Murder On The Isle Of Wight : Episode 479

Welcome to Always True Crime, a podcast network bringing you gripping real-life stories that you won't be able to stop thinking about. Discover your next true crime obsession at AlwaysTrueCrime.com Hello and welcome to episode 479 of the UK True Crime Podcast, I'm Adam, thank you so much for joining me today and a quick reminder to join me for the new True Crime event, which is taking place on the 28th of March in London. True Crime Fest will cost you just 55 pounds, it's a full day of true Crime events with your favourite True Crime Podcasts. We only have 200 tickets to this first event, hopefully of many, so please go and support us and buy your ticket today, that's truecrimefest.co.uk. I've added the website address to the show notes to this episode and I really hope you can join me there, it's going to be a great day. Okay, so before we get into today's story, let's quickly set some context with our guest amongst in-year game, you ready? Top of the UK music charts was the legend who was, is Garath Gates with any one of us, come on I know you have it on your phone. In the US, Nelly with Hot in here was in the top spot and in Australia the top album this month was a Red Hot Chili Peppers and by the way. In the news this month Steve Fosset became the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon, bartenders doing tricks with fire started a major fire in a nightclub in Lima, Peru that killed 25 people and injured over 100. The Queen opened the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and in True Crime news John Taylor, a 46 year old postman from Leeds, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 16 year old Leigh Ann Tienan. Leigh Ann was last seen alive in Leeds City Centre on the 26th of November 2000 and her body was found in the Yorkshire countryside nine months later. So did you get the month in year? It was July 2002, okay so let's go on with today's story. The island of white is located off the south coast of England, approximately 90 miles southwest of London and can be reached by ferry if you have about 10,000 pounds free for the ridiculous the expensive short trip. It's a place I know well as my mum was brought up there and I spent loads of my childhood on the island. It's still a beautiful place to spend time and very popular with foreign exchange students particularly for summer language programmes where they come to enjoy the island's unique environment and welcoming host families which make the island a sort after spot for cultural exchange and language learning. In the summer of 2002, 15 year old Camilla Patterson excitedly left her home in the Danish town of Holbeck for the island of white with all this in mind. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to experience a new country not with the family for a regular summer holiday but instead with 34 like-minded school friends with similar interests and a real passion for adventure. Camilla herself has spired and shared great promise to be an archaeologist or biologist and she demonstrated a real flair for the arts being an accomplished artist who loved to draw and to sketch. Alongside art she also had a huge passion for all things in the natural world. Camilla arrived on the island with the rest of her study group on July 4th, the excitement obvious among them as the promise of three weeks in a whole new environment stretched out ahead. It had been arranged for Camilla to stay with an island-white couple, Steve and Paula Goodwin and established family that provided digs for exchange students every year and they loved welcoming different students into their lives. They lived on station road in braiding, which is a really nice residential space bordered by green fields and hills offering a really lovely backdrop for the children lodging there, as well as being within easy walking distance to local communities and also the train station. Their study group would give them periods of free time to explore and enjoy leisure time in between the English lessons. And along with one of her friends, Camilla had discovered a scenic wooded area upon braiding down, which became something of a go-to place for the pair to visit when they wanted to relax. There was also shopping to be done, of course, so cut loose in a new world, the teenagers revelled in their new surroundings and their differing attractions on offer. On Tuesday the 16th of July, Camilla and two friends were shopping in right, the island's largest town on the northeast coast. It is said that the Beatles hit song to get to ride, was inspired by a trip to Paul McCartney and John Lennon took to ride in the early 60s. A quirky came to fame perhaps, but the town's range of independent shopping at the time was certainly enjoyed by those delights exchange students. And if the days were crowned with things to enjoy, the evenings were also arranged with loads of fun for the students, where the beach party hadn't been organised for later on this particular Tuesday evening. After having had a couple of hours of shopping, Camilla decided she wanted a bit of time for herself and told the two friends that she was with that she was going to head into a special wooded area on braiding downs for some quiet reflective moments and perhaps do some drawing whilst there. Sitting here was nothing new for Camilla, that what she could never have known however on that day was that somebody else lurked there and with the most sinister of intentions. Later that afternoon Camilla had not arrived home to where she was staying which was most unlike her. Stephen Paula, who she was staying with, alerted her friends and some of them went looking for her. At this time there weren't hugely panicked and assumed that she had wandered off somewhere for a while and would attend the beach party later in the evening. Johann Rudin, a 23-year-old economic student at Gothenburg University, was a Swedish activity coordinator and has helped to organise the beach party. He was working on the island during his summer holiday from his own studies. By 10pm the party had ended, but Camilla was nowhere to be seen, she was still not back with the group. Two of her best friends told Johann that she was still missing and had not been seen for any of the beach party that she had been so looking forward to attending. Johann contacted Camilla's host family and spoke to some of her friends, two who advised that she got up into the woods to do some drawing. Johann knew the area well and he knew the area she liked to frequent. So we took a torch with him and with two of Camilla's friends went three towards the woods and into a clearing, but in the darkness that evening something just didn't feel right. The three stopped in the clearing and had a closer look around and it was here that Johann spotted her most horrific sight. There was Camilla and naked body lying face down with her cardigan tied around her neck in a knot. Johann called the police and waited 20 excruciating minutes for them to arrive, wondering if he was in fact just having a nightmare. It didn't feel real. He was then driven to the police station and questioned throughout the night about anything he knew about Camilla and how she may have ended up in the woodsy area on her own. As well as speaking to Johann, police also had the devastating task of tracking and contacting Camilla's parents. Logistically, he has suffered some challenges of course with the family being in Denmark. The Danish Embassy was also informed and arrangements made for Camilla's mum, dad and three sisters to be brought to the island as quickly as possible. They arrived there on Thursday 18th of July with a Danish psychologist accompanying them on the worst journey of their lives. The following morning, Camilla's heartbroken mum was taken by police to the mortuary at St Mary's hospital in Newport, where she formally identified her daughter's body. It is I think impossible to imagine how the family felt at this time. The last time they'd seen their beloved Camilla, she was so full of excitement about what lay ahead for her travel plans. And now here was her mum in a cold mortuary in a foreign country, being asked to identify her daughter's body. The experience didn't end there, she was then taken by police to the very sposset braiding down where Camilla's body had been found, and then finally, for an emotional meeting with Paula and Steve Goodwin. After these somber occasions, the family issued a statement which read, "We will miss our lovely daughter Camilla terribly. She was a happy and lively girl who loved music and animals, especially our cat Victoria. Camilla had a particular gift for art and she loved to draw. We would ask all the press to leave us now to mourn, as we try to come to terms with Camilla's tragic death." Meanwhile Johan, the young man who discovered Camilla's body was offered support after what he'd been three-biddy refused the offer. The discovery and all the horror it had entailed did not even deter him from remaining on the island. He decided he wished to stay there until August, which was when he was due to return home, and Johan refused to speak a toll about Camilla. People back in Johan's part of the world though could not stop talking about what had happened. The story was big news across the whole of Scandinavia, due largely to the fact that high volumes of parents from here, sent their children to England, to study in similar language courses as Camilla had been doing. The dark events on the island were sure to speak plenty of parents from sending their children on school trips. Back on the island to the shock waves were palpable. The couple that Camilla had been lodging with said, "This is a huge shock, and words cannot describe how sorry we feel for the family." She was a lovely girl and a brilliant artist. We loved her as soon as she came to us and we got on well. We are dealing with the situation as best we can. The police inquiry began in earnest and they didn't need to wait long, until there were major developments with the investigation. On the night of Wednesday, the 17th of July, a man entered a phone box in a village of fresh water on the island of white on the northwest of the island and he phoned police. He told him that he was the man responsible for murdering Camilla Pettison. As you know, with these types of confessions, police of course have to treat them with caution in the event they are merely a hoax of some type, which we have sadly heard many times on this podcast, but equally they can't be ignored. They are being able to quickly trace the phone box, officers race there, where they found a middle-aged, innocuous looking man. This was 52-year-old Richard Kemp, who lived in Gossport, in Hampshire, just over the soland from the island. In a black and red rucksack which she was carrying, police found a written note penned by the man it read the following. I confessed to killing a young 14-year-old girl on braiding down. I don't know why. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why, I'm mad at how I just don't know. I could have let her go but I didn't. She was a nice intelligent girl. She was beautiful in fact. I wasn't even sexually aroused. I know how my problem started, but never told anyone before. This is the whole truth I'm not lying. I have nothing to live for now. I was a Christian until yesterday afternoon. The following day, Detective Superintendent Alan Betts updated a curious media about the man they had taken him for questioning. He said they'd only started to question the suspects at 11am that day, as the man had spent the previous evening and part of that morning in hospital. The detective refused to be drawn on how the suspect had been injured, but he denied that it's because he was suffering from mental health issues, and now did that he had been taken to hospital to provide police with the assurance that he was fit for questioning. He would then remain in custody until the police had finished interviewing him. That later transpired that the real reason he'd been admitted to hospital was because of the failed suicide attempt. Kemp had taken up to 90 paracetamol tablets and slashed his own penis with a knife, before staggering to the phone box to make his confession called to the police. Kemp told police that the letter he'd written had been intended to be discovered on his own dead body, but his suicide attempt had failed. On the evening of Friday the 90th of July, 52-odd Richard Kemp was charged with murder by Hampshire police. They looked deeper into the background of this man to find that Kemp was a maintenance worker, who'd been employed at Gothsport's submarine museum for the past 20 years, and was believed to be an unholiday on the island at the time of the murder. People who knew him were utterly shocked to his arrest. Kemp was even a member of Gothsport Salvation Army, and to all intents and purposes he seemed to be a decent man, at least on the surface. This reaction from a neighbour was typical of the responses given to reporters. I'm really shocked and surprised, he is such a lovely man, and I don't think he could ever be involved in anything like this. This neighbour continued that Kemp was a keen rambler, and told him in the past that he would regularly go on week-long holiday on of white and sometimes devon. Detectives came across similar sentiments from Kemp's work colleagues, who also portrayed him as a clean cut man, but perhaps something of a loner, of course nothing wrong in that. For two decades single man Kemp had worked at the submarine museum, and the manager there described the feeling amongst the staff as being simply stunned at his arrest. As shocked as people were though, and despite these glowing character references, Richard Kemp was now the prime suspect for Kemp's murder, and was well and truly within the justice process. On the 20th of July he appeared at Newport magistrate's court on the island, accused of murdering Kemp. He spoke only to confirm his name in address, and was remanded in custody, until the case was heard again at Winchester Crown Court at the end of July. During interviews with the police, Kemp freely outlined the awful truth of what happened in the woods with Camilla. He explained how he enjoyed visiting the downs, and he liked to walk around the quiet area naked, and would sometimes masturbate there. On the day of Camilla's death, Kemp had been walking around the area completely naked. Minutes before Camilla arrived there, he'd spotted a group of walkers, so decided to pull his pants back on. But when he saw Camilla, and realised that the walkers had moved on, he suddenly appeared in front of her, imagining it this middle-aged man wearing just pants a pair of shoes, and his heavy frame glasses. He admitted to police that she was, understandably, terrified by the sight. It was at this point that Kemp grabbed Camilla, twisted her around and dragged her into nearby bushes. Here he stripped and assaulted her, before strangling her with her own cardigan, who said, "I think I killed her because you could have recognised me, but it all just sort of happens. I was thinking about the forensic things that's why I never kissed her. I think it's because you could have recognised me. I thought then I have to kill her. I don't know why. I could have let her go." He then headed back to the ferry and home to Gosport, once home. He tried to destroy any incriminating evidence. He dumped the rucksack he'd been carrying. He disposed of the clothes he'd been wearing that day, and he even threw away Camilla's sketchbook, her pencils, and watch that he'd wrench from her wrists. Meanwhile away from the grimness of the police investigation, those were known Camilla best gathered to remember her. Emotional scenes played out in the island, as scores of people came together. They packed into a small church for a memorial service, which was led by the Reverend Howard Cunnington. He explained how the service was a chance for the young people to be together, and share in a time of music and prayer, in memory of their friends. The service incorporated a song sung by a group of Swedish foreign exchange students who were staying with the church. A candle was then lit, prayer-spoken, and a minute silence in respect of Camilla was observed. Following the ceremony at terrible scenes, groups of teenagers stood weeping silently in the churchyard, as a union flag was lower to half-master. With a week of their scheduled trip remaining, the exchange group were redding themselves to travel home, but of course, these children were the lucky ones, they were at least returning home. In May 2003, a letter under a year since Camilla's death, Richard chemits the trial at Winchester Crown Court. He denied murder, but admitted manslaughter, through diminished responsibility. The trial heard how Kempered not written just the letter we mentioned earlier, but four other confessional letters to both his parents and his friends at the Salvation Army. For the junior members of the public and of course Camilla's family, looking at the man behind the transparent protective screens which surrounded the dock in court number three, they sought a pathetic, somewhat pathetic man before them, but surely not someone who looked capable of carrying out such a terrible act. It was revealed that Kempered's psychiatrist, they had started to walk naked in the woods and carry out other minor and decent assaults about 18 months before Camilla's death. During the trial the QC summed up Kempered's personality. Richard Kempered's a sexual deviant who is quite capable of carrying out a normal life, who simply chose to kill, to avoid detection. And there to the outside world, Kemper appeared relatively normal, whatever that means. The junior five women and seven men, heard how he had a very troubling history of sexual offending and harbored violent fantasies against children. He'd spent eight years abroad more hospital from 1973 to 1981, following four sexual attacks on children. One of the doctors called to give evidence argued that Kemper suffered from the psychopathic disorder, and his fantasies against children could rise to the surface, some of which he would act upon. There had been no doubt as to whether or not Kemper murdered Kemilla, this was not disputed. The issue here was if the proper verdict should be murder or manslaughter, something that the prosecution of course were in no doubt about. The prosecutors had told the jury that from the evidence on offer, there was no doubt it was murder. He said that Kemper's confession proved he'd understood exactly what he was doing when he murdered Kemilla. His understanding and responsibility to what he did is, we say, undermined. He chose to kill this girl to avoid recognition and detection. The letter he wrote to his parents was also disclosed in court, it said, "Dear mum and dad, how will you ever be able to forgive me for what I've done? If you can, forget all about me, forget I ever lived. I have let everyone down, and now I must end it all. I cannot face prism for the rest of my life. Goodbye. On my love, Richard." The pathologist who performed the post-mortem on Kemilla's body confirmed to the court she died as a result of strangulation, and said the breezes and grazes on her body and face suggested she put up a struggle before meeting her death. In mitigation, Kemper's defence team could offer very little. There's little to say, the defendant wishes to make public how truly a party is by its own actions. Whether or not that was true, it doesn't really matter, does it? The jury took very little time to reach her own conclusions. Following an hour in a court of deliberations, the foreman of the jury announced the unanimous verdict, guilty of murder. Upon which Kemilla's mum, he'd been present throughout the five-day trial with her eldest daughter, swayed forward uncontrollably before she was steady by the detective. In sentencing Kemper's life in prison the judge warned him, "You'll be a serious and persistent danger to young people unless you remain in custody. It is my judgement that it'll be most unlikely they'll ever be safe to release you." A very small mercy among the horror is that Kemilla must have lost consciousness within a few seconds of the literature being applied. There is a striking and chilling feature of the case. The apparent total, clinical recall you have of the details of what you did and the reasons that you were doing it. After the case, Detective Sergeant Heidi Oliver, who'd briefly been overcome with emotion after the verdict said, "I found this investigation one of the most harrowing that I've been involved in during my 23 years of police service. This was an unprovoked and evil attack upon an innocent and vulnerable girl. He deprived Kemilla with the life that lay before her and deprived her family of a loving daughter and sister. Their pain is hard to even begin to imagine and our hearts go out to them." So what do you make of what we've heard today? The first thing I would say is we sometimes hear about cases of people flashing as it was called revealing themselves to young people and in some cases almost treat as a joke. But as we can see from the escalation in Kemps offenses, there is nothing at all funny about this crime. Then to think that a monster like Kemp lived in plain sight among us for so long is terrifying, as to so many others, of course. And then there's the contrast of the innocent Kemilla, enjoying the beauty of braiding downs, not even thinking for a moment why would she, that in a place of such tranquility that evil could lurk, that as we've heard so many times before on this podcast, danger in the form of people like Kemp can be found in places of the greatest beauty and where we expect it the least. Today tucked away in the serenity of the braiding downwards, a poignant memorial stands as a touching celebration to the life of Kemilla Pettison. The statue, which is of a young girl, stands tall in the wooded area, carved out of a tree by a wood sculptor. The carving is based upon one of Kemilla's own drawings and in the hand of the sculpture is a white admirable butterfly. The significance of this, being the name Kemilla, is a Latin name for the white admirable. Also carved upon the sculpture, as several woodland animals, all lovingly carved into this special memorial for Kemilla, who loved both art and wildlife. And yet this life of promise and adventure, being lived by Kemilla, was snatched away from her when she was just 15 years old. And as we finished today, our thoughts with the family and friends of Kemilla, and for all those young people who have lost their lives to violence, when their lives have only really just begun. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the UK True Crime Podcast. If you want to support this podcast, listen totally advert free, just imagine that for a second, and gain instant access to 100 of my special bonus episodes, why not join my community Patreon, there are almost 900 of us. It really matters to me quite simply, as this is what enables me to produce free content every week. It costs less than the price of a coffee a month, than you can cancel at any time. A huge thank you is always to all my patrons, but especially the new members this week, that is, Sue Richards, Rachel Sharp, welcome back Rachel, Alex Syme and Martin Black. Thank you so much for your support, which is so much appreciated. The link to Patreon is in my show notes, remember it's super cheap, and you can leave anytime, not that you're want to, of course. And don't forget to get your ticket for truecrimefest.co.uk, March 28 in London, look forward to seeing you there. And finally, it's the true crime catch up tomorrow, where I'm being steered, but we're chatting about the West Midlands police force, and all the issues around them for the last few days. Okay, so that's all for me for another week, unlike the ex-chief comfortable, of the West Midlands police. I won't be retiring on a very comfortable, goal-plated forepension, but instead, I'll be back here next week. So what I do there, do your idea. So until we speak again on Tuesday, please take it easy out there. And despite the others, and as we both know, it's always the others, stay classy. Cheerio for now.