December 2008 Archives

TEN years ago on Sunday, Mitchell Quy murdered and dismembered his wife Lynsey before hatching a callous cover-up of his bloody tracks.
Southport Visiter reporter John Siddle recalls the tragic circumstances of the 21-year-old's death.

THE celebrations at 22 Stamford Road were in full swing for little Jack's first birthday.
Though strapped for cash, Lynsey Quy had gone out of her way to shower her son with gifts and a party atmosphere enveloped the new Birkdale home she had secured through Sefton Women's Aid.
Autumn 1998 represented a new beginning for the pretty 21-year-old mother-of-two. Her violent husband Mitchell had been out of the equation for months and life was improving with every day.
"Everything's great - never been better," Lynsey had scrawled in her diary, "I don't miss Mitch at all."
Quy, a casino croupier, had met Lynsey in 1995 and a whirlwind romance saw them wed within five weeks at Southport Town Hall.
An argument on their wedding night which resulted in Mitchell storming off was a sign of sinister things to come.

Father Peter Wilson said: "There must have been some happy times with Mitchell but most of the time they were at each other's throats.
"They were always arguing and he would beat her. I told her she was better off without him. I told her I didn't want her to marry him, but you know what kids are like. They always do the opposite of what you say."
Lynsey's parents would often witness arguments during family gatherings in which neither wanted to back down.
On one occasion Lynsey even greeted them to her home with the words: "Welcome to the house of horrors."
Lynsey twice tried to divorce the man who would frequently rape and beat her but the fatal attraction of Quy proved too much. There were never enough second chances.
Her husband had walked out seven times in four months, before walking out 'for good' in April 1998.
But then he returned.
Peter added: "It was Jack's first birthday and that was when he weaseled his way back in. He brought a present for him and charmed his way back into her life.
"He won Lynsey over and soon he had moved back in to her home. We never knew this until it was too late - she never told us.
"We always thought he had left the scene."
Tensions were fraught by the end of October and by December, Lynsey told Mitchell once again that she wanted a divorce.
On December 17, 1998, she was due to attend an important solicitor's meetings to discuss the separation. She never made it.
Quy strangled Lynsey to death three days before after a blazing row about missing benefit money he had cashed, before hauling her body into the attic where it lay for 48 hours.
Mitchell then dragged the body into the bath, where he carved Lynsey up.
With the help of brother Elliot, her body parts would be disposed in railway sidings in Birkdale and off a footpath in Princes Park. Her head and hands are said to have been thrown among rubbish destined for the tip.
Lynsey was only reported missing on February 5, 1999, when social workers became concerned for her welfare.
Peter said: "We hadn't heard from her for a few weeks, but from previous experience that meant all was well at home and she was doing okay."
Quy's calculated cover-up began in earnest, with the 24-year old telling the press Lynsey had packed her bags on Christmas Day. "I think she has run off with another fella, but I just wish she would get in touch," he told the Visiter.
But to suggest that Lynsey, whose love for her children was infinite, would do such a thing was farcical to the Wilson family.
"When police knocked on my door telling me they were investigating her disappearance, I knew straight away he had killed her," said Peter.
"Lynsey would never have abandoned her children, there is no way she could have done that.
"I told the police straight away that Mitchell had murdered her."
The former casino croupier continued to protest his innocence in the glare of the public spotlight, even shedding crocodile tears on national television.
Detectives targeted Quy as their prime suspect, yet during a period of more than a year he evaded being charged.
It resulted in Quy growing in arrogance - at one point even having the gall to send greying Det Sup Geoff Sloan, the head of the investigation, a bottle of hair dye.
"Quy would go into the newsagents and scan copies of the Visiter to see his picture was in it," said the retired officer. "He loved the fame and the notoriety. It overcame him.
"Even when he confessed he was still trying to seek out the cameras. It overtook his life. He became cocky and arrogant and it just made me even more determined to bring him to justice."
Lynsey's parents had to summon strength on a weekly basis to collect Robyn and Jack from Quy as the investigation dragged on.
Peter added: "To be honest, every time I saw him I could have killed him, but there are right ways and wrong ways. I had to drag back a lot of the family from going round there intent on hurting him.
"While he was protesting his innocence, we all knew he'd done it."
The breakthrough came in June 2000, when nearly 18 months after murdering Lynsey, police forced Quy to confess.
He was jailed for life in January 2001, with Elliot sentenced to seven years for helping to dispose of the body.
Three months later, the Wilsons suffered a second tragedy when one of Lynsey's older brothers committed suicide by hanging himself.
Peter Wilson Jnr, 24, was discovered in the loft of the family home in Southport. He was said never to have got over his sister's death.

MURDERER Mitchell Quy often called at the Visiter's Tulketh Street office and was so desperate to enlist the support of reporters he even tried to team up for a Christmas night out.
It began as a missing person's story, but soon Visiter journalists Andy Hudson and Phil Coghlan found themselves wrapped up in a murderer's desperate bid to avoid capture.
Quy had no qualms covering his bloody tracks in the media, spreading lie upon lie after our newspaper had convinced him to give his first interview.
Andy, a senior reporter at the time, said: "Mitchell called all the time and popped into the office on more than one occasion to see if I had any news from the police I could tell him.
"I never trusted him and could see how he was using interviews in the papers and TV to try and win sympathy. He was cold and never quite rang true.
"He was always trying to be our friend. Once he wanted to join the Visiter editorial team on a Christmas night out!"
Detectives believe Quy had an obsession with being in the public spotlight and revelled in the thrill of having an audience.
Phil Coghlan, now of the Lancashire Evening Post, said: "When I interviewed Mitchell at his home he had a look on his eyes that was vacant and insincere because he was, in truth, lying to me.
"He wanted me to write a story which painted him as the victim, left behind to look after the kids after his wife had left him. He had clearly gone over and over this story in his mind to be able to repeat it parrot-fashion at moments like this.
"I remember leaving his home to head back to the office thinking: 'I don't believe him.' His eyes were glazed and under his outwardly-pleasant manner he had this aggressive undercurrent."
Both reporters had a direct line to Linda and Peter Wilson and detectives, but received calls nearly every day from Quy.
Phil added: "He wanted to know what the police were up to. With hindsight it's obvious he was desperate to know whether they were onto him yet.
"It went on for months without any charges against him and I remember he was becoming cocky about the situation. When he was charged the office was electric."

By JOHN SIDDLE
RETIRED Detective Superintendent Geoff Sloan, who headed the murder team that eventually forced Quy into confessing, says he has always remained cynical of what happened to the missing body parts of the young mother-of-two.
Mitchell's brother Elliot was jailed for helping to dispose of the 21-year-old's head and hands, which he said he put in black bin bags and threw among rubbish outside a Birkdale shop.
Mr Sloan, who says seeing Quy jailed was the highlight of his career, believes the egotistical former croupier instead roped in someone else.
The distinguished former policeman told the Visiter: "I don't accept that after all they had done, that Mitchell would simply allow Elliot to walk away with the most significant parts and throw them among rubbish.
"The head and the hands were the most easily identifiable parts of Lynsey so I think they would make sure to put them somewhere they couldn't be found.
"I have always thought a third party with access to hospital waste disposal got rid of them, though only the Quy brothers know the answer to that."
Mr Sloan, then 45, was drafted in to review the investigation into Lynsey Quy's disappearance and soon decided to pursue a murder inquiry - main suspect, her husband Mitchell Quy.
He added: "I always thought he was the one who killed her. I didn't believe him when he said he was innocent for one second. It always frustrated me when the Visiter published an interview with him because it fuelled his lies.
"He was so wrapped up in the notoriety and the fame that I think he started to believe it himself. He loved the attention."
As Mitchell told the world how police had unfairly branded him a murderer and were wasting public money on the investigation, Sloan and his team never had doubts about eventually pinning Quy down.
Officers honed in on a period prior to Christmas 1998, when Lynsey missed several important appointments, including one with a solicitor
Mr Sloan added: "When we looked into those dates, we found that Lynsey had telephoned the benefits agency from a phone box to say her benefits cheque hadn't been sent.
"It transpired that Mitchell had stolen them and cashed them in himself. We knew that was probably the last conversation she would ever have."
When returning home to question Mitchell, a row broke out that culminated with Lynsey being strangled to death.
But without a body, police had to rely on circumstantial evidence to bring Mitchell to justice
He added: "It was one of the first cases of someone being charged without a body being found. After a tough interviewing process he eventually cracked.
"But what he had actually done never entered my head. I always thought that - as he admitted - he strangled her. I never considered he would have gone to the lengths he did.
"It was gruesome to cut her up in a bath which he bathed the children in. It just sums up what a horrible, nasty person he is."

STARS of stage and screen are the subject of this week's LookBack as we dip into the memoirs of the Southport actress Christine Warwick-Glass, or Christina Wellings as she was known on stage.
Christine now lives in an Aladdin's cave of a garden flat in a quiet corner of Southport, but for many years she worked as an actress with some of the most familiar household names of the day.
Now retired, Christine has put pen to paper to relive her days in showbusiness.

The account contains anecdotes about theatre impresario Ray Cooney, funnyman Tony Hancock, screen siren Pat Phoenix and Broadway and movie star Barrie Ingham - not to mention her actress mother Doris Wellings.
Ray Cooney, now a wealthy West End producer and writer who penned the longest running comedy on the London stage, "Run for Your Wife", was Christine's first love.
The pair met in Bolton repertory theatre in 1955 when they starred together in a series of farces and comedies.
"I was in a haze of delight," she says.
"No one had much money. Ray used to pawn his watch on Monday and receive it on pay day.
"We often ate at Woolworth's, standing up at the serving counter, eating freshly cooked eggs, chips and peas for one shilling and three pennies.
"'I'll be vastly rich one day with a fleet of white Rolls Royces,' Ray spoke with such conviction, I believed him."
After her romance with Ray came to an end Christine went to London with dreams of making it in the West End.
Along with hundreds of struggling actresses she went through an endless round of auditions and lodged in Soho and despite waitressing and scrimping to make ends meet, Christine looks back fondly on those days.
Her break came when she won a role alongside Tony Hancock and Hattie Jacques.

"I was sent off to take the role of a 'tart', with a comedian who later became a favourite of mine," Christine writes.
"I met this small, plumpish man outside the studio.
"Before asking him the way, I loaded the stranger's arms with my belongings while I searched for the scrap of paper upon which was written the address.
"'I'm working with Tony Hancock. What's he like? Have I found the right place?'
"The stranger gave a cheesed-off expression and replied, 'Awkward! I'd think twice about acting with that self opinionated buffoon!'
"'Surely he's not that bad?' I was shocked.
"'Worse!' He signalled for me to follow him.
"'Are you in the show?'
"He pulled a face and remarked casually, 'I've got a bit part, nothing too close to Tony. Thank God for small mercies!'
"Once inside I witnessed the fuss and admiration the crew and actors gave that clever, young comedian!
"I went bright red as I realised he was the famous Tony Hancock! After that he teased me rotten."
Moving back to the north of England, Christine took a role alongside Pat Phoenix, the Coronation Street star and screen siren who later married Tony Booth.

The girls shared digs as they performed in "A Girl Called Sadie".
Christine remembers the red-haired beauty as "a lovely actress who never seemed to have a cigarette out of her mouth."
"Pat adored men and they her. Well, I should say, man mad with a heart of gold!"
Settling down, Christine married Dave Warwick in 1958, a director at the BBC and Granada TV producer.
The couple moved to Falkland Road in Southport, near to where Warwick's mother lived.
"Dave did a lot for Southport," Christine says.
"Television was in its infancy and it was still privately owned. Dave brought a lot of filming to Southport with 'People and Places' and a lot of location filming for beauty contests."
Although the pair later divorced, Christine stayed in Southport, where she's now putting the finishing touches to her life story, My Capricorn Summer.