Ladies of the Lakes, case one: Carol Ann Park

[Music] this is Coniston water in england's lake district located in the county of Cumbria northwest of the country the waters of Coniston and indeed the surrounding lakes have revealed many historical artifacts over the years it has also claimed the lives of many probably most famously donald malcolm campbell who set the water speed world record in 1964 and was lost to Coniston after his boat somersaulted and disintegrated a ho speed Ahnold Campbell's body wasn't discovered until 34 years later in 2001 the waters of the Lake District have also hidden the bodies of victims of crime here is the first of three such cases [Music] you [Music] in August of 1997 amateur divers John Walsh and David Mason made a discovery beneath the waters of Coniston the men had paid a visit to these waters before but on that day they decided to push themselves and venture a little deeper than they had previously the visibility beneath the water was said to be no more than two meters but when a dark-colored package came slowly into view at a depth of around 21 meters both men admitted to being apprehensive the package was resting only meters short of a Ledge that gave way to the lakes deepest area convinced that their find was something of importance the men brought the heavy package to the surface David Mason took his divers knife and began to cut through the binding rope it was when a piece of lead pipe fell from the sack that the men realized they were dealing with something that was probably deliberately disposed of and weighed down when the package was cut open a white skin-like surface was revealed it was at that point that Walsh and Mason caught for the police what the men had found was a human body tightly bound in a fetal position and concealed in two bags and a dress pathologist Edmund Tapp said that the cause of death was due to considerable blunt force trauma to the face as most of the front part of the skull had been destroyed as well as this there were defensive wounds to the hands again strongly suggesting that a murder had taken place doctor tap believed that an ice axe had been used as the murder weapon the condition of the body had made it difficult to identify but it was thought to be a woman aged between 20 and 30 years and around five foot four with dark hair after the grisly find appeared on the news on August the 17th 1997 and with the police being inundated with calls from the public suggesting the woman's identity dental records confirmed that the body was that of 30-year old Carol Ann Parke a teacher and mother of three who had been missing since the hot summer of 1976 Carol had been married to fellow teacher Gordon Park but for the last 21 years he had maintained to friends neighbors and family that she had abandoned him for another man also leaving behind her three children back in 1976 Gordon Park was the number-one suspect but with no body and a distinct lack of evidence no charges were made in 1997 nothing had changed as far as the police were concerned and Gordon Park was once again the prime suspect the police followed up their suspicions and arrested him after 21 years if Gordon Park was a killer he'd had time on his hands to concoct the story back in the 1960s called and park a resident of lease near barrow-in-furness was a popular young man he was the son of a successful businessman and the Keene Mountaineer and Saylor Carroll Park was an adopted child brought up in the same area when they met she was immediately attracted to this man of the outdoors the couple married in 1967 and lived together in lease in a house that Gordon had built for them a house that they called blue stones which was 15 miles south of colistin water in 1969 Carroll's adoptive sister Christine was murdered by her boyfriend John Rapson they had one shot together named Vanessa who was one year old when her mother was killed Carol and Gordon swiftly adopted Vanessa and brought her up as their own in 1972 they had three children under the age of five and it was at this time that Carol began to feel the pressure of juggling both a demanding motherhood and her teaching career gordon who was also a teacher had become controlling of his wife she was said to have no access to her own salary and her social life suffered as a result or in 1974 the cracks that had begun to appear in their relationship a couple of years earlier at course complete collapse it's said that they at least at one point had an open marriage which involved couple swapping this could have been the catalyst for the number of affairs Carol was set to have had and the eventual collapse of their relationship when Carol left Gordon and moved to a guesthouse in Broughton and then later to Middlesbrough to be with her lover a policeman named David Braley whom she had met whilst on a stomach teaching course in Ko University in Newcastle she left alone without the children in hope that a custody battle would eventually return them to her this wasn't to be and Gordon controlled what little access she had when the custody hearing took place in March of 1975 it's believed that Gordon Parke lied under oath about also having affairs and as a result was awarded custody of the children now in a desperate situation and pointing for her children Carol decided to return to her loveless marriage for the sake of her children one year later at the beginning of the 1976 school summer holidays Carol and park disappeared because of the nature of her broken and sometimes restrictive relationship with Gordon Carroll led a relatively lonely life and therefore no one in the local area missed her at first and being a teacher the summer holiday saw little or no concern from her fellow teachers even her family admitted when speaking to the police that it wasn't unusual for them to go a few weeks or even a couple of months without seeing or hearing from Carol at the end of the summer holidays Gordon paid a visit to Carol's brother and told him that she had been missing for the past six weeks when asked if he had reported her disappearance to the police Gordon admitted that he hadn't because he assumed that she'd left him again for another man miss admission of solids from Gordon suggested foul play to Carol's family but it was Gordon's next move that convinced them of his guilt instead of reporting directly to the police Gordon reported his wife's disappearance through his solicitor he said that he had taken his children to Blackpool during the summer holidays and that Carol had refused to go with them he then said that on their return she had already left home taking most of her belongings with her with all things considered the rocky relationship the custody battle and the Gordon's reluctance to speak out about his wife's disappearance to the police all eyes were now on him a sergeant by the name of bill Lawson paid a visit to the family home one afternoon with the intention of asking the children if they had spoken to their mother prior to their recent trip to Blackpool Gordon Park told him that he couldn't speak to the children as they won't home when the children were approached they said that they hadn't spoken to their mother before leaving for Blackpool it would appear to most by now that Gordon Park was the only possible suspect but the mail online wrote in 2010 the Carroll had been seen by a neighbor at the bottom of the driveway of blue stones after Gordon had left with the children for Blackpool they also saw a man driving a VW Beetle pull into the driveway stay for 20 minutes and then leave neither the presence of the unnamed male all the car has ever been accounted for another woman who knew Carol said that she'd seen her at 6:00 p.m. that day at the Charnock Richards service station on the m6 it seems inconceivable if these witness accounts are true the Gordon Park would be considered the only possible killer a full investigation took place in 1976 and no definitive evidence was uncovered the police appeared steadfast in their conviction of Gordon's guilt but according to them eventually all lines of inquiry ran cold without a body and the fact that Carroll had left home before there simply wasn't enough evidence to even bring Gordon in for questioning the years rolled by and Gordon went on with his life he divorced Carol on grounds of desertion and remarried twice he enjoyed sailing on Coniston waters the same waters that would be his former wife's resting place for the next twenty-one years [Music] Gordon Park was on holiday in France with his third wife in 1997 when his son Jeremy called him to tell him of the grim discovery according to police records in response to this Gordon Park simply replied oh dear he was arrested on his return and questioned by police for two days according to them Park showed little sign of emotion during the interrogation and when he spoke of his wife he described the serial adulterer who had many boyfriends and showed little respect for the sanctity of marriage or family life Gordon Parks somewhat hypocritical comments made no impression on the lawmen and on the grounds of circumstantial evidence alone he was charged with murder and remanded in custody at Preston prison in Lancashire but within a few months the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence and Gordon Park was a free man again another six years passed with no conviction but the police spent that time piecing together any evidence they did have they began new lines of inquiry and even considered other suspects but after everything was taken into account there was only one suspect as far as they were concerned and it was Gordon Park it was now 2003 and forensic science had come a long way since 1997 could the smoking gun as it were still belonged beneath Coniston water women's jewelry and clothing were recovered from the lakes deeper area which would explain the missing clothing which Carol according to her husband had taken with her but there were a couple of things that really caught the law's attention was considering the case the first was the nature in which the knots had been tied in order to secure the body it weren't ordinary knots they were elaborate and professional the kind a mountaineer or sailor would use to secure a boat or climbing rope similar knots were found in the house of Park this was a big feature in the 2007 ITV documentary lady in the lake and was used as a definitive piece of evidence to convict Gordon Park but the Daily Mail website mail online stated in 2010 that the defense had come a separate report from their own expert a man named Robert chisel he said most of the knots on the body were not professional knots but simply granny knots were the police way off in their assumption that Parker tied these knots were they just desperately trying to pin the murder on him or was Gordon Park if indeed guilty too smart to link himself to the murder or using professional knots the second was a piece of rock found at the site of the body according to a geologist the rock was not native to Coniston water again the detectives said that they didn't need to look any further than blue stones the home of Gordon Park where in the garden they found a wall partially made of a rock with the same composition however out was cast over this claim when the police diver who said he had recovered the rock said that he had no recollection of finding it and a defense scientific witness by the name of Kenneth Pye said that there was no proof that the rock had been at the bottom of Coniston water at all a 1997 prison confession also came to light in the early 2000s according to Glenn banks an inmate at Preston prison Park admitted his guilt to him whilst he was on remand seven years earlier when asked about the story Park had given him Bank who was known to have a severe learning disability struggled to get his story straight giving inconsistent details and at one point saying that Gordon Park had killed his wife on a boat in Blackpool it came to light that Glen Banks was so mentally unstable that guidelines for children's court testimonies were followed allowing banks to give his story by a video feed at the eventual trial regardless of bank state of mind and the inconsistencies in his story it was this alleged prison confession and the new forensic evidence that secured Gordon Parks arrest charge and trial for murder all this time it's 2004 and 28 years since Caroline parks disappearance On January 15th 2004 at Barrow Police Station Gordon Park was interviewed again and this time he spoke about his mountaineering hobby an ability to turn the same knots which were found to bind his wife's body however he still denied all accusations that was charged and finally stood trial for murder when his arrest hit the headlines of newspapers a couple by the name of John and John Young came forward to say that they had been on holiday in the Lake District in 1976 and had parked their car next to Coniston water one morning they said it was then that Joan had seen a man who matched the 1976 description of Gordon in a boat dropping a large package overboard Gordon Park contested this but claiming he had sold his boat in June of 1976 but the police already had records and receipts relating to his sailing hobby and the records showed that he had sold his boat in July the month Carroll had vanished the initial police theory was that as Gordon had sailed the lake so often he thought no one would question his actions and he disposed of his wife's body during daylight hours and in plain sight but there were a number of problems with the Young's claim such as the amount of time which had passed before coming forward with the story also the distance they said that they were from the boat would have made it almost impossible for a reliable identification to be made and their description of the boat didn't match that of any Gordon Parker owned finally the spot that they were in was a mile from where Carroll's body was found being a lake a predominantly steel body of water there would have been little movement in Coniston water to move a body weighed down by lead piping but I personally wonder if over the space of 21 years this was at all possible when Gordon Park entered the courtroom in November of 2004 he maintained his innocence and its so for the weeks that followed but when the trial came to a close in March of 2005 it took the jury just ten hours to reach a guilty verdict he was jailed for a minimum term of 15 years it was revealed that Carroll Park was planning a divorce from Gordon with a determination to keep the house and win custody of the children it was upheld by the prosecution that this was the reason Gordon murdered her so subtly and that it happened on the evening of July 17th 1976 following Gordon's returned from Blackpool during the trial at Manchester Crown Court Park suggested that John Rapson Carroll's sister's killer and now a free man was responsible for Carol's murder but the police never considered him a suspect despite knowing that Rapson was in the barrel in furnace area around the time of her disappearance Gordon Park was 32 on the day Carol vanished in 1976 he was 61 when finally found guilty of a murder in 2005 [Music] there were and still are people in the local area who believed he was innocent petitions were made in an attempt to free Gordon Park but in 2008 an appeal against his sentence failed the 2015 book no smoke the shocking truth about British justice or Sandra Layne even used the case as an example of a wrongful conviction Gordon Park took his own life by way of hanging at Lancashire's Gulf prison on January the 25th 2010 it was his 66th birthday his two biological children Jeremy and Rachel headed a campaign in 2014 asking for new DNA tests to be made in the hope that advances in the field would help exonerate their father's name the first photo of Carolyn Parkes body was released at the time of the campaign a postscript to this case and possibly the most tragic feature of all is that the parks adopted daughter Vanessa who was once Carol's niece had by 1976 lost two mothers to murder before the age of nine [Music] you

Channel: Curious World

Views: 302,959

Rating: 4.8893971 out of 5

Keywords: carol ann park, gordon park, the lady in the lake, the lady in the lake trial, the lake district, coniston water, geology, kenneth pye, edmund tapp, cumbria

Id: bICjoDVQ-Jw

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2017