‘The gazelle is fighting for its life. That’s what it felt like’

HER father stood behind the glass of the dock in the court. Handcuffed and alone. Charged with murdering his wife. He appeared composed, indicating to his daughters that somehow things would turn out all right.

Debbie Simpson and her sister were in tears, just trying to hold themselves together.

"On a nature programme, you see a lion with a gazelle in its mouth and it's trying to bring it down - that's the only analogy I can think of," says Mrs Simpson. "The lion has a good grip on the gazelle, but it can't bring it down. The gazelle is fighting for its life. That's what it felt like.

"We seemed very alone as a family. It was like the whole world was thinking..." Mrs Simpson clicks her fingers in a rare dramatic gesture to show the finality of the moment, "...they've got him. But actually, no, they haven't."

To prove they have not, Mrs Simpson is talking publicly for the first time to The Northern Echo about the murder of her stepmother, Ann Heron, on August 3, 1990 at Aeolian House, on the outskirts of Darlington. Nearly 20 years on, the culprit remains at large - Durham's only undetected murder for 50 years - although suspicion still hangs over her father, Peter.

"People who don't know him only read what's been printed - and that's been compounded by the actions of the police - so you can't blame them," she says.

"I feel everyone in the Darlington area thinks that the police can't prove it and he's got away with it. That is so not the case. I want them to look at this again."

Mr Heron was arrested on November 9, 2005. It's a date so horrific to the family that when Mrs Simpson talks about it, it needs no year to identify it - it is as if it is their own 9/11.

"On the ninth of November, I went to work as normal," says Mrs Simpson, who is the director's PA at Hartlepool power station. "I had the radio playing down the A19 and heard nothing. At a quarter to nine, my sister, Beverley, phoned and said they had arrested somebody for Ann, someone from Motherwell.

"I just thought it was a coincidence as that was where Dad had been living since Freda, his third wife, had died in the July.

"I clicked on the internet, but there was nothing there. I picked up the phone to ring Dad, but decided not to tell him until I had something concrete.

"Then the phone rang. The display told me it was my husband's mobile, and he said you are not going to want to hear this'.

"I told a couple of colleagues what had happened and then collapsed onto the floor."

That morning the police had called on Mr Heron at 7.30am.

"He was 70, diabetic and a grieving widow, yet they sent six people to his house to arrest him," says Mrs Simpson, who now lives with her father and her husband, Graham, near Billingham. "He was packed and ready to come to visit us.

"They could have telephoned him and he would willingly have travelled down to Darlington to see them, such was his faith in them.

"His response was, Why am I not surprised? I didn't do it, I'm going to have my breakfast'.

"They drove all the way down to Spennymoor police station in total silence. He was trying to talk about football, but they were having none of it."

When Mrs Simpson recovered herself - picked herself off the floor, quite literally - her attitude began to change.

"I was in absolute shock and disbelief, but then the awful realisation hit, the realisation that the police had wasted the last 15 years. For 15 years we had been thinking they were out there looking for this guy, but they hadn't been."

The first time she saw her father after his arrest was two days later, when he appeared behind the glass of the dock at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, charged with murder.

"Seeing him in court was surreal, seeing him in handcuffs was unbelievable, but he was so composed. He saw Bev and he motioned with his hand as if to say it'll be all right, don't worry," says Mrs Simpson. "There was only us and his lifelong friend, Alastair Bruce, there and we felt very lonely. I felt we were really up against it. I can never ever express how grateful I am to Alastair for coming that day."

Mr Heron was remanded to Holme House prison on the edge of Stockton - another surreal experience for his daughters.

Mrs Simpson recounts it in a distant way, as if it were happening to another person.

"Going there, getting signed in, sitting down and waiting,"

she says. "It was like a big canteen with tables. We could see him talking to the guard, and as he walked over he was wearing a pair of jeans for the first time in his life and a prison-issue blue shirt. We walked up to him and I started to cry, but straightaway he said, No tears - don't say anything as I've got a lot to tell you'.

"He wasn't allowed a piece of paper or a pen to write anything down and so he said I need you to do this and to speak to soand- so, everything right down to arranging for a newspaper to be delivered.

"I'll never forget going to the newsagent in Norton and saying I'd like a Daily Mail for prisoner such-and-such.

"Dad was so rational. He is very strong and he knew that he didn't do it and he knew that the judicial process, however long it took, would prove that.

"He had his own room - I couldn't bring myself to say the word cell, I had to say room.

People would say, Did you do it?' and he would reply, Funnily enough, no'.

He handled everything, but I felt the need to go up to the Scottish family, to Freda's daughters, Morag and Hazel, if nothing else, just for a hug.

They were just as shocked as we were. In fact, Morag was physically sick." After a week in prison, Mr Heron was bailed to stay with Mrs Simpson and her husband at their home in Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, on one condition: he was to have no contact with Beverley.

"We were absolutely bamboozled as to why," says Mrs Simpson. "She's not been very well, but there were to be no Christmas presents, no Christmas cards, no phone calls."

The legal process allows the defendant "disclosure", to see the evidence against them.

Every night after work, Mrs Simpson and her father would pore over the "core bundle" of documents that made up the police case.

They discovered the reason for the bail condition. "In her statement in 1990, Beverley had talked about cutting dad's hair - she's a hairdresser - and said: There, all finished, you'll look nice for your girlfriend in the pub tonight'. It was just an offthe- cuff comment. She knew nothing about the affair, none of us did."

When Mrs Heron was murdered, it emerged that Mr Heron was seeing a barmaid and Beverley's joke magnified suspicions.

"The police theory was that afterwards, they were going to ride off into the sunset, that was his motive," says Mrs Simpson. "But from statements in the bundle, it looks as if the affair was over. They hadn't seen each other very much."

The bundle suggested that the police thought he had murdered his wife before driving back in his white Mercedes to his depot - he was operations manager at GE Stiller haulage company in Middleton St George - after a business meeting.

"After the meeting, instead of returning to the depot via the shortest route, which would have taken him past Aeolian House, he travelled through Neasham and Middleton St George in the hope of perhaps seeing his girlfriend, who would usually be walking her dog at that time," says Mrs Simpson.

"He did not see her and, as witnesses agree, he arrived back at the depot at about 4.50pm. His colleague, Paul Stiller, had just taken delivery of a new car and they went together to see it.

"The police theory has him leaving Cleveland Bridge, driving to Aeolian House, committing the crime, cleaning himself and changing his clothes; getting rid of the weapon and returning to the depot for 4.50pm as if nothing had happened.

"But witness statements in the bundle confirm that he was wearing the same clothes all day. And where is the forensic evidence from his car in which he was driving about doing all this?

"Because he didn't do it, there isn't any evidence."

There was some forensic evidence, and that was what led to Mr Heron's arrest in 2005.

"The forensic report says that a high percentage of the fibres on Ann's body were denim, which indicated that the guy who did it was wearing jeans, but they couldn't rule out the possibility that she had worn a denim skirt that day," says Mrs Simpson.

"That doesn't sound like Ann, as she usually wore pastel cotton skirts, and it certainly doesn't sound like Dad as he has never owned a pair of jeans in his life - he is of the old school and wears slacks even to this day.

"There was also a tiny spot of DNA found on Ann. It was too small to identify using techniques at the time and they had to grow it before they could get anything from it - it was the one chance to solve the case."

By 2005, developments in DNA testing meant the fragment could be analysed, and the results led to the arrest.

"It turned out to be dad's and it came from the carpet that Ann had fallen onto," says Mrs Simpson.

"The same DNA was found in 36 other places on the carpet.

"Dad lived in that house - whose DNA do you expect to find in his house?"

The case collapsed before it could reach trial. Four months after he had been arrested, Mr Heron was at Mrs Simpson's house when there was a knock at the door.

It was a reporter and photographer from The Northern Echo bearing a statement from the Crown Prosecution Service. It said: "After consultation with police and leading counsel, it has been decided to discontinue these proceedings."

This was how Mr Heron learnt that, in the eyes of the law, he was an innocent man again.

"He told the reporters that he didn't know what they were talking about," says Mrs Simpson. "When I got home, I just read the press release in tears. I hadn't known when he'd been arrested nor when the case was discontinued. They had not had the courtesy to tell anybody."

It is her frustration at the way the case has been handled, both by the media and the police, that has encouraged her to tell Mr Heron's family's side of the story for the first time.

■ Tomorrow, Mrs Simpson will detail the flaws in the police case and highlight a vital piece of evidence which she believes holds the key to catching the culprit.

If you have information about the Ann Heron murder, call Durham Police on 0845-60-60-365, or Crimestoppers, the independent charity, anonymously, on 0800-555-111. Or call Debbie Simpson on 01325-505062, or write to her c/o The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington DL1 1NF