Cold Case Cracked: Missing Woman Found In A Lake After 21 Years | Our Life

[Music] good evening welcome to case unsolved tonight the murder of a baby who was just 2 hours old detectives need your help to trace the mother but first we return to the long hot summer of 1976 loving mother suddenly disappears from the family home and is never seen again 21 years later her body is found by divers wrapped up like a parcel lying on the ledge in the murky depth of coniston Carol Park had been murdered and the crime had been hidden for two decades [Music] the person who had took the body into the lake was a very methodical person they had a knowledge of complex knots and how to tie them U suggested it was somebody from the Bon fraternity and somebody with knowledge of coniston water and in fact the place where the body was found was just near a ledge but would have meant if it been a bit further out the body would have actually gone down a lot further it would have been a lot more difficult to find and paps would have never been found Carol Park's tragic story began 20 years earlier in a small village lying just outside Barrow in Cumbria it was a very pleasant s s of life we were brought up in a little village called ruse and uh we were brought up in a Christian family used to go to the Village School there and it was a very close-nit Community she turned into a a very intellectual type of lady she she she went to college she was bilingual very clever at 12 she was a church organist in in barl at 12 years of age but by the time Carol was an adult a terrible tragedy had already struck the price family her younger sister Christine had been murdered well it could well have destroyed us I mean it was a terrible terrible case at the time I mean the girl was answered the door she was strangled and raped uh the man who did it tried to murder my mother she got away from she was in bed she got up and managed to get out a frail woman but she did to the neighbors uh so it devastated all 2 years earlier Carol had married her long-term boyfriend Gordon Park at St Michael's Church in rampside and the couple came to live at this house in the village of lease which Gordon had built for them they had a very very good starting life with a fine Bungalow in the village of lease uh many well-to-do friends and initially everything looked a better roses but to my mind looking from the outside and talking with cattle it seemed to be going downhill uh in the early 70s Carl left uh Garden Park on uh two occasions the first occasion would be in around about 1973 she commenced a relationship with another local man which her husband was aware of and for one night she left home late in 1974 Carol left her husband again we believe leave because the marriage had broken down and she moved into a guest house um at Bron INF ferace during um the period She was at the guest house she she met another man commenced a relationship with him which lasted some time she uh eventually moved to middlesbor in the northeast of England but um after a bitter custody battle over the children uh we know that she turn returned to her husband at um blue stones in lease that would be in 1975 the long hot summer of 1976 and the reservoirs dried up and droughts Afflicted the whole of the country the school term was at an end and Carol and her husband and three children had planned a day trip to Blackpool but on that morning July the 17th Carol decided not to go on Mr Park's return to the family home he discovered that the Carol was missing that appeared to be nothing unto uh with the house the interior of the house and um Mr P put down The Disappearance to Carol leaving him 6 weeks later Gordon Park came to see me uh and asked if he could see me privately to tell me that cattle had in fact gone missing and I asked him had he reported it to the police which he said he had not and I advised him to do that and I accepted as most people would that cattle in fact had done that she was uh bilingual she was dark skinned and possibly she could have integrated into other societies and decided to for some unknown personal reason to have got out of of even the country The Disappearance was reported 6 weeks after uh Carol went missing it was a day before she was due to return to to school at Asam INF ferace and it was reported via Mr Park solicitors to the police extensive inquiries were made with all of her friends all of her Associates and natural inquiries with with uh Banks building societies um there was no evidence whatsoever of any sighting of Carol or any usage of her finances um from the day she went missing I felt resentful in the mid 80s when my mother was then seriously ill and I was having to travel to Lancaster hospital every weekend for for some years and I used to come home and say to my wife our cattle knew what she was doing when she got out of this even though I love my mother it was becoming a terrible burden um and then when my mother died I felt that even at that stage if CLE was indeed alive she would have some contact in in the town and make contact with me but she did not and that is one stage where I started to have a little bit of suspicion that something wasn't quite right with this I think the police were suspicious at the time and that's the C certainly the feeling I get from speaking to officers who were on the periphery of the inquiry who were around at the time this was going on and that's a general feeling I get from them um I think probably um the inquiry U covered all lines they possibly could at that particular time and just eventually ground to a halt with nothing else with nothing else they could do on it and Carol was never found until that is some divers were exploring coniston water in August 1997 we found this package we didn't know what it was could have been a rock it could have been anything so we uh went over to it tried to lift it by hand and it wouldn't come out the silt so we made a a note of the depth and time and then went back to um lift it at a different date we went back with a a lifting bag and a and a r real and uh when we got to the package we had a a plan somebody had to tie the bag to it and other one was filling it with air and and it all went to plan and it went up to the surface and then we actually stayed on the bottom it was on a reel so we pulled it back in with a a card to the shore which is just into the bear behind you I got me knife and cut the outer bag open cut it open about um 12 in and then there was another bag inside which was like a a plastic bin liner really um so we cut that on about 6 in and pulled it apart and it was um like a flesh that we were looking at as soon as I heard the new Splash on the television that a body had come out of coniston water I said to my wife I am convinced beyond all doubt this is cattle my wife wasn't quite in agreeance and one can understand that but within 24 hours I'd informed the police that she'd been missing for 21 years and the rest is now history the body was recovered in in the fetal position it had been tied with a number of ropes and a number of materials had been used to package the body in uh Bin bags were included uh a nylon Rook sack and what we later found out was a pine for dress belonging to Carol Park uh which had actually been used to put her body in a postmortem was carried out after the uh body was recovered and the finding were it it's possible that she was uh struck with a blunt instrument um causing her jaw to break a full murder investigation was launched and an incident room set up at Barrel police station uh the main parts of that uh investigation immediately focused on coniston water on the previous home of the deceased we had to start uh inquiring about things that had happened over 20 years ago and actually tracing materials from that period which obviously wasn't easy Carol was also dressed in a baby doll night dress that was a what what she actually went into the water in and we had to start tracing the origins of that dress and all the layers and ropes that were actually on a body the main problems with the inquiry have been that uh the murder has took place so long ago we're having to trace people from many many years ago um people's memories of that period are fed and many people in fact dead themselves but four years after the discovery of Carol's body her killer is still walking free and that knowledge is taking a terrible toll on her family there have been times when I felt I've had enough nearly every day I feel I've had enough I walk over Wy bridge and I look at the beautiful view of the D Nester and I think of the hell I'm going through over this lot and that car's killer is out there and I could be meeting him around the corner we really do believe that there's still a lot of people out there that will be able to help us uh there'll be people that we haven't found we don't think we've seen everybody that knew Carol um we think that there'll be people who may have reservations about coming forward reservations about getting involved in this sort of inquiry but we urged them to do so at the end of the day it is a long time ago but a lady was killed uh her children have been deprived of her mother and the many relatives who to this day want to know what's actually happened to her were very committed to this inquiry I think the fact that inquiries are still under way there inquiries ongoing now that I can't discuss on this program uh we're going to stop at nothing until we brought the killer of Carol Park to Justice at the end of the day the only thing that will cure me and make my family a lot better is Justice it's the only thing and it's got to [Music] come if you think you have information to help catch Carol Park's killer we'll be giving you a number to ring at the end of the program still to come now the murder of baby Callum from Warrington welcome back to case unsolved the murder of a child is always a shocking crime but imagine someone who takes the life of a baby boy who's just 2 hours old that was the fate of baby Callum his mother and father are unknown and he's named by detectives and buried by the town people of borrington without a single member of his family being present 3 years on warington C ID are still searching for his [Music] killer it was the day before Mother's Day March the 14th [Music] 1998 a man was walking his dog along the driveway that leads to glier's World in [Music] Warrington and it was here in the Woodland just off the path that he made a terrible discovery when his dog became interested in some bin bags that were next to the foot path that he was walking on he went over to investigate ripped open the bin bags and saw callum's body inside Callum received several violent blows to the head he was subsequently uh strangled around the neck there was an attempt at manual strangulation uh and he subsequently died from aixia Callum had been murdered before he was even 2 hours old detectives were now hunting for a killer obviously first of all there was the examination of the body uh and the initial scene the forensic examination and uh at the same time as that we were obviously trying to trace callum's mother they were the two main lines of inquiry initially the most important evidence available to detectives at the time was DNA baby Callum was uh the body was found wrapped in in two plastic bags inside one of the bags there was an amount of blood which we thought was quite significant we obtained a DNA profile from that blood and found that it was from a female on comparing the profiles there were uh numerous points of similarity between baby Callum and the profile obtained from the blood uh which led us to the conclusion that uh the blood was from baby callum's mother subtracting factors in baby callum's DNA profile which matched those in the profile obtained from the blood we were left with half of of baby callum's profile which we could assume are from his father I think it's safe to assume that we we now have a full uh DNA profile uh from his mother and uh a 50% profile from his father well I was initially on the first officers on the scene then I became involved in the daily investigation and I was asked to be the point of contact should the mother wish to contact the police this was to identify somebody that she could see she could speak to and she could actually telephone me and speak to me on a dedicated hotline which we set up it was likely that it was her first pregnancy it could have been that she's had this pregnancy unaided she would have gone through the trauma of the pregnancy which may have been concealed that the pain of the birth may have have indeed been in need of medical attention and could have herself suffered for some time after the birth together with all the trauma of the discovery of the body the the the death of the child and the publicity that followed afterwards I think she had a very difficult [Music] time from the female DNA profile that we'd obtained of C's mother we obviously wanted to trace the mother the main line that we we talk to trace the mother was in conjunction with the Warrington health authority to trace every woman in the local area who was due to give birth at about the time that callum's body was found detectives also consulted a forensic psychiatrist to establish what type of woman callum's mother was likely to be the characteristics usually indicate a woman who is socially isolated a woman who is either young in age or perhaps emotionally immature unsuited for pregnancy a woman who feels s for a variety of external or internal reasons unable to come to terms with the fact that she's pregnant and a woman who for whatever reason is very fearful of disclosing the fact that she's pregnant this led detectives to the suspicion that callum's mother might be a school girl we therefore tried to identify all local school girls uh above a certain age who were absent from school on or around the date that callum's body was found we then went down the line of taking a uh DNA profile from those girls uh to eliminate them as being callum's mother from those schools we eventually DNA sampled around 300 school girls all of whom were eliminated Callum was buried by the town's people of Warrington and although initial investigations failed to reveal the identity of his parents recent advances in DNA testing have given detectives fresh hope there is a further advancement which um which is proving to be an extremely powerful Tool uh which uh is commonly known as low copy number or super sensitive DNA profiling which is really taking uh DNA profiling to the limit uh I suspect in terms of the amount of DNA that we need to obtain a profile and that if properly targeted can provide information from apparently clean surfaces uh information which might give us more information uh more detail about uh for instance who has handled the bags that baby Callum was found baby callum's body was found in while DNA testing on the bin bags continues the profile of callum's mother and partial profile of his father have been put on a National Database so if they ever offend they will be identified the facts as we have them suggest that the child was um got rid of very quickly after birth that the um umbilical cord was pulled from the afterbirth in a torsional type of movement not cut um that the child wasn't cleaned in any way um and that a blunt instrument was used to cause the severe injuries to the front of the child's face and to the neck it is probable that the person who killed the child was in fact the mother shocking though the thought of a mother murdering her baby might be it is not as uncommon as we might expect throughout England and particularly in America a lot of babies bodies are found um neonates bodies but whether they are all recorded and fully pursued given the difficulties when you just find um a body as in the case of baby [ __ ] leads one to imagine that perhaps there are more killings of this nature than than we would want to accept [Music] it's possible that the mother could have murdered Callum uh that is something that we certainly can't eliminate until she comes forward and until we Trace her my personal opinion is that it's more likely that uh it is the father of the baby or the mother's boyfriend or someone along those lines who is responsible but as I say until we trace the mother and until we trace the father we won't know if callum's mother was watching now what I would say to her was that even though she's tried to blank this out there are constant reminders of the death and the circumstances of baby Callum there's reminders every time there's an anniversary of the death mothering Sunday is another reminder it must be a constant distress to her to have these reminders and for that reason I would say to to come in talk about it and let's get us some professional help because she must need some help she's had such a long time with apparently no help no contact and uh I feel that she should help [Music] herself the public can certainly still help with the inquiry in particular I'm thinking of friends or family of the mother or indeed of the father I can't believe after all this time that callum's mother hasn't discussed it with someone it is in her long-term interest that this whole matter is is is put to rest and that um the circumstances around callum's death are fully explained I don't believe that the mother can actually get over um the death of Callum until it has been sorted in in a public [Music] way can you help police catch baby callum's killer or the murderer of Carol Park if so call in confidence The Crime Stoppers number will be shown in a moment [Music]

Channel: True Lives

Views: 18,894

Keywords: our life, documentary, world documentary, documentary channel, award winning, life stories, best documentaries, daily life, real world, point of view, story, full documentary, documentaries, real life

Id: UKr2fpIwXfw

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023