Dudley man jailed for life over 1998 murder after shock confession to cold-case inquiry
Trevor Dunkley, 66, admitted killing Patricia Lashley 26 years ago when police questioned him during a missing persons review. He received a minimum 10-year, 10-month term.
Dudley man jailed for 1998 killing after telling cold-case detectives: 'I killed her, I'm sorry'
Trevor Dunkley, a 66-year-old from Himley Road, Dudley, has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 130 months after confessing to the murder of Patricia Lashley — a crime he had concealed for 26 years, the Evening Standard reports.
Lashley, a mother of seven who was 33 at the time of her death, was beaten to death by Dunkley in September 1998. Her remains were never recovered. She had been reported missing by her sister in June 1999, and appeals to locate her had appeared in the Big Issue and on Good Morning Britain in the years that followed.
The case broke open on 7 July this year when West Midlands Police officers, acting on a renewed missing persons inquiry, went to question Dunkley. He told them: "I killed her, I'm sorry" — and proceeded to describe what he had done.
A confession after 28 years of lies
Dunkley told detectives he had returned home from a night shift on the day of the murder and attacked Lashley with his fists while she was in bed, saying he had "just snapped" and "flipped." He covered her body with bedding, moved her to the cellar of his then home, and disposed of her skeletal remains in four stages over a period of weeks, roughly nine months to a year after the killing — placing bones in household bins.
Prosecutor Robert Price told Wolverhampton Crown Court that Dunkley became emotional at the time of his arrest. The former furnaceman also told police he could hear rats beneath the kitchen floor during the period the body remained in the cellar.
Dunkley pleaded guilty in September to murder and preventing a lawful burial. He remained calm at that earlier hearing as his barrister, Balbir Singh, confirmed to the court that no human remains had been found, given the passage of time and the method of disposal.
Judge: children grew up falsely believing they had been abandoned
Sentencing Dunkley on Friday, Judge Michael Chambers KC described the killing as "a dreadful thing" and identified the impact on Lashley's children as a grossly aggravating factor.
Dunkley, who was not the father of Lashley's nine-month-old baby — who was still breastfeeding at the time — had taken the infant to social services and claimed Lashley had abandoned him. Judge Chambers told Dunkley: "He grew up thinking, obviously quite falsely, that he had been abandoned by his mother, as did his siblings. That is in my judgement a grossly aggravating factor."
The judge acknowledged that Dunkley showed genuine remorse, but said the delay in justice was solely the result of the lies Dunkley had maintained for 28 years.
Several members of Lashley's family, including three of her children, were present in court to witness the sentencing.
'It's just unforgivable'
Detective Inspector Michelle Cordell, from the West Midlands Homicide Unit, said the cellar of Dunkley's former address had been extensively excavated but no human remains were found.
Cordell said the missing persons investigation had remained active across the decades, with officers periodically re-examining the available information. It was during the most recent review that Dunkley was identified as someone with unanswered questions — leading to the July interview in which he confessed.
"It's truly shocking," Cordell said of Dunkley's conduct. "For anybody to be able to use such violence… to conceal his crime in the cruel way that he has done — it's despicable. He has prevented Patricia's loved ones from having a funeral for her. He has left them without answers for decades. It's just unforgivable."
Lashley, who was known locally as Pat or Jade, had links to London, Wales, Newcastle and Scotland and also used the names Vanessa and Tricia, as well as the surname Bradford. She had been living at an address in Hall Street, Dudley, at the time of her death.
Source: Evening Standard