During the quarter of a century that I served as a Police Officer, I worked on a number of high profile murder investigations, as well as many offences of every kind that fill the working day of professional and amateur villains alike. Some very sad, some very funny. Some very clever, some very stupid. However some of these events took place in the fairly recent past, so it would be neither appropriate nor legal to discuss them at this time. It would make a good book though!

However, one interesting case that comes to mind happened near Thorne, South Yorkshire in July 1987. The body of a young man was accidentally discovered by the driver of a mechanical peat digger, working out in the middle of the moors. It was only when the driver, Paul Marshall, flicked his cigarette end out of the back of the vehicle that he noticed a human skull protruding from the ground. The rest of the body was recovered over a two day period and found to be relatively complete. This was due to the fact that the acidic nature of peat has a preservative effect.

It was identified as a suspicious death, given the severe nature of the injuries sustained and the remote location of the grave site. The deceased had massive spiral fractures to his arms and legs and severe compression injuries to his spine. This indicated that he had in fact arrived at his final resting place at a very high velocity. No metal artefacts were found with the body, as the same peat which preserves flesh, can completely dissolve metal.

A very lengthy investigation ensued, which took me all round the country for enquiries, through two different post mortems and eventually into the Coroner’s Court. The final clue was a coarse woven flying jacket, which enabled the whole story to be pieced together.

The coroner decided that sufficient evidence had been found to declare that the young man was one of the fifty-five thousand RAF bomber crewmen who flew away from these shores during World War II, never to return. Twenty-eight thousand of those brave young men still have no known grave to this day. He must have been blown, thrown or else jumped from his stricken aircraft as it flew overhead.

Unfortunately, after many months of investigation, insufficient evidence existed to pinpoint the airman’s identity - not forgetting that this was long before the days of DNA testing. The body was finally laid to rest with fully military honours, in the RAF cemetery at St. Oswald’s Church, Finningley, near Doncaster. The grave is now in the shadow of the newly opened Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood Airport and is marked as simply being ‘An Airman of the Second World War - Known unto God’ and I think that this provides a poignant and fitting memorial to them all.

To this day, I still get enquiries from surviving relatives spread across the globe, trying to establish if the young man we affectionately came to know as ‘Pete Marsh’ was in fact their long lost loved one.

The full and very detailed story is told in a booklet that I am able to provide if you send your full details to: andyg313@hotmail.com

All other enquiries should kindly be directed through the feedback section of this website.