Why in the case of Colin Pitchfork, life should mean life
This week, the double murderer and rapist Colin Pitchfork has been released having served 33 years in prison. I don’t believe he should have been released. Some crimes are so heinous that they justify life in prison.
In 1983, he raped and strangled 15-year-old Lynda Mann. Lynda had failed to return home from babysitting and her body was found in the early hours of the following morning near to a local footpath known as The Black Pad.
In 1986, Pitchfork raped and strangled another girl, Dawn Ashworth. Dawn had been out to visit friends one evening but never came home. Her body was found two days later, close to where Lynda’s body had been found in 1983. I will not go into detail, but Dawn’s murder marked an escalation in his offending, it was a particularly violent assault. At this point, Pitchfork was becoming even more dangerous and in my view, had he not been caught, he would have killed again.
The local community around Narborough, Leicestershire, continue to live with the ghosts of the horrendous acts Pitchfork perpetrated. Lynda and Dawn’s lives are unlived, cut short because Pitchfork decided to kill them. His crimes were not committed in some uncontrollable frenzy. He was not some other worldly monster straight from the bowels of hell, driven to kill because of some inherent evil. He chose to do what he did. He decided to rape and kill Lynda and Dawn. He could have decided not to.
Pitchfork’s behaviour, in raping and killing Lynda and Dawn, did not come out of the blue. It was a reflection of his values and beliefs. Pitchfork was a misogynist. He felt entitled to violate them. Through violating them, he ‘owned’ them, they were ‘his’. His entitlement was evident in other behaviour too – for example the extra-marital affair he had. Women existed for Pitchfork. They were there to serve his needs, wants and urges. They were not autonomous, sentient human beings to be loved and respected in relationships of trust and mutuality. They were objects to be used and discarded. These beliefs were at the heart of his misogynistic world view.
He did not simply wake up one day and decide to commit rape and murder. There was an escalation in his behaviour over the course of several years, all grounded in his misogynistic value system.
Pitchfork had been arrested twice for indecent exposure. His first known offence was in February 1979. He attacked a 16-year-old schoolgirl who was on her way home. He came up from behind her, forced her into a field, undid her clothing and put his hand down the front of her trousers. He then thought someone was approaching and might discover him, so he stopped what he was doing and ran off. This was over four years prior to Lynda’s murder. After his second arrest for indecent exposure, he was referred for counselling and it was thought he would ‘grow out’ of the urge to expose himself. As we know, he didn’t.
The year 1979, in which he committed his first known offence, was also the year he started doing volunteer work for a children’s charity. Yes, he volunteered at a children’s charity, chilling isn’t it? This was where he met his wife, whom he married in 1981.
When most of us upset someone or do something to hurt them, we feel bad about it. We feel awkward and shameful. When people like Pitchfork hurt other people, they don’t experience these feelings. They enjoy the power of dominating and humiliating another human being. They have three priorities: me; myself; and I.
Pitchfork continued to look out for himself in the aftermath of the murders. He dodged the mass DNA screening of local men by convincing a colleague to take the test for him. This colleague was overheard talking about this in a local pub and that led to Pitchfork’s arrest.
When Pitchfork was apprehended, he confessed to his crimes. However, these confessions were self-serving, sanitised versions of the brutal reality of the murders of Lynda and Dawn. He claimed the murders weren’t violent. He claimed the victims had removed their own underwear. He claimed that he killed them because they would have identified him. The sadistic nature of the killings was played down considerably.
He pled guilty to the murders, not due to any feelings of remorse, but to enable him to maintain control of the narrative, tell the story he wanted to tell, and prevent the public disclosure of details that would compromise his version of events during a trial.
Much has been made of Pitchfork’s ‘exceptional progress’ in custody, which has included voluntary work undertaken in prison, transferring sheet music to braille for a blindness charity. In someone like Pitchfork, we need to take benevolence with a very liberal pinch of salt. He did charitable work before committing his offences, so this is not evidence of genuine change. Charitable work can often be something that offenders engage in to maintain a veneer of respectability. Appearances are important, a respectable outer shell detracts and deflects from what’s going on beneath the surface.
No doubt that the Parole Board will have seen a range of other evidence that would support the notion of Pitchfork’s ‘change’. We will never know what this evidence is. It is likely to include indication of his remorse for his crimes. Remorse is an essential part of any offender’s rehabilitation.
But how can you tell if someone has genuinely changed or whether they are simply performing remorse? It is incredibly difficult with some offenders. Just look at Pitchfork’s track record of deception, manipulation and generally being a good actor, ‘passing’ as a regular guy when he was anything but.
How does the Parole Board know that the entrenched misogynistic value system that underpinned Pitchfork’s offending has been dismantled and replaced with something more wholesome? How can they be sure that he is not a risk to women and girls?
He will be subject to an additional 36 monitoring conditions, on top of the standard ones that other offenders must abide by. That’s pretty steep. The Ministry of Justice have claimed that he will be one of the most strictly monitored lifers in the community. Do they seriously expect us to believe that the police and probation have the resources to ensure Pitchfork is not violating any of his conditions? They don’t. So, I guess we just have to ‘trust’ him, right? I find this an absolutely terrifying prospect.
He will now be ‘on licence’ for the rest of his life. This means that if he breaks any of his conditions, he could be returned to prison. In the eyes of the law, Pitchfork is still serving a life sentence, but he’s serving it in the community.
In my view, Pitchfork is not serving a life sentence. He is able to go and sit in a coffee shop. He is able to walk down the street. He is able to meet new people. He is able to build a future. These are things that he denied Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. He took away their chance to grow into the capable and accomplished women that they undoubtedly would have become. They never got to decide whether they wanted to travel, go to university, have a career, have a family. He took that away from them.
I don’t think we should condemn Pitchfork to a life of suffering and misery. Because unlike him, I have empathy. I’m of the view that he should remain in prison, with a comfortable and decent standard of living. He can still live a good and fulfilling life in prison, a life with stability and security, where he can continue his charitable work and have a positive impact on others. This life would come with a considerably smaller risk of him harming women and girls than the risk that we now face with him living in the community.
I want to end by posing a question to any member of the Parole Board who signed off on his release:
Would you be happy for Pitchfork to be sitting in the same coffee shop as your 15-year-old daughter / niece / female family friend?
If ‘Yes’, great, there must be some really compelling evidence that he’s 100% reformed. If ‘No’, you’ve made the wrong decision and it will be on you if he chooses to hurt other women and girls.
