Page 26 Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019
Karen had to fight like a warrior to
bring him finally to justice.
Under the PACE code of practice
(relating to The Police And Crimi-
nal Evidence Act of 1984), DS
Fulcher should have taken
Halliwell straight back to the
police station as soon as he
confessed to Becky’s murder.
Instead, seeing a ‘window of
opportunity’, he’d driven him to
the field where Halliwell claimed
another body would be found.
That decision cost DS Fulcher
his career. In 2014, he was found
guilty of misconduct at a discipli-
nary hearing. Later that year, he
resigned, his police career over.
Not once has Karen, a beauti-
cian, blamed the detective for
jeopardising the pursuit of justice
for Becky. Quite the opposite —
the two remain close to this day.
‘That man is a hero. He brought
Becky home — if he hadn’t done
what he did, Halliwell would never
have shown him where she was.
‘If it hadn’t been for DS Fulcher,
Becky would still be in that field,
and I would not know if my daugh-
ter was alive or dead.’
DS Steve Fulcher’s story is inter-
woven with Karen’s in the drama,
in which she is played by Imelda
Staunton. Becky’s story is there,
too, without any sugar coating.
And what a terrible story it is.
Most difficult of all to watch,
admits Karen, were the scenes
depicting Becky at her lowest
point — when she had been all but
lost to drugs and prostitution. It
was the little details that stung.
‘There was a scene when Becky
went to court over a burglary, and
in the drama she was scruffy, wear-
ing an old tracksuit top,’ Karen
recalls. ‘That bit got to me.’
She remembers the day well.
‘Becky had wanted smart clothes
for the trial. I’d bought her new
trousers and a top, and the night
before I’d steeped them in Comfort
fabric conditioner because Becky
always loved the smell.
‘But in my heart I knew the TV
depiction wasn’t a misrepresenta-
tion, more a tweaking of thetimings. Because there were plenty
of times when Becky had been
more than scruffy. She’d been
filthy, sleeping rough, behind bins.
Yet this was the way she was living:
my daughter, who had a lovely
home, her own bedroom, her own
en suite bathroom.. .’
Karen has written a book, telling
the story of her daughter’s short
and troubled life, and attempting
to make sense of what happened.
Born in April 1982, a little sister
for Steven, Becky was a sensitive
child who was deeply affected
when her parents split up when
she was six.
At school, her shyness made her
a target for bullies. Karen remem-
bers one incident where dog dirt
was smeared on her cardigan and
she was made to put it on.
Before she was 12, Becky had
attempted suicide, was self-
harming and had been referred to
a child psychologist. ‘I could not
believe it was happening — not to
my little girl,’ says her mother.
Yes, there were happy family
memories, too; Karen says Becky
was thrilled when she remarried in
1997, adored her stepdad, Charlie,
and was a proud bridesmaid. But
there were also dark times.
As she moved through her teens,she fell in with a bad crowd and
started inhaling solvents; then she
moved on to heroin.
By then, all Becky’s ambitions of
becoming a vet had gone and she
dropped out of school.
Over the coming years, Karen’s
whole life became about getting
Becky help, or dealing with the
fallout from her addiction. Time
after time, she went to drug dens
and dragged her home.
She tried to keep her off the
streets, too, supporting her when
Becky insisted she was going to
get clean. She so wanted to get her
life back, Karen insists.
‘She hated what it was doing to
her, to me, to everyone. But she
still went back, every time.
‘Afterwards, I know everyone was
asking how a clever girl from a
loving family could end up as a sex
worker, in a shallow grave in a field,
and I’ve asked that question
myself a million times.
‘I feel I failed her. Any mother
would. But it was the drugs that
failed her. They left her vulnerable
to monsters like Halliwell.’
Karen last saw her daughter in
2002, on that day they’d been in
court. Afterwards, with a fine and
a criminal record, Becky asked her
mother to drive her to see aboyfriend. ‘I had to — I knew she
would go anyway,’ Karen says.
It was the last time she would see
Becky alive.
In the coming weeks and months,
she expected Becky to walk in the
door at any moment.
‘She’d gone off before, but she’d
always remembered Mother’s Day
and birthdays,’ she recalls. ‘But
this time there was silence.’W
EEKS became
months. Then
years. Karen
searched, of course.
She went back to the streets,
looking for Becky, and got in touch
with the police — twice.
‘But the situation was confused.
There were members of the family
— on her dad’s side — who said
they had seen her. ‘Her grandfa-
ther insisted he had seen her on a
bus and she’d got off and given
him a hug. Someone else said she
was running a club in Bristol.
‘I got in touch with all the clubs
— nothing. But because there had
been supposed sightings of her,
the police said they couldn’t
register her as a missing person.’
Yet Karen thought about BeckyA
T JUST 4ft 11in tall and
slightly built, Becky Godden-
Edwards was no match at all
for the man who decided to
kill her and dump her bodyin a Gloucestershire field.
No one really knows why he did it — or even
when. Becky’s mother, Karen Edwards, only
knows that some time between 2002 and
2003, when her daughter was 21, her path
crossed with taxi driver Christopher Halliwell
and she was never seen again.
Karen never got to give her a final hug. But
for eight years, she clung to the hope that
Becky was still alive. Then, when her remains
were finally discovered and returned to
Karen, there was only a box to embrace.
Earlier this year, Karen was invited onto the
set as filming got underway on an ITV drama
based on the story of how Becky’s killer was
caught and the extraordinary legal saga that
led to his conviction.
A Confession stars actor Martin Freeman as
the detective who managed to achieve what
no policeman before him had been able to do
— i.e. bring Becky home and identify her killer
— but who was sacked as a result.
Karen wanted to be there as her daughter’s
story was told. Hardened by years of fighting
for justice, she thought she was mentally
prepared for the sight of another slightly
built young woman playing her daughter. She
was not.
‘The actress, Stephanie Hyam was tiny, too.
I put my arm around her, and the unexpect-
edness of the familiar feeling made me imme-
diately tearful,’ Karen remembers.
‘She fitted into my arm just as Becky had. I
felt as though I was holding her again.’
The six-part drama, which starts on
Monday, tells of Karen’s dogged campaign to
bring Halliwell to justice which turned into
one of the most astonishing sagas in British
legal history.
For the fact that Becky was dead — not
estranged from her family, not wanting-to-
be-missing — only became apparent when
her killer was being questioned about the
disappearance of another young woman,
22-year-old Sian O’Callaghan, who had failed
to return home after a night out in Swindon
in March 2011.
When cornered by detectives, Halliwell
admitted that he had killed Sian and led them
to her body. Then he turned to the officer in
charge, DS Steve Fulcher, and said: ‘Do you
want another one?’ He then told them where
he had buried Becky many years earlier.
What should have been a straightforward
double murder investigation became much
more complicated as the trial got underway.
T
HE reason? Halliwell’s confession
to Becky’s murder had been given
without him being reminded of his
rights by DS Fulcher — subsequently
described, wrongly, as a ‘police blunder’ —
meaning he couldn’t be held to account for
killing Becky.
In October 2012, Halliwell was sentenced to
life for Sian’s murder — but not Becky’s.
Haunting TV
drama that’s
brought my^
darling girl
back to life
A cruel ruling stopped the killer of
Karen’s daughter facing justice — even
after he confessed. Now her campaign
to right that wrong is being screened...
reviving so many harrowing memories
by Jenny
Johnston
INTERVIEW