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CHAPTER EIGHT

… And All Things Nice

Once Maxine Buckley and Michael Rigby had pointed out the man who they believed had scared them it was incumbent on their parents to take appropriate steps.

The police were notified and, at 10.20 p.m. on 5 November 1975 WPC Shaw and PC Oliver went to 31 Crawford Street where they spoke with Kiszko regarding the complaint of indecent exposure on 4 October 1975. For the first time in his twenty-three years Stefan Kiszko was to have experience of police officers as inquisitors.

This interview provides an interesting illustration of the power of Charlotte Kiszko compared to the weakness of her son. WPC Shaw’s statement, which was read to the jury at the later trial, says that she ‘spoke to Stefan Ivan Kiszko in the presence of his mother’: it is, for a moment, difficult to believe that she is speaking not of a 14-year-old boy, but of a 23-year-old clerk in the Inland Revenue.

Not that he was, at first, able to say much. The officer explained the nature of their call, saying, ‘I have received a complaint from two girls that a man fitting your description indecently exposed himself to them on Saturday, 4 October 1975, at about 12.45 p.m. in Jackson Street, Rochdale.’ WPC Shaw administered the caution, telling Kiszko that he did not have to say anything unless he wished to do so, but that anything he did say would be taken down and might be given in evidence. But it was Charlotte Kiszko who spoke, saying, ‘You have no right to accuse my son of such things, he is a sick boy, he has only been out of hospital a couple of days, after being in for six weeks,’ and then, ‘My son wouldn’t do a thing like that and I don’t like what you’re saying about him.’ Charlotte was exaggerating; she may not have intended her words to be taken as the literal truth. They would recur later to torment Stefan. The officers then asked Kiszko if he would go into another room with them, but even then they went so far as to ask Charlotte if they could interview him on his own. She, perhaps not entirely unnaturally, asked why the police did not want her there, but she then accepted the explanation that he might be embarrassed to talk in front of her, and let the police and her son go without her into the living room.

Once the police officers had taken Kiszko to a room away from his mother, they were able to direct his attention to 4 October, and to ask him where he had been that day. He replied that he had been with his mother until after lunch, and had later gone out with a friend to take some things to Kings Road, where they were moving. Boxes full of household items tended to confirm that the Kiszkos were indeed moving house. He said that he had been in hospital for six weeks, from 6 August 1975, and had not, therefore, been in hospital on 4 October. He calmly explained that he had been at home with his mother on 4 October, until 3 p.m., and was not, therefore, in the vicinity of Jackson Street at about 12.45 p.m. But when the officers tried gently to give him the opportunity to confess to indecent exposure, with PC Oliver saying, ‘We appreciate that this type of offence is very embarrassing but we understand,’¹ Kiszko became highly agitated and jumped from his seat with the words, ‘I am a civil servant, this is ridiculous, I want my mother here,’ and Charlotte Kiszko, who had been waiting in the hall, doubtless listening in to the conversation, entered to defend her son. Kiszko turned to his mother and said, ‘They have just accused me of exposing myself to some girls,’ to which Charlotte retorted, ‘That’s stupid. He never would do a thing like that.’

Kiszko went on to tell the officers that he did own a car, and showed them his bronze Hillman Avenger, registration number VDK 157 K which was parked in the garage. He explained, however, that he had not driven that or any other car for several weeks, because of his bad leg. He denied owning a parka coat or jacket, but when the police searched the house and found a blue anorak with a hood, and said to him that that coat was just like a parka,² Kiszko replied, ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

The coat was not taken, and the officers, having heard him once more deny indecent exposure, left the house with a warning that they would be making further enquiries. These particular officers were to make no further enquiries in this matter. Instead, they notified the relevant police officers who were investigating the murder of Lesley Molseed, and the reports of Shaw and Oliver joined the forest of paperwork in the incident room, where they would lie, untouched, for several weeks.

Despite the events of late October and early November in Rochdale, the investigation proper (as it was at that time) remained very much on the track laid down by Holland, although by the middle of December it was becoming clear to Dibb and Holland that the flow of information had all but dried up, and that the enquiries in the Rochdale area were nearing completion. It was time for a further review of the entire investigation.

Three hundred and seventy-nine items, including knives, vehicles and clothing had been taken from the crime scene, the body of the child and from suspects, and had been submitted to Ronald Outteridge for examination. He had produced five interim reports. Hundreds of items had been fingerprinted. Photographic negatives found on the moor had been developed.

The data was overwhelming: 12,269 persons and 8,069 vehicles (including 5,700 Morris 1000s) had been recorded in the incident room indices, and a further 7,000 people had been interviewed at the road checks near the scene or in house-to-house enquiries on the estate; 10,070 actions had been raised in the course of the investigation, the majority of which had been completed, and 4,917 statements had been taken. Hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, dry cleaners, local firms and vehicle taxation offices had also participated in the enquiry process, but by the end of 1975, the only outstanding enquiries were the untraced Morris 1000, the white car seen by Emma Tong, and the elimination of six people who were regarded as being strong suspects, although without any evidential basis existing for that suspicion.

As the enquiries on the Lancashire side of the Pennines were clearly nearing completion, a decision was taken on the grounds of cost efficiency to transfer the incident room to Harrison Road Police Station, Halifax. Detective Chief Inspector Little was charged with the transfer of all documentation and Detective Inspector Cooper would manage facilities and telecommunications in Halifax.

It is no criticism of Mr Dibb, Mr Holland, Mr Outteridge or any of the many officers, who had invested hard hours’ work into the investigation, to say that as 1975 was drawing to a close, the prospect of catching the killer of Lesley Molseed did not appear to have improved by a single evidential iota. All that had come forward, from discussions between detectives and scientific staff, was a belief (and it was no more than a belief) that they could be looking for someone who was infertile or with a low or negligible sperm count.

It is quite clear that the incidents of 3 and 4 October and of 5 November represented the beginning of a transitional phase in that investigation. Whilst the police carried out their forensic tests and their examination of motor vehicles; whilst DCS Dibb was taking to the air in a helicopter to trace possible routes taken by the killer, and (more importantly) to add impetus to the publicity machine which was yielding a massive response from the public; and whilst that same officer was appealing to inmates in British jails to give information which might lead to the one type of offender loathed and despised by all ‘normal’ criminals, the transmogrification from the psychological profile reading ‘mentally deranged with sexual deviations’ to identifiable suspect was brought about by the alleged commission of relatively trivial sexual or quasi-sexual offences, and was due in large part to the efforts of the 12-year-old child Maxine Buckley and her mother Sheila.

As we have seen Maxine Buckley made a number of statements to the police. In her first, dated 4 October, she spoke only of the incident of that day. She said that she thought she had seen the man before, and would recognise him if she saw him again. Her second statement was dated 9 October, and dealt with both the Friday (third) and Saturday (fourth) incidents, although she did not think that the same man was involved. The man on the fourth was of a much heavier build. She said that she thought that she had seen this second man before in the area between Vavasour Street and Crawford Street.