??/??/?? - Sophie Hook 7 years
old MURDERED
A 7-year-old girl was abducted from a tent on a summer's
day and murdered to satisfy a pervert's fantasy, Chester
Crown Court was told. Sophie Hook traveled to Llandudno
with her family July 29, 1995, intending to celebrate
the ninth birthday of one of her cousins with a barbecue
and garden party.
During the day the children played around a paddling pool,
cooling themselves with a hosepipe and setting up a campfire.
Because it was so hot, they wore "little or no clothing".
The highlight of the "perfect day" was to spend
the night together in the tent, a present from the nine-year-old's
grandparents.
But Gerald Elias, QC, prosecuting, said that their movements
and laughter were being observed from an adjacent bridle
path by Howard Hughes, 31, an unemployed gardener. A thick
hedge obscured him from view, claimed Mr. Elias, and from
his vantage point he could easily have heard the family's
conversations.
"In their innocent play these children, wearing little
or nothing, made targets for the depravity he was to home
in on later. Doubtless their happy chatter in the garden,
their shouting that the tent was to be their bed for the
night, gave him all the information he needed to carry
out his evil intentions."
Sophie was either led or lured away to her death in the
middle of the night. Her body was found on a beach less
than a mile away. She had been raped, beaten about the
head and strangled. Her attacker, who stripped her of
her Winnie the Pooh nightdress, had "almost certainly"
broken one of her arms in an act of deliberate violence.
Mr. Elias alleged that, 18 months earlier, Hughes had
boasted of wanting to abduct and kill a girl of four or
five - preferably by strangling or stabbing her. Hours
before the murder he had tried unsuccessfully to abduct
another girl, aged six, from a nearby park.
He also alleged that Hughes made a dramatic confession
to his father, Gerald, telling him after four fruitless
days of questioning by police: "I did it, Dad. I
must tell somebody." Sitting in a private room at
Llandudno police station, his father told Hughes: "If
I'm going to stay in this room I need to know whether
you did it or not."
Hughes allegedly went on to describe how he had gone to
the garden first during the Saturday afternoon, then returned
at around 2am. "I persuaded the girl to go with me
down to the beach," he is alleged to have said. "I've
been sexually frustrated since 1990.
We went to the sea and the girl started to scream. I put
my hand over her mouth and kept it there until she stopped.
"I took all her clothes off and threw her body in
the sea." Hughes, of Colwyn Bay, Clwyd, wearing a
charcoal gray suit and with brown, shoulder-length hair,
leaned forward in the dock throughout the prosecution
opening.
He denies charges of rape and murder. Mr. Elias told the
jury of eight men and four women that Sophie, of Great
Budworth, near Northwich, Cheshire, had traveled to Llandudno
with her mother, Julie. Mrs. Hook later returned to Cheshire,
but the remaining children were so enthusiastic about
the tent at the foot of the garden that, by nightfall,
Sophie's aunt and uncle, Danny and Fiona Jones, had agreed
that Sophie, her elder sister, and their two cousins,
could spend the night in it.
Having enjoyed an evening barbecue and played a series
of party games, including charades, the children finally
settled down to sleep at about 12.30am on July 30. The
patio door to the house was left open in case they wanted
to abandon the adventure. "It seemed the end to a
perfect family day," said Mr. Elias.
"But during that night Sophie was removed from the
tent, taken from the garden and subjected to the most
appallingly violent physical and sexual assault. She was
then manually strangled and her body thrown into the nearby
sea. "These atrocities were of such wickedness and
depravity that they almost defy belief."
He went on: "The Crown says he was bent on taking
and using a young girl for his own sexual purposes. It
was, if you like, a fantasy of his which horrifically
he was to bring to reality. He had boasted in the past
of his liking for girls of four or five, and of his wish
to abduct, sexually assault and murder a young girl."
The night began with four children in the tent. But at
around 12.20am, Sophie's six-year-old cousin, frightened
by talk about ghosts, decided he wanted to sleep indoors.
When Mr. Jones checked the remaining three at 12.45am
they were all seemingly asleep.
He zipped up the tent and went to bed. Sophie's disappearance
was not detected until 8.15am. At first she was thought
to be hiding. Later, alerted by the fact she had left
behind her favorite cuddly toy, Blankies, Mr. Jones reported
her absence to police.
By then her body had already been discovered. Whoever
murdered the child would have needed resourcefulness and
cunning to spirit Sophie away from the garden, kill her,
dispose of the body, and conceal her clothes. Hughes possessed
both qualities, he said.
The defendant was arrested the afternoon following the
murder. In the ensuing four days he consistently denied
any involvement in Sophie's death - until his alleged
confession to his father. Mr. Elias said Hughes's own
description of his route home enabled police to find Sophie's
knickers and nightdress.
Later, during a search of his home, officers found a collection
of girls' underwear hidden in a stone wall. The Crown
rejected any suggestion that Sophie had accompanied him
willingly. "As any parent will know, one can lift
a sleeping child without instantly waking that child.
Perhaps the first conscious thought they have is that
their mother or father is lifting them up." By the
time she might have realized this was not so, it would
have been too late. Mr. Elias alleged that Hughes left
Sophie's body in the sea as a deliberate means of erasing
scientific evidence that might link him to her murder.
In the event, he made the mistake of failing to dispose
of her clothes - perhaps because he hoped to retrieve
them later. Chemical traces found on these items had been
identified as similar to those in a jar of Jungle Formula
recovered from his home. Scientific tests on Hughes's
denim jacket, jeans and shoes could not be carried out
because they had been washed, apparently by his mother,
Renee, shortly after his arrest.
However, the herringbone pattern on two pairs of shoes
matched a print on a rhubarb leaf in the Jones's garden.
At an identity parade on Aug 2, he allegedly began shaking,
telling another man in the line-up: "You won't like
what I've done."
Mrs. Hook, 35, said in a written statement: "Because
it was such a lovely day Sophie took her clothes off and
was running around wearing just her knickers. "I
went about 4pm after they cut the birthday cake and sang
'Happy birthday'. The children waved goodbye."
She and her husband, Chris, identified their daughter's
body the following day. Mr. Hook, 38, said he and his
wife had instilled in Sophie the importance of not going
with strangers. He told police: "She was wary of
people she didn't know and I can't believe she would willingly
go away from Danny's house, let alone from the garden."
Howard Hughes might never have been convicted of Sophie
Hook's murder had it not been for the confession he made
to his father. After the verdict was announced, Det. Supt
Jones praised Gerald Hughes, saying: "He is a man
of honor who did a very brave thing. He must have searched
his conscience for a very long time, but he came up with
the right answer."
His son, Howard, had successfully stonewalled detectives
for nearly 94 hours, even though hundreds of witness statements
pointed to him as the culprit. But, in the absence of
DNA evidence, they could not persuade the Crown Prosecution
Service to proceed.
Then, in a glass-fronted room on the ground floor of Llandudno
police station, Hughes, 31, took his father, a businessman,
to one side and whispered: "Dad, yes, I did it. Dad,
I've got to tell someone." Out of sight of detectives,
he went on to recall how he had seen Sophie and the other
children playing around the tent from which she later
disappeared.
He had, he told his father, invited one of the girls to
go with him, but she had refused. He returned at 2am,
persuaded her to leave the tent, and walked with her to
the beach. When Sophie began to scream he put his hand
over her mouth.
After her final breath he threw her naked body into the
sea and discarded her clothes in bushes on his way home.
Mr. Hughes, who knew Sophie's family, had gone to the
police station "hoping against hope" that his
son was innocent. His confession came as a shattering
blow.
In a state of turmoil, he asked whether he had sexually
assaulted the little girl. Again, there was instant confirmation.
Father and son then studied a map to trace the route Hughes
had taken home. Their conversation was then interrupted
by the arrival of one Hughes's sisters, Heather.
"Involuntarily, I said to her, 'He did it. He's just
told me he's done it'. She went over to him and started
to question him. I said, 'There's no point going over
it again. He's done it'." When Mr. Hughes emerged
from the room he was asked to make a statement but refused.
A few minutes later he told a detective in the exercise
yard: "I will tell you this and this only - that
if Howard is involved, this is the route by which he went
home." Mr. Hughes then went home and eventually called
a family conference with his daughters, Karen, Heather,
and Lauren, a dance instructor who had come from Paris.
Later that day he told police of his son's confession.
SENTENCE
A pedophile who murdered Sophie Hook after abducting her
from a tent in her uncle's garden was given three life
sentences at Chester Crown Court. Police had been aware
of Howard Hughes's sexual deviance for 15 years before
he killed seven-year-old Sophie.
But they had been unable to secure convictions against
him because the parents of his young victims were reluctant
to allow them to testify. In the two-and-a-half years
before his arrest, Hughes, 31, had allegedly attacked
or threatened at least five girls. A day before Sophie
disappeared from the house in Llandudno, north Wales,
he is suspected of having tried to abduct a six-year-old
girl but was not charged.
After the unanimous verdicts, the jurors were told that
Hughes had been charged with raping a 14-year-old girl
nine years ago. That charge will be allowed to lie on
the file. Passing sentence, Mr. Justice Curtis said the
case represented "a clarion call" for immediate
steps to improve protection for children. He told Hughes:
"You are a fiend and your crimes are every parent's
nightmare come to pass.
My recommendation, bearing in mind your appalling crimes
and the risk you pose to young girls, is that you are
never released." Hughes, convicted six hours after
the jury began its deliberations, was still protesting
his innocence as he was led away.
He mouthed to the press gallery: "I didn't do it."
Sophie's parents were too distressed to attend court.
Her uncle, Danny Jones, from whose garden she disappeared,
began crying as Hughes was led away. The judge said it
was obvious that Hughes had been assaulting and spying
on young girls.
Yet there appeared to be no statutory system that would
have enabled professionals to supervise him. He hoped
that the Home Office would act immediately upon his recommendation,
"so that perhaps Sophie Hook will not have died entirely
in vain."
Hughes came to police attention in 1981 when he assaulted
a seven-year-old boy, for which he was given a two-year
supervision order. In the ensuing years he was interviewed
about many allegations. He was said to have made indecent
suggestions to a four-year-old and tried to rape a 15-year-old.
However, in some cases parents declined to pursue their
children's complaints. In others it was decided that there
was insufficient evidence against Hughes, an unemployed
gardener, who lived with his mother in Yerburgh Avenue,
Colwyn Bay.
Sophie's murder on July 30 last year came 18 months after
Hughes had told another pedophile of his wish to have
sex with a girl and murder her. The detective who led
the investigation insisted that police could have done
nothing more to apprehend Hughes before the murder.
Det. Supt Eric Jones said: "Everything that could
have been done was done." The Home Office said later
that the issue of tighter supervision for pedophiles was
under consideration. Michael Howard, the Home Secretary,
announced plans to give probation officers a role in supervision
of offenders on release from prison. |
