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Now grieving mother can find peace at last

13/11/2007

APRIL Garrett, the mother of Lesley, was on Monday able to begin living the rest of her life as an agonising wait for justice came to an end.

It is 32 years since April laughed to herself as her ‘enchanting’ youngest daughter headed to the shops to buy a loaf for Sunday lunch, wearing her blue coat and her sister's Bay City Roller socks pulled over her shoes.

"This was hilarious. I wish you could have seen it," she told the court during Ronald Castree’s trial.

This was the sickening moment she came face to face with the man who murdered her 11-year-old daughter.

Despite what must have been an horrendous ordeal, April managed to paint a wonderful portrait of her little girl in evidence which was peppered with charming anecdote about her ‘little darling’.

Originally from Scotland, April moved south of the border in the late 60s.

She left her first husband, Fred Anderson and took their four children to live with Danny Molseed in 1972.

The couple married in 1975 and set up home at 11 Delamere Road, with Lesley, her older brother Fred, aged 12 and her sister Laura, aged 13.

Older sister Julie, aged 16, had left home by the time Lesley disappeared in October 1975 but the little girl, who was said by her mother to love her family, ensured that her big sister was a frequent visitor.

April was a cleaner at a school and worked as a bingo caller at night while Danny was an electrical engineer.

The children helped their mother according to a rota of chores – Lesley had stepped in for her brother, Fred, whose turn it was to fetch the loaf the day she died. Giving evidence during Castree’s trial, April told the court that her daughter, whom she affectionately called Les, had asked for threepence payment for running the errand.

"She was a little rogue at times, she was a little imp," she recalled in her soft Scottish accent.

She said it was by innocent chance that Lesley had gone to the shops that day.

Lesley was born on 14 August 1964 with a heart defect which affected her growth and health, while Fred was deaf and had to be taken by taxi each day to the Manchester School for the Deaf.

In a horrible twist, the taxi firm the family used was Streamline – the same firm that Castree was driving for at the time he abducted Lesley.

Lesley, whom a teacher later described as having the ‘Shirley Temple look’ because of her shock of thick curly hair – spent her first year in hospital as a result of a milk allergy.

In 1997 the family described their lives as a 22-year-journey through hell.

Watching Castree’s trial unfold, daughter Julie sat by her mother’s side as they relived the heartbreak.

But painful as it must have been, April and her family found it in their hearts to befriend Castree’s son, Nick, when he arrived at court to hear his father give evidence.

Born years after the killing, they did not want the young man to think they in any way held him responsible for the brutal actions of his father.