A Forgotten South Yorkshire Murder / Edith Paton / David Hollidge

Every case, we cover starts with a question about human behaviour. Today, we have one for you. We're running a brief survey to better understand how you experience the show. It only takes a couple of minutes. And does a thank you completing it gives you the chance to win one of three signed copies of a They Walk Among Us book. You'll find the survey link right now in the show notes of this episode. This episode contains distressing themes and descriptions of violence. This podcast is intended for a mature audience. Listen, a caution is advised. The quiet South Yorkshire village of Candley was shaken by a violent killing. Prisha mounted on detectives to find answers. But the case would eventually be decided by jury that her two conflicting accounts are the same person. Welcome to They Walk Among Us, a podcast dedicated to UK True Crime. This is the 63rd in a series of bonus episodes. Candley and Don Kaster was largely shaped by the years that followed the Second World War. As the area expanded, new housing estates began to spread across what had once been opened land on the edge of the village, built to accommodate working families and returning service members in need of affordable homes. By the early 1980s, much of Candley consisted of semi-detached houses and short terraces constructed during the postwar boom. Most outsiders recognized the area only for its towering twin water towers visible for miles across South Yorkshire. To residents though, the village was simply home. Familiar streets, neighbors who knew one another and the kind of place where things rarely went unnoticed. That was why the events of Saturday April 24th, 1982, was such a shock to the villages. The body of an elderly woman was found inside the kitchen in a house on St Wilfrid's Road, located on the boundary to Bezeka. From the moment officers arrived, it was obvious they were not dealing with a natural death. The woman had suffered severe injuries and investigators would later reveal that her body had been undiscovered for more than 24 hours. Her name was Edith Emily Patton. She was 83 years old when she died and although she had heart trouble, she had been active for her rage and fiercely independent. Friends and neighbors would recount how Edith was always well dressed and kept to tidy home. Years earlier, she could lost her son during the Second World War and later her husband, leaving her to spend her final years living alone. News of the killing spread quickly through Cantley. By the following morning more than 100 police officers had descended on the village, as detectives began what local newspapers would soon describe as a major murder hunt. The next day's paper revealed the brutality of what occurred when it was revealed that Edith had died in a vicious attack. As the press were trying to find out more about what had happened and who Edith was, detectives were beginning to piece together the events that unfolded inside the small house on St Wilfrid's Road. A neighbor who did not wish to be named explain that she thought it odd that Edith's garden gate was open before the killing. She had always kept it closed. Edith was not the sort of person to let a stranger into her home. Her friend Dorothy Stevenson told reporters that she used to regularly call into visit Edith and they would have long chats together. She was someone who loved company. It was Dorothy who found Edith in the kitchen. She was lying face down and a pint of cold fishing chips had been left on the armchair. At first Dorothy thought her friend had died in an nasty fool before she realised that it wasn't an accident. There were some suspicious looking bloody marks on Edith's face. A senior police spokesperson later disclosed that she had suffered defensive wounds, evidence that the elderly widow had struggled desperately against her attacker. She was obviously a fit old lady for her rage and she put up quite a fight, the officer said. This was a vicious attack on a defenseless old lady. The same spokesperson also revealed a detail that would come up in numerous times throughout the investigation. Detectives believe the killer had used an unusually thin weapon, a very slender instrument as it was described. However, despite extensive searches, the murder weapon remained missing. A post-mortem examination was later conducted and it was concluded Edith Patton had been stabbed to death. A week after Edith's murder, detectives were still no closer to identifying her killer. Many in Canley had assumed the culprit would be swiftly arrested, however the investigation was proving difficult, leaving villagers and the people of Donkaster increasingly troubled. All they knew so far was that Edith had been shopping on the morning of Friday April 23rd and returned home around 1pm. Considering a plate of half-eaten fish and chips had been left out, this suggested she had been interrupted during a meal. The officer leading the inquiry detective superintendent Peter Owen responded with an unusual and highly-targeted public appeal. Rather than addressing the town as a whole, he spoke directly to the women of Donkaster. Someone is inadvertently or intentionally shielding their killer. This woman suffered a very brutal death and we are appealing to wives, mothers and girlfriends to help us. Investigators believe the answer might not come from hardened criminals or professional informants, but from ordinary people who had noticed subtle changes in the behavior of their loved ones. Detectives urge women to think carefully about the men in their lives, whether a husband, boyfriend, son or acquaintance had acted differently in the day since the murder. Detective Superintendent Owen assured the public that any information would be handled in complete confidence. Furthermore, the police revealed they were trying to identify a young man seen near the scene around the estimated time of Edith Patton's death. Witnesses described him as approximately 18 years old with short hair and running through the area shortly before the alarm was raised. Detectives were keen to trace and question him. Then exactly one week after the investigation began, the police employed another tactic in the hope of obtaining new details from potential witnesses. A 76-year-old local woman Annie Swinn agreed to take part in a reconstruction of Edith Patton's final movements. According to newspaper reports, the violence here bore an uncanny resemblance to the murdered widow. Accompanied by detectives and photographers, she walked the streets of Cantley retracing the victim's journey. Local and national newspapers documented the appeal under headlines such as retracing steps and look alike in killer hunt. The idea was simple. The somebody somewhere might suddenly remember seeing something important. But despite the publicity, the reconstruction failed to produce the breakthrough detectives desperately needed. When the breakthrough finally came, it was not because of the widely publicised reconstruction, nor from detectives superintendant Owens appealed to the women of Donkaster. It did not even come from a schoolboy whose account would later raise some questions about the case. Instead it was routine police work. Detectives learned that just days before Edith Patton was killed, two young council workers had been inside her home. One of them was 21-year-old David Mark College. David College was married, live locally and worked for the council as a gardener and labourer. He seemed on the surface at least an unremarkable young man, but there were details in his background that reporters would later seize upon. College had spent much of a complex childhood in care, and as the case garnered national attention, the process. dress repeatedly referred to him as a former Bernardo's boy. Earlier in the week before the murder, Hollige and a fellow-worker Paul Reilly had been assigned to cut the grass outside Edith Patton's council house. Edith had invited the two men inside and made them tea while they took a break from their duties. At some point during the conversation, Edith remarked on how much Hollige resembled her nephew. Curious about the similarity, she reportedly went to fetch a photograph to show them. It was an interaction that was not out of the ordinary, but detectives would later become interested in the fact that Hollige had returned to the property more than once. Everdon subsequently heard in court revealed that he had been allowed to leave a lawnmower in Edith's garden overnight after finishing work there earlier in the week of her death. When detectives finally sat David Hollige down for questioning, he denied any involvement in Edith Patton's murder. This isn't true, he insisted after his arrest. Under repeated questioning, Hollige told officers that he had nothing to do with the killing. Everdon's later heard in court suggested the interview stretched on over a sustained period before his account began to change. At some point, Hollige broke down and told detectives he wanted to see his wife before saying anything further. "Let me do one decent thing in my life," he said, "let me tell her myself." But David Hollige did not wait. Before Leslie Hollige even arrived at the police station, he confessed making it clear he was the only one involved. Paul Riley a co-worker who had visited Edith's home with Hollige was being detained at the time. "I did it," Hollige insisted, "Paul had nothing to do with it." Detective Superintendent Peter Rowan later asked him why he killed Edith. Hollige responded bluntly, "It doesn't matter why. Murder is murder, whatever the reason." When his wife finally arrived at the station, Hollige became emotional, his eyes filling with tears as he directly admitted the crime. After refusing legal representation, Hollige reportedly said, "I don't deserve any help after what I've done." What followed was a detailed confession in which he attempted to explain the violence that had unfolded inside Edith's patterns home. According to Hollige, he had gone to the house intending to collect the lawnmower he had left in the garden early at that week. He claimed he knocked on the door and that when Edith answered, she was holding a carving fork. For reasons he struggled to explain, he believed she was about to attack him. "I shoved her away," he said, "before I knew it, it was in her. I might have done it twelve or twenty times, I just don't know." The entire confession was later read to the jury at Sheffield Crown Court. Hollige described events unfolding in a blur of panic and confusion. "I pushed open the door and shouted hello or something like that, and a fork came at me. I did not really see the old lady. It happened so fast. I just grabbed her and pushed away. It must have gone into her," she was saying, "Oh God, and was then on her knees." What happened next did not entirely align with the claims of sudden panic that Hollige was trying to present. "I went to touch her and take the fork. I was looking at her and had the fork in my hand. I must have stabbed her again. I just went crazy." Throughout the confession, Hollige insisted he had never intended to kill Edith Patton. He told detectives he had originally been on his way to visit his wife's grandmother who lived nearby, but when she was not at home, he decided to collect the lawnmower from Edith's property instead. Describing his previous interactions with Edith, Hollige said, "She seemed an eye-sold lady. I had always got on well with her before." Again and again, he returned to the same explanation, panic. "When you go crazy, you go crazy. I did not realize what was going on. I just panicked." But the account did not end there. "I came round and just stopped. My hand had blood on it. I just looked at it and couldn't believe it. I put some water in a bowl and wiped it off." Then came a final detail that prosecutors would like to seize upon at the trial. "I kept looking at her, then I thought I'd better go, so I just went. I thought to myself, let's be cool." To the prosecution, those final words painted a very different picture from the confused frenzy, Hollige claimed had overtaken him. On Tuesday, May 4, 1982, David Hollige from St James Street in Donkaster appeared before the magistrates, charged with a murder of 83-year-old Edith Patton, and he was remanded into custody. By the time the case eventually reached Sheffield Crown Court, 8 months had passed, and Hollige had spent his 22nd birthday behind bars. The trial of David Mark Hollige opened in December 1982 before Mr Justice Lawson. Acting for the Crown was Nigel Fricker QC, who outlined the prosecution's case built on two arguments, the defendant's own confession and the forensic evidence recovered after the killing. Jurors heard that the police had seized clothing from Hollige's flat shortly after his arrest. Scientific examination of the items would become a key part of the case. Alfred Farragher, who was described as a home office scientific officer, told the court that blood traces found on the clothing matched a rare blood group shared by Edith Patton. Blood grouping was all they could go on, as DNA analysis was at least five years away. Investigators had also identified fibers from the pensioner's jumper on Hollige's clothes, microscopic evidence that prosecutors argued directly connected him to the attack. It was the medical evidence that revealed Edith Patton's final moments. Professor Alan Asha, the pathologist who conducted the post-mortem examination, described a prolonged and violent assault. Edith had suffered multiple deep puncher wounds to the chest and abdomen. The force of the attack had penetrated vital organs, including the heart lungs and liver. The injuries were not confined to the fatal wounds alone. The court heard that Edith's hands bore cuts and slicing injuries consistent with defensive wounds. Signs, the pathologist believed that she had desperately tried to protect herself during the attack. Scratches and bruising were also found on her face. Professor Asha concluded that death would likely have occurred quickly as a result of catastrophic internal bleeding. The trial then heard from an unexpected witness, a 10-year-old schoolboy named Peter Kelly. On the day Edith Patton was killed, he had been attending school directly opposite her home. He recalled seeing a blond teenager, whom he estimated to be around 15 years old, running from Edith's garden at approximately 1 p.m. The sighting introduced some uncertainty into the case. The description did not match David Hollidge. Hollidge was in his early 20s and the schoolboy's account also differed from the earlier police description of a short-haired 18-year-old scene in the area around the time of the murder. After the youth scene running away had been the killer, an important witness or simply someone entirely unrelated to the crime was never resolved during the trial. Furthermore one crucial piece of evidence remained missing. Despite extensive searches involving around 20 police officers, detectives had never recovered the murder weapon. The court heard the officers had spent two weeks coming through a refused tip as well as searching areas around Cantley, but the slender weapon described early in the investigation had vanished without a trace. David Hollidge entered the witness box. The jury heard yet another version of events, one that differed substantially from the confession he had previously given to the police. Hollidge was now claiming that his confession was not true. He told the court he had admitted to the killing only because he was frightened and exhausted by the pressure of police questioning. According to this new account, Edith Patton was already dead by the time he arrived at her home. He said he had gone there simply intending to talk. "At first I thought she had just fallen, I saw some blood on her so I bent down and turned her over a bit to pull her up." What Hollidge claimed happened next closely mirrored some of the physical evidence detectives had found after the killing, particularly the traces of blood discovered on his clothing. He said, "When she didn't move, I presume she was dead. There was blood all over. I let her go, put her down. I had blood on my hands or I tried to rub it off. It didn't come off. There was a bowl and I washed my hands in that." The explanation that a fence argued accounted for the forensic evidence. Hollidge admitted leaving the scene without raising the alarm, but insisted panic not guilt had driven his actions. "I didn't know what to do. I just wanted to go." But why if he was innocent would he confess? Hollidge insisted the answer lay in fear rather than the truth. By the time he finally admitted to the murder a week later, he claimed he felt trapped by the investigation and he was convinced that the police had already decided he was responsible. "I just wanted everyone to forget. I just wanted to be left alone. I didn't care what they did to me." Describing the interviews with detectives, he alleged that officers repeatedly insisted he was the killer until he eventually gave in. They just kept on at me, saying it was me anyway, the way they were going, there was no way they would believe me. The jury were now left with two versions of what happened. The defendant had provided the police with a detailed confession describing a violent attack inside Edith Patton's home, but from the witness box he was claiming his entire story had been invented under pressure. As the trial drew to a close, the judge Mr. Justice Lawson provided a summary of the case, focusing the jury's attention on a single piece of evidence that the prosecution believed cut through all the competing versions of events. He's centered on the weapon. The judge said, "You may think that there is something unusual about the way in which Mrs. Patton was killed. The fatal stab wounds were inflicted with a two-pronged instrument if you accept the pathologist's view." That detail mattered because based on the medical evidence, the wounds had been hidden beneath Edith Patton's clothing. Someone simply discovering the body on the floor as David Hollidge later claimed he had done would not necessarily have known what had caused the injuries. Mr. Justice Lawson told the jury, "Only the killer can tell you what weapon was used. It was the defendant who first told police that it was a fork." Prosecutor Nigel Fricker QC had argued that Hollidge's own words had revealed knowledge only the attacker could have possessed. He also challenged the defendant's repeated insistence that the killing had happened in a blind panic. The prosecutor urged jurors to consider not only the violence of the attack, but what happened afterwards. According to Fricker, the defendant had not fled in terror or confusion. Instead, he had paused long enough to wash blood from his hands and compose himself before leaving the scene. The prosecution argued that whatever emotional state Hollidge later claimed to have been in, the sustained nature of the attack and the calm actions that followed it pointed not to confusion but to responsibility. On Monday, December 20, 1982, the trial reached its conclusion. The jury returned with a unanimous verdict. In the public gallery, David Hollidge's wife Leslie listened as the decision was read aloud. Moments later, she broke down into tears and had to be helped from the courtroom by ashes. Hollidge was found guilty of the murder of Edith Patton. So where are we now? Although David Hollidge had been convicted of murder and sentence to life in prison, the case did not end with the jury's verdict at Sheffield Crown Court. Hollidge later attempted to challenge his conviction, but by then he had already missed the deadline to file an appeal. He asked the court of appeal to grant him an extension of almost six months beyond the final submission date. The initial request was rejected by a single judge. Hollidge then exercised his right to renew the application before the full court. The matter came before the court of appeal on Tuesday, June 19, 1984, the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Sitting on the case were Lord Justice O'Connor and Sir John Thompson. Perhaps aware of what would come next, Hollidge was not present in court. The argument he sought to advance was not new. During his original trial, the defence had already raised claims that another individual had at some stage attempted to confess to Edith Patton's murder. The appeal judges were unimpressed by the suggestion. Delivering the court's judgement, Lord Justice O'Connor bluntly dismissed the argument. The ground-advanced, indeed this was put at the trial, is that some other busy body had also tried to confess to the crime. This was all investigated and there were no grounds whatsoever for thinking that this applicant was not the guilty party. The court refused Hollidge's request for an extension. The judges added that even if the appeal application had been submitted within the proper deadline, it was still a failed. With that, the legal avenues in the case came to an end. For the village of Cantley, however, the memory of what happened on St Wilfrid's road lingered far longer than the court proceedings. Not only because of the brutality of the murder, but because it had unfolded in the sort of ordinary streets where residents believe nothing like that could ever happen to them. Thank you for listening and special thanks to our patrons for their support. For more information about this episode, please refer to the show notes or visit our website. They walkamungaspodcast.com