Yvonne Fitt (Unsolved Murder)

The last official sighting of Yvonne Fitt was on 16th January 1992 when she signed on for benefits at the Bradford DSS offices. Following this the 33 year old single mother seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Over the late spring and summer of that year a few sporadic sightings of Yvonne were reported around Leeds and Bradford, sometimes in the company of an unidentified man. Then in September 1992 her body was found in woodland in the Yorkshire Dales, a half hour's drive from where she lived. Several murders have been linked to Yvonne’s and three convicted killers have been connected to the crime. As the thirtieth anniversary of Yvonne’s death approaches it’s not too late for her murder to be solved.

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Sources: For a full list of sources please see the Facebook page   

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/tragic-life-murdered-mum-dumped-18802869.amp

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https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/are-these-women-linked-deaths-1973786

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https://reasonedcrimechronicle.com/an-approaching-30-year-anniversary-the-murder-of-yvonne-fitt-in-the-uk/

https://www.wharfedaleobserver.co.uk/news/14428237.fresh-hope-for-unsolved-killings

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/murderer-may-have-killed-before-6327512.html?amp

https://metro.co.uk/2021/03/23/majority-of-unsolved-murders-across-uk-involve-female-victims-14286904/

https://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/forensic-cases-murder-leanne-tiernan.html

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/confession-killer-christopher-halliwell-linked-20093964.amp

Transcript

Yvonne Fitt

Yvonne Fitt  led a complicated and stressful life. She was originally from Chapeltown, Leeds and  moved to Manningham, Bradford in 1986 at the age of 27. She rarely stayed in a house for longer than a few weeks and would flit between the homes of different friends across the town. It was a chaotic existence and in December 1991 the now 33 year old single mother moved back to Leeds. A friend called Alison, had kindly offered to put Yvonne up in her flat on Harehills Avenue. Yvonne's 11 year old daughter did not live with her and was cared for by her grandparents who lived nearby, also in Leeds. Yvonne longed to be reunited with her daughter and hoped to save enough money to move into a flat big enough for them to share.  Yvonne was from a large Caribbean family and was one of 7 children. She had a good relationship with her loving and supportive mother Ena.

According to Alison, as Christmas 1991 approached her friend Yvonne became increasingly paranoid. She was normally happy-go-lucky but became gripped by a paralysing addiction to crack cocaine which was slowly devouring her. Yvonne regularly complained to Alison that people were following her and she believed that someone was watching her from afar. Yvonne was too scared to return to Bradford as she said she had borrowed money and was in debt. Money lenders weren't the kind of people who took kindly to unpaid loans and so Yvonne was constantly looking over her shoulder, wary of who may be around the next corner. 

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In order to make a living and fund her drug addiction Yvonne engaged in sex work.  Since 1981 she had worked the streets of Manningham, Bradford and Harehills in Leeds. Yvonne was one of only a few Black sex workers and was well known both by other women in the scene and by the police. There were times when she would stop sex work for some time but would would eventually return to it. Hers was a desperate plight that increasingly led to dangerous situations. It was a difficult cycle to break. 

Yvonne is described as having a bubbly personality, seeming confident and sure of herself. One police officer who frequently came into contact with Yvonne thought this may well have been a defence mechanism used to protect herself from the harsh and often brutal reality of the work she did.

Not long into the new year Yvonne vanished. Her flatmate Allsion did not know where she had gone. The last confirmed sighting of her was on 16th January 1992, when she signed on for unemployment benefits at the department of Social Security offices in Bradford. Over the next four months there were no sightings of Yvonne, and as far as I can make out she did not contact her mother Ena or any of her friends during this time. No one  knows  where she was living or who she was with during this period. Following this gap, over the late spring and summer of 1992 there were a few sightings of Yvonne by friends and police officers who knew her, but they provide scant clues as to what she was doing at this time. 

The first sighting came at the Duncan pub in Leeds city centre, sometime in May 1992. A woman called Gayle, who described herself as a best friend of Yvonne, was working behind the bar when Yvonne came in early one evening. Gayle said that Yvonne looked awful. She was unkempt and seemed depressed. She wasn’t her usual bubbly self. The pair talked briefly and Gayle told Yvonne that she’d let herself go and she needed to pull herself together. Yvonne appeared to recognise this and left the pub at around 7pm. Three hours later she came back but with a marked change in demeanour. Gayle said Yvonne was like a different person, she was smiling and chatting and looked as though she hadn’t a care in the world. Yvonne was now in the company of a middle aged man. He was smartly dressed and around 165cm tall or 5 feet 5 inches, with white/grey hair and a heavy set build. Gayle had not seen the man before and never saw him again. Two months later, in July 1992, there was another sighting of Yvonne with this same man. (I am not sure where this sighting occurred as it is not recorded). 

Over the previous decade, Yvonne had been arrested multiple times by West Yorkshire police. As a result Police Officer Ingrid Cannon, a member of the Vice squad in Bradford, knew Yvonne well and had talked to her on numerous occasions. Some time between July and September 1992, Police Officer Cannon was driving down Bertram Road in an unmarked police car when she saw Yvonne walking quickly from the opposite direction. It had been the first time in months she had seen Yvonne out on the streets. She was scurrying along the pavement and looked like she was trying not to be seen. 

On the 12th September 1992 a local botanist was out foraging for wild mushrooms in a beautiful area near Northwood Edge in the Yorkshire Dales, known as Lindley Wood, adjacent to a reservoir popular with walkers and water sports enthusiasts. It is 5km from the market town of Otley and around a 30 minute drive north from both Bradford and Leeds. The man had parked in the car park and had been searching for around 15 minutes for edible fungi without success; he was just about to turn back when he came across a dead human body. It was partly concealed by branches and lying in a natural hollow. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition but he could tell even then that it was a young female. 

It took five days for forensic experts to determine that the person had been the victim of murder. Several stab wounds were found in the chest and back, which confirmed this fact. The body was fully clothed. I have not found mention of sexual assualt but that may be because any evidence was destroyed during the length of time the body was in the woods. 7.17 Some  reports online say that the body was found bound. Detectives at Harrowgate searched 140,000 missing person records in the national database and two weeks later, through the use of x-rays and medical records, the body was confirmed as being that of Yvonne Fitt. 

The post-mortem could not be exact regarding the time of death. Some reports say Yvonne had been killed two months before her body was discovered and others say it was more than that, perhaps as long as four months previously. If this is the case then it does throw into question PC Ingrid Cannon’s sighting of Yvonne over the summer. What the police did say was that it was a fluke the body was found at all. The killer would not have expected the body to be discovered as quickly as it was, and as a result may give themselves away. They asked people to consider whether anyone they knew had acted strangely after news of the body being found hit the press and TV.

The murder investigation was led by Detective Superintendent Tony Whittle, who set to work quizzing people with known links to Yvonne or known to be frequenters of the red light districts in Bradford and Leeds. A description was given of the clothes that Yvonne was wearing when she was killed to help aid memories. These included a red and black patterned sweater and dark grey mini-skirt, and appear to be similar to clothes worn by Yvonen in one of the few photos of her that exist. Her shoes and handbag were not found at the scene; presumably they had been kept by the killer or disposed of at a different location.  

The appeals in the media brought forth an anonymous tip from a woman who said she had seen Yvonne being bundled into a green van by three men on Bertram Road in Manningham, Bradford. Police remain unsure as to whether this event actually took place, as the woman never called back. It could have been a hoax but I’m personally inclined to think there is a ring of truth about it.

In November 1992 the murder was featrured on the BBC TV program Crimewatch. It included an interview with Yvonne’s mother, Ena and a reconstruction of the sighting of Yvonne in the Duncan pub in May. Appeals were made for the smartly dressed, middle aged man who was seen with her to come forward and they reassured him that at this point he was not a suspect. I have found a picture of this man. It is not an e-fit, but an actual photograph. It was published in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner on Friday 11 December 1992, with the information that police were attempting to identify the man seen in the picture. Although there are plenty of reports of this mystery man in other articles this is the only reference to the photograph I have seen. It looks as though the picture was taken in a pub and it shows a man smiling with a woman. It looks like they could be dancing. I'm guessing this photo was taken at a party or lock-in at a pub and was probably displayed on the wall or behind the bar. A witness, possibly Gayle the barmaid, must have identified the man in the photograph as the person she had seen with Yvonne. 

Following the airing of the TV programme the police received fifty phone calls about the case and the BBC an additional thirty. One person who rang in said they knew who Yvonne's killer was, naming a suspect. A couple of weeks later it was reported that a 32 year old woman had been arrested in connection with Yvonne’s murder; she was subsequently relased with out charge. It has never been revealed if the woman was connected in any way to the name given by the anonymous caller. 

The following year, an inquest into Yvonne's death was undertaken. Yvonne was said to have most likely been killed in July 1992. Despite thourgh searches of the woods and reservoir the murder weapon was not found. Information was shared that a total of three arrests had been made in relation to the case but no one had been charged. It was heard that one hundred witness statements had been taken but not enough evidence had been found to mount a case against any individiual.  From this point the investigation seemed to hit a brick wall and no developments were announced over the next eight years. Yvonne Fitt became yet another vulnerable woman whose unsolved murder had become a cold case. Ena and Yvonne's daughter were left to grieve and try to come to terms with what had happened.

On 26 November 2000 16 year old schoolgirl Leanne Tiernan and her friend Sarah spent the afternoon Christmas shopping in Leeds city centre. The pair caught the bus back to Bramley in the west of the city before alighting and continuing their journey on foot. At 4.50pm they arrived at Sarah’s house and Leanne continued the last 1.5km stretch of footpath to her house alone. The route took her through an isolated wooded area called Houghley Gill. Lianne didn't make it home and was never seen alive again.

Leanne’s mum Sharon tried ringing her mobile at 5.20pm but the phone merely rang for some time before cutting off. She attempted to call again but the phone was switched off after four rings. At 7.00pm Sharon contacted the police and reported her daughter missing. 

The largest missing persons investigation ever seen in West Yorkshire got underway, led by Detective Superintendent Chris Gregg. Waste collections were stopped so individual houses could have their bins inspected and teams of police divers combed through weed infested pools and rivers. Almost 5km of canal was drained and 800 houses plus 1500 gardens that ran from the bus stop to Leanne’s home were checked. There was a lot of rough open space and woodland in the vicinity but no stone was left unturned in the quest for clues.  

A reconstruction was organised by police, with Leanne's older sister Michelle walking the route taken by her younger sibling on the evening she vanished. A few sightings of Leanne in various locations around Yorkshire were reported, but nothing concrete ever materialised, and family and the police were left suspecting the worst. One person did contact police and reported hearing a scream on the evening Leanne went missing and an e-fit of a man seen walking a small dog in the area was released. The man had not been seen there before but was noticed by several people in the days leading up to Leanne’s disappearance. He had not been seen since.The next nine months proved an agonising period for Leanne parents as they continued to make appeals in the media for information leading to the safe return of their daughter. The couple, who were divorced, were very much united in fighting for their daughter. Unfortunately their worst fears were realised in August 2001.

On  the 18th of that month a dog walker was strolling through Lindley woods near Otley, 21 km from Bramley, Leeds, where Leanne was last seen, when they came across a dead body wrapped in a floral patterned duvet. It was very close to a well-used car park and only about 100m from where Yvonne Fitt’s body had been discovered eight years before.

The body was identified as Leanne Tiernan. Her hands had been bound using cable ties and a knitted scarf had been tied around her neck. The body had then been wrapped in green plastic bags. Ten layers to be precise. It was then tied with twine before being placed inside the duvet. A black refuse  bag had been placed over the head and was fastened in place with a dog collar. 

The decomposition of the body did not suggest that it had been in the woods, exposed to the elements for very long. It was estimated it had been there for only a few weeks. So where had Leanne been over the previous nine months? Had she been kept prisoner or had her body been stored somewhere that would slow down the process of decomposition? There was no obvious evidence that a sexual assualt had occured, but it was suspected that there was a sexual motive to this crime. 

The postmortem concluded  that Lianne's body had been kept in cold storage before being left in the woods. Quite possibly a large chest-type freezer that can be found in a lot of homes. Knowledge of this fact gave the police hope that DNA evidence may have been preserved on the body. Unfortunately no DNA of the killer could be found on Leanne's body.

This was a blow to police but DS Gregg and his team moved back to basic policing methods. They began collecting names of people who were known to frequent Lindley Woods. They knew that the site had not been chosen by accident and the killer very likely had an intimate knowledge of the area. Next, the police set about trying to gain more information about some of the items found with Leanne's body. They were able to trace the manufacturers of the dog collar to a mail order company in Liverpool, who in turn were able to supply the police with the name of a person who had brought a similar item living in Bramley, Leeds, only 1km from Leanne’s house. The man had also  appeared on the list of people who visited Lindley Woods. He was a poacher who was known to hunt small animals there. He was the only person on both lists and his name was John Taylor. The 44 year old had no criminal record, but he became the number one suspect in the murder of Leanne Tiernan.

John Taylor was born and raised in Leeds. As a young boy he developed an interest in the outdoors and hunting in particular. This swiftly developed into a desire to abuse  small animals. This disturbing habit progressed as an adult and he had been witnessed stabbing to death a fox whilst as well as torturing rabbits. The dark side of John Taylor was hidden from view; his neighbours knew him to be a regular bloke who they counted as trustworthy. Taylor had been married and had two children but was now divorced and lived alone.

John Taylor lived in Cockshott Drive, Bramley. When police searched his house they  uncovered some incriminating evidence. They discovered the same type of green bags and twine that was used to wrap Leanne's body. The twine was of a special kind used to make netting to hunt and catch rabbits. The type of cable ties used by the killer to bind Leanne were almost exclusively used by Royal Mail. It just so happened that Taylor worked as a delivery driver for Parcel Force, a company which is part of the Royal Mail trading group.

While suspect DNA was not found on Leanne's body, other forensic evidence was available. A dog hair was found on Leanne's sweatshirt and police attempted to create a DNA profile of the dog it belonged to. Forensic experts employed in Texas were able to develop a profile. It was the first case in Britain where animal DNA was used to try to solve a crime. John Taylor was known to own a dog but by the time he was arrested the dog was missing and he claimed that it had died recently. 

Small pink carpet fibres were found on Leanne’s sweatshirt which matched those found on a nail in the floorboards at Taylor's house. He had removed the carpet, but these few strands were enough for a comparison to be made. Taylor was arrested on 16 October 2001 and two pieces of compelling forensic evidence soon followed that sealed his fate.

Under floorboards at Taylor’s house, traces of blood were found that were positively identified as belonging to Leanne. This put the 16 year old in Taylor’s house and suffering from an injury.   

Further confirmation of Taylor’s guilt came when a human hair was detected in the knitted scarf that had been wrapped around Leanne’s neck. Standard DNA testing could not create a profile from the hair root so a more advanced technique was used. Mitochondrial testing was carried out and a profile was compiled from the miniscule amounts of DNA in the hair shaft. It belonged to John Taylor. 

Excavations of Taylor’s garden unearthed the bodies of several small animals, including four dogs, one of which had a crushed skull. A meat cleaver is believed to have been the weapon used,. After hearing news reports that police were looking for a man seen walking a dog in the vicinity of Houghley Gill before Leanne's disappearance, it is theorised that Taylor killed his dog to distance himself from the crime.

At first Taylor admitted he had abducted Leanne but said her death had been an accident. He claimed she had fallen off the bed and hit her head. He had then attempted to move her using the scarf around her neck to pull her. This, he said, is when she must have died. Needless to say no one was buying that explanation and he eventually pleaded guilty to Leanne's abduction and murder.

Taylor ran a pet food business to supplement his income and had three large freezers in his home. A witness who would visit Taylor's house regularly said a large upright freezer disappeared one day without any explanation. It seems the only reason Leanne’s was discovered was because the freezer he used to store her body in had broken down and he therefore needed to dispose of the body. Taylor was reluctant to dispose of the body; for him it was a trophy to constantly remind him of his crime. 

In July 2002 he was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 20 years. The judge said Taylor’s crime had been cold and calulating and described him as a sexual sadist. Sharon Hawkhead, Leanne’s mother, said that although it was good that her daughter's killer had been jailed, for the family the agony would continue. Referencing the possibility that John Taylor could one day be paroled out on the streets again, she said that life should mean life.

After the guilty verdict, a former partner of Taylor’s spoke of his desire to tie women up and said he had expressed to her that he wanted to have sex with her 15 year old daughter. This was three months after Leanne had gone missing.  Taylor would correspond with women all over the country asking for sex. He would often travel long distances across the UK for this purpose.

A year later, Taylor was linked via his DNA to two sexual assualts from the the late 1980s. On the 18th October 1988 he assaulted and raped a 32 year old woman on wasteland in Houghley Gill, the same location where he had attacked Leanne Tiernan. Taylor had attacked the unidentified woman with a knife. He had protected his identity by wearing a mask over his face. A year later he broke into the house of a 21 year old woman. He bound and blindfolded her before abusing and raping her whilst her baby was asleep in the next room. In 2003, Taylor was given an additional life sentence for these offences and his parole was extended to thirty years. Fifteen years later in 2018 Tayloir pleaded guilty to a range of offences including rape and assualt on several women and a 7 year old girl dating from 1977 to 1996.

When Leanne's body was discovered in such close proximity to where Yvonne’s had been found 8 years previously, police immediately wondered about a possible connection. Like Leanne, Yvonne's body had been left in a shallow grave and covered over with sticks rather than bruiere. When John Taylor came on the radar that feeling of a connection only intensified. The methodical way he had executed the abduction, murder and disposal of the body made them suspect that this was not his first murder. Another clue to this effect was the finding of a necklace in the boot of Taylor’s car. It could not be identified and it is thought it could possibly be a trophy from a previous victim. The fact that it had been proved that his offending goes all the way back to the 1970’s means that in 1992 when Yvonne was killed, he already had a history of violence against women.

There are some differences between the murders of Yvonne and Leanne. Yvonne was stabbed to death rather than strangled, and her body had not been wrapped in plastic as Leanne’s had, although as I mentioned a few reports do say that Yvonne’s body was bound and tied. There is no evidence that Yvonne was placed in a freezer, but she was missing for a long time before her remains were found. 

Taylor did have a connection to Bradford as he regularly worked at the Bradford Euroway Trading estate. Former police intelligence officer and current  cold case investigator Chris Clark views John Taylor as a key suspect in Yvonne’s murder and says Taylor is known to have used sex workers. Taylor may well have come into contact with Yvonne on the streets of Bradford.

As well as Yvonne’s case, West Yorkshire police said they were looking into three unsolved murders that could be linked to Taylor. These were Lindsey Jo Rimmer, 1994, Deborah Wood, 1996, and Rebecca Hall, 2001.  He is also being looked at for unsolved murders in Scotland as he trvelled to galsgow often. There were a total of ten cold cases that were reopened in response to the sentencing of John Taylor in 2002.

Ten years later another suspect for the murder of Yvonne Fiitt arrived on the scene in a  dramatic and truly horrifying way. In May 2010, the police arrived at a flat in Holmfield Court,  Bradford to find 40 year old Stephen Griffiths calmly waiting for them. He was sitting in the kitchen, in which days earlier he had dismembered the body of 36 year old Suzanne Blamires. Suzanne had disappeared a few days previously on the 21st May. 

Griffiths had been on a police watch list for a while because of his odd behaviour and his previous convictions. We will go into them in more detail in a moment. The police had arrived at the block of flats that night because of a phone call from the janitor. He had been reviewing CCTV footage from a camera that overlooked the communal garden. To his horror and surprise the CCTV showed a young woman (Suzanne Blamires) running away from the flat with Griffiths in pursuit. Griffiths caught up with  Suzanne and pulled her to the ground. He then shot her twice in the head from close range with a crossbow bolt. Griffiths could then be seen dragging the body back inside the flat. Hours later Griffiths came back outside and looked directly at the camera before putting his middle finger up at it. 

When Griffiths was arrested he claimed that he had committed many more murders. He said that he had cannibalised the flesh of his victims. Some he cooked on his stove while some he had devoured raw. Shockingly this was not a sick boast and was proved to be true.

Forensic testing of the flat found traces of blood belonging to 43 year old Susan Rushworth, who disappeared in June 2009. Susan’s remains have never been found.In April 2010 he murdered and dismembered 31 year old Shelley Armitage. CCTV footage was found that showed Griffiths transporting her body parts wrapped in plastic on a train before disposing of them in a river. Shelley’s remains were able to be reclaimed by police divers from the riverbed.

Grifftihs  was obsessed with serial killers and had  expressed to his psychologist his desire to become one. He created an online alter ego, a demon-like creature called Ven Pariah. Pariah meaning social outcast and Ven believed to be a shortening of Stephen. He would quote fictional serial killers on MySpace like Frances Dolarhyde from Thomas Harris Red Dragon and generally spew misanthropic bile about the human race and women in particular. He also had a history of controlling and abusive behaviour towards partners and ex-girlfriends.

Eventually he did take that next step and made the decision to start murdering women.The question is when did he first make this leap? Stephen Griffiths’ personal history certainly provides the possibility that he started killing many years before the crimes for which he was convicted

Griffiths is a suspect in the murder of Yvonne Fitt for several resons. All his known victims were sex workers from Bradford. He chose sex workers because they were vulnerable and to emulate his hero, the Yorkshire ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe killed at least 13 women between 1975 and 1980. Although Yvonne’s murder occured 17 years before that of Susan Rushworth, Griffiths’ violent offending had started when he was still a teenager.

Stephen Shaun Griffiths was born on Christmas Eve 1969.  He grew up in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire. Griffiths had a difficult childhood. His parents divorced when he was a child and he then lived with his mum. However his mum was a convicted criminal, guilty of fraud and was a renowned con artist. Griffiths was intelligent and secured a scholarship to a prestigious private school but he didn’t settle and dropped out. He soon found himself involved in low level crime like petty theft and shoplifting. 

Things took a violent turn when he was apprehended by a shop assistant for stealing. Griffiths flipped and cut the shop assistant's face with a knife. The then 17 year old was given a three year Youth custody sentence for the offence. He only served one year before being released. In 1989 he was made to carry out a hundred hours of community service after firing an air pistol at someone. He used to use the gun to shoot birds and dissect them afterwards. At this point he was diagnosed with an unspecified personality disorder.

In 1990 Griffiths was sent to prison after holding a knife against a young woman's throat. Around this time Griffiths was formally diagnosed by medical professionals as a sadistic schizoid psychopath. This was not a treatable mental illness so he could not  be sectioned under the Mental Health Act.  Griffiths was also noted as being deeply narcissistic and misogynistic. 

When Griffiths was released from prison he moved into a flat in Mallingham, Bradford, close to where Yvonne lived and worked up until her move to Leeds at Christmas 1991. There is some conflicting information regarding when Griffiths was in prison. Most information states he was out of prison by 1992 but some that he was sent to prison in 1992. Either way he could have been at large at the time Yvonne is believed to have been killed in July 1992. I believe he had lived in Mallingham previously, when he first came out of Youth custody. As a proven user of sex workers there is every chance he may have had contact with Yvonne.

Grifftohs is curretnly serving three life seneycnes for the murders he is known to have committed.

There is a now third convicted killer who has been linked to the murder of Yvonne Fitt. In 2011 48 year old Christopher Hallwiell was a taxi driver living in Swindon with his partner and her three daughters. He was described by neighbours as a nice bloke who always had a smile on his face. Behind that facade hid a dark and disturbing reality.

On 19th October 2012, at Bristol Crown Court, Halliwell pleaded guilty to the murder of 22 year old Sian O'Callaghan. Sian disappeared from Swindon, Wiltshire, having last been seen at a nightclub in the town in the early hours of 19 March 2011. Her body was found on 24 March 2011 near Uffington in Oxfordshire. 

During proceedings against Halliwell it became known that a second murder charge against him had been dropped as a result of a percieved error in police handling of the case. The body of Becky Godden-Edwards, a woman who had been reported missing in 2007, was found a matter of hours after Halliwell's arrest for the murder of Sian. Halliwell actually led police to the body.

However, it was determined that Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher had breached the guidelines of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 by failing to caution Halliwell and denying him access to a solicitor during the period the confessions were obtained. As a result the judge deemed that they were inadmissible in court.  

The following years were full of legal wrangling, and Detective Superintendent Fulcher resigned from the force in 2014 after being found guilty of gross misconduct for not following proper procedures when arresting Haliwell. By 2016 enough evidence had been uncovered and Halliwell was charged with the murder Becky Godden-Edwards. He was found guilty that year.

Fulcher maintains that Halliweill is a serial killer and says Halliwell quipped that if they knew the truth they should be questioning him about eight murders. In 2019 The Daily Mirror published an article saying they had conducted their own investigation and  concluded there are similarities between the murders of which Halliwell has been convicted and four other murders including Yvonne Fitt.

Becky Godden-Edwards was known to engage in sex work and Halliwell picked her up in the red light district in Swindon. There is ample evidence he used sex workers regularly. Halliwell’s father's house was in Huddersfield, only 25km away from where Yvonne was last seen, so he would likely have been familiar with red light districts in West Yorkshire. Halliwell is linked to the murders of other women who worked as sex workers, including 32 year old Carol Clark. Carol vanished from the red light area of Bristol in March 1993. Two days later her body was found dumped in a canal 50 km away.  

Halliwell was a known long barge and canal enthusiast and would holiday regularly in the north of England. The Liverpool-Leeds canal is a popular destination for long barge hobbyists which runs near Bradford and right into the centre of Leeds. The location where Yvonne’s body was disposed does fit Halliwell’s method of dumping the bodies of his victims in rural locations far from where the murder took place. 

Retired detective Mike Rees spoke in 2021 in the online newspaper Gloucestershire Live about the need for police to investigate Halliwell as a serial killer. He did not mention any cases specially but in the article Yvonne Fitt’s  murder was brought up yet again as being possibly connected to Halliwell.

John Taylor, Stephen Grifftihs and Christopher Halliwell have nee notoriously tight lipped about other murders they may have committed. Taylor and Griffiths have been deinfinetly been questioned about Yvonne’s murder. I'm unsure if this is the case with  Halliweill. Both Taylor and Griffths are in Wakefield prison and have attempted suicde on more than one occasion. They seem determined to take any secrets they have to the grave.

Another potential suspect in this case is the middle aged man Yvonne was seen with in the Duncan pub. He could have nothing to do with her death. He may not have come forward out of fear or embarrassment  if he was one of Yvonne's customers. Of course there are also the three unidentified people that were arrested during the first year of the investigation, including an unidentified woman. It is not known if these people were known to each other, but this could point to the fact that more than one person was involved in Yvonne’s murder.

One of the big unanswered questions is where was Yvonne living between January 1992  and when her body was found? She didn't appear to be working on the streets at this time. Was she held against her will? Or was she staying with someone? Did it have anything to do with the debt she was in?

Regardless, I think it's obvious that the killer was someone who frequented red light areas and also someone who must have been very familiar with Lindley Woods, where her body was left.  It may have been one of the suspects I have mentioned but it could be someone else equally as abhorrent who has never been caught.

Former Detective Mark Williams-Thomas is now an investigative journalist involved in trying to solve cold cases. He has highlighted the disproportionate number of women and girls who make up the 2600 unsolved murders in the UK. If you include missing persons cases the gender bias is even more pronounced. The most vulnerable people within this sad statistic include runaways and sex workers, many of whose cases have seen little movement for decades.

Finding details about Yvonne Fitt’s murder has been diffciult. Of all the cases I have covered this has been the hardest about which to find archived articles. It was a lot easier to find articles on the episode I did on John Gill who was killed in 1888, also in Bradford, than on Yvonne Fitt, who died in 1992. It's hard not  to believe that race has been a significant factor in why Yvonne’s case does not get a lot of exposure.

Mark Williams-Thomas is calling for a national database to be established to help connect the dots between crimes that might lead to cases like Yvonne’s being solved.

It's a depressing fact that in 2022 some female victims are viewed as innocent and  others as having somehow brought their misfortune on themselves. Dr Jane Woodrow, quoted in the Metro in 2021, writes how some of the victims of Peter Sutcliffe and Fred and Rose West were not viewed as “respectable” and how this impacted the effectiveness of the initial investigations into the murders associated with them. Anyone who has seen the Netflix documentary “The Ripper'' about Peter Sutcliffe will recognise this fact. The language used by police and members of the public at the time of his murder spree between 1975 and 1980 highlights the disregard sex workers were held in. Even some of the modern day interviews involved in the documentary seemed to illustrate those views as still prevalent. Dr Woodrow makes the point that all victims are innocent, and all are worthy of being treated with dignity.

2019 saw police make a fresh appeal for information about Yvonne’s murder as part of a complete review of the case. Detective Chief Inspector Emma Winfield requested that the anonymous caller who had phoned in following the Crimewatch programme in 1992 should now call again. In 1992 this person had named a suspect and the police were keen to talk to them again about this. As far as it is known the caller did not respond. Despite the length of time that has gone by, police say they remain committed to getting justice for Yvonne and her family. 

Ena Fitts passed away four years ago. She spent the last thirty years of her life grieving for Yvonne everyday. While carrying this burden she also brought up Yvonne's daughter.

In the interview Ena gave for Crimewatch in November 1992 she talks about how kind and generous Yvonne was; she would always buy mum flowers just to show her how much she loved her. 

Decades after the fact Yvonne's daughter is quoted  in the Daily News about how she remembers vividly the day she learnt about her mothers murder. It was just 4 days before she turned 12. She says she has never got over it and that she remembers her mum as being just lovely.

Over the thirty years 600 people have been interviewed in relation to Yvonne’s murder but those responsble remain at large. Please share Yvonne’s story with people and raise awareness of this cowardly crime. The culprit believes they have got away with it forever but let's do our best to remind people that Yvonne's case is not closed and this is not over.

If you have any infrotmaion regarding the murder of Yvonne Fitt you can ring the Major Investigation Review team on 01924 821543 or alternatively you can contact crime stoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.