Is this a murderer?
Janet Holt has confessed to killing her former business partner, but no one believes her…
It’s a shocking case… someone confessing to murder, being arrested – and then not being believed. But that’s exactly what happened to Janet Holt.
In November 2011, Janet called the police and made a shocking confession. She told detectives that in 1976 she had been raped by a farmer called Fred Handford, and fearing he would do it again, she’d shot him at point-blank range before disposing of his body in a shallow grave.
Janet had first met Fred Handford at Ball Beard Farm in Buxton, Derbyshire, when she was 14 years old and stabled her horse on his land. She began helping out on the farm and later became his business partner.
But in March 1976, when she was 26, Fred, then 56, vanished from the farm and was reported as a missing person. Searches of local fields and moors were carried out, but to no avail.
He was never found. The police concluded he had committed suicide as they had evidence from witnesses that Fred had described wanting to kill himself by jumping down a local air vent, serving as a long-closed coal mine.
Meanwhile, over the next three decades, Janet claimed to have awful nightmares about Mr Handford and underwent therapy to see if she could discover why.
She claims the recollections she had were terrifyingly clear… the attack, shooting Fred and transporting his body in a wheelbarrow to a shallow grave.
Janet confessed to detectives that she’d killed Fred.
Police carried out an excavation of the mentioned farmland, as well as the field Janet said his body was buried in. But nothing was found by the police and they believe Janet to be a fantasist.
In a recent documentary, the 69-year-old said, ‘ Why would my memory have invented this story? What could it be based on? And what purpose does it have?’
But Detective Inspector Paul Cullen was clear in the documentary. ‘She has tried to con police and a psychologist to try and make financial gain,’ he said. She had been working with a local journalist who was writing her autobiography.
Further shade was thrown on Janet’s story after it was revealed she was a thief and convicted fraudster.
Fred’s daughter, Lynette Chapman, believes Janet murdered her father, not for rape, but for monetary reasons. ‘ Who actually benefited the most from it all? And there’s only one person… I think that’s Miss Janet Holt.’ She goes on to dismiss the suicide theory as she believes Fred’s remains would have been discovered by now.
But no charges have been brought against Janet, who said, ‘It’s so frustrating when you feel people are not even beginning to believe you and you’re left with no other way of convincing them other than just repeating the truth all the time.’
So, what is the truth? It’s been a mystery for 42 years and looks to remain that way…