The Tattingstone Suitcase Murder - Unsolved since 1967

 

Sexually Assaulted, Strangled and Chopped up into 8 pieces, This is the case of Suffolk Police's most gruesome & longest-running cold case which remains unsolved to this day

Bernard Oliver, born and raised in Muswell Hill London was 17 when he was sexually assaulted, strangled then clinically and very neatly cut up into eight pieces and put into two large suitcases, which were found in a field in the village of Tattingstone, Suffolk on 16th January 1967. The field in which the two suitcases were dumped was just one hundred yards from the main road between Manningtree and Ipswich.

Bernard had left home in Muswell Hill, London on January 6th 1967, was reported missing by his father the next day and had been missing for some 10 days before his remains were found. Of course, there were no clues to identify him at the time, so police took the unprecedented step of releasing a photograph of the head in hope that someone would recognise the young man. The family of Bernard Oliver contacted the police quite soon after the photograph appeared in the news and gave details as to his identity.

Bernard had been a bit of a loner and had some difficulty in learning, according to his younger brother, Chris who told the media; "He was a little bit backward, he found it difficult to pick up reading and writing". He did not do well at school or indeed afterwards. 

Chris found out about his brother's murder from a newspaper whilst getting on a bus in Muswell Hill. Now in his 60s and living in Whetstone, Chris said: "It's just tormenting, not knowing what happened to him. We were all just boys at the time, I was 15. Bernard was a very gentle, friendly person".

Speaking of the day he found out about his brother's murder Chris Oliver said: "I was waiting for a bus going up to Muswell Hill, there was a clipping of this boy, just the head was showing, a friend that was with me said 'he looks like your brother', I couldn't believe it".

Bernard was one of six children born to George and Sheila. Maureen was his only sister and he had four brothers Andrew, Philip, Chris and the youngest was Tony, who was just 13 at the time of the murder. 

Mum and dad, George and Sheila had separated just a year previous so things were extremely stressful for the Oliver family, 

Chris Oliver said: "It had a massive impact on us, you cannot describe it. Even today it really upsets me. To be honest I don't think any of us have ever really sat down and spoken and grieved about it" 

Of course, there would have been no counselling services back then, people just kind of carried on, it must have been really difficult for such a family. 

According to Chris Oliver; he and his brother Tony believe that the murder was somehow connected to the notorious London gangsters, The Kray Twins. Chris told the media "They all used to go down to this house in Suffolk, there were rent boys brought in and there were all sorts of people that went there".

Following the media stories being released, various leads were given to the police within the first month of the murder, including several reported sightings of Bernard in and around the Muswell Hill area between when his disappearance and the body being discovered in Suffolk. Police were always of the mind that the murder and dismembering had taken place in Suffolk.

The enquiry was initially kept very busy and was soon being investigated by local police but had attracted the interest of Scotland Yard so their detectives were brought in to investigate but despite such in-depth enquiries, the case remains unsolved.

Suspects

There have been suspects in the case, one being Doctor John Byles, a 38-year-old former ship's surgeon, he was found dead in a hotel room at The Prince of Wales Hotel, in Northern Queensland, Australia on 19th January 1975. The doctor had been one of 2,000 people interviewed as possible suspects in connection with Bernard Oliver's murder. He had booked the room in the name of John Mathews and is believed to have taken a fatal drug overdose. 

At the time of his suicide, Byles had been wanted for extradition back to England as he had been alleged to be part of a paedophile ring known as "Holy Trinity" ring which featured around a church in Huddersfield. Several members of the ring had already been arrested for child sex offences and convicted at Leeds Crown Court in 1975 

It was alleged that Doctor Byles had invited teenage boys to his surgery in South London, where he plied them with alcohol and bribes in order to get them to commit sexual acts, whilst they were doing so the doctor would take indecent photographs of them and then sell on as pornography in Denmark.

According to information given to Scotland Yard after Byles death, it was said that the doctor had once admitted killing a ship cabin boy and dismembering his body, but this story has never been confirmed. 

The other suspect was Doctor Martin Reddington who had previously owned a surgery in Muswell Hill in the 1960s. In 1977 he was charged with committing an indecent assault on a young man between December 1971 and July 1973, He was dealt with at the Central Court in Sydney Australia.

Two years prior to Bernard Oliver's murder an arrest warrant was issued for Martin Reddington in which he was wanted on suspicion of Buggery and sexual assault on two males in 1965. Unfortunately, before the arrest could be made Reddington managed to slip the net and flee to South Africa. He apparently owned a surgery practice in Muswell Hill which was situated on one of the last streets that Bernard was even seen walking down. The doctor allegedly managed to return to England several times after he had initially fled but the warrant was never executed and thus he could never be tried. 

In 1977 a female private investigator claimed to have recognised the suitcase with the initials P.V.A marked on its side, She said that she believed it belonged to one of three men that had regularly visited Muswell Hill Launderette, one of those men was Doctor Reddington, the investigator had recognised him from a photograph.

Police did not feel that there was sufficient evidence at the time to be able to extradite Reddington from Australia so he was never questioned about the murder. 

In 2004 original documents from the Tattingstone Murder revealed that both Herrington and Byles had been wanted for a string of serious offences, one of which was the murder of a boy in London in 1973 after a homosexual relationship had failed.

Doctor Herrington apparently died in Suffolk in 1995 aged 63, no one official knew that he had returned to England and thus he was never even formally interviewed about the 1967 murder.

New Theories

Until 2018 the location of the actual murder and dismemberment of Bernard Oliver had a always remained uncertain but following an article that looked back at the 1967 murder being published in The Ipswich Star newspaper on 6th January 2018, a female witness came forward with new information.

The woman insists that she recalled seeing Bernard Oliver Alive in Tattingstone, The lady is now in her 60s but was advised by her daughter to go to the police with the information after they chatted about the newspaper article.

The woman who asked to remain anonymous told the paper "I was 16 at the time and worked as a groom in Freston. One of my duties was to exercise the horses every day. On the morning in question, I was riding one horse and leading the other. As I came up the hill in Tattingstone near to The White Horse, I saw a young man carrying two suitcases. I knew he was not someone that I had seen before in the area, he had freckles all over his face".

Obviously in the 1960s in small villages, everybody knew one another so I can imagine the woman would have realised straight away that the boy she saw was not a local person. 

The witness goes on to say "A few days later I saw the photograph in the paper and thought 'oh my goodness that's the chap I saw. I still believe it was him. I think he must have been murdered close to the Tattingstone area and someone else must have seen him".

Another witness that came forward as a result of the 2018 appeal suggested that the suitcases were most likely linked to the military, The witness said: "The large lightly coloured suitcase resembles a military issue suitcase of the time. I was issued one on my enlistment in 1969". 

This is an old, interesting murder with a somewhat novel way to hide the body. I would love to see this case get the justice that it deserves but as both of the main police suspects and the Kray Twins are all dead it is highly unlikely we will ever see anyone convicted in the physical sense. It would certainly be good to see the case solved so that the family has some kind of closure after all these 53 years. 

If by chance you do have any information that you feel would help the Oliver family to get the closure that they deserve then get in touch with Crimestoppers 0800-555-111 or call 101 and ask for The Metropolitan Police. It's never too late to speak out and help solve a murder.

That's all for this one. If you'd like me to review a UK Unsolved Serious Crime then please do get in touch. I specialise in unsolved and cold cases here in England and am always keen to review, research and write about a case for you. I write for films, documentaries, books, reports, podcasts and of course blogs so do get in touch.

Email me: jaradcoldcases@protonmail.com

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Lyn Bryant - Murder Unsolved

 

Lyn Bryant was aged 40 when she was murdered whilst out walking her dog

On the afternoon of October 20th 1998, a 41-year-old housewife set out on a regular dog walk with her Lurcher called Jay. Lyn Bryant took her usual very familiar route along the Ruan High Lanes, under a mile from her home, a walk that she took alone with her dog every day. She was wearing a Tan waxed coat, dark jeans and a blue jumper with brown walking boots.

Lyn was last seen alive at 1.45pm close to the Ruan Methodist Chapel chatting to a man described as being in his 30s and around five feet, nine inches tall and wearing 'light' clothing. I feel this is one of the earliest indicators of something a little unusual. Remember it was an October day and therefore not that warm, in fact, the weather forecast for that day (link below) suggested rough wet and windy conditions so why was this man dressed so lightly? 

20th October 1998 Weather

Anyway, I digress. . . 

A tourist found the body of Lyn Bryant in the gateway to a field at 2.30pm, her clothing had been disturbed possibly indicating a sexual motive for the murder, She had been savagely attacked with multiple stab wounds to her neck, throat and back. The tourist called 999 and when the air ambulance arrived at around 2.50pm Lyn was sadly pronounced dead at the scene. 

Evidence shows that Lyn had fought hard with her killer and therefore the person responsible for her death would have been covered in blood, probably bruised and certainly pretty shaken. Forensic officers say that they believed that the killer had been with Lyn Bryant for some time and that injuries suggested that she had been stabbed whilst standing up and again laying horizontally. The dog had not been harmed at all during the attack. 

Lyn had been to her regular job as a cleaner at a local house, then briefly popped in on her parents on her way home. She had then gone out again driving her car, a grey Ford Sierra, when she firstly visited Harris Garage but having discovered that they were out of petrol she then drove on to Chenoweth's garage where she filled her car with petrol, bought some foodstuffs and went home. 

It was noted that during her drive Lyn was followed by a man described as being of large build and around 50 years old with a scruffy beard, he was driving a white van, possibly a Volvo van which was seen on the forecourt of Chenoweth's garage at around 1.05pm. More than 6,700 white vans and their owners have been identified and tracked during the course of the long-running investigation.

Lyn returned home and had lunch with her 19-year-old daughter Erin during which they discussed Lyn's upcoming 41st birthday, before setting out to walk the dog.

As you can see things seemed to happen in somewhat of a succession and over quite a small space of time. I mean let's just take in that at 1.05pm Lyn is at a petrol garage fuelling her car and shopping. By 1.50pm she had driven the mile or so home, presumably put her shopping away, had lunch, got her coat on and made her way to the Ruan Methodist Chapel and was talking to a man. Just 40 minutes later she was found dead in a field gateway. It seems suggestive to me that Lyn Bryant may have gone out quite quickly after her shopping trip in order to meet the male, whilst I am unable to find any actual evidence of this it does seem more of a distinct possibility. Did Lyn go out and unwittingly meet her killer? Just a thought. 

A critical sighting was made by a farmer at between 2.45pm and 3pm when he saw a man walking across a field which does not have a footpath close to it or surrounding it and according to the farmer was never normally used by walkers. The man was wearing what the farmer described as normal clothes and shoes which of course is quite odd for two reasons, firstly the weather was wet and rough and secondly, he was crossing fields in late autumn when it would obviously be muddy. 

A vital piece of evidence is a quantity of vivid blue polyester-cotton mix fibres found on Lyn's body. The police have since identified them as the sort used in the manufacture of polo shirts and sweatshirts. There has been no identification as to a specific manufacturer or brand thus far, obviously, that would narrow things down still further, It is fair to assume that the fibres were left by the killer as they were completely alien to Lyn and her home, again this is suggestive of a link to the man seen wearing 'normal' clothes perhaps, but we should not explore a line with no supporting evidence either.

Some four months after the murder on the 2nd February 1999, Lyn's tortoiseshell spectacles were found just 3 feet from where her body had been discovered plainly sitting on top of the mud, an area which had been intensely searched by police. 

The 2nd February was a dry and mild day with temperatures as high as 8 degrees Celsius in Cornwall so it's not like the glasses suddenly blew out of a tree in a storm or anything. So did the killer return to the murder scene for some strange reason maybe to relive his or her sick fantasy again? Another question which pops into my mind, did the person that reported finding the glasses actually "find" them on that day or on the day of the murder? Did that person have a connection to the murder, maybe the killer was known to them and they hid that from the police?

The police are absolutely certain that there was no way the glasses could have been missed during the in-depth search of the area in October and as the area was a muddy and well-used entrance to a field the glasses would have been damaged or buried long before a six month period had passed. There is something really quite curious about the "discovery" of those glasses that I feel somehow is very relevant to identifying the killer. I truly believe that when the person found those glasses and reported the find to the police it was one of the moments when the police were, in fact, closest to revealing the killer's identity.

During the murder investigation, the police interviewed every male aged between 14 and 70 years old on the Roseland Peninsula but they did not reveal anything of real relevance and certainly did not find Lyn Bryant's killer.

The area where this murder took place is a very remote area of Cornwall and the murder investigation team are satisfied that the killer was almost definitely a local person with good knowledge of the area. Senior investigating officer detective Stuart Ellis said "This is a very remote area and not the kind of place someone is liable to just wander into" He went on to say that it is much more likely that the killer was someone that had a definite reason to be there, whether that be work, family or another connection but the indication is that it is almost certain that the person that was responsible has good local knowledge and local contact.

A very interesting little twist to this story is that in 2013 a self-proclaimed psychic medium and drag queen known as Tristan Rees came forward to police claiming that he had seen regular visions of Lyn's murder and that he was visited by her spirit. During such "visits" the spirit showed Tristan what he described as almost film-like footage of her being followed then murdered. He said that he had begun to receive these spiritual communications just a few months after Lyn Bryant was murdered and they were very graphic, however, he did not contact police as he felt he may be made a suspect. 

Police did indeed treat Tristan Rees as a suspect in as much as they took DNA samples from him but no action was taken against him. Tristan later said that he believed the police had taken his samples because of how much detail he was able to give to them. He described the vehicle in which the killer fled the scene and the killer himself but I think the police possibly saw Tristan Rees more like a suspect than an informant due to the length of time that had passed before he came forward. 

Tristan described the killer as having ginger but greying hair, a wrinkled face and wearing a blue boiler suit and heavy boots which were covered in blood when he left the scene. He was driving a large white van. The clairvoyant said that he was plagued by the spiritual images and visions for some 15 years before he eventually found the courage to contact Devon and Cornwall police and give them his drawings of the suspect and details of the murder. I personally feel that there is good and credible evidence in Tristan Rees's words but it seems the police did not take things seriously enough. 

He said that he left the drawings and description documents at the police station and the spiritual communications stopped, that was the last that he heard of it all until some two years later when two plain-clothed police officers arrived at his home and took DNA samples. As far as I am able to ascertain Tristan has not been contacted further and is unsure whether he may still be considered a suspect. 

I would love to speak to Tristan Rees but I have not so far been successful in establishing contact, I will, of course, advise you here and via social media if and when that changes. 

In 2015 police went back to basics so to speak and undertook a full forensic view of the case during which they examined hundreds of exhibits. A partial DNA profile of the person believed to be Lyn's killer was able to be found 

It has been suggested that there may be links to some other murders of lone women walking dogs within a few months of each other, do I think they are linked? In all honesty, I doubt it. There is a slight possibility that the murder of Kate Bushell may possibly be linked due to some similarities but I feel that the murders of Helen Fleet and Julia Webb are almost certainly separate cases. 

Helen Fleet was murdered in March 1987 so over 11 years before Lyn Bryant and Julia Webb's murder took place some 310 miles away from Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall and even 223 miles from Exwick in Devon and there was no stabbing of the victim at all. The only way I see any link could be established between the killing of Helen Fleet, Lyn Bryant and Kate Bushell is to explain the very long gap between the murders. If anyone has anything that you would like to suggest then do please get in touch, I would be delighted to hear from you my contact details are below and of course you can leave me a comment here. 

Of course, if anyone reading this knows anything or even believes they do then please do get in touch with Devon and Cornwall Police or Crimestoppers at once, remember even the smallest piece of evidence, a name, a vehicle identity or a location can change this enquiry and lead to justice for Lyn and especially for her family left behind, still not knowing who was responsible for her horrific murder or why.

Points of interest

(Not necessarily related to the case) 

20th October 1998 was Tuesday and was the 293rd day of the year (the 42nd Tuesday of the year) This pattern of dates will be exactly the same will be 2026 when in effect you could reuse your 1998 calendar 

In mythology, October began the season for military campaigns and ended the season for farming. In the Roman religion October 19th, the day before this murder the festival of Armilustrium was celebrated in honour of Mars, the god of war. On this day soldiers, and weapons were purified 

Genette Tate - Unsolved

 

Genette Tate vanished from her home village age 13 years, she has never been found

On August 19th 1978 a 13-year-old girl simply vanished whilst she was doing her regular paper round delivering the Exeter Express & Echo. It is now 42 years since Genette Tate disappeared and her father has recently passed away without knowing what truly happened to his little girl. As a parent, I can only begin to imagine how dreadful that must have felt. 

So let's look at the story then draw some thoughts as we go along. . .

Genette lived in the historic village of Aylesbeare, approximately 8 miles east of the city of Exeter in Devon UK. The village dates back to at least the 13th century and is by all accounts a very peaceful and pleasant area to live in. The village has a somewhat mixed population of farmers, retired and commuter families within it, it is very small and even today if you drive in one end you will be out the other end in less than 2 minutes. Once the M5 Motorway was opened in 1975 the village was just a field or two away from national road links, so a possible way for the killer to enter Aylesbeare, abduct Genette and leave just as fast.

Genette had been born in the Somerset town of Taunton but she had moved with her family into Cornwall, then on to Aylesbeare. Her mother and father had divorced and Genette was living with her dad, his partner Violet and her daughter Tania. 

The teenager's family had nicknamed her 'Ginny' and she had an amazing ability with mathematics and had a great curiosity about the world, all in all, a pretty smart girl it seems. She was a keen little worker and was doing holiday relief paper rounds on the day that she disappeared. She had left home at around 2pm, cycled through the village and met the newspaper van on the A3052 (the main Exeter to Sidmouth road) outside The White Horse Pub at around 2.50pm, something which she had done each day for the past week, as she was the relief paper girl. 19th August 1978 was to have been Genette's last day doing the round as the regular paper girl was due back.

Okay so let me pause there for just a minute and explore the last couple of sentences. . . Genette was doing a temporary job so, does this suggest that this was very much a random abduction or was it planned? I would say that I feel something like that is more likely to have been planned as opposed to just a random kidnapping. why do I say this? Well, let's think about the setting, a very rural, quiet village where I imagine pretty much everybody knew one another so abducting a young girl that could well make an awful lot of noise, struggle and may even get away and raise the alarm could be extremely risky. The only consideration here is that there is no telling what goes on in an evil monster's mind, would someone just take pot luck, a random chance abduction? Could the real target have been the regular paper girl that was away on summer holiday? 

Moving on. . .

Okay so Genette collected her papers and began her round delivering some fourteen papers before she met up with two local friends, Margaret Heavey and Tracey Pratt around 3.15pm, they chatted and walked slowly with Genette up a slight incline in the road heading back into the village. Once they reached the peak of the incline Genette took to her bike once more and rode ahead to continue her deliveries, she remained in the girl's sight for around 50 metres then took a curve in the road. Just about five or so minutes later the Tracey and Margaret came across Genette's bike, on the road with the newspapers all tipped out of the cycle's basket, there was no sign of Genette at all. 

Now once again I draw your thoughts to the abduction, Margaret and Tracey were only a matter of minutes behind Genette yet she had vanished, suggesting that the abductor must have acted very, very fast. He or she must have really taken a massive risk as the girls or indeed anyone else from the village could have come along at any moment, was the kidnapper working alone? Was there any force, was Genette maybe gagged or in someway stunned to silence her? It was suggested by one writer that a large van was used, considering the noise and the way such a vehicle would have stood out in such a surrounding that seems extremely unlikely, So what did happen to Genette Tate? We may never know.

The two girls began to call Genette's name out and looked over hedges and into gateways but there was no sign of the teenager. They walked on, pushing Genette's bike until they reached John Tate, he said: "Genette's friends came up the road to tell me that they couldn't find her, so I joined them and we headed back along the road to the lane where they had last seen her". "We were all looking for her by then jumping over hedges, shouting her name but to no avail, quite soon after that Violet said 'John I think we should call the police' ".

This was to be the start of one of the longest and biggest missing person searches ever launched by Devon and Cornwall police. The response by the police was prompt and well operated, within two hours of the report being made they had a helicopter from the RAF search and rescue team in the air and there were uniformed police all over the village. I can only imagine the dreadful fears held by John and Violet as they watched things unfold before their eyes. The couple spent the evening and many evenings after that searching the lanes and fields for Genette, but with no luck, Genette had literally 'vanished into thin air'.

The police officer in charge of the investigation was Detective superintendent Eric Rundle, he had no clues, no leads to go on. he was a highly experienced police officer and the second most senior detective on the Devon and Cornwall police force at that time. He had a team of officers working under him, which he divided into teams to search in particular areas. His job must have been extremely difficult as he had no witnesses, no sightings or reports of anything suspicious. There were so many questions; had Genette had some kind of accident? Had she been the victim of a robbery? Had she been abducted, if so why? The possibilities were endless but all just had no starting point, the most obvious hypothesis was that she had been abducted and taken away somewhere and based on that Eric Rundle would have been extremely aware of just how crucial time is in such cases if there is a chance of finding a victim alive.

It was said by a police officer working on the case that one disappointing thing was Margaret and Tracey had moved Genette's bike which could have given some clue or guidance to a trained eye, "the scene had been tampered with before the job got going".

The police commandeered the village hall as a form of operational centre and issued a description of Genette as 'boyish, 5ft tall with close style brown hair, suntanned wearing a white t-shirt with her name embroidered on its left shoulder. Her dad recalled her as very young-looking still very much a child but, interestingly some others from the village described her as maturing fast and very much a developing young woman. This, of course, has no obvious relevance to the case as far as I am able to ascertain but the description difference could bear importance as well as the way in which the missing girl was thought of and in how investigators understand the girl that apparently just vanished. 

Very early in the investigation police realised that they needed help from the full force of the media to get Genette's face on the pages of papers and Television screens all over the UK. They called a press conference and staged photographs of the teenager's bicycle abandoned in the road and for a whole month after the disappearance, the publication which Genette had been delivering ran stories with a photograph of her on their front page every day. 

On Monday 21st August just two days after the disappearance the headline on the Express and Echo ran 'Echo newsgirl vanishes'. They encouraged more than 8,000 people to gather just a week after Genette went missing to search the local common just on the outskirts of Aylesbeare known as Woodbury Common. The media dubbed the searchers 'Genette's army' as they set themselves into groups and tramped across the vast common searching for any clue that might lead to the missing girl being found. Worryingly it has since been admitted that there was actually no operational reason to scour the common but nonetheless it was done. 

The family were becoming increasingly desperate with every day that passed and this lead to many theories being put forward from all walks of life including paranormal investigators and mystics of all kinds including some conspiracy theorists (a pet hate of mine) but unfortunately, it seems Devon and Cornwall police were keen to listen to almost every theory suggested, maybe not the best practice but things were pretty desperate in so many ways, so every bit of publicity in a difficult case such as this really could have made a difference. 

Sadly as time wore on with no new leads and literally nothing at all to suggest what had truly happened to Genette eventually things began to wind down, The police gave the village hall back and the press headed off to find their next story. No sign of Genette, no one coming forward with credible information finally lead to the case becoming somewhat cold and enquiries being scaled back. 

In 1990 a killer was arrested for child abduction in the Scottish Highlands, he was Robert Black. He had a very shady past and had all the stereotypical identities of a predatory paedophile. He had a very bad childhood and moved down into England in 1968. He passed his driving test in 1976 and took a job as a poster delivery driver which gave him a reason to travel the highways and motorways with his work and could by all accounts literally turn up 'anywhere in the UK'. 

According to records Black's method of abducting children was to leave the major roads and head into rural settings such as Aylesbeare, abduct a child and vanish again without anyone even noticing him, so a theory was suggested that Genette Tate was a victim of Black but I don't feel that to be the case. 

In 1994 Roger Black was tried and convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of three girls during the 1980s and he was sentenced to life in prison. His victims were Susan Maxwell, aged 11 whom he sexually abused and murdered on July 30th 1982, he drove her body some 264 miles to dump her. Caroline Hogg aged just 5 was abducted on July 8th 1983 and her body found 310 miles away from her home and Sarah Harper aged 10 was abducted on March 26th 1986 from Leeds with her body found some 71 miles away. 

Devon and Cornwall Police interviewed Roger Black at length but he did not give anything away and was never charged but still remained a firm suspect in the Genette Tate disappearance. I personally am not convinced that he had any connection and neither was John Tate, Genette's father. Just remember this; all the other bodies were found, Genette's was not and whilst this may be just unfortunate I think it changes the hypothesis surrounding Black as an abductor.

In 2007 the police submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service with a view to charging Black in connection with Genette Tate's disappearance but the CPS were unable to find sufficient evidence to proceed. There was a little more hope in Black being further pursued after he was charged and convicted of yet another abduction and murder in 2011, that of Jennifer Cardy aged 9 abducted on 12th August 1981, Black had grabbed her whilst she was cycling to a friend's house. 

There is some evidence relating to Genette Tate's case in that a witness saw Black at Exeter Airport "acting suspiciously" on 19th August 1978 and the existence of a fuel receipt puts Black in the South West of England around the date of Genette's disappearance but it is not known how close to Aylesbeare he actually was. 

Whilst I accept these small pieces of evidence may be suggestive of Black taking Genette it is very much assumed based purely on other crimes he had committed and I am not at all convinced, I firmly believe that the person responsible for Genette's disappearance was from much closer to home but this is very much my own opinion. 

Black has been suggested as a relevant name / possible suspect in over a dozen child abduction cases in both the UK and into Europe but to be fair most "serial killers" will always be put forward for many crimes because they have been responsible for something similar. After all look at Christopher Halliwell, I have recently been made aware of a person writing on Facebook suggesting that he was responsible for 27 or more abductions and murders, but many can easily be debunked as nothing to do with him either.

Nobody knows for certain what happened on the afternoon of 19th August 1978 in Withen Lane Aylesbeare. Some are convinced that Robert Black was responsible for the vanishing of Genette Tate but many others are equally not convinced at all. Due to the passage of time and many theories combined with misinformation the stories and amateur sleuths, it seems unlikely we will ever get to the truth now, but we must never give up hope. 

There have been many suggestions of paedophilic activity in and around the village, occult crimes and more but I personally don't feel these "suggestions" are that far from the truth after all, but I don't want to be seen as too suggestive. I will, however, add just one point taken from a news article published by Devon Live which reads "The only lane leading off the main road is called Withen Lane, about 100 metres from the centre of Aylesbeare and within sight of the ancient church turret" think carefully about that. 

The village itself dates back to The Domesday Book and is itself very rural with lots of farmland. I won't dwell on these points but I feel that this information is important when studying the case in any depth, I could, of course, be 'barking up the wrong tree' so to speak. 

I will just close by saying that Genette Tate's father John went to his grave not knowing what happened to his precious daughter but he was absolutely adamant that Robert Black was not the man responsible for the disappearance. John Tate said that Devon and Cornwall Police had Black's name in the frame but purely based on his past not even any circumstantial evidence exists, that is made clear by the fact that as I mentioned previously the CPS would not prosecute as there was insufficient evidence. 

The disappearance of Genette Tate is a tragic and confusing case whist being of huge interest to true crime researchers such as myself. I do hope that one day there will be some answers and we may get to know what happened to Genette as she and her family still left behind deserve justice. 

Here below are some useful links with regard to this case. . .

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-52697413

https://youtu.be/mat8SCRyb1I

https://janmeecham.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/into-thin-air/