Carl Bridgewater murder: New revelations in TV documentary

Bert Spencer, an ambulance driver with links both to the crime scene and to the Bridgewater family - and who later served time for a murder that bore striking similarities - has always denied killing the 13-year-old paperboy.

The horrific shooting at point-blank range at Yew Tree Farm in Prestwood, near Stourbridge, in 1978 shook the country. It remains the biggest unsolved child killing since the Moors murders.

Now a former hospital secretary, who provided Spencer with what he called a 'cast-iron' alibi, has admitted she cannot prove where he was for the entire day on which Carl was killed.

His first wife Janet Spencer has also spoken on the record for the first time in almost 40 years, making potentially incriminating claims. She says believes the police should reopen the inquiry.

The allegations are contained in a Channel 4 programme to be screened on Sunday, in which leading criminologist Professor David Wilson quizzes the pensioner.

Now 76, Spencer approached the academic via his biographer, Bridgnorth author Simon Golding, for a book to be published later this month, based on his own account of what happened. He asked Professor Wilson to challenge him on his story in a series of no-holds barred interviews to set the record straight.

As part of the deal, he agreed to the conversations being filmed for the 90-minute documentary. But instead of strengthening his case, the programme paints him as a manipulative liar.

Channel 4 also approached Spencer's daughter, who was friends with Carl as a child. The two families used to live five doors away from each other in Wordsley. She told them she believes her father is innocent but that he was holding back information.

Her mother Janet, who was married to Bert Spencer for 16 years, was never interviewed by police at the time because the spotlight quickly shifted to the men who became known as the Bridgewater Four after they were arrested for an armed robbery at a farm in Romsley, near Halesowen.

She said Spencer disposed of a shotgun he legally owned the day after Carl Bridgewater died. She also told how she found a green sweater hanging on the clothes line which Spencer had uncharacteristically washed himself on the day Carl died, and that she never saw it again after that day.

When she heard about the murder on the news that night, she said she went upstairs to where Spencer was sleeping and asked whether he killed Carl. She said he replied: "No I didn't, but don't you think they'll be after me? It's on my patch."

Spencer also told her he was worried the finger would be pointed at him because he was not at work all day on September 19, the day of the murder, claiming he spent a long time in the toilets because he was suffering from a stomach complaint.

Spencer became a prime suspect after company director Roger Edwards came forward to say he had seen a pale blue Vauxhall Viva driven by a man in a dark-blue uniform turning into the lane leading to the farmhouse that afternoon.

The owners of all cars of that description living within a 50-mile radius, including Spencer, were questioned by the police. Their suspicions grew when they found out he was also an ambulance driver, and so wore a dark uniform, and was a part-time antiques dealer.

Spencer had visited the farmhouse on a few occasions and knew it to be full of antiques. His wife says Spencer told her he buried a bag of stolen antiques somewhere around the Prestwood area.

For the first time since his trial, Spencer talks about the murder with which he was charged and convicted. Just months after the Bridgewater Four were jailed, he killed his friend, 70-year-old Hubert Wilkes, in a way that had strong echoes of Carl's murder.

The local landowner, whose properties included Yew Tree Farm, was fatally shot at a 40th birthday party he threw for his friend, who was also his gardener. Spencer tells Professor Wilson that Hubert Wilkes had a reputation for serving strong cocktails that led to wife-swapping romps.

He claimed to have 'just gone bloody mad for a few minutes' when Mr Wilkes offered his wife a cocktail. He strode out to his car, cut off the barrel a shotgun, returned to the house and shot him.

His wife Janet tells the programme that Carl Bridgewater was discussed that night but Spencer denies that he was goaded by Mr Wilkes about the murder. He does, however, agree with his interrogator that the similarities with Carl's murder were 'eerie.'

Professor Wilson, based at Birmingham City University, who spent more than 20 hours in Spencer's company, conducted a P-scan test, widely used by the police to assess the criminal mind and found him to have a score in the high range which he said was 'a cause for serious concern.'

Spencer, who was filmed in his Lincolnshire home, has rejected all the new allegations made in the programme.

He accepts he no longer has a cast-iron alibi but denies going for lunch on the day Carl died. Denying all of Janet Spencer's allegations, he said he had no recollection of the missing green jumper and describes her account of events on the night Carl was murdered as 'nonsense'. He said he did have a shotgun but it was sold two months before Carl's murder and he denied burying stolen antiques or discussing them with Janet.

Channel 4 commissioning editor Rob Coldstream says: "The murder of Carl Bridgewater remains one of the most horrifying crimes to go unsolved. Carl's family, the family of Hubert Wilkes and the men who were wrongly imprisoned for almost 20 years have suffered unimaginable grief so when Bert Spencer offered to speak on the record for the first time in more than two decades, we felt it was an important opportunity to potentially shed new light on this case."

* Interview With A Murderer is broadcast on Channel 4 at 9pm on Sunday.