A former senior police detective has suggested that a taxi driver convicted of the murder of one young woman and now on trial over a second may also have carried out other killings.
During an extraordinary courtroom exchange, the former superintendent Stephen Fulcher said Chris Halliwell may have become confused about how one victim was buried because there were others.
The defendant, who had the opportunity to cross-examine Fulcher because he is representing himself, replied by calling the ex-officer a “corrupt bastard”, and said the truth was yet to emerge.
Halliwell is serving a life sentence for the murder of Sian O’Callaghan, 22, whom he abducted from a nightclub in Swindon, Wiltshire, in 2011. She was stabbed in the head and strangled and her partially clothed body left at the side of a country road in Oxfordshire.
After police arrested Halliwell, 52, over the disappearance of O’Callaghan, he allegedly told the senior investigating officer Fulcher he had killed a young woman some years before. He then accompanied Fulcher and other officers to another spot 17 miles away in Gloucestershire, where the body of Becky Godden, a sex worker who was last seen alive in 2003, was later found. Halliwell denies murdering Godden.
Fulcher, who now works as a consultant in Somalia, described to a jury at Bristol crown court the conversation between him and Halliwell at the spot where O’Callaghan’s body was found.
He said Halliwell had told him: “We need to have a chat.” Fulcher said Halliwell then told him: “I am a sick fucker,” and asked if was too late to get help. Fulcher replied: “It’s gone beyond that Chris.” The court heard there was a pause and then Halliwell allegedly said: “Another one.”
Fulcher said: “I asked him when was that and he replied 2003, 2004 or 2005.” Halliwell allegedly told Fulcher he had taken a prostitute from the Manchester Road area of Swindon. Fulcher asked if Halliwell could take him to the “vicinity” of where he had left her. He allegedly replied: “Exact spot.”
Fulcher told the court that Halliwell directed him to a ploughed filed at Eastleach in Gloucestershire where he allegedly said he had buried Godden’s body.
“He took a reference from a dip in the wall and paced to the exact spot where he indicated where he had buried another victim,” Fulcher told the court.
Fulcher said Halliwell had told him he had dug a grave 150cm (5ft) deep but, cross-examining the former officer from the dock, Halliwell challenged him on the depth of the burial site. Fulcher accepted that in fact it was a shallow grave 15-20cm (6-8in) deep.
Halliwell asked him: “It wasn’t 5ft deep, was it?”
Fulcher replied: “No it wasn’t, but that’s what you told me at the time.”
Halliwell told him: “You know from your inquiries that I spent most of my working life as a ground worker or building. So in that capacity I knew the difference between a 5ft hole and a 6in hole. Doesn’t it stand out?”
Fulcher replied: “It does stand out. What I inferred from that Christopher … ”
Halliwell interrupted: “Chris … ”
Fulcher continued: “ … is that Becky is one of your victims, as is Sian, and you got confused about the nature of this deposition. You described very clearly a 5ft hole. That led me to conclude that there are other victims.”
Halliwell said: “OK, if you say so. Or does it suggest that maybe I really didn’t know? By the end of this process you will know the truth. You won’t like it but you will know the truth … It is going to leave a hell of a lot more questions unanswered … The first time I was in that field was with you.”
He added: “Oh and by the way, it was a pleasure ruining your career, you corrupt bastard.”
Fulcher replied: “I’m sure.”
A second officer who was with Halliwell and Fulcher at the field in Eastleach, Det Insp Benjamin Mant, said he was struck by how calm and controlled the defendant was. He told the court: “He was calm, he was controlled. He spoke softly but precisely.”
The trial continues.
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