer? But then the grass is always greener on the other side when you are feeling depressed. Gail was subconsciously blaming her husband for all her emotional problems. It was a tinderbox scenario, liable to explode into a crescendo of bitterness at any moment, and Graham Jones was painfully aware of
his wife’s unhappiness.

That was why, in September 1981, he decided that moving around Britain as a time-and-motion man was no longer the perfect career for him. He unselfishly decided that his wife and children came before his job – and he started to look around for a new profession. Graham Jones had always had a dream about running a seaside pub. It was something he had frequently discussed with Gail, but they had always dismissed it as just the wishful thinking of someone stuck in a totally different kind of job. But now he had an opportunity to make that fantasy come true. Graham Jones decided now was the time to try and have the place of his dreams.

By this time, the Jones family had settled in the gritty Yorkshire town of Wetherby. A grey-stoned place filled with friendly, hard-working people whose idea of a good time was a regular pint at their local hostelry. For months Graham Jones searched desperately for the perfect tavern to run but – besides a lack of seaside – there just wasn’t anywhere suitable.

Then he decided to look slightly further afield. The craggy Yorkshire coastline had dozens of little towns and villages. There had to be somewhere. Jones knew that the sooner he found a pub to run, the sooner Gail might start to emerge from her
self-imposed
depression. The clock that represented the
survival of their marriage was ticking away at a fast rate. He was well aware that it would not survive for much longer.

Graham Jones knew the moment he saw the outside of the Belle Vue Hotel that it was the perfect place for him and his young family. Situated right near the seaside in the small community of Filey, Yorkshire, it just had that instant kind of effect on him. This was truly what he had dreamed of doing for his entire adult life. Now those ambitions were about to become a reality. He felt so relieved that they could at last settle in one place.

Filey itself was a dour-looking place filled with lots of red and grey brick buildings. Row upon row of tiny terraced cottages off the seafront. A scattering of shops and pubs, and a sleepy atmosphere encouraged most mornings by the thick mist that swept in from the cruel North Sea. A blanket of cloud often filled the sky, turning the sea into a musty green colour that deceived the mind into believing it would not be very pleasant to swim in. The truth was that many locals took to the sea on summer mornings and it had a fantastically refreshing effect on anyone who bothered to brave the cold water.

Within days of viewing the Belle Vue, Graham Jones and his young family were happily installed in the double-fronted property that was a truly
imposing sight on the seafront. As Graham and Gail looked out at the North Sea from their bay-fronted living room above the hotel bar, they felt a resurgence of the warmth and loving they had experienced all those years earlier on that cruise where they had first met.

Now at last they were back by the sea – the very place that had sparked their romance in the first place. Graham and Gail used to joke about going on another cruise to help revive their often flagging relationship. But now they had a permanent place by the sea and Graham Jones presumed that he had now sealed their marriage for life.

For the next two years Graham and Gail really did take their task at the Belle Vue to heart. It was just the sort of joint challenge that they had obviously needed since the cracks in their marriage first began to appear. The problems of their previous few years were soon put behind them as they started to build the hostelry into a very popular haunt for locals.

Graham got himself a reputation as a warm, caring landlord for whom nothing was too much trouble. When he started running the local football team it was yet another dream come true for him. He had always been a keen sportsman and now he had become a truly accepted member of this tightly knit Yorkshire community.

And there was an added bonus from all this – all the members of the team and their hundreds of fans naturally came to make the Belle Vue their regular venue for a pint and a chat about their favourite football teams.

Gail was also feeling far more settled. She was enjoying the challenge of setting up the pub just as much as her husband. It was very hard work with exceptionally long hours, but the bonuses were there for everyone to see – a huge place overlooking the sea, a husband who was always around. Happy, peaceful, safe surroundings where kids could play in the streets and parks without fear of attack.

Gail also rediscovered a pride in herself. She enjoyed it when some of the younger male customers tried to flirt with her. It helped her regain her confidence. She felt a bit like she did all those years earlier when the crew members on that cruise had flattered her.

‘Don’t forget, Gail. I’ll be waiting when you decide to leave Graham.’

Comments like this were just harmless quips that summed up the happy-go-lucky atmosphere the Joneses had managed to foster on their premises. Gail did not take any of them seriously and Graham just laughed whenever he heard them. It was just part and parcel of life running a tavern.

Mind you, some of them did try to take things a
little further sometimes. They were the customers who’d try and pinch Gail’s still very firm bottom when she was leaning over them to pick up some glasses. Most of the time she would give them a rather evil look and they’d get the message. But some of them did not.

These were the ones who were really getting off on the sight of the pretty brunette mother-of-two who tended to dress in a tight-fitting pencil skirt with a low-cut blouse and high heels. But just so long as they did not actually try anything sexual with her, there was nothing that she could do apart from glare back at them.

One particular ‘pest’, however, had a different sort of effect on Gail. His name was Rod Tillotson and he became a regular in the Belle Vue about a year after the Joneses arrived.

Gail could often feel his eyes giving her body the once-over as she walked away from his table, having collected some glasses. Sometimes their eyes would meet and she would immediately turn away,
embarrassed
at having caught his glance. Somehow, she reacted differently to this man. She could handle most of them, but there was something about Rod Tillotson that made her a little uneasy.

At first she thought nothing of it. But when he started to come into the pub virtually every night and pour out his troubles to her, she started to realise
what it was. Unlike all the other pushy guys, Rod was one hell of a ruggedly handsome fellow. His mop of thick black hair and his droopy moustache made him look more like some Mexican bandit than an unemployed labourer. And he seemed to have experienced such tragedy in his life. She soon found herself listening intently to his account of his broken marriage and his current life – living in a tiny council flat in Filey with his elderly parents. She could not help feeling a bit sorry for him. She also managed to ignore the sneering remarks of the other locals:

‘Gail, you’d better watch out for Rod, he’s a real ladies man.’

‘I think he’s sniffing after you, Gail. He’s one hell of a womaniser.’

Basically, those regular customers were saying exactly what Graham Jones was thinking. He had recognised Tillotson as an unscrupulous type of character but he did not want to cause a row with his wife, so he let those regulars do his talking for him.

Just so long as Tillotson did not try anything on with his wife, then he was reasonably content to let her continue those long heart-to-heart chats with Rod most evenings.

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea, do you?’

Graham Jones’s reaction when his wife asked him if they could hire Rod Tillotson as a barman was hardly surprising. But Gail felt so sorry for the
six-foot
labourer. He had spent months telling her about his desperate attempts to find a job. It was only natural that he should end up asking her if there was any chance of a barman’s position at the Belle Vue.

‘I feel we owe it to him. He’s a good bloke.’

Gail Jones’s opinion of Tillotson was the complete opposite to that of every other customer of the hostelry, but she seemed genuinely concerned about his well-being. In any case, Graham Jones did not want a row about it. He had heard the gossip and seen the danger signs but then again, they did need more staff. The pub was packed out every night, and he and his wife were finding it exhausting just keeping the basics of the business together.

When Rod Tillotson turned up for his first day of work behind the bar at the Belle Vue, there were sniggers all around from the customers. But Gail Jones was happy. In fact, she was happier than she had ever felt throughout her marriage. As she walked down from their flat above the bar, her eyes locked straight on to Tillotson and she smiled. Now she had almost everything she ever wanted …