Did original suspect in Carl killing pull trigger after all?
THE ‘cast-iron’ alibi of the main suspect in one of Britain’s most notorious murders was rocked by new claims last night.
Paperboy Carl Bridgewater was shot at point-blank range after apparently disturbing a burglary at isolated Yew Tree Farm in Prestwood, near Stourbridge, West Midlands, in 1978.
Bert Spencer, an ambulance driver with links to the crime scene and the Bridgewater family – and who later served time for a murder in the same village which bore striking similarities to 13-year-old Carl’s death – was the original suspect. He always denied being the killer.
But a former hospital secretary who had given Spencer, 76, what he has described as a ‘cast-iron’ alibi for the day Carl was shot, last night told a Channel 4 documentary that she cannot prove where he was for the entire day.
And Spencer’s ex-wife, Janet, went on the record for the first time to express her own doubts about his innocence. Mrs Spencer said her then husband, who was also an antiques collector, had disposed of a shotgun he legally owned the day after Carl was killed.
She also told how she found a green sweater hanging on the clothes line which Spencer had uncharacteristically washed himself on the day the boy died, and that she never saw it again.
But she was never spoken to by police because the investigation shifted to the men who became known as the Bridgewater Four after being arrested for an armed robbery at nearby Halesowen.
In one of this country’s biggest miscarriages of justice, James Robinson, Patrick Molloy and cousins Vincent and Michael Hickey had their convictions overturned after 18 years amid claims that police had fabricated evidence.
Just months after the Bridgewater Four were jailed in 1979, Spencer killed his friend, Hubert Wilkes, at a farmhouse party, a case with echoes of Carl’s murder.
Mr Wilkes, 70, was the owner of Yew Tree Farm, and his body was said to have been left slumped upright on a sofa, like Carl’s. Petty criminal Spencer had been the initial prime suspect in Carl’s murder because he fitted the description of a man in uniform seen leaving Yew Tree Farm in a pale blue Vauxhall Viva, similar to one he owned. He also collected antiques like those housed at the farm, knew the property because he used to shoot in the area and had been a neighbour of the Bridgewaters for several years.
Barbara Riebold, a secretary at Corbett Hospital in Stourbridge, had told police Spencer was on ambulance driving duty that day, but now says she cannot be sure of his exact whereabouts for the entire day.
She told Professor David Wilson, a criminologist who interviewed Spencer for last night’s programme, Interview With A Murderer, that Spencer may have ‘gone for lunch’ on the day of the murder.
The programme also featured the first interview with Spencer’s then wife, Janet, who said police should reopen the inquiry.
She said that Spencer had told her he was worried the finger would be pointed at him because he was not at work all day on September 19, the day of the murder, claiming he spent a long time in the toilets because of a stomach complaint.
Spencer, who was released from prison in 1995, denied his former wife’s allegations, adding: ‘My exwife blamed me for everything, including breast cancer.’
He has previously claimed to have been just one of ‘37 suspects’ and said he had sold the Vauxhall Viva to a policeman by the time of Carl’s murder.
Staffordshire police said the case was ‘not currently under investigation’, but added that it would ‘review the investigation in light of any new information’.
‘Striking similarities’