I Know It Was You

Chapter 9

NINE

David Jarrett still seethed with indignation and anger.

In prison, serving a sentence of thirty-two years for a crime he did not commit.

When first sentenced, he’d been held in HMP Wakefield, the Category A prison that is home to some of the most evil and dangerous men ever convicted and known as ‘Monster Mansion.’

Amongst those who have been incarcerated there are the likes of David Harker who killed and dismembered Julie Patterson and ate some of her flesh with pasta. Ian Huntley the notorious killer of ten-year-old Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman is serving a minimum of forty years, although now transferred to Frankland jail in Durham. Roy Whiting, a known paedophile who abducted and murdered eight-year-old Sara Payne is another killer serving a minimum of forty years.

Doctor Harold Shipman killed at least 218 victims, mostly elderly ladies, and received a whole life tariff. However, he had the good grace to hang himself in his cell.

Ian Watkins, the singer with the group Lost Prophets who had been sentenced to thirty-five years for child s*x offences had also spent time at Wakefield, as did Mark Hobson who killed four women, including his girlfriend and her twin sister. Hobson also attacked fellow inmate Ian Huntley with boiling water, but as he was already serving a whole life sentence, the attack made no difference to the length of his incarceration.

‘Should have been given a medal,’ David Jarrett thought sourly.

Levi Belfield, killer of at least two women as well as thirteen-year-old Milly Dowler is another who will never be freed. It is suspected that he has killed others and investigations continue.

Mark Bridger, the notorious killer of five-year-old April Jones is also serving a whole life tariff. He was attacked in Wakefield, slashed across the face with a prison made knife but his request for a transfer to another prison was denied.

David had been at Wakefield for almost a year when a prison officer came to his cell and told him. ‘Mr Jarrett, get your stuff together, you’re being transferred,’

‘Where? Why?’

‘Can’t say, just get your stuff together, you’ve got an hour.’

He was then relocated to HMP Full Sutton, a high security category A and B men’s prison near York.

Although more modern than the largely Victorian era Wakefield, Full Sutton was no holiday camp. Over the years it had become notorious for g**g violence and the high level of d**g taking by inmates. And had housed the likes of Charles Bronson, dubbed Britain most violent prisoner, as well as Donald Neilson the infamous murderer known as the ‘Black Panther’ who robbed and murdered at sub post offices and kidn*pped and murdered seventeen-year-old Leslie Whittle. Serial killer and necrophile Dennis Nilsen, who killed and dismembered at least twelve men in North London was another killer held at Full Sutton until his death in 2018 whilst child killer Colin Hatch had been murdered there. The prisoner responsible had also attacked Ian Huntley, a one-time inmate.

And now David Jarrett is in Full Sutton but although he is a convicted killer, it has earned him little respect in the jail. A man who has supposedly killed his parents does not rank highly in the hierarchy of prison inmates.

However, he is largely left alone, unlike the nonces and child killers who will always have a hard time in whatever jail they are housed. ‘Serves the bastards right’ David thought.

‘So, if it wasn’t me who killed Donald and Janet, then who did?’ he repeatedly asks himself. He wrestles with the dilemma every waking moment and always returns to the same conviction.

‘It had to be Chloe f*****g Macbeth! Had to be! She hated my guts, always had done. If her fingerprints were all over the house, so what? She practically lived there when Julia was alive. The police would attach no significance to her prints everywhere.

Even if they found her prints on that hammer, she could still claim she had handled the hammer years ago and nobody can prove otherwise.

He had to think rationally.

‘First thing, stop behaving like a twat.’

He knew he had done himself no favours by his attitude. Pissing off the police, especially DCI Swan, would not have helped prove his innocence.

Same with his lawyers. Calling them useless cunts was never going to help his cause. Constantly shouting out, swearing in court, and claiming he was ‘fitted up’ by the police could only have damaged the outcome at his trial.

What a stupid, stupid t**t. He had dug his own grave by his behaviour and now was paying the price. ‘Thirty-two f*****g years of it!’

But at least he realised that now,

Better late than never.

Now he had to think it through logically and then lodge an appeal.

Find some specialist lawyers, lawyers who handle miscarriage of justice cases.

‘Because that is what it was, a gross miscarriage of justice.

And somebody was going to pay.

Chloe f*****g Macbeth!’