Babes in the Wood Murder

Gerry Brooke takes a look at a new book about West Country murders and singles out a Bristol murder which, 50 years on, still remains unsolved.

Many people are under the impression that the West Country is the sort of place, quiet and sleepy, where shocking murders rarely happen.

But a new collection of tales by crime writers Nichola Sly and John Van Der Kiste, should make them change their minds.

Greed, jealousy, lust and insanity are, after all, universal traits and Cornwall, Devon and Somerset certainly have their share of stories.

Skirting Bristol the authors have researched a Victorian murder in Weston-super-Mare, another in remote Loxton, near the Webbington, and yet another from Bath.

And it’s in the Somerset section that we discover four Bristol stories.

The last one in the book, and the one that caught my attention, centres on the Stapleton area and the so called “Babes in the Wood” murder.

An unsolved crime, it’s an horrific and distressing tale that has intrigued me for well over 30 years.

On Thursday June 20, 1957, Bristol was in the grip of a heatwave.

In the late afternoon, as it began to cool down, five year old Royston Sheasby asked his sister, seven year old June, if they could go for a walk together.

The boy said that he wanted to visit some horses in a nearby field.

June wasn’t keen but, after telling their mother, Barbara, who was doing some decorating, what they intended to do, the two set off hand in hand.

When Mrs Sheasby next noticed the time she was horrified to see that it was almost seven o’clock and immediately raised the alarm.

The children’s disappearance sparked a massive search with thousands of members of the public turning out to help the police scour the countryside.

The whole area around Stapleton was covered in minute detail while firemen lowered the water in Duchess Pond in Stoke Park so that divers could trawl its depths.

Then came a new twist to the story.

Within a few days of the little ones’ disappearance, a letter was sent to the editor of the Evening Post stating that they were alive and well and demanding the sum of £200 for their safe return.

But Chief Supt Phillips, the head of Bristol CID at the time, dismissed the letters as, “a wicked and cruel hoax.”

Meanwhile exhausted policemen were giving up their days off and turning down overtime to continue the thankless task.

The book’s authors now take up the story.

“At about 9pm on July 1, PC Brough noticed a tiny hand protruding from the earth in dense undergrowth close to the River Frome as it flowed through Snuff Mills Park.

“It was Royston Sheasby’s.

“Immediately, hundreds of police officers were deployed to the area to search for his sister.

“However, when Royston’s body was removed from its shallow grave, it quickly became evident that June’s body had been concealed in the same place.”

The children had both suffered severe head injuries, probably caused by a blunt instrument but there was no evidence of any kind of sexual assault.

But the police now had a tenuous lead.

Who, they asked, was the man in a blue striped suit who had been spotted sitting on a log near to the burial site at around the time the children had disappeared?

“Exhaustive enquiries were made at the four mental hospitals in the immediate vicinity,” say Sly and Van der Kiste.

“The police... issued a detailed description of George Weston, a patient who had escaped from Purdown Mental Institution.

“But he was quickly traced and eliminated from their enquiries.

“They also asked for help in tracing a girl, aged about 13, who had been seen with the two children... and two boys who had been fishing on the river bank between about 6pm and 9.30pm.”

Attention was now focusing on the patients of one particular mental hospital and also on any locals who had been convicted of offences against children.

During the weekend of July 6/7, the case took a promising turn as the police received an anonymous letter said to contain vital information.

It led to a blue suit being recovered from a storeroom at the Bristol Mental Hospital.

One patient, who was interviewed several times, had his parole cancelled and was put under 24 hour guard.

On July 11, police announced that the letter writer, a woman, had come forward and that, as a result, they were expecting to interview a man who had since left Bristol.

“They also issued a description of a 67 year old man from Newport” say the authors, “ who they urgently wanted to trace, as he had been missing from home since the night on which the children’s bodies were discovered.

“Both men were later eliminated from enquiries.”

Despite interviews with over 25,000 people and the taking of over 2,000 statements the case of the “Babes in the Wood,” while remaining open, grew cold.

Then, in 1964, came a sensational new development.

A consultant psychiatrist, Dr Williams, claimed that a prison inmate who had recently died had confessed to him that he had killed a young boy and a girl.

Interestingly, there had been no other known murders of this type in the relevant timeframe.

“But the doctor refused to name the individual concerned” say the authors, “likening himself to a priest who had received confidential evidence in the confessional.”

The Home Office, in their turn, stated that a psychiatrist’s confidential notes did not form part of Prison Department records.

Although questions were asked in Parliament, Dr Williams would not reveal any more information and could not legally be forced to do so.

The “Babes in the Wood” case remains open to this day.

n West Country Murders by Nichola Sly and John Van Der Kiste is published by the History Press at £14.99