A cruel Christmas card charade

IN THE final Christmas card Susan Edwards sent during the killers’ long deception, she wrote of her father’s excitement at the forthcoming London Olympics – even though he had been dead for more than 13 years.

Edwards told her cousin Vivien Steenson in 2011 how the woman’s own Christmas card had ‘proved a hit’ with William Wycherley, who was ‘looking forward to the 2012 London Olympics, having been around when they had the 1948 one’.

And ironically, ruthless Edwards told retired legal secretary Mrs Steenson that her father had commented that the ‘Welfare State seems to have been so run down’ – when she was falsely claiming his benefits and pension.

She finished the card by wishing Mrs Steenson ‘peace and health in 2012’, signing the card from ‘Susan and Christ, Jeff and Pat’ – bizarrely misspelling the name of her father, who was sometimes known by his middle name of Geoff, with a J instead of a G.

Mrs Steenson, from North London, said she had exchanged Christmas cards with ‘Uncle Bill’ for years but by the late 1990s – when Edwards started writing them – they had noticeably changed in tone.

‘Before then, he wrote to me quite a bit, but then all of a sudden the cards got dull and terse,’ she said. ‘They would have one or two lines saying things like “Hasn’t the weather been bad” or “We’ve all had the flu again this year.” ’

But in 2012 – when the defendants had fled to France – Edwards failed to send a card. Mrs Steenson added: ‘You see these kind of things on Agatha Christie programmes like Poirot, but you never imagine they happen in real life.’