Page 10 of Murder in the Family

GUY HOWARD

Yes I was.

NICK VINCENT (Producer) – off

And the girls were your sisters?

GUY HOWARD

(nods)

Maura was 15, Amelie was 13, and I was 10. It was Maura who called 999.

NICK VINCENT (Producer) – off

She found the body?

GUY HOWARD

Yes.

NICK VINCENT (Producer) – off

And who was it?

GUY HOWARD

Luke Ryder. My stepfather.

CUT TO: MONTAGE of contemporary newspaper headlines under vox pops/news broadcasts/clips as follows:

NEWS ITEM 1

More than two weeks after the body of 26-year-old Luke Ryder was found savagely beaten in the garden of his wife’s house in Campden Hill, the Metropolitan Police seem no closer to finding out who did it. Mrs Ryder was at a party that night, and the only other person in the house was her 10-year-old son. It was only when her daughters returned from the cinema at around ten thirty that the horrific discovery was made.

VOICE 1 (woman on street)

It’s been absolutely ghastly.Ghastly.I have friends who are still afraid to go out on their own, never mind at night. A crime like that – it just doesn’t happen round here.

VOICE 2 (man on phone-in)

Of course it was the wife – who else could it have been? Who else even had a motive? And as for getting into that house without anyone noticing, no chance. If you ask me, he was playing away and she caught ’im at it. Wouldn’t be the first time, now would it.

NEWS ITEM 2

As if a brutal and apparently senseless killing weren’t enough, the Metropolitan Police are now coming under fire from campaigners who say that Caroline Ryder is being unfairly targeted because she’s an older woman in a relationship with a much younger man.

Detective Inspector Peter Lascelles, who is leading the investigation, said yesterday that ‘whenever a murder takes place in a domestic context our first priority is always to question those closest to the victim and eliminate them from our enquiries, and that is what we are doing now’.

VOICE 3 (friend of Caroline)

I’ve known Caroline Ryder for ten years and she would never do something like this. She just doesn’t have it in her. And despite what the papers are insinuating she and Luke were very happy. I know, because I saw them together only a few days before he died and there was absolutely no tension at all.

And as for the idea that she would kill Luke and leave her ownchildrento find the body, well, anyone who knew her would tell you it’s just inconceivable. Absolutely inconceivable.

NEWS ITEM 3

It’s come to be known as the ‘Cougar Killing’ though, and more than a decade on, there is still no evidence to suggest that Caroline Ryder murdered her much younger husband, and she has certainly never been charged. Nor, indeed, has anyone else.