Detectives are making a renewed effort to solve the murder of a man whose burnt body was discovered in a reservoir above a West Yorkshire town almost 30 years ago.
Laurence Winstanley, a 23-year-old car mechanic and part-time car dealer, was killed with a gunshot to the head before his mutilated body was trussed up and dumped in a reservoir in the moorland above Huddersfield.
Police divers were spotted searching a pond off Blackstone Edge Road in Littleborough, Greater Manchester, at Christmas.
Winstanley, who had moved with his family from Ogden, Rochdale, to Shaw in Oldham, was reported missing in 1988. A year later – in September 1989 – his mutilated and scorched body was found at Baitings Dam between Littleborough and Ripponden after a summer drought had left the water levels lower than normal.
He had been wrapped in a curtain and weighed down with a pick-axe head. At the time detectives said they believed it was a gangland “execution”.
West Yorkshire police confirmed the most recent search was in connection with the murder investigation. A spokesman said: “Inquiries remain ongoing. West Yorkshire police has made a key commitment that a case is never closed until it is resolved. This is to give, where possible, victims and their families closure. As part of this commitment to victims we continuously review our undetected homicides and serious sexual offences.”
In 2009, on the 20th anniversary of the discovery of the body, police put up a £10,000 reward to help bring the killer to justice.
At the time Winstanley’s mother, Vanessa, said her life had been “ripped apart”. She begged the public for information to help detectives find her son’s killer.
She said: “Laurence was a wonderful son. The whole family have lost their normal lives. We only function in the hope that this will come to a close, that the perpetrators will be brought to justice and that Laurence will finally be laid to peace. He was given no chance to have a normal life – to get married, to have children and to grow old.
“The people responsible for this horrific crime must be found and punished, somebody must know them, and we urge you the public to have the strength to come forward and speak out.”
Eight years ago, the Winstanley family put up a £25,000 reward for information about the killing. It prompted several new lines of inquiry, but left police no nearer to catching the killer.
At the time of his disappearance Winstanley lived in the Sholver area of Oldham.
On the day he went missing, he had been drinking at his local pub, The Windsor, when he received a telephone call that seemed to concern him. He went to his mother’s house, but took more than an hour to complete the journey, which would normally take minutes.
Officers want to know where Winstanley went that afternoon before calling to see his mother.
He was seen at the pub later that evening, but no one can be sure what time he left. He was never seen alive again.
A couple of days after his disappearance, his red Ford Cortina estate, registration number SAT 385W, was taken to a scrap merchants in the Oldham area.
His mutilated body was discovered almost a year later on 26 September 1989 in the reservoir, just off the A58 on the outskirts of Ripponden.
The case featured on Crimewatch in 1989 and more than 80 officers swooped on homes in Rochdale and Littleborough in January 1990.
A man was questioned after the raids, but Winstanley’s murderer has never been found.
Anyone with information can call West Yorkshire police on 101 or ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
