After being suspended for an internal inquiry, a coroner’s officer who believed a serial killer was responsible for the murder-suicides of two elderly couples now risked losing her job.
The papers on the deaths of two elderly couples in 1996 and 1999 were handed to Stephanie Davies, a coroner’s officer for Cheshire Police, in 2013.
She feels Howard and Bea Ainsworth’s deaths, as well as Donald and Auriel Ward’s, could have been the work of a serial murderer, and has repeatedly stated this to authorities.
But the Cheshire force has repeatedly rejected the idea, noting the deaths as two separate murder-suicides, despite evidence at odds with this.
Ms Davies was, and still is, suspended, after her 179-page report calling for further investigation into the deaths was leaked, with stories about the suspected murders appearing in the national press.
Howard and Bea Ainsworth were found dead in their Wilmslow home in Cheshire in 1996.
Police said that Mr Ainsworth, 79, murdered his 78-year-old wife with a hammer and a knife, before suffocating himself by placing a bag over his head. A suicide note was found at the scene.
But he had bruising above his top lip, something that has been documented in cases of asphyxiation, whereby someone else pushes their hand around the victim’s nose and mouth.
Mrs Ainsworth was found with her nightdress pulled above her hips and a pillow partially covering her face, which confused coroner’s officer Christine Hurst.
She could not see any evidence of domestic abuse in their marriage, with their family and friends reporting them happy, the Times reported.
Detectives working the case suggested it could have been an act of euthanasia.
But Ms Hurst felt that there was no dignity in the couple’s deaths — one of the core principles of euthanasia.
Police also found a bottle of chlormethiazole tablets — a short-lasting sedative and sleeping pill — despite neither husband or wife having a prescription for the drug.
Ms Hurst also raised her concerns about the lack of blood on Mr Ainsworth’s pyjamas after having murdered his wife with a hammer and knife, according to police officers.
A scenes-of-crime officer told her that the blood was a ‘strange one’.
In 1999, Donald and Auriel Ward were found dead in their Wilmslow home, on a street near to the Ainsworths’ house.
Police concluded that it was a murder-suicide, with officers suggesting that Mr Ward stabbed, beat and suffocated his wife and then cut his own throat, and stabbed his groin, wrists and heart.
Mrs Ward was also found with a pillow partially covering her face, and some evidence of hammer marks on her head. But the tool was not found at the scene.
Ms Hurst raised the links with investigators but was told ‘Leave it alone, Miss Marple. It’s all in hand’, the Times reported.
In 2013, 14 years later, Ms Hurst presented the two cases to her colleague, Ms Davies, 35 years her junior.
She also felt that something wasn’t right.
Having analysed the blood on Mr Ainsworth’s pyjamas, both coroner’s officers believed that his hands, sleeves and front should have been covered with spots of blood with ‘tails’, if he had killed his wife.
She also questioned how Mr Ward was proposed to have killed himself, with his wounds not showing signs of heavy bleeding, the Sun reported.
Conducting her own research into the statistics around murder-suicides, Ms Davies felt that the cases were an anomaly, and proposed that a serial killer had been operating in Cheshire since at least 1996 — although this theory has been rejected by the victims’ families.
She also found three other cases in 2000, 2008 and 2011, and marked them for further investigation.
All three involved blunt and sharp force trauma. Two were a few miles away from Wilmslow, Cheshire.
Among them, former police officer Violet Higgins, 76, who was found dead – also in her nightie – at home with security guard husband Michael, 59, in Manchester in 2000.
He had supposedly battered her with a rolling pin and stabbed her with scissors. The police quickly dropped the investigation.
The inquest heard evidence Mr Higgins was suffering from Parkinson’s and his wife had threatened to put him in a home, a possible motive.
But the coroner stressed what happened was out of character. ‘It was a very sad end to many years of apparent happy marriage,’ he said.
Mr Higgins’s brother Daniel also told the inquest he did not believe he was capable of such violence.
The report also raised questions over the deaths of Eileen and Kenneth Martin on the eve of their 55th wedding anniversary in November 2008.
Mrs Martin, a former printer, 76, suffered blows to the head – possibly from a hammer – and had cuts to her neck and wrists.
She was found in the garage at home in Davyhulme, Manchester, next to her husband, 77, a retired steel erector, who is said to have cut his own throat and wrists and hanged himself.
It was reported as a mercy killing. Mr Martin had prostate cancer and was struggling to look after his wife, who had dementia.
The night before he died he broke down and told his daughter he could no longer cope.
But Mrs Davies’s report said the injuries Eileen sustained were not consistent with a mercy killing. Kenneth was also frail and had difficulty walking, raising doubts about whether he was physically capable of such an attack.
However, Dennis Tong, who discovered the bodies of Eileen and Kenneth, disputed the serial killer theory and said the family were ‘100 per cent sure’ Kenneth was responsible.
‘He must have done it on the spur of the moment,’ he said. ‘We know Ken was going downhill. He was a proud man and would not take any help from anybody. We suggested putting Eileen in a home and he just refused. I think he just crumbled under the pressure.’
Similarly, some time overnight on February 17, 2011, ex-quarry worker Stanley Wilson, 92, is said to have carried out an attack on his retired teacher wife Peggie, 89, at home in Kendal.
She was hit on the head and face, strangled then stabbed in the neck. Mr Wilson is said to have stabbed himself in the neck.
The inquest heard Mr Wilson had just been released from hospital and was expressing paranoid fears his wife, son and the nursing staff had been trying to poison him.
His son Graham believed there is no doubt he committed the crime.
In 2020, Ms Davies’ home was raided by detectives from her force. They suspected that she had leaked the details of the two cases to The Sunday Times, which had published a story on her report’s findings. It called the proposed murdered the ‘Silver Killer’.
In the leaked 179-page report, Ms Davies called on the National Crime Agency and Interpol to review other murder-suicides in the UK and Europe.
She suggested in the report that the potential suspect was a younger man who could overpower his victims, and had given it to officers two times in the hopes that they would investigate the deaths further.
She also suggested that the murderer ‘had a strong hatred toward women, especially domineering females,’ the Sun reported.
This individual will not stop killing until someone or something stops him,’ Ms Davies said in the report.
‘The acts of dominating the victims, carrying out the murders, and fooling the police, are all addictive to him.
‘He will have meticulously planned each murder, ensured he left no forensic evidence and followed the cases in the media.’
The Sunday Times journalist, David Collins, told officers that Ms Davies was not the source of the leaked documents.
But she was investigated for misconduct in a public office, and the Crown Prosecution Service declined to prosecute.
She was, and still is, suspended on full pay while the force completes an internal investigation.
Senior detectives at the Cheshire force still refuse to reopen the case.
Mr Collins has written a book on the case, titled The Hunt for the Silver Killer.