Twenty seven years after the body of six-year-old Rikki Neave was found near his home in Peterborough the case can finally be closed, after 41-year-old James Watson was found guilty of his murder at the Old Bailey.
For EDP journalist JOHN ELWORTHY it was the end of a case which had become intensely personal, and one which he helped to get re-opened.
Here, he explains how he become so deeply involved in the search for the truth...
It began with an email.
A ‘Gary Rogers’ had seen a story I’d written about an unsolved murder (Una Crown, from Wisbech) and told me "I’ve got something you ought to investigate".
After arranging to meet in a pub in Ely, he told me about Ruth Neave. How he had met and married her.
And of her jail sentence for child cruelty and acquittal of murdering her son Rikki.
By the end, he had convinced me there was sufficient to merit further investigation as Ruth had been thwarted in her campaign to get the case re-opened.
Ruth, explained Gary, distrusted journalists but surprisingly, on the steps of the pub, he asked if I would like to meet her. I assumed sometime in the future.
Moments later we were outside his car, the window down, and I met Ruth Neave.
Over the following days, in January 2014, we met frequently, mostly for dinner at a pub in Soham (which reminds me... I never claimed the costs back).
Later that month the Eastern Daily Press ran the first version of my findings – across five pages.
And so began a long, arduous, challenging campaign to persuade Cambridgeshire Police of “compelling new evidence”, to re-open the case.
Gary worked night and day going over every document, statement and piece of evidence he could find (and how he got hold of them will remain untold).
I interviewed them, often, and compiled fresh stories, offering fresh thoughts, fresh perspective with a growing sense a provincial newspaper editor might just ‘have something’.
We held press conferences to keep the case in the public eye, re-enacted Rikki’s ‘last day’ in a woefully inadequate YouTube video (but which has been seen 40,000 times) and, finally, the major crimes unit was convinced.
They re-opened the files. Officially. BBC Crimewatch followed.
It has cost me, personally, much. My health suffered. I was stressed and worn out.
But I grew fond of Ruth and Gary. And never wanted to quit – even when a family member threw hot coffee over me for ‘siding with that scum’.
Now, with the verdict, in, I am simply relieved.
That’s it. Since the jury went out, I spent nearly every day with Ruth awaiting the verdict.
She is tired and exhausted but delighted that, finally, the truth can be told.
Mr Elworthy is editor of newspapers including the Cambs Times and Wisbech Standard, sister papers of the EDP
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