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The Handless Corpse

A Lancashire Murder Mystery

By Niall James BradleyPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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Recovering the body (Lancashire Evening Post)

The Delph was a stone quarry. Years before, it had closed its gates for the final time and the stone cutting had ceased. In one corner of the quarry, a spring had ruptured out of the bedrock and slowly, over the years, the Delph had flooded. Everything had been consumed by the waters: the stone workings and the office building until all that was visible was a placid lake with sheer cliffs on all sides, except for the end where the access road disappeared into the water. Only a solitary telegraph pole and winding wheel breaking the surface, hinted at what actually lay in the depths beneath.

The Delph as a working quarry (from Eccleston Memories Facebook Page)

The flooded quarry today (courtesy of yumping.co.uk)

The Delph became a magnet for wildlife. Dragonflies would hover and skim across its surface and a multitude of fish would glide through its dark waters. The fish attracted fishermen and the flooded quarry also attracted local teenagers. Through the long summer days, they would sunbathe at the side of the lake. Occasionally, they would venture to swimming in the warm top layer of the lake's water. Some of the more fool-hardy would jump from the towering cliffs into the water below. It would then become apparent that the warm water was only skin deep; beneath, the water was still dark, ice cold and deadly. All the local children knew not to swim near the submerged spring, where the water was colder still. However, almost on an annual basis, there would be reports in the local paper of teenagers from cities such as Liverpool who had come to the Delph, having heard of its reputation, and had drowned in its waters when their muscles had ceased with the cold.

The Delph also became the go-to place for local thieves to dump stolen cars. Often, there would be burnt out cars abandoned by the old access road or, if they had been feeling a little more energetic, pushed off one of the cliffs into the water. Visitors to the Delph could always glimpse fish swimming to the surface to grab a helpless fly but they could often also see, submerged just below the surface, the rear of the latest abandoned vehicle. The mixture of calm water, flooded buildings and discarded vehicles also made the Delph a magnet for another group: scuba-divers. Scuba groups used this large body of open water to train, once they had outgrown the local swimming pool. At the surface, the water was clear enough for beginners, but descend just a few feet and the years of silt made visibility near impossible. Drop anything to the bottom of the Delph and it would be lost forever.

Cars collected on one of the regular clean-ups at the Delph (Lancashire Evening Post)

It was on such a dive that something unexpected was uncovered. In the waters near the drowned spring, on a ledge in the old, stone workings, one scuba-diver discovered a long, thin, plastic wrapped package, about the length of a sofa. Cutting the package open with his knife, the diver revealed something which made him quickly surface and call the police. What the diver had discovered was the body of a man, wrapped with weights, which had been intended to sink to the bottom of the lake. When the body was recovered, by police frogmen, later the next day, it was found that the man had been murdered. In a vain attempt to stop him being identified, his hands had been cut off and his jaws, to stop dental identification, had been smashed with a hammer. If the body hadn't, unluckily for the perpetrators, come to rest on the submerged ledge, then the body would have sunk to the bottom of the lake and would probably have never been discovered.

Newspaper cutting of the police frogmen (Lancashire Evening Post)

Rumours ran rife in the local schools: who was the handless corpse? Where had he come from? Was there a sadistic killer living in the local community? The children, including me, would have to wait a whole year to discover who the man was and who had killed him.

One year later, in 1980, the trial began of Terry Clark and Andy Maher at the medieval Lancaster Castle, which had been converted in modern times into a high security prison and crown court. The man they had killed, whose handless corpse had been found in the ice-cold waters of the Delph, was Christopher Johnstone.

Christopher Johnstone (Lancashire Evening Post)

Johnstone was a drugs-trafficker from New Zealand. He went by the nickname 'Mr Asia', which he had been given by a New Zealand journalist, Pat Booth, in a series of articles in 1979.

Terry Clark was, in 1979, second in command of the 'Mr Asia' drug syndicate, which imported heroin into Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. When he met Christopher Johnstone early in the 1970s, he had been a petty criminal and Johnstone was already making a good living importing drugs into New Zealand. Together, they increased the quantity of drugs they transported, expanded internationally and became extremely rich. However, Clark wanted more. By killing Johnstone, who was not the first member of the syndicate Clark had killed off, he would become the head of the organisation.

Johnstone was lured to the UK by Clark on the pretext of setting up a meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, to begin importing and selling heroin there. When he arrived in the UK, Johnstone was met by his life-long friend, Andy Maher. Unbeknown to Johnstone, Maher was under orders from Clark to kill Johnstone and dispose of his body.

On their way to Scotland, in a lay-by somewhere north of Lancaster, Maher shot and killed his friend. Maher and another man, Jimmy Smith, then took the body back to a garage in the town of Leyland, where they mutilated it with an axe, hammer and spade. They chopped off his hands and extracted his teeth, in the hope that he would never be identified. Maher knew the Delph from childhood visits and attempted to dispose of his body in its dark waters. They would probably have got away with the murder as well, had it not been for a distinctive medallion. The medallion, with a unique Chinese symbol, belonged to Johnstone and Maher had mistakenly left it around his neck.

The police posted a picture of the death mask and the medallion in the local papers in an attempt to identify the body. The breakthrough came when a former beauty queen, Julie Hue, walked into Leyland police station and identified the handless corpse as her boyfriend, Christopher Johnstone. She had been unable to contact him since returning from a Spanish holiday. She also informed the police that his friend, Maher, was probably the killer.

Clark, Maher and three others were convicted of Johnstone's murder in what, at that time, was the most heavily guarded and expensive trial in British history.

Only three years later, in 1983, Clark died in prison of a heart attack. Further investigation revealed that his heart had actually exploded. One theory was that he had been passing on information to the police about fellow inmates at the prison, some of whom were members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Rumours suggested that Clark had been smothered with a mattress on the orders of the IRA high command. Another theory was that the death was just a cover story. Clark was about to tell the Australian police all about the workings of the Asian drugs syndicate. In return, he had been removed from the prison by the British authorities, secretly transported back to Australia and given a new life and, with the help of plastic surgery, a new identity.

As for the Delph, it was bought by a private company and drained. All the abandoned cars were removed and the quarry was then allowed to reflood with fresh water from the spring. The Delph is now used as a scuba-diving training centre. So far, no new bodies have been located.

The Delph Diving Centre (Tripadvisor)

capital punishment
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About the Creator

Niall James Bradley

I am a teacher who lives in the north west of England. I write about many subjects, but mainly I write non-fiction about things that interest me, fiction about what comes into my head and poetry about how I feel.

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Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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  1. Compelling and original writing

    Creative use of language & vocab

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    Well-structured & engaging content

  3. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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Comments (2)

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  • Alley8 months ago

    I just finished watching the episode of Crime Story regarding the Handless Corpse. Beyond the fact that the murder was horrific I felt the need to look further into it and found this article. It was great. Well written and kept me reading which is difficult for me since I had just watched the story on TV. If not for the way you wrote the story kept me engaged. I look forward to reading other stories of your.

  • Dark Moon Empire11 months ago

    This was incredibly interesting. Thank you for sharing!

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