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NEWSPAPER COVERAGE
:
The violence committed at Fordingbridge attracted widespread media coverage and
this publicity helped quickly bring ringleader George Stephenson and gang
members, George Daly and John Daly to justice. |
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Because Burgate House lay at the end of a winding drive
in five and a half hectares of its own ground, no one spotted the
blaze. But the vine-clad building did not burn to the ground as
the killers had planned.
The nineteen century house had been extensively rebuilt
during the early 1940s. Because timber was so scarce during the
Second World War the builders had replaced wooden beams and joists
with concrete. It meant that although the furniture, carpets and
curtains burned fiercely for several hours, the house stayed intact
with little outward sign of the conflagration within.
The horrific events of the night before were not discovered until
about 10.30 on the morning of 2nd September, when cleaner Nellie
Taylor and gardener Edgar Stubbings arrived for work and saw smoke
billowing from the upstairs windows.
They found clear signs that the downstairs rooms of the house had been
ransacked. The remains of the unfinished meal were still on the
dining room table. |
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TOM CLEAVER
:
The Cleavers were a close family. They were quick to rally round
the ageing Joseph Cleaver and his wheelchair bound wife Hilda when they were
left without assistance following the sacking of gardener/handyman George
Stephenson for violence towards his wife. |
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The Cleavers' pet poodle was staggering about and
whimpering, its face bloody where someone had hit it. The dog
was so badly injured it later had to be put to sleep. From
upstairs they also heard whimpering from Wendy Cleaver's two pet
long-haired dachshunds. Taylor and Stubbings ventured upstairs
and found the dogs pawing at the door to a spare room. On the
bed inside was the half naked, bloodstained body of Wendy Cleaver.
The master bedroom was still a glowing mass of embers, too hot to
enter.
Mr Stubbings tried to phone for the police, but found the telephone
lines had been cut. He and Nellie Taylor hurriedly drove to the
local police station to report their horrific find. |
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WENDY CLEAVER :
Joseph Cleaver's son Tom and
daughter-in-law (pictured above) did not normally live at Fordingbridge and were
only visiting the house to look after the elderly couple. |
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Scene of crime officer Detective Constable Malcolm Slaughter was the
first CID officer to enter the house.
Downstairs he noted that a gun cabinet had been cleared out and that
there had been a hunt for a wall sage, all but one picture in the
entire house having been left hanging to one side.
A bottle of milk, half empty, stood incongruously on the carpet amid
the antiques in a downstairs sitting room and was carefully preserved
for fingerprints. A cocktail cabinet had been emptied of bottles
of spirits.
Detective Chief Superintendent Alan Wheeler and Detective Chief
Inspector Dennis Luty of Hampshire CID both visited the scene.
They had little doubt that this was the work of at least two, maybe
three, men. |
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JOSEPH & HILDA CLEAVER
:
Joseph Cleaver, a successful publisher,
had bought Burgate House in 1948 as a weekend retreat. The six-bedroomed,
white painted, country house had been converted from a barn in the 1930s and
extensively rebuild in the 1940s. The Cleavers had moved in permanently when
Joseph retired in 1970.
Joseph and Hilda Cleaver were an almost reclusive couple. Most people in
Fordingbridge had never met them; many locals did not even know that their
isolated home was there.
At the time of the murders Mrs Cleaver was severely disabled from the effects of
a stroke she had suffered 10 years earlier. The couple had needed help and
had advertised in the newspaper for a live in cook and handyman. George
and Fiona Stephenson had applied for the job and had been accepted.
Later, Joseph Cleaver had discovered that George Stephenson was a violent and
aggressive man who beat his wife. Shocked at such despicable behaviour,
Cleaver fired Stephenson and asked him to leave Burgate House.
Although the house could easily have been restored after the fire, relatives
found the prospect of using it again after the tragedy too painful. In
1989 they ordered the old mansion to be razed to the ground by bulldozers and a
new, smaller house was constructed on site. |
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But if this was just a robbery, why had the victims been
so brutally murdered? Could it be that the Cleavers had recognised the
intruders sealing their fate?
Within a few hours the experienced senior men thought they knew the answer to
that question, and probably the identity of one of the killers. Joseph
Cleaver's correspondence contained a letter from a Bournemouth family. It
was a reference for a couple called George and Fiona Stephenson, who had applied
for jobs as cook and handyman at Burgate House.
Joseph Cleaver had placed an advert in the Bournemouth Evening Echo in
July, two months earlier. The Stephensons had replied and had got the job.
They had moved into a small cottage in the grounds the same month, but by the
middle of August they had gone.
Mrs Stephenson had run away to escape the drunken beatings handed out by her
husband. On the night before she left she had fled to Burgate House and
had been given shelter by Mrs Murphy - after Stephenson had hit her again in
another drunken rage. |
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NEWSPAPER COVERAGE :
The house at Fordingbridge was a large converted barn, set in five and
a half hectares of its own grounds. Knowing the house well,
Stephenson knew that they could do almost anything they wanted and
nobody would hear them to raise the alarm. |
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Shortly after, Joseph Cleaver, appalled at his employee's
behaviour, had sacked Stephenson. In themselves these facts could be said
to mean nothing. But after a check with the police national crime index,
Wheeler and Luty were almost certain they knew who was behind the Fordingbridge
mass murder.
Stephenson had been in jail several times. He had
previous convictions for burglary, fraud, theft, dishonest handling, drugs,
assault and firearms offences. While attempting to resist arrest in one
incident he had squirted a policeman in the face with tear gas spray.
The detectives went to Bournemouth, to the address on the letter found in Joseph
Cleaver's bureau. There they interviewed a married couple who were friends
of Stephenson. In the front room was a TV and video recorder - stolen from
Burgate House.
The couple explained they had last seen Stephenson on the morning of the
murders. He had asked them if they wanted a TV to replace the one they
owned that had gone wrong. The next morning they had woken to find the TV
and video on their doorstep. |
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EDGAR STUBBINGS & NELLIE TAYLOR :
Gardener Edgar Stubbings and cleaner Nellie Taylor found the scene of
horror when they arrived for work the next day. |
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By that night, every police station in the country had
been asked to join the hunt for George Stephenson. By the next day his
picture was on TV and in every national newspaper.
The message flashed to police throughout the UK described Stephenson as 'armed
and dangerous'. Detectives knew that he and his accomplices had escaped
from Burgate House with two double barreled 12-bore shotguns, a single barrel
.410 shotgun, a .22 rifle and dozens of boxes of ammunition.
Within hours of the TV and press appeals the search had switched from the south
of England to the Midlands and Coventry, where Tyneside-born Stephenson had
spent his teenage years. |
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SEARCHING THE GROUNDS
:
Police make a thorough search of the grounds in an attempt to find a
clue to the killers' approach to the scene of the crime. |
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A car-hire company in Coventry contacted the police to say that
Stephenson had hired a red Rover 213 in the days before the killing. His
driving licence details were on the hire form, but the deposit had been paid by
another man, 25 year old George Daly, who lived in Deedsmore Road, Coventry.
Stephenson was shocked when he saw his picture on the TV news. He
telephone policed in Hampshire and said he was going to give himself up.
He travelled south by train to Brockenhurst, where he spent his last night of
freedom on a crawl round four of the town's pubs. Under his arm he carried
a copy of the previous day's Coventry Evening Telegraph that featured his
picture on the front page.
In the Forester Arms, Stephenson chatted up two girls who were staying on a
nearby campsite. After sharing several drinks with them, he accepted an
invitation to go back to their tent to carry on drinking after the pub closed. |
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BURGATE
HOUSE
:
Burgate House, the scene of the
massacre, was located in its own grounds near the village of Fordingbridge,
Hampshire. It had been bought by the Cleavers in 1948 as a weekend
retreat, having been converted in the 1940s from a 19th century farm building.
During the conversion many of the original timber beams and joists had been
replaced by concrete supports. So when the killers tried to torch the
house, only the furnishings burned: the main structure survived to tell its
grisly tale.
Stephenson, an ex-employee of the Cleavers, knew crucial things about the
family's habits that allowed an easy access to the house. The family
always left a spare key in the porch until 9pm; the killers did not even need to
break in - they had merely to unlock the door and let themselves in.
Stephenson also knew that the family made an event of the evening meal and
always ate together at the same time of night. He was, therefore,
confident that their entry to the house would not be disturbed and that the
family would be found in the dining room. |
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They shared a bottle of red wine and smoked cannabis until about 2am,
when he left them. He walked to the nearest public telephone box and
called the murder incident room, asking detectives to come and collect him.
In the meantime, police in Coventry had raided the house in Deedsmore Road and
arrested George Daly and his 21 year old brother John, who were handcuffed and
driven to Hampshire.
The trial of Stephenson and the two Daly brothers began at Winchester Crown
Court on 6th October 1987. All three men pleaded not guilty to five counts
of murder, Stephenson and George Daly pleaded not guilty to rape, but John Daly
pleaded guilty to rape and robbery.
Prosecuting QC David Elfer opened with a dramatic account of the events at
Burgate House on the night of the murders and immediately after. He told
the jury that Stephenson had planned to raid the house and kill Mr and Mrs
Cleaver because he wanted revenge for being given the sack from his job as
handyman, and because he was jealous of the family's wealth and elegant
lifestyle. |
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BURGATE HOUSE
:
Police officers seal off the grounds of Burgate House, its smoke stained upper
story the only external clue to the horrors that lay inside. |
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Stephenson and the Daly brothers had prepared for the murders by
buying two cans of petrol and firelighters beforehand and taking them to the
house.
Mr Elfer said: 'They were there for the money, guns, ammunition, jewellery, a TV
and video and any other valuables they could find.
'But the plan went further. No one was going to be allowed to live to tell
the tale, and the house was then to be burned to the ground, removing all clues
to what happened that night. Nobody was going to be allowed to come out
alive.'
Mr Elfer said that Stephenson was the man who thought up the plan.
'Precisely for that reason it had to end in murder. If not, Stephenson
risked identification from his voice, his shape, possibly even recognition
through his stocking mask. |
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FORCED ENTRY :
Experts checked the front door of Burgate House
for signs of forced entry. They found none: George Stephenson knew where
the Cleavers kept the spare key to the front door, and had used it to gain
entry. |
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'But Burgate House didn't die. It refused to
collapse or go up in flames as had been expected.
'They were not to realise that Burgate House is made entirely of
concrete, and instead of the fire catching the floor and wooden joists
and galloping through, it contained itself in one room.
'Thus, the following morning when the police and fire brigade came they
were able to see and have left to them all these grisly clues as to what
had taken place, right the way down to the dinner table and the
interrupted meal.' |
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SEARCHING FOR CLUES
:
Scene of crime officers from Hampshire police undertook a painstaking
search for evidence at Burgate House. The killers had always intended to
cover their tracks by burning the house down and so were not especially careful
to avoid leaving clues. But due to the extensive use of concrete in the
building's construction their arson attempt had failed.
Police scene of crime officers search the hallway
of Burgate House for any evidence that would provide a clue to the identity of
the vicious killers. |
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Mr Elfer told the jury of eight men and four women that they
would see in evidence horrific pictures of burned bodies. He told them: 'I
must warn you that the facts of this case are gruesome in the extreme.'
The court heard that having worked for the Cleavers for a few weeks, Stephenson
was familiar with the family's routine. Dinner was always at 8pm sharp and
everyone was expected to dress for it. Stephenson also knew that the
Cleavers always left a front door key in the porch until 9pm every night.
On the night of the murders the three intruders had arrived quietly at about
8.30pm and let themselves in with the key from the porch. They had come
prepared, equipped with pickaxe handles and stocking masks, and Stephenson had
also taken a shotgun from the gun cabinet in the hall and loaded it before
bursting in on the dinner party. |
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SCENE OF CRIME
:
The Cleaver family would have been bundled up this stairway by the
gang. To the right are the bedrooms in which they were to meet their
deaths. |
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Stephenson had not expected to find five people in the house; he
didn't realise Thomas and Wendy Cleaver would be there. Ironically, they
were only staying to help the elderly couple out while they looked for new staff
to replace the sacked Stephenson and his runaway wife.
Mr Elfer told the court how in the middle of the raid, Tom and Wendy's 22 year
old son Jason had telephoned from their home at Oxshott in Surrey. He was
suspicious when a strange man answered the phone and refused to let him speak to
any of his relatives.
When Jason rang for a third time the killers had untied Thomas Cleaver and
pushed him to the phone at gunpoint, where he was forced to tell his son that
his mother was in bed with the flu and everything was all right. |
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SCENE OF CRIME :
Hilda Cleaver's invalid car stood in the garage at Burgate House. It was
one of the many areas that the police checked for evidence that might have been
left by the killers. |
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Mr Elfer told the court that Wendy Cleaver had been beaten, and
then assaulted by all three men. In a tape recorded interview with the
police, John Daly told how, after he had raped Mrs Cleaver, Stephenson had
walked into the room with a knife and a piece of cloth and put them on the bed.
He told detectives: 'He didn't say anything, he just put them on the bed.
But I knew what they were for - to kill her with. I turned her onto her
face, slipped the cloth round her neck and pulled tight. Her face went
blue and she died.'
When detectives asked Daly how long he had strangled Mrs Cleaver for, he
replied: 'About five minutes.'
His elder brother George told detectives that while he was loading booty from
the house into the hired Rover, Stephenson told him: 'They are already dead and
I have poured petrol on them.' |
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SUSPECT
:
Investigators discovered that Joseph Cleave had recently fired a man called
George Stephenson, which provided them with a possible suspect.
Stephenson, a violent man with a long criminal record, was certainly ruthless
enough to have committed such a brutal multiple killing. Within hours,
police forces around the country had been alerted to search for him. |
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John told the police that it was his brother who lit the deadly firelighter and
tossed it into the petrol soaked bedroom.
Stephenson, the jury were informed, had told police he was shocked when he saw
his picture on TV and had given himself up in order to clear his name. But
Mr Elfer said that after phoning the police Stephenson had waited almost a day
before giving himself up in order to concoct an alibi and to give the Daly
brothers time to hide the guns and dump jewellery and other stolen items in a
canal.
When he did talk to detectives he told them that he had driven to Bournemouth
from Coventry on the day of the murders and had given a lift to two Hell's
Angels he saw hitch-hiking.
He told the detectives: 'I was telling them about the house. It must have
been them that went there and killed them.' |
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GEORGE STEPHENSON
:
George Stephenson never dreamed that the police would be on to him so
quickly. Clues from Joseph Cleaver's correspondence at Burgate House made
him a prime suspect, however, and soon his picture was being broadcast
nationwide in the press and on television. |
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Some of the most damning evidence against all three men was given
by Ruth Smith, who lived in Coventry with George Daly. She told the jury
that Stephenson and the Daly brothers had arrived at the house in Elgar Road at
about 3am on the morning of 2nd September - about six hours after the murders
had been committed.
The three men had a collection of bottles with them including wine, gin, vodka
and whiskey, and immediately sat down and had a rowdy drinking session until
dawn.
She also told how the men had brought five guns in leather cases and boxes of
ammunition into the house from the hired car. She was later to identify
four of the guns to the police.
Ruth also spoke of the 'panic' to get the guns out of the house when George
Stephenson's face appeared on television and said she had seen them carried out
in a plastic bin liner. Detectives later got the guns back, after John
Daly told them where they were hidden. |
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THE DALY BROTHERS :
Once he saw his face on the
news, George Stephenson knew it was only a matter of time before he would be
caught. After one more night of freedom, he gave himself up to the police
- at about the same time as his two accomplices, George Daly (left) and John
Daly were arrested in Coventry. |
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Ruth said: 'George said he's picture had been on TV. He
said that five people had been murdered and the police thought it was him, but
that he was innocent. He then went and shaved off his beard and moustache
and said he was going back to Hampshire to clear his name.'
Some of the most dramatic evidence came in the form of tape recorded evidence
which were played to the court.
George Daly sat in the dock with his head in his hands crying as a recording of
an interview with detectives was played. In it he described the moment he
threw the blazing firelighter over the landing banister.
On the tape he said: 'After putting some stuff in the car I went back
into the house and it stank of petrol. Stephenson came down the stairs and
said they were all dead. |
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BURGATE HOUSE
:
After the tragedy at Burgate House, the surviving members of the
Cleaver family decided to demolish the building, and it was torn down at the end
of the 1980s. |
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'I thought they were just going to be left tied up. He said
he would have to burn the house, so I lit a firelighter and threw it over the
rail as I was on the stairs. There was no bang. It just went up in a
big flash.'
John Daly also wept as he heard his own voice describing to detectives how he
had raped and murdered Wendy Cleaver.
He said: 'I thought it was just going to be a robbery. I though we
would get thousands. I never thought I would have to do anything.'
Daly had then demonstrated to the detectives how he had throttled Mrs Cleaver,
motioning with his hands to show how he had crossed them over and then pulled
the ribbon tight until she was dead. |
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GEORGE STEPHENSON :
George Stephenson had shaved off his moustache in an attempt to avoid capture,
but too many people knew his face for him to avoid arrest for long. As
ringleader of the gang he was given six life sentences. |
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As the trial wore on, the defendants used 'cut throat' defence
techniques, each blaming the other for what had taken place. When it came
to Stephenson's turn to testify, he changed his story from the one he had told
the police, claiming he had made up the story about the two Hell's Angels
hitch-hikers. He said he had been to Burgate House on the day of the
murders, but acted only as a getaway driver and had stayed outside while the
Daly brothers went in to steal the guns.
He said: 'I would not have harmed them. They were lovely people; they
had been good to me.'
His defence earned him a stiff rebuke from George Daly's counsel, Mr Anthony
Palmer QC, who told him; 'The only way out for you now is to blame the Daly
brothers to try and save your own wretched skin. You are a man with no
conscience.'
George Daly later testified that he had walked into the bedroom at Burgate House
and seen Stephenson attack Wendy Cleaver while still holding a shotgun in one
hand. |
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GEORGE DALY :
George Daly followed where Stephenson led. It was he who set fire to the
petrol-soaked bedroom where the Cleavers lay. Despite this, the jury found
him not guilty of murder and convicted him of manslaughter. |
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George told the court: 'I am telling the truth. I have nothing to
lose because I am going to be found guilty and sent to jail for life anyway.
I am not daft enough to think I am going to get off this.'
But, unlike his younger brother, George Daly denied vehemently that he had raped
Wendy Cleaver.
In his closing speech David Elfer, prosecuting QC, told the jury that all three
men had plotted the 'holocaust' together and were all equally guilty.
He told them: ' Is there one of them that is not guilty of robbery? Is
there one who is not guilty of rape? And is there one of them who was not
party to the mayhem, carnage and murders that took place at Burgate House?' |
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JOHN DALY
:
John Daly was the youngest of the killers. He was found guilty of
strangling Wendy Cleaver on the instructions of Stephenson, and received an
extra life sentence to make a total of seven for his part in the murders. |
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On the 17th day of the trial the jury returned after five and a
half hours to announce guilty verdicts on the rape charges against both
Stephenson and George Daly. John Daly had already pleaded guilty to the
rape charge.
But it was not until the next day, 28th October 1987, that they were able to
make up their minds and convict Stephenson of murder. He was given six
life sentences with a recommendation that he should not be released until he had
served at least 25 years.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Hobhouse told him: 'These murders were committed in
circumstances of indescribable brutality and cruelty. You showed no mercy
and deserve none.'
John Daly, the youngest gang member, was given seven life terms for rape,
robbery and five murders. His brother George, the man who had ignited the
inferno, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter. |
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THE OTHER VICTIMS
:
Throughout the trial Tom and Wendy's
children, 22 year old Jason and 19 year old Melissa Cleaver, bravely endured the
harrowing details of how their parents and grandparents had met their violent
deaths. They sat silently throughout, occasionally quietly weeping or
holding hands for mutual comfort.
At the end of the trial the two children issued a statement that revealed more
of the way they truly felt.
They said: 'The murder of our family last year dealt a tragic blow to those of
us who remain. We could not even attempt to put into words the impact of
this and the deep grief that this and the loss of our much loved family nurse
have caused us all. Now the trial is over we can attempt to resume our
normal lives. However, as a family, our lives can never be the same
again.'
Jason and Melissa Cleaver took some small satisfaction at seeing the killers of
their parents and grandparents given long prison terms. |
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The judge said he was not satisfied that he had intended
to kill anyone, but told him: 'You showed reckless regard for human life.' He
was jailed for 22 years.
As the sentences were announced Stephenson, who had tried to pin the blame on
his two co-defendants, sneered at George Daly standing alongside him. Daly
tried to attack him and the two men were separated and pinioned by prison
officers. When order was restored Stephenson smiled at the jury, then
swaggered down the steps from the dock to the cells below.
Stephenson's wife Fiona was not in the court to see her husband jailed.
They had married just nine months before the murders after a whirlwind, two week
romance. The beatings had started almost immediately. Unbeknown to
Stephenson, Fiona called the police after reading about the murders and put her
husband's name forward as a prime suspect. |
