40 years on, girl snatched from street is reunited with rescuer
WENDY, THEN 5, WAS FOUND ALONE AND TERRIFIED AFTER HORRIFIC INCIDENT
WENDY Gould was just five years old when she was snatched off the street about 100 yards from her home in Ashton-under-Lyne in August 1978.
Later that night, she was released unharmed 16 miles away in the village of Holme, near Holmfirth, Yorks. Over the years, Wendy didn’t really discuss the terrifying incident with her parents Barrie and Margaret in much detail.
But in a remarkable turn of events, she and her partner Dave Eccles, a lorry driver, were returning home from a trip to London in September, when the M62 was closed and decided to take the road through Holme – somewhere she had never visited since that fateful night.
Wendy, a 45-year-old mother of two grown-up boys and a grandmother, said: “I had a complete meltdown I was feeling sick and I couldn’t breathe properly, the fear was overwhelming.” She went straight to her parents’ house in Ashton and asked them to tell her everything about it. She decided to try to research what happened.
She got in touch with the Holme community website, run by Dayn Wilkins who promised to pass her message on. It reached Jill Hayfield, whose husband John Sandford had found five-year-old Wendy alone and crying in the village all those years ago. After getting in touch, an emotional reunion took place between John and Wendy, along with their partners Dave and Jill.
John, 70, said: “I thought she must have got lost from her family or something more sinister had happened, which proved to be the case. The next morning two detectives from Manchester came to interview me and I asked them what had happened. That was the last that I heard of it until now. It was wonderful meeting her again and we chatted for an hour and tried to piece together what had happened.” Jill added: “We are hoping to make Wendy an honorary member of Holme village. We have tried to lay all the ghosts to rest and make her feel welcome.” Wendy said: “Visiting Holme with John and Jill made everything fall into place. It was unreal seeing John but he and his wife and everyone else I met made me feel so welcome. I really wanted to go back to the village and he took me to where he found me. I felt so relieved that finally I had all the answers.”