Campaign to prove innocence ends as husband found dead

Coniston Water where the body of Carol Park was found. Photo / Wikimedia Commons

For more than 20 years it seemed as if Carol Park in England had disappeared from the face of the earth.

In truth, the heavily bound body of the quietly spoken special needs teacher lay not far from her home, 21 metres down in the depths of Coniston Water in the beautiful Lake District.

Yesterday her former husband, a retired schoolteacher who in 2005 was found guilty of the so-called "Lady in the Lake" murder, was found hanging in his cell at HMP Garth in Lancashire.

It was Gordon Park's 66th birthday, five years almost to the day of his conviction, and he could not be revived by prison officers who discovered him with a plastic bag over his head.

His apparent suicide brings to a close one of the longest-running and most baffling murder cases in recent criminal history.

For the couple's three children and the friends of Park who have vigorously protested his innocence since his arrest in 1997, three decades after his wife went missing, it means an end for their campaign to secure his release.

The couple's son, Jeremy Park, said that the family were "completely devastated and still believe his innocence 100 per cent".

They were working to overturn the conviction and his 15-year sentence despite the Court of Appeal turning down an application for a retrial two years ago.

Senior judges rejected new defence evidence which purported to undermine prosecution claims that rocks used to weigh down Mrs Park's body came from the family home.

The problem in the Parks' turbulent and short marriage seemed to be sex, not violence.

The teacher had relationships with other men and left the family home at Leece in Barrow-in-Furness at least twice.

During one separation Mr Park was granted custody of the three children, forcing her to return.

He did not report his wife's final disappearance for weeks after he claimed she had failed to join them on a family outing to Blackpool in the long hot summer of 1976.

The couple divorced in 1978, Mr Park citing desertion.

He remarried twice and won admirers for the way he brought up his children.

In 1997 amateur divers uncovered her battered body dressed in a blue baby doll night dress.

Suspicion immediately centred on Mr Park, who was on holiday in France with his third wife.

He is claimed to have said simply "Oh dear" when told of her discovery.

He was arrested and held on remand in Preston jail, where the prosecution claimed he confessed to two fellow inmates, one with learning difficulties, the other a heavy drug user.

Yet the case did not come to trial for seven years, until a new witness emerged, a holidaymaker who recalled seeing someone who looked like Mr Park pushing a body into the lake.

The prosecution claimed the keen sailor had the necessary skill to tie the knots binding the body after bludgeoning her to death at their home with an ice axe.

- THE INDEPENDENT