Murder of Suzanne Capper
The murder of Suzanne Capper was committed in Greater Manchester, England in December 1992. Capper, aged 16, died in Withington Hospital on 18 December 1992, from multiple organ failure arising from 80% burns after being deliberately lit on fire on 14 December. Before her death, Capper relayed that she had been kidnapped and held captive for seven days at a house in Moston, Manchester, where she was beaten and tortured. She was taken from the house by car, driven into the countryside and forced out of the car into a wood at Werneth Low where petrol was poured over her and she was set alight. The murder arose from the "avenging trivial grievances: a sexual insult, infection with pubic lice and the loss of a pink duffel coat."
Detectives conducting the inquiry said that "for sheer mindless brutality" the crime ranked alongside the torture inflicted upon the victims of the Moors murderers. The case went to trial in November 1993 but received "comparatively little publicity" as it coincided with the trial of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables for the murder of James Bulger. On 17 December 1993, Jean Powell, aged 26; her ex-husband Glyn Powell, aged 29; and Bernadette McNeilly, aged 24, were sentenced to life imprisonment for their parts in the murder. Jeffrey Leigh, aged 27, was jailed for twelve years for false imprisonment. Jean Powell's brother Clifford Pook, aged 18, was sentenced to fifteen years in a Young Offenders' Institution for false imprisonment and conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm. Anthony Michael Dudson, aged 16 at the time of the murder, was also found guilty of murder and sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure under section 53 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933.
Background
Suzanne Jane Capper, described as "a gentle and easily influenced girl," had been babysat by Jean Powell since she was six years old. In 1990 she had spent time in the care of the local authority after her mother, Elizabeth Capper, and her stepfather separated, after which Capper and her older sister, Michelle, stayed with their stepfather. Around this time Capper began to be truant from Moston Brook High School, and her attendance during the final two years of schooling was described as "erratic". She increasingly spent her time at Powell's house.Powell lived at 97 Langworthy Road, Moston, a small Victorian terraced house, where she also dealt drugs and was involved with the handling of stolen motor vehicles. Michelle had briefly lived with Powell, but moved out in August 1992 because she did not like the "evil new friends" Powell was associating with, particularly Bernadette McNeilly, who had recently moved in three doors away at number 91. McNeilly, who had three children, subsequently moved in with Powell and her three children, where the two shared a bed in the downstairs dining room because the bedrooms were "full of children." Capper continued to stay regularly even though Powell and McNeilly frequently bullied her. Her sister said: "It was not that she was scared of them, it's just that she would do anything for them. She pampered their every whim."
Powell was separated from her husband Glyn, although the two remained friendly and he would visit regularly from his nearby home. McNeilly's boyfriend, 16-year-old Anthony Dudson, was also having a sexual relationship with Powell. Powell was also sexually involved with Jeffrey Leigh, a regular visitor to the house as a purchaser of amphetamines. Another frequent visitor to the house was Powell's younger brother, Clifford Pook.
Events leading to murder
Kidnap
At trial, several reasons were given for Capper's kidnapping: Powell claimed that Capper had tried to persuade her to sleep with a man for money; McNeilly and Dudson had contracted pubic lice which they believed were from a bed that Capper had also used; and McNeilly believed that she had taken a pink duffel coat that belonged to her.In November 1992, when Dudson had contracted pubic lice and had his pubic hair shaved, McNeilly told him she thought that he had caught them from Capper. On 7 December, Capper was lured to Powell's home, where Glyn and Dudson were already waiting. She was grabbed as soon as she arrived and held down while Glyn and Dudson shaved her head and eyebrows and then made her clean up the hair and place it in a bin. Then he placed a plastic bag over her head and walked around her while hitting her on the head taking turns with Dudson. Capper was then kicked by Powell and McNeilly as she lay curled up on the floor, with both women taking turns beating her with a three-foot-long wooden instrument and a belt. She was then taken to the bathroom and forced to shave off her own pubic hair as "ritual humiliation in revenge for having caused, as they claimed, Dudson and McNeilly themselves to be shaved. Afterwards Powell locked her in a cupboard overnight.
The following morning, Capper was taken upstairs and locked in another cupboard. On 8 December she was transferred to McNeilly's house because of concern that Powell and McNeilly's six children were disturbed by Capper's crying. There she was tied spreadeagle to an upturned bed with electrical flex in a downstairs back room.
Torture
Over the next five days, Capper was subjected to a series of violent acts, "increasing in severity and brutality as the time passed." She was regularly beaten and injected with amphetamines, burned with cigarettes and had rave music—in particular "Hi, I'm Chucky " by 150 Volts, featuring samples from the film Child's Play—played at maximum volume through headphones. McNeilly would commence each torture session with the phrase, "Chucky's coming to play."At some point during the week, Pook and Leigh called at the house and saw Capper, blindfolded and gagged, tied to the bed. By this time, Capper had been lying in her own urine and feces for several days and was placed in a bath containing concentrated disinfectant and scrubbed with a stiff brush with sufficient force to remove skin. Pook then used pliers to extract two of her teeth, which police later found at his house "like some kind of macabre trophy." Dudson said: "I was stood at the doorway with Jeanie and Bernie . Cliff took her gag off. He told her to open her mouth. He said: 'Right, I'm going to rip your teeth out'. He started hitting her teeth with the pliers. He got the pliers on and started pulling it out. But it just snapped and chipped. Then he hit them a few more times. He put the pliers on again and really, really pulled. He pulled Suzanne's head forward until there was a snap and he had the tooth in the pliers. He did the same again and he was laughing."
Missed opportunities for rescue
David Hill, aged 18, was asked to "sit in" at the house, and while there heard Dudson shouting in the back room. When he asked what was going on, Leigh had shown him Capper. Hill could clearly see evidence of torture and was later left alone with Capper, but did not free her. He said: "She asked me if I could help, but I told her I couldn't. I asked her who she was. She said her name was Suzanne. She asked me if I could untie her. I said I couldn't do anything." Hill later claimed that he was too afraid to intervene, saying: "I thought they would batter me. If I'd said they'd all have got me, wouldn't they? I didn't know what to do. I was too shocked to do anything."Leigh and Dudson also helped Capper's sister's fiancé, Paul Barlow, repair his car while knowing she was being held and tortured in the house. Barlow said: "They could have told me there and then. The door would have been kicked down and I would have got Suzanne out. I did not think they were capable of such savagery. Now all I want is ten minutes with them in a back room."
Murder
The six primary attackers heard that Capper's family was going to report her as a missing person, and so agreed that Capper had to be removed from the house.In the early hours of 14 December 1992, Capper was forced into the boot of a stolen white Fiat Panda car and driven 15 miles to a narrow lane at Werneth Low, near Romiley, on the outskirts of Stockport. In the car were McNeilly, the Powells and Dudson. McNeilly "giggled" as they made the journey. Powell later said that Capper was pushed down an embankment, into a patch of brambles, where McNeilly poured petrol over her. When McNeilly had difficulty getting the petrol to ignite, Glyn Powell and Dudson made multiple attempts before lighting the girl's body on fire. McNeilly began to sing "Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn!" from The Trammps song "Disco Inferno".
Believing Capper to be dead, the four returned to Jean Powell's house, stopping to buy canned drinks on the way. Both Leigh and Pook were at the house when they arrived.
Naming attackers before death
After her attackers left, Capper managed to scramble back up the embankment and stagger along the lane for approximately a quarter of a mile to Compstall Road, despite extensive burns. She was found at 06:10 by Barry Sutcliffe and two of his colleagues on their way to work. They immediately took her to a nearby house and roused the residents, Michael and Margaret Coop, to call for an ambulance. Michael Coop said: "Both her hands appeared like ash. Her legs were just like raw meat and her feet appeared to be badly charred. I was struck by how polite the victim was. She was constantly thanking my wife for her assistance." Margaret Coop said: "I instinctively went to put my arms around her but she pulled away because she could not bear to be touched. Her head was shaved and there were recent, not new, cuts to her head. Her face was almost featureless. Her hands were red raw and black at the fingertips. Her legs were red from top to bottom. She couldn't bear anything near her legs."Capper drank six glasses of water, but was unable to hold the glass herself because of the injuries to her hands. Capper was rushed to the hospital and was able to give the names of her six assailants, as well as Powell's address, before falling into a coma. The extent of her burns was such that her mother and stepfather were unable to recognise her, and she was positively identified by a partial fingerprint from her thumb, the only part of her hands not severely burned. She died on 18 December 1992, without regaining consciousness.