In the second half of June 1982 three men died in North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire within eleven days of one another, and the police attributed every one of those deaths to the same man. Two of the dead were officers of North Yorkshire Police. The third was a civilian who died in Nottinghamshire; his wife survived. A fourth officer, a dog handler, was injured during the same weeks and lived.
The man the police named was Barry Prudom. Before the first death he was already wanted on an earlier charge and had failed to appear for trial at Leeds Crown Court. For seventeen days, from June 17 to July 4, 1982, police from several counties worked to find him, in what became Britain's biggest manhunt to that time. On July 4 he died by suicide in Malton, North Yorkshire. He was never arrested for the three deaths, never charged with any of them, and no jury ever heard the evidence. The case against him remains an accusation that was never tested in a court.
By the summer of 1982 Prudom faced a charge of wounding and was due to stand trial for it at Leeds Crown Court. He did not go to that trial. Instead he left, and from that point the courts and the police regarded him as a wanted man. In police records he appeared under another surname, as Barry Edwards, the name under which he was wanted for wounding; his real name was established only later, during the inquiry into the first death.
That earlier charge was never tried. No court ever made a finding on it, and with his death it lapsed with everything else.
PC David Haigh was a constable of North Yorkshire Police, based in Harrogate. On the morning of Thursday, June 17, 1982, he went out on what he took to be a routine inquiry, one that had nothing to do with Prudom. The man he met near the village of Beckwithshaw was not the one he had been sent to find, and the constable died there that morning.
Before his death the constable had done what officers are trained to do with a stranger. He had questioned the man and written down what he was told: a name, a date of birth and a few other particulars. Those few lines became the foundation of everything that followed.
The name the constable had written down was false. Detectives took the other details and began working through police records. An officer in Leeds cross-referenced the date of birth and the other entries against the files and found a match: Barry Edwards, the man wanted for wounding, who had failed to answer his trial at Leeds Crown Court. From there the inquiry established his true name as Barry Prudom.
That identification changed the character of the inquiry within days. North Yorkshire Police were no longer looking for an unknown man seen once. They were looking for a named man with a police record, who had already failed to answer one court.
In the days after June 17 the trail crossed county lines. On June 20 police in Lincolnshire recorded an incident that was later linked to the same inquiry. Three days later, on June 23, 1982, George Luckett died in Nottinghamshire. His wife survived. He was the only civilian among the three dead, and he had no part in the police inquiry.
For a short time these were three separate cases in three separate force areas. What changed that was the decision by Lincolnshire Police, Nottinghamshire Police and North Yorkshire Police to share what each had learned. Comparing their information, the three forces concluded that they were pursuing the same man. From that point the Nottinghamshire death was attributed to Prudom as well, and the inquiry became a single operation across the three counties, with North Yorkshire Police at its center under the direction of the force's chief constable.
The next development came back in North Yorkshire. Near Dalby Forest, about eight miles from Scarborough, a police dog handler made a routine check, was injured in the encounter and survived.
The dog handler's evidence moved the inquiry forward. Shown a photograph, he identified Prudom as the man he had stopped, and the police now had a second officer who had seen him face to face. Prudom was named publicly as the prime suspect. At dawn the following day the police began a large operation in and around the forest, with about a thousand officers taking part. They did not find him there.
Sergeant David Winter was a sergeant of North Yorkshire Police. On Monday, June 28, 1982, eleven days after his colleague's death and while the force was still trying to find the man it held responsible, he was on duty in Old Malton, beside the town of Malton, and he died there.
The operation was led by the force's chief constable, and after the second officer's death the police concentrated their effort on Malton and the country around it. Outside forces were called in, among them a specialist unit of officers from Greater Manchester. In all, about four thousand police officers took part at one stage or another.
By the end of June the emphasis had shifted from the forest to the Malton area. On Thursday, July 1, the police stood down a search party of about a thousand volunteers and accepted the help of a retired army tracker, who had offered his services. Police said at the time that the motive for the deaths remained unknown.
The police kept their attention on Malton for several more days, and the operation ended there on the morning of July 4.
On Sunday, July 4, 1982, Barry Prudom died by suicide in Malton. On the day itself the police first believed he had died from their own officers' fire, and an autopsy was ordered to settle the point. The post-mortem examination found that he had taken his own life.
He was never arrested for the three deaths and never charged. His death ended any possibility of a trial. The evidence that had led the police to name him, beginning with the constable's notebook and the dog handler's identification, was never presented to a jury, and no court ever reached a verdict on whether he was responsible for the deaths in North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.
The end of the operation reached the House of Commons within days. On July 13, 1982, a Member of Parliament put a written question to the Home Secretary, asking him to obtain a report from the Chief Constable of North Yorkshire on the officers deployed in Malton when Prudom died. The question assumed that officers had caused the death. The Home Secretary answered the same day, on the chief constable's account, that no officers of the operation had been where the question placed them. The post-mortem had already found that the death was suicide.
The case returned to the Commons record in February 1985, though Prudom himself went unnamed. Asked for the names of police officers killed on duty in England and Wales since 1965, with the number of suspects arrested and tried in each case and any sentence imposed, the Home Office set out a table year by year. Both North Yorkshire officers appear in it under 1982. For the sergeant the table records one suspect, marked by a note as the same suspect as in another entry, with no arrest and no trial, and in place of a conviction or sentence the entry reads "Suspect committed suicide."
Barry Prudom was never charged with, tried for or convicted of any of the three deaths. All three were attributed to him by the police, and no court tested that evidence. The same is true of the injuries to the dog handler and to the Nottinghamshire victim's wife, and of the Lincolnshire incident of June 20.
The earlier charge of wounding, on which he had failed to appear at Leeds Crown Court, was never tried either, and no finding was made on it.
On the day of his death, early reports and a written question in Parliament described Prudom as having died at the hands of police officers. The post-mortem examination found that he had taken his own life.
1982: Barry Prudom, wanted under the name Barry Edwards on a charge of wounding, fails to appear for trial at Leeds Crown Court.
June 17, 1982: PC David Haigh of North Yorkshire Police dies near Beckwithshaw, outside Harrogate.
June 1982: details the constable recorded in his notebook are matched in police records, and Barry Prudom is identified.
June 20, 1982: an incident in Lincolnshire is later linked to the same inquiry.
June 23, 1982: George Luckett dies in Nottinghamshire; his wife survives.
Late June 1982: Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and North Yorkshire police conclude they are pursuing the same man.
Late June 1982: a police dog handler is injured near Dalby Forest and survives; he identifies Prudom from a photograph, and Prudom is named publicly as the prime suspect.
June 28, 1982: Sergeant David Winter of North Yorkshire Police dies in Old Malton.
July 1, 1982: the police stand down a large search party and accept the help of a retired army tracker.
July 4, 1982: Barry Prudom dies by suicide in Malton; a post-mortem examination finds the death self-inflicted.
July 13, 1982: a written question in the House of Commons asks the Home Secretary about the police operation at Malton; the Home Secretary answers the same day.
February 25, 1985: a Home Office written answer listing police officers killed on duty records both North Yorkshire deaths of 1982, with no arrest or trial and the entry "Suspect committed suicide."