Killed by their beds!
Carole, left, with her mum and Alice
Sunday 18th May 2008
They were giggling like a pair of schoolgirls.
'I wanna have sex on the beach
' my mum, Mildred Bowman,
sang, dancing round my living room.
'Come on, move your body,' my aunt, Alice Wardle, piped up.
You'd think they were 16-year-olds singing along to The Vengaboys, not women in their sixties. But I couldn't resist joining in with a dance and a laugh.
That was my mum and Aunty Alice all over. Full of energy and laughter, those two were guaranteed to make you smile.
'Only three weeks until we go to Benidorm,' Mum, 62, beamed, plonking herself down on the settee. It was July 2005, and Mum, a retired cleaner, lived for her foreign holidays with Alice, 68.
They'd been going away together ever since Mum and Dad divorced in 1995. Back then, Alice's husband, my Uncle Ronnie, was still alive, so the three of them would go away together. But since he'd died after breaking his neck falling down some stairs, 13 months earlier they'd started going away together three times a year.
With their cheeky humour, they'd always get up to mischief. One year, they'd gone to Amsterdam, not realising it had an infamous red-light district. When they got home and found out, they were so gutted they'd missed it, they went back the following year to have a look!
'I've never seen the likes of it,' Mum chuckled afterwards.
'Shocking,' Aunty Alice agreed, with a smile.
Last year, they'd even come on holiday to Gran Canaria with me and my husband, Philip, 47. And boy, did they make the most of it! We barely saw them the whole fortnight. If they weren't playing bingo, they were going line dancing or shopping.
'I don't know where you find the energy,' I'd laughed.
Their favourite destination by far, though, was Benidorm. They'd been going there since 1995, and had friends out there.
This year, they were going with Alice's daughter my cousin, Allison, now 45, and her family.
'You two had better be good,'
I teased them now. Of course, I saw Mum several times before she left.
She only lived a 20-minute walk away from my home in Gateshead, so I'd see her every week and chat every day. And every Sunday, she and Aunty Alice would come round for a roast dinner.
On 20 July, Mum popped round to visit.
'Just came to see if you needed any help packing?' she said.
Philip and I were off to Kusadasi, Turkey, the following day, for two sunny weeks with my brother, John Bowman, 38, and his family.
'It's all under control,' I replied. 'But stay for dinner.'
Mum was leaving for Benidorm in nine days, while I'd still be in Turkey, so I wouldn't see her for more than three weeks.
After our ham salad dinner, I drove Mum back to her flat.
'See you in a few weeks,' I said, hugging her. 'Have a great holiday.'
'You too, love,' she smiled.
And did we ever! When we got to the all-inclusive resort the next day, it was like heaven. This holiday was all about relaxing. Definitely more lounging than line dancing.
'Mum and Alice will be in Benidorm by now,' I smiled to Philip one day, as we lay by the pool. 'I wonder what they're up to.'
'I shudder to think,' Philip laughed. 'I bet the holiday reps don't know what's hit them!'
We travelled home overnight on 4 August, and arrived back at 10am. But there was no time for sleep there was shopping to do, and washing to get in the machine.
'I wish I was in Benidorm with Mum now,' I grumbled to Philip. 'Not here with piles of washing.'
'Have you heard from her?' he asked.
'No, but that's no surprise. She'll be too busy to text!' I laughed.
By nine o'clock, I was shattered and ready for an early night. I put on my nightdress and went downstairs to the kitchen to say goodnight to Philip. But I was surprised to see John standing in the kitchen. He looked pale and worried.
'Have you heard what's happened to Mum and Alice?' he asked.
'No,' I replied, worried. 'What?
Was it food poisoning? Had they been mugged?
'They're both dead,' John said.
Mum and Aunty Alice were dead? As the shock hit, my legs gave way and I fell to my knees.
'Allison phoned,' John said, helping me up. 'They don't know what happened, just that they died in their hotel room.'
It didn't make any sense. Had they been poisoned? It couldn't be suicide. They both loved life too much
'Allison had been staying at a different hotel,' John explained. 'She'd tried to get in touch with Mum and Alice. She'd even left a note taped to their door.'
After three days, she'd made enquiries at the Levante Club Apartments, the newly-built hotel where Mum and Alice were staying. Eventually, their bodies were found in their room. My head was swimming. It was all so confusing. I didn't know what to think or how to feel.
In shock, I threw some clothes on and we all went to Gateshead Police Station.
'I'm sorry,' the officer there said. 'As the deaths happened in Spain, there's nothing we can do.'
So we went back to John's house, just up the road from ours, and sat up all night, drinking cups of tea.
I phoned my son, Stephen, 26, to break the news.
'It's your nan and Alice,' I said. 'They've been found dead in their hotel room.'
'Oh Mum,' he gasped. 'I can't believe it.'
'Neither can I,' I whispered.
I still hadn't cried. Truth was, because we weren't expecting them back for nine days, it almost felt like Mum and Alice were on holiday.
Then, at midnight, Allison called.
'The police think Mum and Mildred might have suffered some crushing injuries,' she said.
Crushed? In their hotel room?
'But how?' I gasped. 'When?'
'I don't know,' she replied.
Over the next few hours, we got more information from Allison.
She hadn't seen Mum and Alice since they'd arrived in Benidorm on 30 July five days before. They'd been staying at a different hotel, so they'd arranged to meet up the next day, on 31 July. When Mum and Alice hadn't shown, Allison hadn't been worried.
'They knew the area, and they're so independent, I thought we'd just missed them,' she said.
But after three days of not hearing from them, she'd gone to their hotel, where the receptionist phoned Mum and Alice's room. There was no answer.
Allison had waited for two hours, and eventually, stuck a note on their door asking for them to meet her at their hotel pool the next day. My head throbbed. Had Mum and Aunty Alice heard Allison outside, sticking the note to the door? Had they been in pain, trying to scream for help? When they failed to turn up again, the hotel manager broke into the room and found their bodies.
'B-but how did they die?' I stammered. 'What's all this
about crushing injuries?'
'I don't know,' Allison sobbed.
She was finding everything out second-hand from a holiday rep. Mum and Alice had booked their holiday with My Travel, who offered to fly us to Spain the next day. But the idea made me shudder. If I went over there, if I saw the police cordon tape and spoke to the officers, then it would be real.
'I can't do it,' I gulped to Philip and John.
'We'll go,' Philip said.
So the next day, Philip, John, and my other brother, Paul, 41, flew out to Benidorm, while I stayed behind, sitting in the house like a zombie.
John called the next morning.
'They did a postmortem,' he said. 'Alice and Mum died some time between 11pm on 3 August and 2am on 4 August.
The cause of death was asphyxiation.'
'What?' I gasped. They'd suffocated?
But the truth was worse than anything I could have imagined.
'They were found lying in their beds,' John said.
'What do you mean?' I frowned. 'Did someone suffocate them
as they slept?'
'No,' he said slowly. 'The beds pulled down from a wooden cabinet on the wall. The heavy wooden frame had collapsed down on top of them trapping them inside for four days.
'The hotel took us to see a similar room,' John said. 'The beds were so heavy, it was a struggle to pull them down the weight of them could have dragged the frame over.'
They'd been trapped for four days and no one noticed? Didn't the hotel have maids cleaning the rooms? Thinking of Mum and Alice, gasping for breath as their oxygen ran out, broke my heart. Were they at least able to hold hands under the bed frame? It must have
been like being buried alive. I cried and cried. I thought I'd never stop.
Mum and Alice must have been having a lie-down before going out for the evening. There was no way they'd be tucked up in bed early on their first night on holiday.Their insurance company appointed a Spanish solicitor to begin a civil case against MyTravel, while the Spanish police investigated what had happened. After three days, John, Paul, Philip and Allison came home. Mum and Alice's bodies were flown back the following day.
I went to clear out Mum's flat, and wrapped a few things in bubble wrap like her gold necklace, and her bone china tea set. Then I put it all in a box and took it home to store in the loft. I wasn't ready to have it out on display. That would mean Mum wasn't coming back. Five days after they were brought home, I went to see Mum and Alice at the morgue at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was like they were both sleeping, with sheets up to their chins.
'Goodbye,' I whispered, laying a rose beside them both and kissing
their cheeks.
The inquest was adjourned until the Spanish investigation concluded.Then, on 22 August 2005, we held the funerals at Saltwell Crematorium. We said goodbye to them together. It seemed fitting.
'At least Mum's not alone,' I cried to Philip, as we played Eva Cassidy singing Fields Of Gold. Afterwards, we planted a pink rose bush in the crematorium gardens and scattered their ashes beneath it.
The next months were bleak. On Sunday afternoons, instead of singing and dancing in my house, there was only the quiet clink of our cutlery as we ate our roast. And two empty chairs at the table. We knew our solicitor was working on the case, but I felt so far away from it all. So, in December 2005, Philip and I booked flights to Benidorm to see how he was getting on. We stayed near the Levante Club Apartments, and I had to go and see the place for myself. As I walked up to the hotel, a chill ran down my spine.
Philip held my hand and opened the gate to the pool area. It could have been any hotel pool in Spain, with people laughing and sunbathing around it. Don't you know my mum and aunt died here? I felt like screaming, as I walked around, numb from head to toe. After we got home, our solicitor faxed us a copy of the report that MyTravel had produced, after launching their own inquiry. It said that four months before Mum and Alice died, somebody else had expressed concerns about the safety of the beds. The report also showed the beds had been fixed to the wall with unsuitable screws. Was that all it had been? A couple of dodgy screws? It was infuriating.
Now, almost three years after Mum and Alice died, our civil case in Spain is still ongoing. MyTravel offered to settle out of court, but we've declined. The criminal investigation is expected to go to court this year. As for The Levante Club Apartments they're now operating under a different name. But I can't move on yet. I think about Mum and Alice every day, and it hurts just as much now as it did three years ago. They had so much living to do. Instead, they died a long, drawn-out death in awful circumstances. That's why I've vowed to get them justice, whatever it takes.
If you've missed an issue, check out our Story Library where old stories are printed IN FULL!