babes in the wood

The unsolved murder of June and Royston Sheasby (1957) - At about 5.30 p.m. on Thursday, 20th June 1957, June Sheasby, aged 7, and her brother Royston, aged 5, left their home in Brockworth Crescent, Stapleton, Bristol, for a walk towards Wickham Glen. When they failed to return a massive search involving thousands of people was launched, during which fields and woodland were scoured, police frogmen searched a pond, and near-by streams were dragged. Eleven days later on Monday, 1st July, the bodies of the Sheasby children were found buried side by side in a shallow grave among dense undergrowth in woods 100 yards from the River Frome at Snuff Mills Park.

 

A light covering of leaves and soil had been partly exposed by heavy rain. Both children had severe head injuries and fractured skulls. The patients of four mental hospitals around Bristol were questioned. Despite an extensive police investigation during which 25,000 people were interviewed and more than 2,000 statements were taken, the murderer remained at large.

 

Why innocence died with Babes in Wood

 

AS the search party prepared to turn in after another frustrating day, the shrill blast of a police whistle emanated from a secluded nook in a Bristol wood. The bodies of two children, their tiny skulls crushed, had been found in a shallow grave on the banks of the River Frome, in Stapleton. It was 9pm, Monday, July 1, 1957. The 'Babes in the Wood', as they came to be known, were seven-year-old June Sheasby and her younger brother Royston, aged five.

 

And their killer? What monster could have committed such a cowardly crime? Still, almost 50 years on, nobody knows. Could a West Country pensioner be hiding a sinister secret? Could the person who shattered the idyllic tranquility of a Bristol suburb be walking the streets today? Looking back, it sounds like a golden age, an age of innocence. Even the gyrating hips of Elvis Presley had to be censored lest they caused offence. But behind this veneer of naivety was a reality that the West could no longer ignore once that whistle was heard across the grounds of Snuff Mills Park.

 

'Tell this story,' the mother of the murdered children, Barbara Sheasby, would later implore. 'I don't want it to be forgotten. Things like that should never be forgotten.'

 

Thursday, June 20, was a sultry, sticky summer day - the West was in the midst of a heatwave. When the temperature eased in the late afternoon, little Royston Sheasby felt like going for a walk. His elder sister, June, was less keen. But Royston was insistent - he wanted to look at a pair of brown horses in a nearby field - and June was swayed. It was half-past-five. They told their mother of their plans, and off they went - June clutching a chocolate box, both of them laughing and talking excitedly.

 

Mrs Sheasby was so busy decorating the family home in Brockworth Crescent, Stapleton, that time simply flew by. When she finally took a break from her painting, she noticed the time with a fright - seven o'clock. Her children were always back by then, and she raised the alarm.

 

SO began the biggest child hunt Britain had ever seen. The whole country was intrigued by the mystery surrounding the siblings' disappearance. In an amazing tribute to the strength of the West's community spirit, volunteers joined the search party in droves. Before long, more than 10,000 men, women and children were scouring the Stapleton area. Nowadays, such a response is unthinkable.

 

Local police officers who searched around the clock for 11 days, turned down overtime pay. As the days went by, storm clouds started to gather overhead, and as the heatwave broke, heavy rain hindered the search effort. The signs were ominous, but as the dogs sniffed, frogmen waded and firemen toiled, the West held its breath, desperate for some good news. Right to the end, the children's parents - Jesse, an iron moulder, and Barbara - clung to the possibility that their offspring would be found alive.

 

Perhaps they had been kidnapped. A letter addressed to the Bristol Evening Post suggested they had, but it turned out to be a malicious hoax. Could June and Royston be trapped in the woods? There were ravines enough around the banks of the River Frome, where they were last seen.

 

But that ghostly whistle shattered the hopes of a whole community. It was sounded by Jefferson Brough, a young police officer. He had glimpsed a tiny hand protruding from of a bundle of leaves. The rain had washed away some of the foliage and revealed a shallow grave - and within it, the body of little Royston Sheasby.

 

June was found just inches away, the pair as close in death as they had been in life, each of their lives brutally cut short by a blow to the side of the head with some blunt instrument.

 

There was no evidence of a sexual assault, no sign of a struggle, no theft and no obvious motive for this mindless attack. It seems the Sheasbys died satisfying one person's murderous lust. More than 25,000 people were questioned and thousands of statements were taken, but police had very little to go on. They tried to locate two key witnesses. The mysterious 'Man in the Blue Suit' was thought to be the last person to see the children alive. And a man with 'peering eyes' was seen staring at children near where the Sheasbys were found. Neither witness (maybe they were the same man) was ever identified.

 

Other difficulties arose. The children were found yards from Bristol Mental Hospital, now Blackberry Hill Hospital. However, when they interviewed the patients, proceedings took a farcical turn. Dozens confessed to the murder, and the police were forced to spend precious time disproving these confessions, rather than trying to catch the killer. The facade of innocence that pervaded 1950s society hampered the investigation, too. It was known that there were courting couples down by the river, but many were too embarrassed to come forward.

 

So, as the Sheasby children lay in a flower-strewn grave in Filton New Cemetery, the trail went cold. The investigation had lost momentum. Promising leads were scarce and the passing weeks became months and then years. Barring a miracle, it seemed the identity of the man who struck fear into the whole of the West would remain a mystery.

 

However, in a sensational development, that miracle nearly came about seven years later, in the summer of 1964. On August 26, the sixth international congress of psychology gathered in London, and Dr Arthur Hyatt Williams, a Home Office psychiatrist, delivered a speech that stunned the West Country.

 

Hyatt Williams said that a prisoner patient of his, serving time for a minor crime, had made a confession to him just before he died. He had murdered two small children - a girl and a boy.

 

THE case of 'Babes in the Wood' was back in the spotlight, thrust into the centre of a political storm. Hyatt Williams would say neither who the prisoner was, nor who the murdered children were. He said he felt like a priest who had received a confession. Jesse Sheasby, though, had no doubts. The murder of June and Royston was the only such crime of recent years.

 

But maybe the confession was false, like those made by the Bristol psychiatric patients at the time. Without any details, Hyatt Williams's revelation was cruel.

 

Should the Home Secretary Henry Brooke insist the confession be made public? Questions were asked in Parliament and Labour demanded an official inquiry, but the Home Office distanced itself from the case. Bristol CID approached Hyatt Williams, but he sent this reply: 'I have spent a night with my conscience and I cannot divulge the name of the person concerned.'

 

Technically, the case is still open. There has been no closure on this horrific episode. And in the West, people still shudder at the memory of that terrible fortnight.

 

Letters in the press

 

' I sensed evil of babes' murder ' - 2003

 

SIR - In June 2002, while visiting my relatives in Bristol, we went for an afternoon stroll at a riverside walk in a large park-type area on the other side of the city.

 

Having parked, we walked down to the riverside and, within minutes, I started feeling extremely uncomfortable, claustrophobic and totally oppressed by the area. This got worse until I felt what I can only describe as a feeling of pure evil around me. I desperately wanted to leave the place, but felt stupid and unable to explain my feelings. We walked about a mile before I felt less uneasy.

 

The impression and atmosphere of this place has haunted me for 18 months. I had only ever mentioned this to my husband, and had recently decided to ask my relatives in Bristol if they could do some research of that area to find out if anything bad had happened there. Perhaps it had slaves working on the river, as it was obviously part of a large estate years ago. To my utter amazement, I opened my Western Daily Press on December 9 and saw the article about the murder of the 'babes in the wood' 46 years ago at Snuff Mills Park, and their burial on the riverbank.

 

It was the very place we had taken our walk and I had seemingly sensed its awful history. Thank you for helping to solve my problem. I do think that, on that day, I had sensed the pure evil of that awful event. Now at last I know the possible reason for it.

 

'Memories of the murder'

 

There was panic among the young parents on the Oldbury Court Estate and surrounding area. All us youngsters - there were hundreds of us due to the post-war baby boom - were lectured over and over about not talking to strangers.

 

Vassalls Park through to Snuff Mills was our adventure area. We would spend hours playing in the shallows where the stream enters the river Frome on the edge of Bamboo Island. In fact, we played anywhere along the river up and into Snuff Mills. After this incident took place - and the lack of apprehension of the murderer - we were told not to go there alone. This was drummed into me so much that to this day, on a visit to Snuff Mills, I always mention the murder to whoever I am with.

 

It was the talking point at school and on the street, with some lads giving graphic details of what they thought the bodies would be like. I would have nightmares. We were told that it was a mental patient from Glenside/Stoke Park hospitals who had done it, but that they could not be identified.

 

Going to Snuff Mills for a picnic with the family was never the same and we tended to stay in the 'safety' of Vassalls Park. But as time passed, we children gradually went back to playing in the area as before - but we were ever-cautious about strangers and a little on edge. We tended to play in larger groups.

 

This was an event which will forever be engraved in my memory - just like the later plane crash near Ovendale Road. No one who is my age and who lived at Oldbury Court will ever forget either.

 

Never forgotten: Royston and June Sheasby were killed near Snuff Mills nearly 50 years ago - but no one was ever charged with their murder.

Done