AN Appleton author and former deputy editor of the Warrington Guardian has released a thrilling memoir about a notorious murder case he covered while working as a young news reporter.
Jeremy Craddock is the first to reveal the full story of the 1990s Coniston Water murder, which generated global media interest in his latest novel The Lady in the Lake: A Reporter’s Memoir of a Murder.
Jeremy, 56, who now teaches journalism at Manchester Metropolitan University, covered the case as a young newspaper reporter in the Lake District in the 1990s.
The mystery began when the body of 30-year-old mother Carol Park was discovered by amateur divers in the lake in the summer of 1997.
Shortly afterwards, police arrested her husband Gordon Park on suspicion of murder. At the time of his arrest, he was a 53-year-old respected retired teacher married to his third wife.
But what might have seemed an open-and-shut case would prove to be one of the most complex and challenging in British legal history.
As well as the biggest story of Jeremy’s journalism career.
It would take another two decades to reach its conclusion, not least because of Gordon Park’s insistence of his innocence and the eroding effect of time on the evidence.
“This is a case I could never forget, even after I’d moved to Cheshire and begun working at the Warrington Guardian,” said Jeremy.
“Although The Lady in the Lake is about a horrible murder and the devastating effect on a family, it is also a meditation on the role of the media and the challenges of writing ethical true crime.”
And the university lecturer will feature on Sky TV’s Forensics: Catching The Killer with an author interview in December.
Sticking with the true crime genre, Jeremy penned his first true crime book which was published back in 2021titled The Jigsaw Murders.
It tells the story of the landmark investigation into the crimes of Lancaster doctor Buck Ruxton in 1935 and has been widely acclaimed, having been nominated for the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction.
The book is currently being developed as a television drama by the team behind ITV’s Vera and BBC’s Shetland.
You can purchase your copy of The Lady in the Lake from Amazon in paperback and Kindle e-book, as well as in a variety of high street book shops.
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