Deadly Divorces (15 page)

The case was featured on the BBC’s
Crimewatch
programme. Surrey Police offered a reward of
£
10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in Tina’s abduction or murder. But still there were no leads. But then the police decided to interview Martin’s ex-wife Gillian Hopkins. What she told them would throw stomach-turning new light on what was looking like an unsolved mystery. Gillian painted a miserable picture of a violently unhappy marriage. Martin had threatened her at various times throughout their relationship, she said. ‘One time he even held a knife up to my throat,’ she shuddered.

This was useful background evidence to show what kind
of man Martin really was and what he was capable of, but it was Gillian’s next comment that really made officers sit up and take notice. The couple had been arguing about something, as they often did, she explained. When Gillian looked up, something in her husband’s expression sent a chill of fear right through her. ‘Do you realise I have the power to make you disappear permanently?’ he’d hissed at her, his face contorted with barely suppressed rage. ‘No one would ever find you. I would cut you up and feed you to the pigs.’

Pigs are known to eat anything. If they’re hungry enough, it’s reckoned, they’ll even eat human flesh. Could Martin have lain in wait for his estranged wife at the farm, killed her and fed her remains to his animals? The thought was at once unthinkably gruesome and horribly plausible. It would explain the lack of bodily evidence and the absence of clues.

In October 2005, more than three years after Tina Baker’s disappearance, her husband Martin was arrested and charged with her murder. Police were only too aware that with no body found, despite searches done on the pigswill and manure in the farm, a murder charge would be very hard to prove.

The case came to trial in November 2006. Martin still protested his innocence but the case against him was compelling. In addition to the other evidence, he’d also contacted the local authority to get the council charge on
the farm reduced just nine days after Tina disappeared, describing himself as a sole owner. Plus, in April 2003 he’d used his wife’s maiden name – Tina Doyle – to get a DVLA licence for a stolen BMW. Neither action pointed to a man that believed his wife was still alive.

On 13 November 2006 Martin Baker was found guilty of murdering his wife. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 14 years. Tina’s body has never been found.

W
hen Julia Pemberton at first caught sight of the papers laid out on the desk in the study of her
five-bedroom
home she didn’t really register what they were. It was probably something to do with her husband Alan’s business, or maybe one of the children had left some schoolwork behind there. But, as she realised what those papers actually represented, idle curiosity turned to puzzlement and then gradually, as the meaning sank in, to horror.

On the desk were copies of her and Alan’s wills, plus instructions to the children, William and Laura, of what to do in the event of their parents’ deaths. All of a sudden the words Alan had spat at her, his eyes narrow with hatred, started to reverberate around her head.

‘I’m going to kill you and then myself. Laura and Will are going to be f*****g orphans and it’s your fault!’

At that moment 46-year-old Julia knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her husband of 22 years was going to murder her. The only question was when – and how.

Slanting Hill, near Hermitage, Berkshire, is not the type of place where people live in fear for their lives. Sure, there’s crime but with huge detached, multi-million pound properties, surrounded by trees and greenery, it tends to be robbery-related. Burglar alarms and Neighbourhood Watch notices are as much a feature of the houses here as the conservatories and pillared porches.

It’s the kind of neighbourhood most of us imagine buying into if we ever win the Lottery. Flashy sports cars nestle next to top-of-the-range 4x4s in the driveways, while the houses are set well back from the unmade road thus ensuring maximum privacy. Despite this, it’s still a residential area where neighbours know each other’s names and wave as they set off in the mornings for the station or the school run.

When Julia and Alan Pemberton built their dream home here in the late 1990s, they appeared to be the family that had it all. The red brick house, with its porticoed windows and wooden fences, was the embodiment of everything for
which they’d worked so hard over the years. Alan now ran a successful financial advice company in Newbury but it had been a hard slog getting to the top of his profession and he’d had to put in long hours before finally reaping the rewards of success. Julia too had earned her good fortune by juggling bringing up her two high-achieving children with her job as a health visitor that often exacted a high emotional toll on her caring, sensitive nature.

Though both were well into their forties, the Pembertons looked a lot younger than their years and had hardly changed in fact from when they’d first met as students at Southampton University. Julia retained her trademark long dark hair, which fell halfway down her back, framing her intelligent, aquiline face. While Alan, with his dark brown hair and unlined complexion, exuded the virile physical energy of a man still in his prime. ‘A lovely, lovely couple,’ was how a neighbour from Castle Eaton, where they lived in the early years of their marriage, described the Pembertons. ‘You couldn’t have known a nicer couple.’

The two children completed the textbook family picture. Laura, a strong-willed redhead, was a natural academic high-flyer, excelling at everything she turned her hand to. Her younger brother Will was more of an
all-rounder
, gifted at music and sport but equally at home on the stage or the football pitch.

As so often happens, things inside the
£
975,000 dream
house – quirkily named Old Hallowes – were not quite what they seemed to the outside world. Take a glimpse, for a moment, through the wood-framed windows to the living room, dominated by a huge brick fireplace, where the sofas matched the wine-coloured walls and heavy, dark-patterned curtains drape the windows. It should have been the centre of a warm family home yet something was slightly wrong. Some small, but vital part of the picture was missing and, as a result, nothing else quite gelled together, it seemed.

The Pembertons had enjoyed good times together since their 1980 wedding at Holy Rood Church in Swindon, but by the time they moved into their lovingly designed Hermitage home nearly two decades later, the marriage was showing signs of strain. Alan had always had a strong controlling streak. He liked to dominate and to be in charge – that was half the secret of his business success – but increasingly he was showing that side of his nature at home, and particularly to his wife. Though never physically abusive, he went out of his way to show Julia who was boss in their household, periodically subjecting her to vicious verbal attacks. He’d also use money as a means of control, sometimes denying her the means to buy petrol for her car, or even food. Despite being a strong woman, who survived breast cancer, Julia became increasingly intimidated by her husband. She felt she had to be on her guard 24/7 in case she said or did anything to antagonise him. Later, she would later maintain that her husband had also sexually
abused her over the years, turning their bedroom into a place to demonstrate power rather than love.

Eventually Julia decided she couldn’t carry on living the way they were any longer. She was an intelligent, attractive woman, why should she share her life with somebody who seemed to want a subordinate rather than an equal? It was on 3 September 2002 that she finally worked up the courage to voice the words she’d been thinking about for months: ‘I want a divorce.’ It’s a measure of Alan’s
iron-fisted
self-control that he didn’t react straightaway. Instead, he waited a week and then issued her an ultimatum as calmly as if he was negotiating a deal with a client – ‘If you don’t live with me as my wife, I’ll kill you. Then I’ll kill myself.’ That, he explained, would make orphans of their children. To emphasise the point, he left the wills and letters of instruction out in the study.

Julia was distraught. She knew her husband well enough to know he didn’t make idle threats. The following morning she called her brother Frank Mullane, begging for help. In response to the raw desperation in his sister’s voice Frank arrived at Slanting Hill as quickly as he could. Clearly traumatised, Julia wanted to report the death threat to the police, but didn’t want to drag the children to the police station with her, or to leave them alone in the house. Instead they phoned the police station and were told someone would attend. They waited all weekend in a state of frozen dread but no one arrived.

In the end Julia and Frank went to Newbury Police Station in person, where they spoke at length to the Domestic Violence Co-ordinator, who was convinced by Julia’s obvious terror that the setting out of the wills was certainly not some kind of sick practical joke. ‘In all my experience … I have not come across such a cruel act,’ the Co-ordinator wrote in a letter of support for Julia. She was advised to seek a Civil Injunction against her husband, barring him from coming near her or the house. In addition, she was assured that her address would be flagged up on the police system so that if she ever made a 999 call, even a silent one, the police would immediately know where to respond and would be on the doorstep within 10 minutes. Julia Pemberton had no clue how dearly this assurance would ultimately cost her.

When the Injunction was served on Alan a few days later, he was predictably enraged but powerless to do anything apart from collect his belongings and leave the house. As she watched him drive his gleaming Mercedes away from Old Hallowes, Julia had a sick, churning feeling in her stomach. Though he’d gone for now, she knew her husband would never, ever leave her alone. And she was right. Over the following weeks, Alan Pemberton kept up a campaign of phone threats against his terrified wife. Julia logged them in a diary. ‘It’s appalling!’ he railed at her in one call. ‘I’m destroyed, I’m going to do something not very nice!’ In another he told her: ‘I’ve got to have you, I
will not tolerate this!’ The level of threat increased: ‘I will take my revenge. It will devastate Laura and Will. I will not tolerate this!’

Clearly Alan was letting his bitterness turn into a dangerous obsession. In his crazed mind, Julia was no longer a person independent in her own right but an adjunct to him. He wasn’t just married to her, he
owned
her, and just as surely as he owned the house they’d spent so long dreaming of, and designed to suit their exact specifications. She’d soon see that she couldn’t just erase him from her life, from
their
life. He wasn’t about to roll over like an obedient puppy on her command – she’d see who was in charge here. She’d realise that he simply, in his own chilling words, would ‘not tolerate this’.

Back in the family home Julia was slowly trying to reclaim back her life after years in the shadow of her controlling husband. When you’ve been accustomed to living on eggshells, never quite sure from one minute to the next whether something you’ve done or said is going to antagonise your partner, it can be difficult to adjust to being free. Not that Julia ever really stopped looking over her shoulder – she knew Alan wouldn’t forgive or forget – but slowly she started to enjoy the little pleasures of single parenthood. For the first time she could come and go without having to account for where she’d been. She could skip dinner if she felt like it, or hire a romantic movie from the video store.

It felt as if she and the children had been staggering through their lives under an enormous weight that had suddenly been lifted. It would take a while before they walked completely tall again, but at least now they were gradually unfurling, flexing muscles that had all but withered through under-use.

While time was beginning to open up Julia’s eyes to a world of potential, it was doing nothing to lessen her husband’s obsession. In April 2003, Julia and Will returned, tired but content, from a weekend away. Getting out her keys to open the front door, Julia realised something was very wrong. The key just wouldn’t go in the lock. Tentatively she ran a finger over the hard blobs surrounding the keyhole: Super Glue. With a rising feeling of panic, she and Will ran to the back door to see if they could get in that way but again the lock bore the same tell-tale blobs. Julia fought back a wave of nausea as she realised what this meant. Alan, who was supposed to be keeping right away from her and her home, had been to the house.

She called Frank, who immediately got onto the police. Yes, Alan would be interviewed, they were assured. But a follow up call revealed that nothing happened. Similarly, no one came to investigate the locks or to dust for fingerprints. No one seemed to be taking the incident very seriously, except Julia and her family. They were all too aware this was no petulant childish gesture but part of a systematic campaign of revenge – and it was not going to stop there.

The following month there was another chilling reminder that Alan had no intention of giving up and quietly going away. A single letter plopped gently onto the doormat of Old Hallowes. It wasn’t the usual post time so it must have been hand delivered. The letter was addressed to Will. Inside was a copy of the Affidavit Julia had sworn when she filed for her injunction. All around the edges were angry, hand-written scrawls. They were death threats, all aimed at Julia.

Surely now the police would have to take them seriously? Who else could have posted the letter apart from Alan, who once again was not supposed to be anywhere near the property? And surely making death threats was considered a crime in itself? Julia was terrified, but at the same time she was also slightly relieved. At least now she had concrete proof that her life was in danger; at least now they’d believe her and something would be done to stop Alan.

Clutching the defaced Affidavit, Frank and Julia once again presented themselves at the police station, where again they had to go through the whole history of the threats and the superglued locks and the injunction. ‘This document is vitally important,’ Frank entreated the police officer, reluctantly handing over the Affidavit, with its clear and undeniable message of hate and aggression. Walking out of the police station, Frank and Julia were convinced that finally some action would be taken, yet later on when Frank phoned the police station, he was
astounded to hear that once again the threats were being brushed under the carpet.

Unbelievably, it would later transpire that the incriminating document had somehow ended up tucked into the police file about the glued locks and the police had no record of it. Yet again, Julia Pemberton felt she was being left to fend for herself, a sitting target for her increasingly enraged husband. Can you imagine how it feels to live in a beautiful home you can’t enjoy because it no longer feels safe? Or how you might jump every time the phone rang or freeze to the spot at the sound of a car door slamming outside? To the outside world Julia was a beautiful woman inhabiting a fairytale house. But to those who knew, she was a prisoner, trapped in a web being stealthily spun by her estranged husband – and just waiting for the fate she knew was coming.

In June 2003, an increasingly frantic Julia again met with the Domestic Violence Co-ordinator and had a panic alarm installed in her home. It should have made her feel safe, but it didn’t. She was still convinced the police were not taking her situation seriously. ‘When my son’s bike was stolen, two police officers turned up at my door,’ she told a friend. ‘When my husband wanted to kill me, nobody wanted to know.’

The police didn’t give Julia advice on what to do if Alan followed through with his threats and attacked her. They didn’t inspect the house or point out the best escape routes,
should she be confronted in her own home. True, the suggestion of moving to a ‘safe house’ had been mooted, but Julia’s strong maternal instincts were to try to retain as much stability as possible for her children. They’d already undergone so much upheaval and emotional trauma that she didn’t want them to lose their home as well.

The initial Injunction Julia had against Alan stipulated that if he didn’t stay away from her or the house he would be arrested. When that expired in 2003, she had to face the ordeal of another court hearing. Worn down by events and frustrated at what appeared to be indifference on the part of the authorities, Julia was persuaded to allow the Injunction to be downgraded so that a breach would no longer qualify for automatic arrest. Consider the facts: Julia knew her husband wanted to kill her; she knew he’d visited the house on at least two previous occasions despite there being an Injunction against him. Not only this but she also knew the police hadn’t pulled him in for questioning. Could you blame her for losing faith in the system supposed to be protecting her? Or imagine how she might agree to take the path of lesser resistance, hoping perhaps that it might dampen the raging fires of Alan’s bitterness and anger?