An 89-year-old retired pig farmer who tried to blame serial killer Fred West for his wife’s disappearance almost 40 years ago has been found guilty of her murder.
David Venables was convicted of killing Brenda Venables, whose skeletal remains were discovered in a septic tank at the couple’s former home, 37 years after she was reported missing.
During his month-long trial, the pensioner – who had been having an extramarital affair when his wife disappeared – claimed she could have fallen victim to West.
His legal team had claimed West had links to the Worcestershire village of Kempsey, where the Venables couple lived.
If she’d been found in the basement of West’s house, then possibly. But it appears the jury weren’t taken in here.
I would have thought that a pig farmer could have disposed of a body by feeding it to pigs, as was alleged in the case of the kidnapping and murder of Muriel McKay. Perhaps he had too much respect for his late wife’s mortal remains, and decided to stow it in a septic tank instead.
So what I’m hearing from this is “If you murder somebody, bury the body somewhere you don’t own and ideally somewhere it can’t be found”.
Got it.
Mind you, he did pretty well and nearly got away with it. Lived a bit too long.
Mainstream movies such as Shallow Grave and Snatch explain the techniques required. Scarface offered a few tips but the victims were alive at the time…
“So what I’m hearing from this is “If you murder somebody, bury the body somewhere you don’t own and ideally somewhere it can’t be found”.”
When the wife ‘disappeared’ they did own the property where the body was eventually found. He only moved out in 2014. I bet he’d been expecting the police knock ever since, once he left there was no way he could control how and when it got cleaned out, as proved to be the case.
More to the point, how dim were the police not to have searched the septic tank 40 years ago? I mean a septic tank is not exactly a world class ‘hiding a body’ location is it?
Before he completed the sale in 2014 he could have filled the septic tank in, removed and sealed the cover with grass / top soil and had a new septic tank fitted somewhere else on the property.
I’m guessing that after 40 years he simply thought he had gotten away with it.
@John Galt: he pretty much has, hasn’t he? At 89 he’s now guaranteed better care in the prison system than those outside it.
Well Jim.
Maybe the police just thought, ‘Bugger this for a joke. I’m not going to shovel through all this shit. We’ll just put her down as ‘disappeared”.
@JuliaM No. He’ll get life, serve 10 years and be out just in time to get his telegram from King William. 😉
I think Boganboy is right on the money. No policeman wants to be more than 5 minutes away from the next cup of tea and digging a septic tank is a bit like actually doing work when there are twitter messages to read
Diogenes
This was 1985 so before social media. But they had their football pools to do, watch Going for Gold, bungs to collect…
Forgive me for being so crass, but I rather don’t care for this David Venables guy.
“So what I’m hearing from this is “If you murder somebody, bury the body somewhere you don’t own and ideally somewhere it can’t be found”.”
“I’m guessing that after 40 years he simply thought he had gotten away with it.”
Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey used to say that we only know about the stupid murderers, the ones who make mistakes; who knows how many there have been who really were clever enough not to get found out? This case sounds much closer to that than usual. (Although, as noted, how dim were the coppers not to search the septic tank in the first place?)
“Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey used to say that we only know about the stupid murderers, the ones who make mistakes; who knows how many there have been who really were clever enough not to get found out?”
The trick is not so much avoiding getting identified and caught for an obvious murder, more making sure the death doesn’t get categorised as murder in the first place……presumably the really smart murderers manage to get their crimes put down as suicide or natural causes.
Being married to an ICU nurse who loves crime fiction I’ve been treated to her thoughts on how she could kill me and make it look undetectable on more than a few occasions. She says it’s not that hard, it’s access to what you need that’s usually the issue. As mentioned above she subscribes to the approach above, if no one suspects foul play they aren’t going to look very hard.
The other issue is quick or slow, there’s plenty of common over the counter drugs where an extended high dose will lead to health issues that will kill you though it may take a while.
Jim,
Decades ago, a minor comic-book antihero called “Accident Man” opened his first episode by saying “Some people think that a quarter of ‘accidental deaths’ are really murders. That’s nonsense. It’s only about one in ten.”
But then the glory that was “Yes, Minister” covered this long ago. Why are convicted criminals generally as thick as porcine excrement?
+++++
Sir Desmond Glazebrook: If you’re incompetent you have to be honest, and if you’re crooked you have to be clever. See, if you’re honest, then when you make a pig’s breakfast of things the chaps rally round and help you out.
Sir Humphrey: If you’re crooked?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook: Well, if you’re making good profits for them, chaps don’t start asking questions; they’re not stupid. Well, not that stupid.
Sir Humphrey: So the ideal is a firm which is honest and clever.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook: Yes. Let me know if you ever come across one, won’t you?
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