Killer couple stared, with no sign of remorse at all
TRIAL OF LANDSCAPERS MURDERERS NOT LIKE TV SHOW
They know no-one. You knew they wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared Mrs Justice Kathryn Thirlwall
Legal Affairs Correspondent REBECCA SHERDLEY compares the truth of the trial of murderers Christopher and Susan Edwards with the Sky drama Landscapers
AS dramas based on real-life events go, Landscapers is compelling, edge-of-your-seat stuff.
It plays out events with some artistic licence, as the Edwards eventually fled to France after Christopher Edwards shot Susan’s parents in 1998.
Together, they buried the reclusive Wycherleys in the back garden of their semi-detached home in Forest Town, Mansfield, but kept up the lie that they were still alive.
Landscapers, starring Oscar-winner Olivia Colman as Susan Edwards and David Thewlis, as Christopher, transports viewers into a makebelieve world where they are living an idyllic life in France, speaking some French and getting by, until 15 years later, they return by Eurostar to face the music with police waiting for them.
Colman, as Susan Edwards, is chatty, bright, optimistic, funny and eccentric, while her husband is more serious, troubled and jobless.
But the jury at the Edwards’ Nottingham trial for the murders of Patricia Wycherley, 63, and her 85-year-old husband William, saw a very different couple.
The pair sat in the dock at the city’s Crown Court staring blankly with not a glimmer of remorse as their crime was laid bare by the prosecution.
Jurors heard about a background of debt. Of stealing the Wycherleys’ money, callously selling their home after killing them, and of Susan’s father, who had sexually assaulted her as a child. The abuse stopped when she was 11. She left home in her early 20s.
Judge Mrs Justice Kathryn Thirlwall told her: “That background may well explain why you hated him, which you did, and why you have no remorse about killing him.”
Prosecutors disputed Mrs Edwards’ version of events – that the couple had lain dead for a week – or that Mr Edwards had been in London at the time of the killings.
They believed that in all likelihood it was experienced former gun club member Mr Edwards who pulled the trigger of a .38 revolver, shooting the Wycherleys twice each, and then helped his wife cover up the killings for the next 15 years with lies, forged signatures, bogus Christmas cards to relatives, and collecting he Wycherleys’ benefit and pension money.
Credit controller Christopher told how they decided to sell the Wycherleys’ home in 2005 after he was “shocked” to discover his wife had run up considerable debt.
They created documents purportedly signed by the Wycherleys and the money from the sale – £66,938.09 – was paid into a joint account opened after the couple had been killed.
Davis Howker QC asked Mr Edwards: “Was Susan living in the real world, do you think, Mr Edwards?”
He replied: “Probably not, no.” Mr Howker asked: “Did you agree to go along with the sale of the house?”
Mr Edwards replied: “I wasn’t happy to do it because we were no longer in control of the grave site.”
The sale only reduced their debts of some £160,000.
Finally there was the memorabilia and the couple’s love of Westerns, played out in dream-like scenes in Landscapers.
Certainly, nothing like that was heard at the trial. The judge said: “You were a completely self-contained couple. So far as you were concerned, only the two of you mattered.”
Christopher blew £14,000 in two years on signed photographs and other mementoes of the Hollywood star Gary Cooper.
He was interested in military history and firearms, and insisted he was buying the items for his wife, who claimed to have a long-running pen friendship with French actor Gerard Depardieu. Christopher Edwards bought a signed document in Cooper’s name relating to the purchase of stock for just over £4,000 on November 7, 2011, when the couple were deeply in debt and paying off an IVA (individual voluntary agreement), at 25 percent of what they owed. Apart from the one euro they had left to their names – they claimed they had run out of money when they surrendered to police – among their clothes in suitcases were the valuable Gary Cooper memorabilia, an autographed Frank Sinatra photo and strips of stamps of the legendary American singer and film actor.
The couple were each convicted of two offences of murder. They pleaded guilty to obstructing the coroner and to theft.
On each count of murder, they received life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years before they could be considered for parole. For the offence of obstructing a coroner, they received five years’ imprisonment and for theft, four years in jail. All the sentences are running concurrently.
The judge told them: “Mr Wycherley was 86, Mrs Wycherley was nearly 64. They were living a quiet, reclusive life in Mansfield. They knew no-one.
“They had as little contact as possible with other people. You knew they wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared. And they weren’t.”