"You are an intelligent and cunning man. You are a convincing liar as well as a very dangerous one."
Mr Justice Hooper (Judge passing sentence at Sheffield Crown Court 1998)
Willerby shopping park, the petrol station can be seen at the top of the picture where the shopping park adjoins the road to Beverley
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Willerby is a suburb on the westernmost edge of Kingston upon Hull on the East Coast of England.
It sits halfway between the Humber Bridge which is the UK's longest single span suspension bridge and the historic market town of Beverley.
Its mainly residential and According to the 2011 UK census, Willerby parish had a population of 7,940.
On the westernmost edge of the area there is a shopping park, with a McDonalds, Waitrose, Home Bargains and other smaller shops surrounded by a large car park.
As you drive out of the car park exit you go uphill and it is at the top of this hill where there is a petrol station, this is where in 1998 an infamous murder case took place.
On 4th March 1998, Kirsty Carver a 22-year-old civilian employee of Humberside Police who worked at Queens Gardens police station, Hull city centre, spent the evening visiting friends.
Kirsty was a petite brunette with long curly hair. she was originally from Withernsea, which is a small seaside town on the East Coast. Kirsty had moved to Hull, the nearest city for work and was at the start of life, she was pretty, young, vibrant and popular.
Kirsty had until that fateful night, been in a relationship with a Humberside Police officer called PC Graeme Jones. Their relationship had begun having problems following a car accident Kirsty had been in the previous year and suffering from depression Kirsty had returned to Withernsea and her parents home to live.
Initially on the night in question she had planned to spend the evening with her boyfriend and spend the night with him. She had prepared a meal at his home before he started his nightshift, but he had told her that very evening that he saw no future in their relationship.
Speaking at Trial PC Jones had said about that night "After the meal I expressed to Kirsty that it wasn't appropriate for us to carry on in the way we were. She was upset and left before I went to work. No arrangements were made to see her when I finished work in the early hours.''
Kirsty was so upset at this break up that she left his home at 7.15pm and rather than return to her parents home she visited two friends in the area.
After leaving the first of those friends she went on to spend until the early hours of 5th March 1998 with the second of those friends, Janet Farrand,
after several house of being a shoulder to cry on Janet told her that she was tired and had to get up early in the morning to take her young son to school. Janet then offered Kirsty a bed for the night, but she turned it down telling her that she planned to convince PC Jones to reconsider by waiting for him outside work when finished his shift at 4am at Hessle Police Station which is close to the Humber Bridge.
Janet told the Court:
''She said she was going on to a nightclub to meet friends and would then go on and see Graeme.
''At about 1.45am I invited her to stay the night because it was late and she could get up and go and see Graeme at 4am when he finished work if she wanted.
''But she declined, and I said she would have to go because I had to take my son to school in the morning. She went to her car and I never saw her again.''
Kirsty was waved off by Janet as she got into her car, a Toyota Celica, outside her friend's house at 1.45am. This was the last time anyone, except her murderer, saw her alive,
"Had she accepted that offer no doubt she would be alive today but it seemed a fateful decision."
Andrew Campbell QC, for the prosecution at the Trial
Janet lived on Wold Road, a residential street in west Hull which leads onto Willerby Road and Kirsty must have headed west up hill along Willerby Road into Willerby and then towards the Willerby Hill Shopping Park. Whether she planned to just fill up with fuel, or was wasting time until PC Jones finished his sift we will never know, but eventually she was probably then aiming to go on South towards the Humber Bridge area to turn east towards Hessle Police Station. She never arrived to meet him.
In the early hours of 5th March, a Toyota Celica was discovered, abandoned and unlocked, with the keys in the ignition on a quiet farm track near Willerby, approximately 1/2 a mile from the shopping park. There was blood insider the car and so it was clear something was wrong. Smears of blood were found on the inner surface of the driver's door and traces of blood was found on the steering wheel,
Calling in the registration number the police officer realised it was registered to a member of Humberside police staff and immediately detectives were called in, who launched a desperate search for the owner. The car was impounded to analyse it further and Kirsty's family and friends were contacted.
Janet was obviously under suspicion immediately, she was arrested and interviewed under caution whilst the Police continued their investigation. Janet was a known friend of Kirsty and they worked together, also Kirsty had told her first friend that she was going on to Janet's that evening. Janet lived only a couple of miles from where the car was abandoned and It would seem inconceivable that only hours after going to visit her friend Kirsty could have met a mysterious fate at the hands of someone she did not know.
But that is exactly what happened........ within less than an hour of leaving Janet's home, Kirsty had been horrifically killed in what seemed a motiveless attack at the hands of a stranger.
Following appeals to the public there was a local determination to help find Kirsty and this was never more evident than during a mass search, when about 3,500 people and 300 soldiers met at the Humber Bridge to help scour hundreds of square miles in a search for her. That search lasted more than a month and ended with the tragic discovery of Kirsty's body.
meanwhile her distraught parents, Vanessa and Arthur, made a number of emotional appeals for information.
Her body was eventually found in the undergrowth, Police dogs and handlers discovered Kirsty's half-buried body during a search with the Army at isolated Spurn Point just over a month after her abandoned car was found
Spurn is a narrow sand tidal island located off the tip of the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, that reaches into the North Sea and forms the north bank of the mouth of the Humber Estuary. It was a spit with a semi-permanent connection to the mainland, but a storm in 2013 made the road down to the end of Spurn impassable to vehicles at high tide. However back in 1998 you could drive to it.
The island is over 3 miles long, almost half the width of the estuary at that point, and as little as 50 yards wide in places. The southernmost tip is known as Spurn Head or Spurn Point and is the home to an RNLI lifeboat station and two disused lighthouses.
Spurn is about 30 miles from Willerby and you have to drive through Hull to get to Spurn from the West a journey of approximately an hour from the Willerby Park petrol station.
Jewellery and personal items were used to identify the remains and a post mortem revealed she had died from head injuries.
She had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer
Mr Craig Belcher a 24 year old local man from Boothferry Road Hull, a long road in the west of the city which stretches through to Hessle and eventually to the Humber Bridge, was arrested after three of his friends saw the media coverage of Miss Carver's disappearance and made a series of phone calls to the police. The friends advised the police that Belcher had contacted them and offered them money to help him dispose of the body, they had refused.
At his Trial at Sheffield Crown Court that year at which Belcher pleaded not guilty, a motive was not really established for the murder but the series of events were outlined:
Sheffield Crown Court heard that Miss Carver visited a petrol station in Hessle, on the outskirts of Hull, in the early hours of 5 March 1998.
Andrew Campbell QC, for the prosecution, said Mr Belcher attacked her with a hammer and hid her body, which was not found for a month (35 days
"What caused him to attack her the prosecution don't know. Whether she had been subjected to some sort of advance which she had rebuffed we cannot say but we do know she was left lying on the storeroom floor bleeding heavily with fatal head injuries."
Andrew Campbell QC, for the prosecution at the Trial of Craig Belcher
The Jury heard how Kirsty went to the petrol station in Willerby where Mr Belcher was working the night shift alone in the locked Petrol Station.
It is not known if Kirsty had visited Belcher there previously or if they knew one another as
no one except Belcher will truly know what happened but Belcher waived the company rules and allowed Miss Carver into the locked shop, it was while she was there that's she was attacked before being dragged into the back storeroom. Blood was later found in that back room.
Her skull was fractured in two places, her right cheekbone was broken and her left arm was shattered, the latter shown to be defensive wounds as she put her hands up to ward off the frenzied hammer blows. A pathologist who conducted a post mortem examination said she would have been rendered unconscious or semi-conscious by the first blow.
Stains were found on the floor of the storeroom which matched Miss Carver's blood.
"We shall invite you to conclude Kirsty Carver received the blows causing her rapid death in that store room," The prosecutor Mr Campbell told the jury
Mr Campbell said traces of Mr Belcher's blood were found on the inside of the driver's door of Miss Carver's car. the blood on the steering wheel was, it was concluded, transferred from him driving the car from the scene and possibly wearing blood soaked gloves.
It was concluded that after the murder Belcher had abandoned his post and left Kirsty in the locked shop whilst he drove her Toyota Celica car to an isolated road nearby and returned to the garage on foot.
An employee from a nearby firm who called at the Petrol Station during a break from work was told over the tannoy by Belcher that the petrol pumps were not working and he could not be served. he went to get petrol elsewhere. However, a short time later he had passed the garage on his way back and noticed it in darkness, no-one was there and no cars were on the forecourt.
Following the murder after returning from dumping her vehicle Belcher then tried to clean up the bloodstains in the Petrol Station before dragging the body into the boot of his own car.
That morning Belcher rang a friend, Mr Darryl Ottaway, and asked if he would meet him in nearby Beverley and go to the Dolby Forest some distance from Hull.
A foxhunt was taking place there so the two drove on without stopping.
While they were in the car Belcher showed Mr Ottaway a black purse, which had cards with a picture of Miss Carver and one of her father inside.
He said that the woman who owned the purse had been killed at the garage last night and her body was in the very boot of the car they were in, Belcher offered to show the body to Mr Ottoway who refused to look, Belcher had also told Mr Ottoway that Kirsty and an Asian man had been killed by two men at the filling station. Mr Ottoway made his excuses and left Belcher without assisting him and later contacted the Police.
The court heard that Belcher then contacted another friend, saying he had been given £200 to dispose of the body. He later told police he had been working for a drugs courier who had brought Ms Carver and an Asian man to the filling station. They had been taken into the storeroom and Ms Carver emerged looking groggy with blood on her head.
After trying in vain to get help from friends, he drove to the Dolby Forest near Beverley but finally dumped the body in a shallow grave at Spurn Point - a desolate beauty spot an hour's drive from the garage, the court was told.
When the garage's cleaners arrived in the morning they found Belcher emerging from the toilet area looking "somewhat startled" they noticed a mop, a shovel, gloves and a duster were missing and there were signs of a spillage on the floor having been cleaned up.
The filling station's handyman later noticed his hammer was missing from his toolbox.
Following the tip-offs to the police Belcher was arrested and when interviewed by police he told a story about working for a drug dealer called Andy who he blamed for Kirsty's murder.
Belcher, who claimed to be a drug runner for one of the gang, said he was told the attack was connected to a drugs turf war in which Miss Carver had unwittingly been caught up in, because she was friends with the dark-skinned man he had told his friend about.
he also claimed that Kirsty was driven away by Andy and that she was alive when she left the Filling station and that he had been left to clean up the evidence.
'his account was a complete fabrication'.
Andrew Campbell QC, for the prosecution at the Trial of Craig Belcher
The jury at Sheffield Crown Court took five hours to find Belcher, 24, guilty of battering to death Miss Carver in Hull.
There were cries of delight from Miss Carver's family in the public gallery as the jury delivered the verdict.
Belcher looked at Kirsty's family and shook his head muttering to himself.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Hooper told Belcher: "You are an intelligent and cunning man. You are a convincing liar as well as a very dangerous one."
The judge said Belcher had done his utmost to conceal his crime, compounding the anguish of Miss Carver's family.
He also said that there was no truth in defence claims that Miss Carver was involved in giving information to drug dealers from the National Crime Computer.
"Kirsty was a young woman who had everything to look forward to in life but that life was brutally ended.
"But she made one mistake which cost her life. That mistake was to call at a petrol station - something that you or I do without even thinking."
Detective Chief Inspector Rick Monkman, who led the investigation giving a statement after the verdict
Belcher, is currently serving a life sentence at Frankland Prison in Durham, to this day he has never given any explanation for the killing, refusing to admit his guilt, despite his version of events being discredited during his trial at Sheffield Crown Court.
To this day, Kirsty's family do not know what led to her death.
dedicated to the memory of Kirsty Carver aged 24
(c) K Lemonidis 2021
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