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A walk in the countryside

A walk in the countryside ... led to violent death for Diana Davidson
By David Cocksedge

IN THE SWELTERING summer of 1969, the sleepy village of Paddock Wood was sweetly perfumed with new-mown hay. This rural village in Kent, England was quiet as usual on the Sunday afternoon of 20 July. On the village green, a cricket match was being played between the local team, known as the 'Mad Hatters' and an opposing village team. At two o'clock Sean Galbally, a member of the Mad Hatters team, drove up in his sports car accompanied by his attractive girlfriend, Diana Davidson (21).

The young lady sat with friends watching the game, but then sometime between 5.30 and 5.40pm she became bored and left the green to go for a walk. Her friends knew that she did not especially enjoy watching cricket matches and often went for long walks in the beautiful local countryside - the county of Kent is known as 'The garden of England'.

Diana worked at the Ministry of Defense and Development at Fort Halstead, near Sevenoaks, and lived with her family in Oxford. On this day she was wearing a very short mini-dress colored in orange and pink stripes. Only three people noticed her leave the cricket green and they were among the last to see her alive.

When Ms Davidson failed to return at close of play after 6.30pm, both cricket teams and their supporters made a search of the area and eventually Sean Galbally reported her missing to the local police.

Despite a massive police search and maximum publicity in the newspapers over the following days, not a single person seemed to have seen Diana after she left the cricket green. Detective Chief Inspector Jack Goodsall of Kent Police made extensive enquiries about the missing girl. He found out that she was highly intelligent and efficient in her work; had a strong interest in wildlife and the local countryside, and often went walking alone. Men found her attractive but were sometimes rebuffed by her cool manner. She had two regular boyfriends and enjoyed attending parties and social gatherings in pubs with both of them.

One week later, on 27 July, a retired prison officer out walking his dog found a naked female body in an orchard on Eastlands Farm, less than a mile from the cricket green. Goodsall rushed to the scene and was shown the body, lying at the bottom of a ditch, face down. He noticed that the ditch was overgrown with long grass which was dry and yellowing. The autopsy report later described a well nourished, slim young woman 5 feet 1 inch (1.55 meters) in height with 'considerable larval infestation'. There was also evidence of sexual assault, and the pathologist found extensive deep bruising around her neck, particularly over the left side and at the back, which he felt was consistent with manual strangulation.

Within a few hours the body was identified as that of Diana Davidson. The hunt for a missing girl now became a hunt for a murderer.

Goodsall's men searched the immediate area and soon found a fawn cardigan and a pair of open sandals, and close by Diana's orange and pink-striped dress, a pair of pants and a brassiere. Lab tests confirmed that the clothes had been forcibly torn from her body. Near the clothes was also a length of braid, knotted at both ends and similar to the braid used for piping dressing gowns. Earth and grass samples from the murder scene and a blood sample from Diana, with the scrapings from under her fingernails, also went to the forensic laboratory for further examination. Goodsall also set up an incident room at a local school a mile and a half from Eastlands Farm. Detectives now fanned out and made extensive inquiries about Diana's movements on 20 July 1969. It was fairly obvious that she had been sexually assaulted and murdered on that day, possibly shortly after she had left the cricket match.

On 3 August, a week after the body had been found, police reconstructed the events of 20 July. All the people who were at the cricket match and many members of the public who were in the area were assembled in the village. At 5.30pm that evening, WPC Susan Lane wore an identical mini-dress and walked a timed route from the cricket green to the orchard where Diana's body had been found. The Woman Police Constable also wore a wig of shoulder-length dark hair, and she so strongly resembled the dead girl that many of Diana's friends present were visibly upset. The event attracted nation-wide publicity, and was helpful in that afterwards several people came forward to state that they remembered seeing Diana Davidson walking off the main road towards the entrance to Eastlands Farm, near a number of houses.

The police forensic science lab then reported that they had found three spots of blood on the brassiere. Two of them were Diana's own group (O/MN) but the third spot was classified as O/N, and blood on her dress was found to be of the same group. The field of suspects had suddenly narrowed - only 10.3 per cent of Britain's population have blood of group O/N. It was the vital clue; what Americans call "a smoking gun".

In the course of earlier house-to-house inquiry detectives had interviewed a 31-year-old bachelor named Roy Andrew Thomas Carter. He had moved to Paddock Wood a few months earlier, and was something of a loner. He had been orphaned at an early age and had been raised by the local authority and then trained at a farm school in animal husbandry. Carter had a passionate love for animals and country life and would talk freely on these subjects, but was very coy when women or sex were discussed. He lived by himself near the Eastlands Farm, where he was often employed in part-time work. And his alibi for the murder proved to be a lie: Carter stated that he was with neighbors on that day, but it soon became apparent that they were away on holiday on 20 July.

A farm manager named Harry Cox, who lived in a cottage on the farm and close to the ditch, remembered a man resembling Carter calling on him at 6pm on 20 July and asking for directions to Charlton Lane. Cox did not know of this road, and the caller walked away. A few minutes later Cox saw the man walking back down the path and following an attractive young girl wearing a mini-dress. This was obviously Diana Davidson. Carter was included in a second group of people for blood samples, which were obtained on 10 August. Laboratory analysis proved his blood to be Group O/N.

Two detectives who re-interviewed Carter noticed a piece of braid, similar to that found in the ditch, which was being used to tether a dog to a stake. They searched Carter's rented apartment and found another piece of the same braid tucked under a mattress.

Carter was taken to the incident room and at first flatly denied murdering Ms Davidson; but patient questioning eventually revealed the truth. He stated he had met Diana on the path, and that after a brief chat, she had taken her dress off and invited him to have sex with her. This was a cynical and blatant lie. Diana Davidson was not in the habit of coupling with complete strangers in the open air, or anywhere else for that matter.

When detectives firmly told him that fact, Carter broke down and made a full confession. He now stated that when he had passed Ms Davidson on the footpath he had said to her, "Good evening, miss. Looks like we are going to have some good fruit this year."

Carter said that Diana had replied, "What do you know about it, you stupid bastard?"

As she turned away, Carter had grabbed her, enraged at her rude manner, and carried her to the orchard. Being a foot taller than her and much stronger, he was easily able to overpower the young girl. He began to strangle her to stop her screaming as they struggled, and they both fell into the ditch. He then ripped her dress off and removed her brassiere and pants before raping her.

As he killed Ms Davidson by strangulation, he heard someone passing by on the path above, and swiftly hid himself and the body from view. When the man had passed by, he hurried away from the scene. He concluded his statement: "Since this happened I have been very sorry and very upset. It wouldn't have happened if she hadn't called me a bastard, which I am not."

On Carter's face were scratch marks that matched the flesh found under Diana's fingernails. She had died fighting and marked her killer before she expired. The case was a triumph for forensic science. It was the first time in British criminal history that a blood spot had led straight to a murderer.

At his trial Roy Carter pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty of manslaughter. His plea was not accepted by the Crown, and following a short trial, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He walked out of Maidstone Prison in the summer of 1980. Carter had served his sentence, but now had a criminal record - he was branded for life as a convicted rapist and killer.

(Research: 'A walk from cricket to murder' by Tom Tullett, Grafton Books).

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