Is this the first Scilly Isles murder since 1976?
The death of Josh Clayton, 23, has cast a shadow over the island of Tresco and questions remain unanswered. Joe Shute reports
This week, spring arrived early on the Scilly Isle of Tresco. Bees droned. Daffodils bloomed. Residents pootled past on bicycles bidding each other hello. A trip to this Atlantic archipelago is to visit a gentler age. Nobody would dream of locking their front door and everybody, they say, helps everyone else. But mention one name, and the mood darkens.
On Sept 23, 2015, the body of Josh Clayton was found washed up on rocks on the nearby island of Teän. The 23-year-old had vanished 10 days previously from a party on Tresco hosted by the son of Robert DorrienSmith, a close friend of the Prince of Wales, whose family hold the island on lease from the Duchy of Cornwall.
At first, police treated the death of Clayton, a popular bar manager at Tresco’s Ruin Beach Cafe, as a missing persons inquiry and his bloodstained clothes were disposed of rather than forensically examined. After all, the last murder on this spot 30 miles off the Cornish coast was in 1976, when a farmer bludgeoned his 18-year-old son to death.
Not for nothing did “Scilly Sergeant” Colin Taylor, who wrote a book about his five years policing the island, describe his former beat as “like [the TV series] Heartbeat, but less frenetic”.
Then, last month, new evidence caused the inquest into Clayton’s death to be halted halfway through. Police are pursuing fresh lines of inquiry and islanders fear they may have another murder on their hands.
On the mainland, in Taunton, Somerset, Tracey Clayton, wipes away the tears as she describes her fight to discover what happened to her youngest son. They used to speak every day. She scrolls through her phone showing me the messages that always ended in love and kisses. “I can’t grieve because nobody can tell me what happened,” says the 52-yearold. “There is a grip around my heart and I just feel a part of me will always be broken. I want somebody else to care.”
The Clayton family, which includes Josh’s two older siblings and five grandchildren, has so far spent around £60,000 on a legal team and a private investigator and lodged several complaints against Devon and Cornwall Police. (The force has declined to comment).
Indeed, it was questions submitted by the Claytons to one of the inquest witnesses, Leroy Thomas, a 42-year-old ex paratrooper, that prompted the coroner to abandon the hearing. In previous statements to police, Thomas, who moved to Tresco to work as a painter and decorator, claimed he could not recall ever meeting Josh. But at the inquest he gave an apparently different account: claiming he saw Josh involved in a row with Polish or Hungarian men, and that he had been “ranting and raving” before running off into a gorse thicket and threatening to kill himself. Thomas claimed he returned to the scene later but could not find Josh. The inquest, held in Plymouth, also heard allegations that cannabis and other drugs were present at the party and a girl was assaulted. “To my mind it is a murder and nothing else,” says Mrs Clayton.
Tresco is just two and a half miles long and one mile wide. The south of the island is thick with tropical fauna, 300 species of which are in bloom at any time of year. To the north lies wild moorland and crumbling forts, where the waves boom in from the Atlantic.
The Dorrien-Smiths live in Tresco Abbey, built in 1843 by their ancestor Augustus Smith and surrounded by magnificent gardens. The island, home to around 150 permanent residents, is arranged like a fiefdom with every building and business owned by the estate. When the family is in residence, a Union Flag flies from atop the abbey.
A few times each summer Tristan Dorrien-Smith, now 20, would open up his private party venue – a green rectangular building in an isolated south-eastern corner of the island, fitted with music decks and old sofas. It was known among the young seasonal workers, here from March to October, as “the Shed”.
In 2015, Josh was working his second summer on Tresco and was planning to do a ski season in Japan with his boyfriend, Sam, that winter. His family and friends describe him as a happy, caring young man who was excited about the future. He was known for looking out for others at the island parties, and established a “buddy” system so nobody ever walked home alone.
Tess Hillier, 23, from Somerset, was among 43 people at the party on Sept 12. She worked at Tresco’s New Inn pub and had become friends with Josh. That evening they met for drinks. Josh was reluctant to go to the party as he had work the next morning but relented.
“We arrived at the Shed at 11.30pm,” she says. “Everyone was really in the mood for a party.”
While Hillier insists she does not take drugs, she says cannabis joints were passed around. “It’s pretty easy to get stuff. There’s not much in the way of police control.”
She recalls seeing some eastern European workers, but insists they were not causing trouble. At one point, she saw Josh take a drag of a joint, but toxicology tests on his body found no drugs but he was two and a half times over the drink-driving limit. When Hillier left with her boyfriend at 1.30am, she says Josh was tipsy but not out of control.
At this stage, the picture becomes muddier. Soon after, Josh reportedly said he was going to leave in a golf buggy but a friend stopped him and said she would come along if he waited. When she returned, several minutes later, Josh had disappeared, leaving behind his new coat.
Late the next morning, on a path close to the Shed, Hillier found a packet of Josh’s cigarettes and his phone charger. In the bracken, she discovered his mountain bike with the chain off and saddle twisted.
The nearest beach, Pentle Bay, is renowned for its calm, shallow waters and locals find it hard to believe somebody could drown there. Josh’s mother and stepfather flew to the island to join a search involving coastguards from across Cornwall and the Scillies – as well as Tresco residents. “I think deep down someone knows something,” says Hillier. “There’s definitely more to this than has been let on.”
Since the inquest was suspended, Leroy Thomas has been interviewed again by police as a voluntary witness. While Tristan Dorrien-Smith did not attend the inquest, his family told The Daily Telegraph this week that they will “continue to fully cooperate with the investigation”.
Tracey Clayton fears it is too late to secure meaningful new evidence, a view echoed by the few locals willing to discuss the inquiry.
On Monday, Josh would have been 25. Last year, his family held a party to raise funds for the Cornwall Search and Rescue Team. This year, Tracey says she doesn’t have the strength. Instead, they will lay flowers at Josh’s grave.
“I just tell him I’m sorry I haven’t found the truth yet,” she says. “But I promise him, before I take my last breath, that I will.”
‘This is a grip around my heart. A part of me will always be broken’