Pig farmer guilty of wife’s septic tank murder 40 years on
A RETIRED pig farmer who ‘got away with murder’ for nearly 40 years was convicted yesterday of killing the wife he claimed had simply walked out of their home.
David Venables dumped ‘prim and proper’ Brenda, 48, in a septic tank behind their house in order to rekindle an on-off 15-year affair with mistress Lorraine Styles, a court heard.
Her bones were finally discovered in 2019 after the new owner of the farmhouse had its underground chamber drained.
Venables, who was arrested soon afterwards, claimed he had woken up one monring to find his wife gone and the front door open. He suggested that serial killer Fred West may have murdered ‘depressed’ Mrs Venables or that she may have gone into the tank herself.
Jurors heard he had to be cajoled into reporting her missing at the time of her ‘disappearance’ and showed no emotion. He later sought an annulment of the marriage.
Yesterday Venables, 89, blinked as a jury returned a 10-2 majority verdict that he was guilty of murdering his wife in May 1982.
Prosecutor Michael Burrows QC told jurors they could be sure he had killed Mrs Venables, adding: ‘He wanted her out of the way – he wanted to resume his long- standing affair with another woman.’
He said the ‘secluded’ septic tank was ‘almost the perfect hiding place... for nearly 40 years in which Venables got away with murder’.
Venables was calm in court and in the build-up to his trial, attending a street party in his cul- de- sac to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. A neighbour in the street in Kempsey, Worcestershire – where Venables moved after selling the nearby farmhouse in 2014 – told how he casually ‘batted away’ questions about the case.
The court heard Venables rekindled his relationship with Mrs Styles for the final time at Christmas 1981 and it continued until the end of 1982.
Mrs Styles died of lung cancer five years ago.
Venables had a reputation as a wealthy but penny-pinching womaniser long before his wife’s death. He is known to have had relationships with at least two other women beyond Mrs Styles, who was a married mother-ofthree when they met in 1967.
Venables and his wife met at a young farmers’ dance in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, in 1957 and married three years later.
Worcester Crown Court heard they moved to Quaking House Farm, built for them on what had been his father’s land overlooking the Malvern Hills, in 1961.
Unable to have children, Mrs Venables, a keen baker, settled into life as a homemaker. Venables told jurors he had a normal loving marriage with his ‘generally appealing’ wife.
But three months before she died, Mrs Venables confessed her unhappiness to a psychiatrist, revealing they hadn’t had sex since 1969.
Some who worked for Venables suggested that he used the farm nursery, where produce was grown, as a hunting ground for women.
Jurors heard Mrs Styles was an employee there when their friendship turned sexual.
Mrs Styles lived out her last years in a Droitwich flat where until her final months she again resumed contact with Venables, who would bring her fish and chips on Fridays.
Detective Sergeant James Beard said Mrs Venables was ‘killed by the person who was meant to care for her most’, adding Venables had caused her relatives 40 years of heartache.
Mrs Venables’s nephew, Nicolaus Sheppy, 59, said the family had no knowledge of the killer’s affairs, adding: ‘He was always a cold man. You can imagine my feelings towards him now. One saving grace of all this is that my auntie Brenda has at least come out of it being portrayed as the kind, lovely, thoughtful person she was.’
Venables is expected to be sentenced next week.
In a statement released through West Mercia Police, Mrs Venables’s family suggested her husband had, unbeknown to them, been subjecting her to coercive control.
‘In 1982 the attitude to missing women was different. In this case, Brenda’s husband was seen as her keeper,’ they said.
‘There was no murder inquiry for 37 years, just a missing person investigation. The details of this case have highlighted substantial progress in those 40 years, both in the professionalism, practices and methods of police investigations, and societal attitudes to women.’
They said Mrs Venables became cut off from family and friends before her death, adding: ‘Coercive control was not a term used or understood in the 1970s and early 80s. We wish we had sensitively asked her about how life was for her.’
‘He wanted her out of the way’
‘He was always a cold man’