Plans for play about child killer axed after backlash
AFORMER schoolteacher has scrapped plans for an amateur stage play about Cannock Chase child killer Raymond Morris – after the victims’ devastated families threatened to protest outside the production.
Relatives of Margaret Reynolds and Diana Tift, snatched and killed by Morris, reacted with fury over Peter Sidgwick’s plans for the performance by his am-dram group, the Tower Players.
They launched an online tion, which attracted more 400 signatures, demanding Morris : The Cannock Chase ders be banned. On Friday, they got their wish. Diana’s niece, Jemma Tift, said: “This is fantastic news. I’m so overwhelmed, I’m fighting back tears.
“If this play had been staged, would have broken the families.”
The Tower Players are based in Pye Green, close to where the bodies of Morris’ three victims were found in the mid-1960s.
Morris, who died in Preston Prison in 2014, was convicted of murdering Christine Ann Darby, aged seven. He always denied being responsible for the deaths of Diana Tift, aged five, and six-year-old Margaret Reynolds, but remained the chief suspect.
All three murders was near identical. Diana and Margaret’s bodies were found in a ditch at Mansty Gully on Cannock Chase in 1966.
Christine’s body was found a year later, just a mile from where the two little girls were discovered.
Angela Upton, grand-daughter of Margaret’s mum, said that her family had been devastated by the news of the play, which has taken Mr Sidgwick, chairman of Cannock Chase Arts Council, two years to write. The script is loosely based on former detective Pat Molloy’s book The Cannock Chase Murders.
She pledged that those still scarred by Morris’ vile crimes would stage a demonstration if the play was performed.
“It is sick and twisted and torturing the family,” she said. “Florence (Margaret’s mother) is really upset by this. “It is totally offensive. “You think it is at an end, you think that is it, then someone brings petithan that Mur- it it all up again. If this goes ahead, we will protest outside.”
Jemma Tift, who lives in Walsall, pulled no punches either.
“It is an utter disgrace that they can make a play about the murders,” she said. “And we are not alone – our petition currently has more than 400 signatures.
“If the play is staged for three days, we will protest for three days.”
News of the show hit her father very hard. He had been with Diana on December 30, 1965, the day she was abducted while walking to her gran’s home in Bloxwich.
“In five minutes she was said the 31-year-old.
“Dad is extremely upset, and this brings it all back. To say this is in extremely poor taste would be an understatement.”
Both families were so gone,” incensed that they contacted MP Eddie Hughes.
The petition reads: “Please can all my friends sign this petition to get this play stopped.
“These are three little girls who sadly had their lives taken from them by such an evil man, who couldn’t even admit to his crimes.
“My auntie Diana Tift was sadly one of the girls this evil man killed and then just left like she was rubbish in a ditch on the Cannock Chase.
“This affects my father in every way and still makes his heart break – and for someone to make it into a play is downright wrong.
“Yes, I understand that he is trying to show that we must protect our children, but don’t show us in this manner.
“Please let these little girls rest in Walsall North peace. They have gone though too much suffering at the hand of Raymond Morris.
“Let us, their families, not have to be put through the pain again. This isn’t a documentary – it is a play. How can you make something so heart-breaking into a play?”
The petition, which was planned to be delivered to the playwrite, Staffordshire County Council, and Cannock’s Prince of Wales Theatre – a favoured venue for Tower Players – also carries a response from Alan Reynolds.
“My sister was a victim of this cold-blooded murderer,” he said. “Now he’s dead – good riddance to trash.”
Ginette England posted: “I’m signing this because my auntie was one of the victims and I don’t think it’s very fair on all the family of the victims to keep having this brought back up.”
Last Friday, Mr Sidgwick vowed to ditch the production, but was unavailable for comment.
You think it is at an end, you think that is it, then someone brings it all up again Angela Upton