MURDER ON
Janet says she killed business partner who raped her but there’s no proof... and even the police don’t believe her
The facts
Janet first met farmer Fred when she was 14, when she stabled her pony on his farm and started to help out there, later becoming his business partner.
She was 25 when, in March 1976, Fred vanished from Ball Beard Farm in quiet New Mills, Derbyshire.
He was reported as a missing person, and police dogs and mountain rescue teams searched the fields and moors.
Witnesses gave evidence that Fred had described how he would kill himself by jumping down a local air vent, serving a long-closed coal mine.
Investigators suspected he killed himself because of financial problems.
More than three decades later, Janet came forward. She was remanded in custody as police probed her claim but, with no evidence, was never charged.
Janet’s story
Janet says she feels “no guilt or shame”, and that she is in fact an innocent victim of rape whose life was derailed.
She says: “Fred attacked and raped me twice. Then I was trapped in the kitchen. I thought he’d lost his mind because he was talking rubbish about us getting married and having children.
“I thought he was going to attack me again. There was his gun, leaning against the wall. I picked it up and I shot it. There was nothing running through my mind... no emotion.
“He fell to the ground. I got a wheelbarrow, put him in it, took him round to the field and dug a hole. I don’t think there was any panic.”
Janet, a dry stone waller who lives 20 miles from New Mills, says she was not thinking about covering up the murder but rather the shame of being raped.
She says: “I would have rather died than tell my parents I’d been raped. No one talked about things like that. What would my dad have thought of me?”
Janet claims these memories only returned to her after the therapy, and that she feels “a sadness” that Fred’s family will not forgive her crime.
She adds: “It’s very hard to ask people to forgive you when you know that you are the victim. He did what he did and I did what I did.
“I have experienced a trauma. It affected my relationships, my personality, my whole life. I wish people would believe me, but I’ve done everything I can. I don’t want to go to prison, but I wanted to set the record straight.”
Theories
One theory is that a reservoir pipeline, installed in the late 80s, disturbed the site where Janet says she buried Fred.
She says: “I have photographs of the route of the pipeline. And I’ve got horses on those pictures which were born around the late 1980s.
“So, I know my memory is perfectly correct about that. But I couldn’t convince the police.”
Former Det Insp Paul Callum, a senior investigator on the case in 2011, says: “We had forensic archaeologists and aerial photos, and Janet was part of the process of pointing out where the pipe was. She disputes the dates that the pipeline was installed, but this was a very thorough investigation.”
Testimony from Fred’s daughter Lynette Chapman seems to support Janet’s claims that Fred attacked her. She says her father was violent and erratic and “obviously very troubled”.
Lynette once caught him holding her mother by her face. She says he had squeezed her throat and badly bruised her face, putting her in hospital.
“He once threatened me,” adds Lynette, who says she picked up a knife and told him not to intimidate her.
But another theory is that Janet, who has a criminal record for embezzling money, cooked up the story for monetary gain. It was THOROUGH Callum suggested not only that she wanted Fred’s farm, but she wanted a better ending for her autobiography, ghostwritten with Helen Parker – the journalist who suggested she seek therapy.
Janet claims she made no money from the farm or book deal, with any proceeds going to a donkey sanctuary.
She says: “I’ve never made a penny. I did serve time in prison for stealing money. I don’t defend that but I do feel that isn’t who I really am. I think 1976 changed me.”
The police
Detectives worked tirelessly on the case in 1976, re-opening it after Janet’s confession. Paul says: “We wanted enough certainty to put it to bed one way or the other. In the old days confession was everything but, although it gives you a big arrow, it’s not. People can admit offences for a whole range of reasons.
“One line of enquiry was that she was trying to get publicity for her book. One argument is she’s done it and we’ve never found the body, but we’ve not found evidence to support that.
“She was described as quite strong because of being quite active on the farm, but you’re talking about dragging a body into a wheelbarrow, wheeling it round a farm, digging a hole in semifrozen land – the weather was freezing.
“These are very unlikely things to have happened. The facts to support her claim just weren’t there.” He adds: “Technically the case is still open b u th an
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