Who would kill a new dad?
Keith Weightman
Thursday 1st November 2007
My brother Keith Weightman's voice bubbled with excitement.
'I've got the best news sis,' he said down the phone. 'Janet's pregnant! Isn't that brilliant?'
Though my heart sank, I didn't miss a beat.
'That's fantastic,' I said.
In fairness, part of me was happy for Keith, 47. Despite having two daughters from a previous marriage, they'd sadly never been part of his life. So I knew this news meant the world to him.
'I just hope that child is his,' I fumed to my husband Alan, 52, after I'd put down the phone.
You see there was more to Keith's girlfriend Janet Taylor, 39, than met the eye. When I'd first been introduced to her 10 months earlier in December 2004, I'd thought she seemed nice enough. The whole family was round at our mum's Brenda, 72, for Sunday lunch.
'It's so good to meet you all,' she smiled.
But my brother Ian, 45, who normally never had a bad word for anyone, didn't take to her.
'She seems a bit fake to me,' he sniffed.
Alan wasn't keen either.
'She looks like Myra Hindley,' he joked.
I rolled my eyes. I didn't care if she looked like La La the Teletubbie, so long as she made my brother happy. And over those next few months, Keith seemed happy enough.
But then in November 2005, I heard a rumour that made my stomach churn.
'Word is, Janet's cheating on your Keith,' a friend told me. 'With some bloke called John Gibson.'
I'd never heard of this John bloke but I was furious.
'If Keith finds out, he'll be heartbroken,' I thought.
Which is why I didn't tell him.
But now, three months on, here was Keith telling me Janet was pregnant.
'What if it's not his child?' I fretted.
I told myself I was being silly. But by the time baby Ben was born on March 29th 2006 things weren't going well between Keith and Janet.
Then a month later…
'Janet's saying the baby's not mine,' Keith told me.
He looked so heartbroken, I wanted to cry.
'Oh Keith,' I said. 'I'm sure that's not true.'
Keith was so determined to be a great dad to his son, he decided to forget what Janet had said and try to make their relationship work.
A few weeks later I was strolling up to Mum's door. At the same time two men were walking up to the doorstep too.
'Can I help you?' I asked.
'We're from CID,' one of them said. 'Have you heard there's been a stabbing?'
I had heard something about a stabbing on the radio.
'Yes,' I said, wondering what on earth Mum had to do with that.
'Could you describe your brother, Keith?' one asked.
My heart thudded.
'Well, he's pretty distinctive, he's got a tattoo of an eye on his neck for a start,' I said. 'But he'd never stab anyone.'
But as I looked at the two officers from CID, their heads bowed, the penny dropped. They didn't think Keith was the one doing the stabbing. He was the victim.
'No,' I gasped.
It was agony, breaking the news to Mum while the CID men hovered in the background.
'Our Keith's been stabbed to death,' I sobbed.
Both of us looked stunned as the officers described how his body had been left like a pile of rubbish in a dodgy part of town. A loading bay behind some shops where drunks pass out. In slow motion, Mum seemed to fall off her chair. She was in deep shock. The whole family was.
The next day I went to the place where Keith had died. There was a bunch of flowers lying there from Janet.
'I love you,' the card said.
But there was something about it that didn't ring true. Lately, she and Keith had been having an awful time, rowing and screaming about her affair. So why the sudden declarations of love?
After the funeral, I couldn't stop thinking about those flowers Janet had left at the spot where Keith had been found. Something inside, some instinct, was screaming — I know who did this. So, screwing up the card, I went straight to the police station.
'I think the people you want are Janet Taylor and John Gibson,' I told an officer.
The question was, would anyone believe me?
Luckily, the police did and in December 2006, three months after Keith's death, the police called to say Janet had been arrested. A week later, they found her blood-stained Ford Mondeo hidden in a lock-up garage and she was charged with Keith's murder.
That wasn't all. Janet's bit on the side John Gibson, 47, his daughter Sarah, 18, her boyfriend Barry Dodds, 21, and his brother Michael Dodds, 28 were all charged with perverting the course of justice for helping to dispose of Keith's body and the murder weapon.
I was horrified. All those people were involved, and yet they'd kept quiet and said nothing?
As part of the evidence, in June this year, the police demanded that Janet take a DNA test to confirm who Ben's dad was. It came back that it was Keith.
'If only he was here to know the truth,' I sobbed.
Finally in July this year, she appeared at Newcastle Crown Court. I couldn't bear to sit through it all, but as a family, we pieced together what had happened that night. After popping round to Mum's for a spot of lunch, Keith had left at around 4.30pm. Then he'd gone round to Janet's to see baby Ben.
But there'd been a row and Janet had taken out a 6in kitchen knife and plunged it into Keith's heart, severing a main blood vessel.
At first Janet pleaded not guilty, claiming she hadn't seen Keith that night. Then she changed her mind and said she'd killed Keith in self-defence after he'd attacked her in a drunken rage.
'Rubbish,' I thought, furious. Keith would never hit anyone.
In fact, evidence in court showed Janet was the violent one. Friends and neighbours of Keith testified that in the months before his death, Janet had attacked him with a hammer and rammed his pick-up truck with her car.
'I'd no idea,' I gasped, stunned.
The court also heard that while Keith lay bleeding to death in her flat Janet had phoned John Gibson. He'd then called his daughter and got her to drive him to Janet's. Sarah's boyfriend, Barry Dodds and his brother Michael Dodds came too.
At this point, Keith was still alive. So any one of them could have done the right thing and called an ambulance or left his body outside a hospital. That way, he might have lived. Instead, they took him to a dark, cold alley where no-one would find him. Keith battled for two hours before he was found by passers-by. He died in hospital.
By this time, Janet and her gang were all back at John's house, ordering a Chinese takeaway. And while my brother bled to death, they stuffed their faces with prawn balls and special fried rice like nothing had happened.
Finally, after a two-week trial, Janet was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 16 years. She didn't show any emotion, just stared ahead blankly. But I clenched my fists in triumph.
After pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice, John Gibson was sentenced to five years in prison, Sarah Gibson and Michael Dodds, 12 months and Barry Dodds two years. He was the one who'd arranged a garage to hide Janet's car. They're all pure evil as far as I'm concerned.
I still miss Keith terribly. The whole family does. Another victim in all this though, is little Ben. My heart breaks when I think how he'll feel when he eventually finds out Mummy murdered Daddy. He's 18 months old now and in foster care.
But I hope to build a relationship with him. And one day, when he's old enough, I want to tell him the truth about his dad - that he was one of life's good people whose only mistake was getting mixed up with an evil woman. Evil through and through.
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