@asyousay
Perhaps these digs show that the police do
not in fact have anything else on JC, and are an attempt to get more. All they've got is that they think he looks a bit like a bloke seen (with someone who may have been SJL) by someone who later imagined and retracted an abduction in the street; that he was one of 30 or so rapists recently released from the Scrubs; that he faked a plate that some people think vaguely refers to SJL; and that it's the sort of thing he'd do. Whatever the police do have on him must have been presented to the CPS and found inadequate, so the only way they're going to get evidence is by finding her at a location that associates her with him.
DV suggests the police did the digs because they found out he was reinvestigating the case freelance and they wanted to refix JC's guilt into the public consciousness. They may also have done this to ensure that the Parole Board doesn't let him out this year.
@Terryb808
If we pick apart DV's book, he broadly seems to me to reason as follows.
SJL did not go to 37SR for several reasons. One, he car was never seen there; two, she was never seen there; three, she took no keys to the house; four, no Mr Kipper was known to Sturgis; five, he has an idea where the made-up name came from; and six, she had another errand to run.
She went instead to the PoW, the only other plausible destination. She is knows to have lost stuff there, apparently borne out by several members of the pub's staff - CV, his wife, the permanent landlord.
I'm with him so far, but it now begins to go a bit haywire.
First, we have no idea and DV offers no suggestions as to who she was with when she lost her stuff at the pub. We know it wasn't AL because she spoke to him on the phone, meaning he was elsewhere. That evening the relief landlord found her stuff. Next day he and perhaps others spoke to her, depending on when her bank put her in touch with the pub and who was around when she called. But the relief landlord maintains she never arrived. DV changes the relief manager's name to "Clive Vole" and then concludes she died at the pub, possibly by accident. He now wants a forensic search of the pub.
The permanent manager and his wife were gone for two weeks before SJL even left her office. The other people at the pub were CV, his partner, and a cellarman. The cellarman is not mentioned and CV's wife totally refuses to engage with DV. The inference one tends unavoidably to draw is that CV knows something about this.
However, DV gives no motive at all for CV to kill her. He would have to be a reflexive sex attacker who read the diary, decided it could be traded rather than given back, and gets her to the pub intending to proposition her. He's thought all this up from scratch based simply on finding the diary - there's no evidence he even knew what she looked like at that point. When she turns up and she's quite the babe, he duly tries it on with her, she fights back and he then kills and hides her.
This scenario calls for serious thinking on his feet. First of all, where are his partner and the cellarman during all this? Next, he's got to hide her body. But he's also got to get rid of her car because he can't have this found near the pub. He has her Ford car key, but all 1980s Ford keys looked the same, Ford had a 30% UK market share, so hers could be any of maybe 40 or 50 Fords parked within however many nearby streets. So first he has to find her car. Then he has to get rid of it and get back without anyone noticing his absence. Then he has to act normal.
It would surely be far safer to fake an accident.
I was washing some glasses when she arrived, and my hands were wet, officer, so I said If you pop down those stairs, love, your stuff's on the fuse box...then there was a crash, see, and she'd fallen. It's so upsetting, officer. That's why I'm so sweaty and uncomfortable.
If this
was an accident, on what planet is hiding it the reflexive and best course? You cover it up by concealing her body on or near the premises and denying she was ever there? If you're CV and this is what you're thinking about doing, what about the several people who probably knew she was headed there? There's CV's partner, possibly; the permanent landlord and his wife; the cellarman; the staff at the bank; colleagues at her office who either overheard the calls, or whom SJL told where she was going. How do you persuade these people to forget she was headed there? Why don't you just say, there's been an accident?
In either case, there is the matter of the other phone calls to the pub. CV knew for sure that two people knew that SJL was headed there, but they didn't know when. If you've killed her or you intend to, what if these people turn up looking for her? And why did those two callers never get in touch with the police to say,
I know where she was really going?
What we are left with is that up to seven people knew SJL was heading for that pub: the regular landlord, his wife, CV, CV's partner, the cellarman, and the two callers. The first two had left before she could have got there. CV knew she was coming because he spoke to her. He volunteered as much to the police at the time and to DV recently so he doesn't appear to be hiding anything. We don't know about the other four. DV was not able to speak to CV's partner but she behaved very oddly; the cellarman is not even mentioned; and the two mystery callers are just that.
I conclude we need to know more about what CV's partner saw and knew, and who the callers could have been.
