Mo Lea - Facing the Yorkshire Ripper

FACING THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER

THE ART OF SURVIVAL

THE ART OF SURVIVAL

MO LEA

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

Pen & Sword True Crime

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Mo Lea 2020

ISBN 978 1 52677 757 7

eISBN 978 1 52677 758 4

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52677 759 1

The right of Mo Lea to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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A heartfelt thanks to all my family and friends for their support. To Mum and Dad, Pauline and Robert Lea, who have provided love, calmness, sanctuary and security. Thanks to my brothers Rob Lea and especially Philip Lea, who has supported me wholeheartedly throughout. Thanks to Mike, Roz and Hannah Beason for their reassuring hugs.

I would like to thank Sophy Bassett for her continued ability to make me laugh even in my darkest moments. Thanks also to her parents Linda and Brian Bassett for their friendship and love, and to Lucy, Shaun and Tom Virtue for their long-standing companionship.

I am fortunate to be surrounded by great friends including Dawn Hesketh-Joslin and Janet Emmanuel, inspirational creatives that have spurred me on. Thanks to Yvonne White and David Walker for their generous spirits, kindness and understanding, and to Holly Barnett and Marcus Sanchez for kindly showing me the best of East LA. Thanks to Elizabeth Toogood, who has provided strong guidance and reassurance, and to Paul Frecknall who gave me the final friendly push of encouragement to get this book out there.

Thanks to all my good humored and much-valued colleagues at the Art Centre and Gallery in Bedford for uplifting chats, lots of encouragement and plenty of giggles.

Thanks to Glyn Middleton and Sima Ray who were the first research journalists to enable me to start relaying my story, and to Keith Hellawell, who was the first chief constable to listen to my story with care. Thanks also to Chris Clarke, who kept me informed throughout.

Thanks to Patrick McGrath for many years of kind counselling and to Nik and Eva Speakman, who changed my old ways of thinking, which gave me the courage to complete this book.

Thanks go to the talented filmmaker, Roberto Duque, who gave the story a unique and powerful ending, to my agent Robert Smith and to Carol Ann Lee for their reassurance and belief. Thanks to all the talented and patient staff at Pen and Sword, especially Harriet Fielding and Kate Bohdanowicz.

Special thanks go to my four-legged friend Frederick Jamieson whose company and long walks have kept me grounded.

Last but not least I owe enormous gratitude to Lorna Smith, who saved my life.

I knelt on the highly polished floor in one of the rooms in the Walker Art Gallery. I was hunched over a large piece of grey sugar paper, pressing down hard with my wax crayons trying to get the shapes and lines to resemble the Pre-Raphaelite drawing that I was copying. I remember being discouraged because the colours just werent the same as the painting and that I couldnt get a fine line with the blunt broad edge of the cheap school crayons. The harder I pressed, the worse the marks became. Feeling despondent, I had to make do with what I had, and reluctantly completed the picture.

At the age of 8 I understood that this was just the beginning of an artists journey, one where I would try to replicate what was in front of me as honestly as I could. While I was copying the picture, staring up at the painting, I wondered what was going on, people were eating and drinking, and someone was kicking a whimpering dog.

The painting, by John Everett Millais, illustrated the fable of Isabella and Lorenzo. On one of the dining chairs, a hawk perched eating a white feather, symbolising impending violence. On the white tablecloth, salt had emptied out of its cellar, a symbol of the blood that would be spilled. One dinner plate had a picture of David beheading Goliath and on another, someones entrails were being pecked out by an eagle. On reflection, the painting mirrored the underlying tensions in an otherwise everyday event: demonstrating how the thin veil of civility can disguise fear and terror.

I was huddled underneath the painting, unaware of the symbolic contents above my head. I was more intent on struggling with the surface issues of drawing people, furniture, and long plaited hair. Unbeknown to me, my life would go on to hide a macabre secret just like the painting above me.

My work was chosen to go up on the classroom wall. I should have been pleased, but I knew this act of praise wasnt justified and that I could do much better.

These were my enduring memories of my childhood in Liverpool. I was born in October 1959, and in that autumn term of 1968 I was lucky enough to be able to go to the Walker Art Gallery every week for quite some time. My school, Rice Lane Primary in Walton, understood the importance of art education and my pictures were often up on the classroom walls. After passing the Eleven Plus, I went to Liverpool Girls College where I waited patiently for the weekly art lessons to begin in the sunlit attic rooms of the old Edwardian building. Here I developed a passion for drawing, learned how to use pencil, charcoal, watercolour and pastels, and began to understand the importance of line and the endless subtleties of tone, contrast and colour.

I would often draw when I was on the family holiday, as an escape from petty family squabbles. Drawing made me calm. It was a quiet occupation and the solitude it required gave me much pleasure. Drawing in isolation meant you could make mistakes without retort, reinvent your world, and transform a blank piece of paper into something meaningful. It was comforting and uplifting.

Home life was a time of contrasts from singing in the choir at the local church to trespassing on the fields and derelict railway sidings at the end of our road. I would argue and fight with my brothers and friends and then be lost in thought, trying to draw buttercups and dandelions alone in my little box room.

We lived in a semi-detached house that my mum, Pauline, and dad, Robert, had bought new, soon after their wedding day, They were proud, positive people who embedded a sense of fair play and kindness in us. Dad was out of the house by 7.00 am every weekday as he cycled to work at Ogdens Tobacco factory. Mum would make sure we had polished our shoes before our half-hour walk to the local school. Mum loved the garden which was always full of colour; my favourites were the fragrant wallflowers and the white climbing roses that covered the old coal house in the garden just in front of the kitchen window.