Son's murder on camera!
Gavin Waterhouse, the innocent victim
Monday 12th May 2008
Staring over the table at my son, Gavin Waterhouse, I felt so happy, I had to fight the urge to jump up and conga though the Chinese restaurant! My son's come back to me.
Gavin, 29, hadn't physically gone anywhere. He lived in a bedsit in Keighley town centre, just a 10-minute drive from where I lived with his stepdad, David Wiseman, 43, and younger brother, Scott, 23. After he'd left home at 20, I'd seen him at least three times a week.
So I couldn't say Gavin had been missing from my life. I'd lost him in another way.
Over the past 10 years, he'd struggled with an addiction to alcohol. I'd watched my hard-working, bubbly son get fired from his job as a stonemason. His good looks faded. His weight dropped… Drinking lager down the pub with his mates turned into drinking cans alone at home.
'I don't know why I drink,' he'd shrug.
I blamed myself.
As a sensitive 11-year-old, he'd been devastated when I'd divorced his dad. It hadn't affected Scott and Gavin's older brother, Lee, 32, but I saw the change in Gavin instantly. He'd started hanging out with the wrong crowd, drinking and smoking. As the years passed, his drinking took over. Even a two-month stint in rehab had failed.
'The drink will kill him,' I wept to David.
I couldn't have been more wrong. After rehab, Gavin had stuck with counselling and even gone to church with my cousin, George Parker, 50. I wasn't religious, but it seemed to work for Gavin. He'd cut down the drink, and now, watching him tuck into dinner, I was thrilled at how healthy he looked.
'I've got so many plans,' he said. 'I want to be a carer, like you.'
I worked with adults with learning difficulties, but Gavin wanted to help youngsters with drink problems.
'You'll be good at that,' I smiled.
'And I want to meet someone, have a family,' he chattered.
'There's plenty of time for all that,' I giggled.
Over the next few weeks, Gavin looked better every time
I saw him. On 23 September 2007, I was cooking a Sunday roast, when he called. He was heading to the supermarket.
'Don't worry if I don't call you tomorrow,' he said. 'I have a hospital appointment.'
He'd been suffering with a stomach complaint.
'OK, love,' I said. 'Call me Tuesday.'
'OK, love you,' he replied.
But he didn't phone on Tuesday, so that evening, I called him.
'I keep getting the answerphone,' I told David. 'Do you think he's OK?'
'Of course,' he insisted.
Gavin may have been a grown man, but it didn't stop me worrying.
I decided if I hadn't heard from him the next day, I'd pop round.
But I never got the chance.
The following morning, a police car pulled up. I watched the two female officers walk up my drive and I knew. I just knew.
'I-Is it Gavin?' I asked.
'Yes,' one of the officers replied. 'Can we come in?'
They came straight to the point. The caretaker in Gavin's building had noticed he wasn't picking up his post, so he'd peered into the window of his ground-floor flat.
'He was found on the settee,' they said. 'I'm sorry, your son's dead.'
'Dead?' I gasped. 'How?'
'We're not sure,' they admitted. 'The postmortem will tell us more.'
I didn't cry. I was in total shock. Minutes later, David turned up.
We called the boys, then my sisters, Mary Dunne, 57, and Pat Delvine, 56.
Within the hour, everyone was gathered in our living room, all asking questions: How? Why? What happened? The police had questions, too.
'Do you have any idea how Gavin got a bruise on his stomach?' they asked.
'No,' we all answered.
We could only wait.
The next day, at the mortuary at Airedale General Hospital, Steeton, reality hit me. The coroner explained Gavin had died from a ruptured spleen. He'd never made it to his hospital appointment. The coroner mentioned the bruise on Gavin's stomach again.
'We've really no idea how he could have got it,' I said.
It was a mystery. The only person who could tell us was lying on a table in the adjoining room.
Walking in there was the hardest thing I've ever done. Part of me couldn't get in there fast enough. Another part wanted to put it off as long as possible, because I knew, as soon as I saw him, I'd have to accept he was gone.
'Oh, Gavin…' I gasped.
A sheet covered him up to his neck. Apart from a tiny scratch
on his chin, he looked perfect.
'How could you leave me?' I sobbed, clinging to him.
David, Scott and I spent 15 minutes with Gavin, but I can't remember much of it. I told him I loved him, and asked who I was going to tell off now. Apart from that, it's a blur. As are the days that followed.
Grief-stricken, we informed Gavin's friends, and organised his funeral. However, five days on, the coroner turned up with a police liaison officer. Nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to hear. A man had come forward to tell the police he'd seen Gavin being attacked near Morrisons in the town centre on Sunday afternoon.
'Attacked?' I gasped. 'Why?'
'It would seem just for fun,' the officer explained.
'Fun?' I gasped, horrified.
The witness, who wanted to remain anonymous, had described how two drunken teenage boys beat Gavin up, as a girl videoed it on a mobile phone.
'You're telling me this girl videoed these boys beating my son to death?' I raged.
The officer nodded. I clamped my hand over my mouth and wept.
I'd read about 'happy slapping', where kids videoed fights on their phones. But how could anyone video something this horrific? It was the sickest thing I'd ever heard.
Gavin had managed to get home, but died before he could get help. I imagined him, alone in his bedsit, in pain, and sobbed until I had no tears left. As further postmortems had to be done, Gavin's funeral was cancelled. On the day he should have been cremated, Mark Masters, 19, and Sean Thompson, 17, were charged with murder.
We were told the 15-year-old girl, who couldn't be identified, wouldn't be charged.
'She didn't touch Gavin,' the police said. 'Our hands are tied.'
So when we were finally able to hold Gavin's funeral, on 26 October, at Oakworth Crematorium, Keighley, I was full of bitterness. That girl might not have touched our son, but she'd filmed his death. How could that go unpunished?
The Crown Prosecution Service were of the same mind, and in December 2007, they charged her with murder, too. It was a landmark decision, but all I wanted was justice.Yet over those next months, at first Bradford, then Leeds Crown Court, all we felt was insulted. The court accepted three guilty pleas to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Then, the judge allowed Thompson's mum to sit with him in the dock and hold his hand.
'It's not right!' I wept to David. 'I'll never hold Gavin's hand again.'
The court heard how Thompson and Masters had spotted Gavin leaving Morrisons supermarket and targeted him. They gave the girl a mobile phone and said: 'Video this,' before lashing out, kicking and punching Gavin to the ground.
Witnesses said the girl was 'hyper', as she danced around filming the attack. The boys were brutal thugs. What sort of person enjoys filming someone being beaten to death? The insults didn't stop there. Afterwards, the three defendants sent the horrific footage to friends' mobile phones and even published it on the internet.
'You animals!' I gasped.
I prayed the judge would lock my son's killers up for a very long time. However, in March 2008, six months after Gavin's death, Masters was sentenced to seven years in a young offenders' institution, and Thompson was ordered to serve six. I stumbled out of court in shock.
As I left, Thompson's stepdad stepped out from the crowd.
'Get me away from these people,' I begged David, desperately blinking back tears. The next week, we came back, to see the girl given just two years in a young offenders' institution. She sobbed as the judge told her nothing could excuse her 'cruel and revolting' behaviour. I knew those tears were of self pity, not regret.
And that's what really hurts. None of my son's killers showed any remorse. Gavin was killed for sport. His attack videoed for a laugh. What a shameful and horrific waste of my son's life.
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