Lottery champagne on ice for 20 years
TWO lottery winners have now got the go-ahead to open a decades-old bottle of champagne they saved for a lottery win after scooping £500,000 on the Thunderball.
Weston-super-mare couple Brian Courtney, 65, and wife Julie, 62, won on January 30, allowing them to retire early.
And while the odds were stacked against them, Mr Courtney’s belief that he would win big stretched back to the 1990s and a bottle of champagne.
“We used to take part in a French exchange and in the early nineties we had a family to stay who brought us a very nice bottle of pink champagne to say thank you,” said Mr Courtney. “When they gave it to us we said then and there that we’d keep it and drink when we won the lottery.
“I think they thought we were mad but I was sure that we’d be cracking it open one day to celebrate a big win!”
Mr Courtney, a factory worker, and Mrs Courtney, a hotel worker made redundant last year, were able to put work behind them as a result.
“Julie and I have worked all our lives and I think we’re both ready for retirement,” said Mr Courtney.
“However, to be able to retire knowing we don’t have to worry about money, is just the icing on the cake.”
PAUL Tebbutt has helped investigate nearly 2,000 deaths since joining the forensics team at West Midlands Police in 1985 - and admits some sights are too horrific to every forget.
They include heinous murders, sometimes of children including the brutal stabbing of a 15-year-old boy in Coventry recently featured on TV and even incidents as big as the Coventry plane crash in the mid-1990s.
He suffered ‘burnout’ after taking a photo of a teddy bear left in bed by a 12-year-old murder victim. He admits: “It broke me.”
But it is these moments that bring home how important Paul’s job is to him as he says he “speaks for those that can’t speak for themselves”.
Paul explains: “I do this by following the forensic clues and evidence that are left behind at the scene of a crime.
“I mentally reconstruct what happened to the victim. I piece together their last moments and co-ordinate the recovery of the forensic evidence that will hopefully deliver justice to the victim and all those that loved them.”
The 61-year-old crime scene investigator became one of the first ‘civilians’ to join the team, as up until 1985 only police officers were allowed to become scenes of crime officers.
Since then he has spent nearly 40 years in the forensic services department not only helping to solve crimes, but also pioneering new techniques such as 3D micro scanning research which was used in a Coventry murder investigation last year.
That work, alongside the
University of Warwick, was seen during a BBC documentary aired this week which followed the bid to identify and capture those who fatally stabbed a teenager nearly 20 times in a park.
During his 37 years at West Midlands Police, Paul has investigated over 200 murders and 1,500 sudden deaths.
He was the forensics expert who attended the 1994 Coventry air disaster which saw five crew members lose their lives when a Boeing 737 came crashing down in Willenhall.
At just before 10am on Wednesday, December 21, 1994, the cargo plane collided with an electricity pylon about a mile from the runway at Coventry Airport and crashed into woodland near Middle Ride.
Miraculously no-one on the ground was killed, but all five air crew perished.
And Paul admits that there have been times when it has
been difficult to deal with the job and gives an honest account of what it’s like to see and deal with trauma on a daily basis.
“A few years ago my partner and colleague retired and for 18 months I worked my shifts completely on my own,” he said.
“This is the type of job you don’t want to take home with you, I didn’t want to express what I had to deal with to my family. I was on my own, dealing with murder case after murder case.
“Working in a team is critical and really helps make sense of your world, you can ask for support and we look after each other. We can see when things are beginning to get a little too much. But I didn’t have that resilience and the build-up of trauma eventually became too much.
“What people don’t tell you is that it’s not just dealing with the trauma of the victim and crime scenes that breaks you, it’s the little things. One of the things for me was having to take a photo of a teddy bear that had been left in the bed by its owner. The teddy bear belonged to a 12-year-old murder victim and it broke me.
“I soldiered on but after another 12 hour day single crewed on yet another murder, I went home and the next day I couldn’t get out of bed. In fact for the next two months I couldn’t get off the sofa. I was diagnosed with burnout and it took me six months to recover with the help of a therapist and I learned that it’s good to cry.”
Viewers recently saw Paul’s work first-hand in the BBC documentary Forensics: The Real CSI, which focused on the murder of a 15-year-old boy in Coventry.
Paul was one of many people who contributed towards a complex investigation that ensured the teenager’s killers were brought to justice and put behind bars.
Asked what it was like to work with the documentary film makers, he candidly said: “The truth is, that I was apprehensive at first, I didn’t know what to expect but sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith. The documentary team were complete professionals, they said they wanted to showcase the work we do and I believe that this is exactly what will be shown. I will say it time and time again I don’t do this job for any glory, I do this job to ensure justice for those that can’t speak for themselves.”
Camera crews followed West Midlands Police’s forensics services experts for almost a year as they worked on a number of high-profile crimes. Paul has decided that he will be hanging up his forensic gloves for the final time in the next 12 months.
He said: “It’s about time I made way for the next generation - that’s why I’ve decided that this year is my last year as a crime-scene co-ordinator.
“I just hope that my legacy is that my lifetime of research into these horrendous crimes has helped in some way towards shaping the future of forensics.”
And asked about what he is going to do when he retires in 2022, Paul said: “My daughter has taken up scuba diving and I started taking lessons with her before Covid,, so I would like to do a bit more of that.
“I’ve worked with so many fantastic, dedicated people and I think it’s this that I will miss.”