‘I kiss Christopher’s picture every night. But I’m living with the unthinkable – my brother killed my son’
EXCLUSIVE
By Phil Ascough
Pam Cawley didn’t want to talk to the media 40 years ago about the murder of her treasured son, and she’s still uncomfortable doing it now.
But she opened up ten years after the abduction and murder of nine-year-old Christopher Laverack and, in a series of exclusive interviews which have never been published, told of the devastating impact of the incident on her life and on her family.
Now Pam has expanded on that and spoken for the first time about how she felt first to lose her “darling Chris” – and then to find out that the man responsible was her own brother, Melvyn Read.
Pam’s comments from our first meeting in 1994 indicate she was desperate to find out who killed Christopher.
“There’s just one thing I want from life and that’s to find out who did it,” she said.
“Someone robbed me of something that was very, very precious to me and I have been living a false life because nothing can ever take the place of Chris.
“I can’t think of anything I would want to say to the person who killed Chris but all I have been living for is to see them brought to justice. I would feel like putting a knife through them but that would put me behind bars, but I would want them to suffer.”
At the same time she was haunted by the assertion from detectives leading the investigation that the killer knew Christopher and had regular access to the little boy.
MELVYN READ: Christopher’s uncle, who police named as his killer four years after his death in Hull Prison
She said: “Whoever did it can’t have any idea of what they’ve put me through over these years unless it was someone close to me. If it was someone close to me I couldn’t shield them. If I ever found out it was someone I knew I would be the first to put them behind bars.
“I always remember someone telling me that some time I would find out what had happened to Chris and it would make me very happy just knowing. But I also have an uneasy feeling that eventually I will get some awful news that will devastate me, but if I can cope with what happened to Chris I can cope with the rest of it.”
It was almost a premonition, and it came true in August 2012 when police named Read as the killer. Read had died in prison in 2008 after being convicted of sex offences against boys. Police revealed they’d planned to arrest him for the murder as soon as he was released.
Having repeatedly been invited to think the unthinkable, Pam has now had nearly 12 years to come to terms with it. She said she accepts that her brother killed her son, but she’ll never understand it.
She said: “I can’t understand how he could be one of the people who identified Christopher’s body in the way that he did. I can’t understand how he was so supportive after Christopher’s murder.”
Pam revealed that Read used to find garden gnomes for the family to display at their home in Anlaby. He would decorate them in bright colours, often with Christopher’s help. She still has one gnome which Christopher helped to paint.
As Pam and her husband Brian Cawley tried to build a new life together without Christopher, they had a caravan near Whitby. Read helped them get it ready, and when Pam started working in the campsite shop he helped her with moving stock, pricing items and stacking shelves.
She said: “I don’t know how much time he spent with Christopher but Chris used to stay at Kim’s [Christopher’s half-sister] house most weekends. She was usually working in the pub. Her husband lived there and their baby son Martin. My brother lived nearby.”
On the night of Friday March 9, 1984, Pam and Brian dropped Christopher at Kim’s house in Harpham Grove. Kim was working at the Crown pub in Marfleet Lane.
Her husband Steve Hines went there to buy Christopher some crisps, and he stayed for a drink or two, which was not unusual. When he returned he found Martin crying but no sign of Christopher. The police were called, a search was carried out and Christopher’s body was recovered from Beverley Beck, about nine miles away, on the Sunday morning.
He died from a fractured skull and brain injuries. His body was wrapped in a plastic carpet underlay bag and dumped in the Beck on the Friday night. It was weighed down with a rock which was believed to be the murder weapon.
The bag floated to the surface on the Sunday and was found by a dog walker who used his stick to widen a slight tear. He contacted police when he saw what was inside.
A post-mortem examination showed Christopher had been subjected to serious sexual abuse over a period of several months or possibly longer.
Pam will never forgive Hines, for leaving Christopher and Martin in the house, and she refused permission for him to attend Christopher’s funeral in January 1985.
In the early stages of the inquiry she was silenced by her own grief and protected by the police. When she had to make public appearances – a press conference, the inquest and Christopher’s funeral – she felt detached.
“I didn’t take anything in – I felt like I was floating,” she said.
APPEAL: One of the original police posters asking for information
It was the same over the weekend of Christopher’s murder, although sedatives played more of a part then and may have been a factor in her not pushing harder to view her son’s body, a duty which fell to Pam’s husband Brian.
“I wanted to go and see him,” she said.
“I regret to this day that I didn’t see him but the police would not allow it. I blame myself because I should have been stronger about it. All I wanted to know was what Christopher looked like. Brian said he looked like a little angel and just lay there.”
Pam opened up in verse, writing a poem, My Lost Son, which tells of her memories of Christopher, her despair at her loss and her hope that the killer would be brought to justice.
Pam said: “I remember standing round the grave with some of my family. I remember what I was wearing. I don’t remember being in the church. It was a very cold January day. I thought of the poem I had written. I just kept writing and writing to put all my feelings down in a poem.”
She also shared her feelings when she was referred for group counselling sessions at a special unit at Kingston General Hospital, which stood at the junction of Beverley Road and Fountain Road.
Pam said: “I was told it would do me good because I was still on tranquillisers and this would help me cope with things. I had been sitting at home on my own and getting very depressed.
“I was interviewed and asked about what had happened. I wanted to talk about it and I was encouraged to talk about it, but at the same time I felt I couldn’t talk about it because it was an unsolved murder and there were certain details which I had been told should not come out into the open.
“I didn’t think anybody there had been through the sort of thing I was going through. I just wanted to sit in my bed and cry but the sister would pull the curtains back and demand that I get out of bed and stop feeling sorry for myself.
“I had to talk it out with everybody else but they were going on about things like marriages not working out or housing problems. I’d already been through all that and I just thought crying would do me good but they wanted me to talk to everyone. I felt as though I was in a bit of a nut house.
“I suppose in a way it gave me the encouragement to realise that I had been through the sort of problems they had experienced and I had bounced back. In a way it made me stronger.”
Pam, now 86, married her first husband, Brian Bolton, in 1956 and they had four children before they were divorced in 1974. She married Ray Laverack shortly afterwards and Christopher was born in October the same year.
Ray died of motor neurone disease in 1987 and Pam suspects his illness contributed to the friction which had led to their divorce in 1980.
She found happiness with Brian Cawley and they were due to move to Barrow upon Humber as a family in the second week of March in 1984. The move was delayed by Christopher’s murder and when it finally went through they struggled to settle and moved back to East Yorkshire.
Pam worked hard in various jobs which all involved helping other people – cleaning, caring, shop work. She had been a foster carer but a return to that role was blocked.
She said: “We tried to go back to fostering but social services wouldn’t allow it. They were worried about the possible effect on me if the police caught Christopher’s killer.”
CASE FILES: Phil Ascough’s shorthand notes from his first interview with Pam Cawley in 1994; the Humberside Police annual report featuring the murder; and VHS tapes with TV broadcast coverage of the case over the years
Brian worked on the fish dock and between them they were able to keep a nice house and enjoy holidays in Canada and Mallorca as well as caravan and motorhome trips. Pam also loved her trips to Amsterdam to visit Richard, one of her sons from her first marriage.
When we met in Amsterdam nearly 30 years ago, Richard told me: “After the murder I didn’t speak to my mum for a year, which was a shock because I normally spoke to her every day. I have no intention of returning to Hull but we keep in touch and she always has a good time when she comes here. Always! We go out and get p****d! She’s not one to drink heavily but I introduced her to Dutch drinks.”
Brian Cawley died nearly four years ago and Pam has lived alone since then. She is in touch with Richard and his brothers Glyn and Neil, and with her step-sons Andrew, David and John. But she says she is “estranged” from Kim and her grandchildren.
She endures a frailty from arthritis and other conditions and uses a stick to get around the house and a rollator walker when she feels well enough to venture round the block. She feels as though her memory is fading and she fears developing dementia, yet she’s certainly alert, feeding her mind with a rack of puzzle magazines and an infrequent supply of jigsaw puzzles.
“I only do 500-piece puzzles now because the 1,000-piece ones are too difficult,” she said.
“The pieces are too small and I can’t manage the irregular shapes. It’s not easy to find a new puzzle that I haven’t done already.”
Pam knows another anniversary is likely to bring further media requests. She says she’ll continue to ignore them.
“I always hate it when March 9th comes around. It’s the same with Mother’s Day which always follows soon after,” she said.
“I always said I would like to go and place flowers on Christopher’s grave but I won’t do it on March 9th. This year it’s a Saturday so one of my step-sons might be coming to see me but if not I’ll probably just stay in and do my puzzles.”
And before going to bed she’ll kiss her photograph of Christopher, as she has every night for 40 years.
TIMELINE: Key events in tragic story
JANUARY 1984: Frances McFaul convicted of murdering her adoptive mother at Haworth Street in Hull having tried to mislead police by making the scene look like a botched burglary. Frances was having an affair with Steve Hines.
FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1984: Christopher Laverack was abducted from a house in Harpham Grove where his half-sister Kim lived with her husband – Steve Hines – and their baby son. As at Haworth Street the scene was made to look like a burglary gone wrong, leading police to believe the culprit was known to family and was trying to cover their tracks.
Hines had left Christopher at Harpham Grove at about 9.15pm. Christopher was missing when Hines returned at about 10.20pm. The call to police was logged at 10.29pm.
SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 1984: Just after 11am a dog walker spotted a large plastic bag partly submerged in the waters of Beverley Beck. Inside was Christopher’s body. Later that day police issued a statement to inform the media that a body had been found.
Between 5.30pm and 9.30pm the same day a post-mortem examination established Christopher died from a fractured skull and head injuries caused by a weapon which was relatively heavy and used repeatedly with force.
Time of death was placed at between 5pm on the Friday and 8am on the Saturday.
The examination also revealed Christopher had been sexually abused over a substantial period of time – months or even years.
MONDAY, MARCH 12: Police held a press conference to confirm the body was Christopher’s. Local, regional and national media attended, and many of them visited Christopher’s family home in Anlaby.
APRIL 6, 1984: Christopher’s mum Pam Cawley speaks in public for the first time at a press conference.
JANUARY 1985: Christopher’s funeral took place at St Andrew’s Church, Kirk Ella and he was buried at the cemetery near his school, St Andrew’s Primary. Pam refused to allow Steve Hines permission to attend.
MARCH 2002: Melvyn Read, Christopher’s uncle, was arrested for sexually assaulting four young boys. The following year he was jailed for seven and a half years.
FEBRUARY 2008: Read died of cancer while serving his sentence in Hull Prison.
AUGUST 1, 2012: Police confirmed Christopher was killed by Read and declared the case closed.