My Brother the Killer, page 25
Having spent much of his time in prison developing his physique, Stuart emerges bigger than ever, walking with an exaggerated gait, an invisible suitcase under each arm. His body mass and knowledge of gym equipment doubtless helps him quickly secure a job as a personal fitness instructor at a Mill Hill gym. Fortunately for him, criminal record vetting won’t become routine for at least another decade.
Encouraged by his apparent attempt to go straight, I decide to help him. Even when he boasts about all the young women he’s meeting at the gym, and how keen they are to have sex with him, I rationalise it by telling myself he’s making up for lost time. After all, Debbie lives with her parents 35 miles away in Tilbury. Between her full-time job in the City, and his weekends and evenings spent on private training sessions, they barely see each other.
So he’s cheating on his girlfriend? Who am I to judge? Anyway, logistics and morals aside, she’s too young and naive to be with him. Their relationship is destined to fail.
Yet within a few months he and Debbie save enough money to get a place in Tilbury and move in together. She has just turned 17.
* * *
And then a door opens, one I’d never even considered. By November 1984, i-D magazine is so hip that New York’s coolest nightclub, Danceteria, wants to throw a party in the magazine’s honour, and offers return flights and hotel for four contributors. Along with Dylan, Caryn and Nick, I fly out on this fabulous freebie. But while the others dutifully return four days later as scheduled, I strike up a friendship with Haoui Montaug, the club’s doorman and promoter, and move into another friend’s apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. When I return to London six weeks later, I’m offered the role of a lowlife party promoter in a satirical BBC drama about a rake’s progress from London nightlife to a stellar media career.
It feels like irony turned inside out.
By year’s end, playing in the band feels like a chore. Even if we resolve our musical differences, we’ll need to borrow more money from our manager. And while he is offering to underwrite a further £10,000 in recording costs, I can no longer go on spending money I haven’t earned, money made by the people who work in the shop above us, while we play guitars in a basement rehearsal room. Besides, I want to try my hand at journalism without feeling I’m letting the side down.
So I quit the band to focus on writing.
London E1, July 1985
By now i-D is paying me £250 a month to write and edit and publicise the magazine, and already I see myself as a fashion and pop culture writer. As style magazines like The Face, Blitz and i-D start to carry real clout, fashion journalism is becoming a dream job. Working for i-D means free admission to nightclubs and private members’ clubs, invitations to catwalk shows and gallery openings and book launches, entrée to exclusive parties thrown by publishers and record companies and fashion brands.
Meanwhile I’m wondering where I’ll live next, because pretty soon I’ll have to move out. Back in 1977 our ragtag band of squatters had become semi-organised and approached the Greater London Council, owners of our long-condemned Victorian tenement buildings, with a proposed amnesty. In exchange for a nominal rent we were allowed to form a housing co-operative, which meant we could secure a GLC grant to fully renovate the premises. Seven years later, we have started to vacate our flats, which will now be gutted and refurbished. Work is scheduled to start on my block in a few months.
Unexpectedly, my friend Rob Brown says he’s moving to America, to take his chances in Hollywood. This means his one-bedroom flat will be vacant for several months even before it is due to be renovated. Spying an opportunity, I contact Stuart, urging him to attend our next monthly co-op meeting, and to bring Debbie with him. They should dress in smart casual but nothing flash, and let me do the talking.
I canvas my friends in the co-op, asking them to support Stuart’s temporary membership, so he and Debbie can move into Rob’s flat until it comes up for renovation. I explain that my brother has recently got out of prison and is trying to put his life back together, so I’m trying to help him out, get him on the straight and narrow. This way, I’ll be able to keep an eye on him. And it would be perfect for Debbie, since she works just up the road at a City insurance firm. This would mean some stability for them, I say, the start of a proper life together.
Even though my friends laugh at this blatant nepotism, they agree to back me when I put Stuart’s membership to a vote, and on Wednesday 3 July 1985 Stuart is granted temporary tenancy of Rob’s old flat – the same premises Rob and I had broken into and squatted when we were still art school students. My friend Justin, who had joined us on the dancefloor at the Dun Cow a few years earlier, invites us all to celebrate with dinner at his place.
With Stuart and Debbie installed in a flat directly across the courtyard from my own, I realise there’s more I can do to help him. A full-page feature in one of London’s hippest magazines, I figure, will have clients lining up to hire him as their personal trainer. The following day I set to work on an interview-profile for i-D’s September 1985 issue. The feature runs with a small black and white photo taken by Debbie, showing a shirtless Stuart flexing his left bicep.
i-D Talks to Bodybuilding Instructor STUART CAMPBELL
Stuart Campbell is a bodybuilding and fitness instructor at The Body Factory, a gym and health centre in north-west London. He spoke to i-D about bodybuilding and fitness in general . . .
How long have you been bodybuilding?
Seriously, only since December last year. But I always used to read bodybuilding books and magazines and at one time I did power-lifting. That was with BAWLA – the British Amateur Weight-Lifting Association. I became Bucks County Champion and South Midlands Champion and Group 2 Champion for 1979. But that was really power/strength training rather than bodybuilding – although it was the basis for my later involvement in bodybuilding.
Why did you take it up? Did you just decide to change your shape?
There was a point where that came up, and I thought, ‘Right, I’m gonna be something different.’ Also, I had friends who were doing it and I’d noticed the changes in them: not only their size and shape, but also their personalities. That appealed to me.
How has bodybuilding changed you?
Well, I’ve got bigger and strong, and I suppose I’m less aggressive than I was, although I’ve still got a lot of work to do in that direction. [Italics added for emphasis] My personality has changed – I’m more aware, not only of health and fitness, but also my environment.
* * *
In the autumn of 1985, I feel certain that Stuart has turned over a new leaf. He seems happy and healthy, living with his young but sensible girlfriend in an inexpensive flat, a place where they can save some money and get ahead. And of course, I will be there for him, just 30 yards away, across the courtyard, ready to lend a hand if he needs it.
Still, he pretty much keeps to himself and we rarely see each other socially.
Many years from now, I will finally learn how he repaid me.
But for now, I have no idea that while I’m working the phone and typing up my notes at i-D’s Covent Garden office, and Debbie is at work in the City, Stuart is picking up teenage girls and taking them back to the flat I’d helped him secure, where he photographs and molests them.
26
Chelmsford Crown Court, Tuesday 3 December 2002
1 year, 5 months, 15 days since Danielle’s disappearance
Yesterday, after almost two months of testimony and witness statements, the prosecution finally rested its case. Today, Michael Borrelli QC begins Stuart’s defence. Forgoing an opening statement, Mr Borrelli calls a female witness who claims to have seen a schoolgirl resembling Danielle Jones several hours after her supposed abduction, weeping in Grays public library. However, under cross-examination by prosecutor Orlando Pownall, the witness concedes that the schoolgirl’s clothing bore little resemblance to the clothes Danielle was wearing on the day she disappeared.
The defence continues in this vein for the next week, calling witnesses and introducing testimony that seeks to sow doubt in the jurors’ minds as to whether Danielle has been abducted. Furthermore, Mr Borrelli argues, given the absence of a body, the jurors cannot even be certain that Danielle is, in fact, dead.
Chelmsford Crown Court, Monday 9 December 2002
1 year, 5 months, 21 days since Danielle’s disappearance
Today is my 46th birthday. I wake up in Paris and get online to read that Michael Borrelli, Stuart’s defence counsel, has already made his closing argument.
It is quite possible, he tells the jury, that this girl [Danielle] had simply decided not to go to school, simply decided not to go home and had not been kidnapped from Coronation Avenue [in East Tilbury]. The witness sighting of a girl who resembled Danielle raises a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that she may well not have been the victim of a crime when she set out at 8 a.m. that morning. The fact that Danielle’s phone was no longer registering after 19 June proves maybe that her battery is dead but – we hope – it doesn’t prove that she is.
Finally, Mr Borrelli tells the jurors, Unless you are sure that Mr Campbell was in East Tilbury on the morning in question, you cannot be sure he is guilty of these crimes. He did not do it and the prosecution cannot prove he was there to do it.
Reading this closing statement, I can’t help but feel it’s a desperately feeble defence. For a start, it implies that Danielle was not abducted, but chose to run away from the family she loved without telling even her closest friends. And, as the prosecution has established, without a change of clothes, her passport, or the £400 in savings she left untouched in her bank account.
And then, instead of phoning her parents or a girlfriend with a message of reassurance, the jury is invited to believe that she instead composed a pair of garbled text messages to her uncle, written in a completely different format with different spellings from her own, and sent from her mobile phone to Stuart’s while they were within 50 feet of each other.
As a hypothesis, it’s beyond absurd. It’s an insult to the jury’s intelligence. But it’s all the argument that the defence can muster. Stuart cannot take the witness stand, since that would open him up to cross-examination, which would be a disaster.
So, Mr Campbell. When you were interviewed by Essex Police about your relationship with your 15-year-old niece Danielle and your whereabouts at the time of her disappearance, you refused to answer their questions. Indeed, you repeated the phrase ‘No comment’ at least 30 times, correct?
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
After reading Mr Borrelli’s summation I don’t much feel like celebrating my birthday, and decide to stay home. That evening I get a call from someone who identifies himself as Martin Wallace, Scottish crime reporter for The Sun. I don’t ask who gave him my home number, although I suspect it is someone from Essex Police.
I wonder if you could give me a quote about your brother, he says, how you feel about him and this difficult situation.
I have no comment to make, I say, out of respect for the girl’s parents. I don’t want to get involved.
Jesus, did I just say No comment?
Oh, I can understand, says Wallace. I daresay you’re upset about the shame he’s brought upon you and your family . . .
The oldest trick in the book.
I have to go now, I reply.
Well, if you change your mind, I’m . . .
Goodnight.
Chelmsford Crown Court, Wednesday 18 December 2002
1 year, 5 months, 30 days since Danielle’s disappearance
Both sides have finished their closing arguments, and the trial judge has almost completed his summing up, explaining the applicable points of law to the jury in layman’s terms. Finally, Mr Justice McKinnon tells the jurors what he expects from them when they return tomorrow to start their deliberations.
You must reach, if you can, unanimous verdicts, says the judge. Please put out of your minds any ideas of majority verdicts.
The following morning the seven women and five men of the jury file into a locked room deep inside the courthouse. Seven and a half hours later the foreman sends word: they have reached unanimous verdicts on both counts.
The court is quickly reconvened.
In the dock stands Stuart Campbell, grim-faced, wearing his sombre blue suit. Given that his defence had relied on sowing doubt and confusion, he knows that his only chance of an acquittal rests with a deadlocked jury, split between rival camps, with one or two holdouts arguing for days that there is still a reasonable doubt. Therefore, he and his legal team must know that the jury’s remarkably swift and unanimous decision is an ominous sign.
The foreman stands to read out the jury’s verdicts.
Stuart Campbell is guilty on both counts, namely the abduction and the murder of his 15-year-old niece, Danielle Jones.
As the judge confirms the verdicts, Tony Jones grimaces with relief and turns to comfort his wife Linda, who is sobbing.
Stuart displays no emotion.
For the first time since the trial began 11 weeks ago, Mr Justice McKinnon turns to address my brother directly.
You are no stranger to violence, he says, and merit the description dangerous . . . You have been a blatantly deceitful and thoroughly dishonest smooth operator over many years.
He then sentences Stuart to a life term for Danielle’s murder, with the tariff to be set at a later date. He also hands down a concurrent 10-year sentence for the kidnapping conviction.
Mr Justice McKinnon then takes the unusual step of telling Stuart that had the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter – as he feared they might – he would have asked for psychiatric reports with a view to imposing a life sentence.
Stuart calmly picks up his file and notepad before being led out of the dock to begin his sentence.
Outside the court, DCS Steve Reynolds of Essex Police talks to reporters.
Danielle’s family, he says, have been left with a tremendous void in their lives, thanks to the cold, callous predator in their midst.
Undoubtedly, he says, Campbell did not want the relationship [with Danielle] to end. Worse for him, though, was the prospect of what might happen to him if she told his family and Debbie what her ‘favorite uncle’ had been doing to her. He was being rejected and he felt threatened. For an evil and inadequate pervert like Campbell, he says, it was a dual threat. He reacted as perhaps all the signs showed he would: he killed Danielle.
Next, Tony Jones speaks to the press.
He should have been a trusted family member, he says. It’s terrible for someone to be murdered, but for someone in your family to do it, that is just unbelievable.
Finally, Linda Jones steps forward. Fighting back tears, she tells the press that while she’s content with the sentence, she remains heartbroken, unable to move on.
We still don’t have her back, she says. We need to find her so that we can lay her to rest and grieve properly.
* * *
Reading the news reports in Paris, I’m thankful it’s over, but there’s no sense of relief.
And even though the ghostly presence no longer seems to lurk in the dark corners of my apartment, my mood remains shadowy, my thinking dislocated.
Was it just my imagination, after all?
Does Stuart now wake up at night with that feeling of being watched?
Who cares.
I am numb. A throbbing mass of dull misery, a stump that has been cut off with a jagged blade and thrown into a landfill.
* * *
With the trial over and Stuart Campbell a convicted murderer, reporting restrictions are lifted, to reveal what was crawling under the rock. In the Guardian I learn of yet another betrayal.
Stuart Campbell had begun notching up convictions from the age of 12. A robber, burglar and car thief . . . for almost two decades he picked up girls on the street, claiming to be a photographer, and coaxed them into posing in lingerie . . . He was a practised liar. When he first met Debbie he was calling himself Stuart Sharkey . . .
The irony is not lost on me. When I’d helped him to evade justice in 1982 and he’d started calling himself Stuart Scott, I’d thought about urging him to adopt our mother’s maiden name instead. And now, 20 years later, I find he had indeed become Stuart Sharkey. But only to sell himself as the brother of i-D style journalist Alix Sharkey, the better to dupe underage girls into posing for him.
Along with the story of his double life, splashed all over the press are details of his cold evasiveness under questioning about Danielle’s disappearance, his callous indifference to her parents’ agony. With his true nature exposed and any last shred of doubt obliterated, only one question remains.
Where is Danielle’s body?
Tuesday 24 December 2002, Evening Standard
Danielle’s Killer Stays Silent
The parents of murdered schoolgirl Danielle Jones suffered more heartbreak today when her uncle refused to tell police what he did with her body. Stuart Campbell has refused to speak to officers about the whereabouts of her remains.
Police family liaison officers have told them Campbell, from Grays, who is being held in prison in Chelmsford, refused to speak to them in his prison cell.
A police spokesman said: ‘Mr Campbell didn’t want to speak to us. There are ways we can make him sit down and have a conversation with us. But we are going to wait until the New Year and pursue him then.’
A police source said detectives were confident they would eventually persuade Campbell to speak to them. They said: ‘Perhaps he will have a change of heart at Christmas. We will go back in the New Year, and if he won’t speak to us we will go back and go back and go back until he does.’
