Interview With A Murderer: Bye bye to Bert’s alibi

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Interview With A Murderer: Bye bye to Bert’s alibi

June 12, 2016 - 19:47
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Who killed paper boy Carl Bridgewater? Watch Channel 4’s powerful documentary Interview With A Murderer and the chances are you’ll decide it was Bert Spencer.

Bert Spencer and criminologist David Wilson

Who killed paper boy Carl Bridgewater? Watch Channel 4’s powerful documentary Interview With A Murderer and the chances are you’ll decide it was Bert Spencer.

For nearly 40 years the former ambulance officer has been a prime suspect in one of the most infamous unsolved murders in British criminal history. He has always maintained his innocence and cites a “cast iron alibi”.

When Carl was shot in the face at point blank range, Spencer insists it couldn’t have been him because he was at work. Which was confirmed to the police by Barbara Riebold, a secretary at Corbett Hospital who knew him well.

But in a chilling programme that Spencer hoped would finally exonerate him, his alibi falls apart as Barbara reveals she couldn’t possibly account for his movements throughout the day.

The pages in a log book chronicling Spencer’s whereabouts have mysteriously disappeared. With the case for his defence disintegrating, the accused turns nasty.

“Do you have any evidence that I killed Carl Bridgewater?” he snarls. “If you don’t then shut your mouth!”

His ex-wife Janet doesn’t have any evidence. But based on her then husband’s odd behaviour - when news of the tragedy broke he buried a box of antiques and uncharacteristically washed a jumper - she is convinced he did it. And, speaking publicly for the first time, says so. A dramatic moment.

Of Ann Whelan, who continues to campaign for him to stand trial, Spencer stares into the lens and growls: “I actually hate that bitch. I worship the ground she’s got coming to her. Horrible bitch.” As a self-serving PR exercise, this production is not exactly a triumph.

At one point, criminologist Professor David Wilson tells Spencer he’s a psychopath: “I find you to be egocentric, callous, cold blooded, predatory, dominant, deceptive, manipulative and lacking in genuine remorse for socially deviant and criminal acts.”

His character duly assassinated, Spencer booms: “You need psychiatric treatment son.” His face red with rage, he dismisses Wilson as “a f***ing nutter.”

In a series of tense confrontations Professor Wilson filmed 20 hours of Spencer’s strange denials and even took him back to the scene of the 1978 slaying.

Yew Tree Farm in the West Midlands village of Wordsley was a place Bert was extremely familiar with. He was friendly with the elderly owners and hunted on their land with his licensed shotgun.

On the day of Carl’s death, a witness saw a blue Vauxhall Viva drive towards the farm with man in a uniform behind the wheel. Spencer owned a blue Vauxhall Viva and wore the ambulance service uniform.

At first detectives believed that part time antiques dealer Spencer was in the process of robbing the house when Carl arrived with the newspapers and disturbed him. The poor kid died instantly.

When Spencer was interrogated by the cops he failed to mention that he lived just yards from the Bridgewater family in the same street. Did Carl recognise his neighbour and pay the ultimate price?

It’s a complicated story. Just as the circumstantial evidence was piling up against him, Bert was suddenly off the hook after four housebreakers were arrested and sensationally confessed that they were the culprits. They were sent to jail to serve sentences ranging from 12 to 25 years.

Incredibly, one month later Spencer blasted a friend with a sawn-off shotgun during a booze fuelled argument at a farm house in the sleepy village of Stourbridge. After admitting to a brutal homicide that was eerily similar to Carl Bridgewater’s, he went to prison for 14 years.

Although he concedes he is a murderer, he vehemently protests that he did not murder the paper boy. So who did? Certainly, not the so-called Bridgewater Four whose convictions were quashed in 1995 after the West Midlands police were found to have fabricated their confessions.

Interview With A Murderer is compelling viewing. Flitting from OTT chumminess to shifty evasiveness to excruciating sentimentality to explosions of self-pitying fury, Bert Spencer clearly believes his version of events is credible. Frankly, it has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

Perhaps the weirdest scene unfolds outside Yew Tree Farm as he addresses the late Carl. His voice quivering with theatrical emotion, he sighs: “How I wish we could have been fused together under different and happier circumstances." He comes across like the worst kind of hammy actor.

You can’t help wondering why on earth this guy agreed to cooperate with Prof Wilson’s forensic TV investigation. He complains that for decades he has been subjected to trial by media. Now he subjects himself to trial by television. With disastrous results.

During this absorbing one hour and twenty minute probe Spencer reveals himself to be a thoroughly unpleasant individual. And he succeeds in wrecking the one thing that has kept him out of the frame. His alibi.

Whether the West Midlands police will opt to reopen the case remains to be seen. But surely this is a historical crime that warrants another look. Carl Bridgewater deserves justice.

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Henrietta Knight's picture

If ever there was a case that should be reopened, the murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater in 1978, should be top of the list. Fingers point to one man since the quashing of the conviction of the Bridgewater Four. In Interview With A Murderer all roads lead to Bert Spencer, previously imprisoned for killing pensioner Hubert Wilkes in Stourbridge a year later.

It is unclear why Spencer, who has already written a book, agreed to take part in this one-off documentary His manner is so creepy, but unlike many psychopaths, he seems incredibly stupid. His opening statement immediately sets alarm bells ringing: “This is going to start the programme. Right you bastards, you’re ‘aving it.”

The interesting format of the show sees criminologist Professor David Wilson interviewing Spencer in quite a chummy way, until it all turns nasty. The former ambulance driver tries to present himself as a loveable old man, weeping for the cameras and making bizarre imploring speeches. But that all changes the moment he’s asked a question he doesn’t like. Then he becomes wild-eyed and threatening.

We learn that he’s already been to prison for 14 years for slaughtering his friend Wilkes, a local landowner during a party at his home. Hence the show’s title. Both Wilkes and Bridgewater were shot in the head in a similar fashion, which might be a bit of a clue.

Barbara Riebold, the former secretary who gave him an alibi, has now retracted it. Even more powerful was the interview with his first wife Janet, who revealed that he disposed of clothes and a gun soon after the Carl Bridgewater was murdered.

Bert shows Wilson his kitsch paintings of animals and religion. He claims that his first wife Janet burned some of them, but she isn’t asked why. Perhaps she did it because they are in such poor taste, but I suspect there’s more to the story than that.

The psychoanalysis of Bert doesn’t go down terribly well. Wilson calls him: “Egocentric, callous, cold-blooded, predatory, impulsive, irresponsible, dominant, deceptive, manipulative and lacking in empathy, guilt or genuine remorse for deviant and criminal acts. And that fits you to a T.”

“It also fits you to a T,” snaps back Bert. “I think you need to see a psychiatrist.”

This was an extraordinary documentary that will hopefully pave the way to a new trial and justice for the 13-year-old paperboy.