It is a sad fact of life that some murders go unsolved and that sometimes killers get away. However, nowadays new scientific techniques such as genetic finger printing offer a way of tracing the killers.
The body of British Rail steward Mark Yendell was recovered from Bristol City Docks - the case remains unsolved...AS police frogmen searched the 14ft deep, murky waters of the Welsh Back harbourside on the afternoon of September 12,1984, hopes were gradually fading that 33-year-old Withywood man Mark Yendell would be found alive. People living on nearby houseboats seemed unable to offer any assistance. The British Rail steward's 32-year-old wife, Susan, had reported him missing some time after 9.30 the previous evening.
A trail of bloodspots, next to a disused quayside shed, ended abruptly at the water's edge and DS Don Taylor, who was leading the inquiry, told Bristol Evening Post reporters: 'We think some harm may have befallen him. We have not ruled out foul play.'
The following day Yendell's body - discovered without a shirt, by frogmen using touch alone - was recovered from the water. An inquest deemed that he had died of strangulation and head injuries, which included a fractured skull. Police believed that he had been attacked by at least two men at Temple Meads station car park. They had killed him, bundled him into the back of his car, driven it to Welsh Back and then dumped his body in the water.
But who had done this terrible thing? The 50-strong investigative team admitted to being baffled. The motive - at one time thought to be homosexual - was unclear and there were no suspects. DS Taylor said: 'Mark Yendell was seen getting off the train at 9.10pm on Monday and going out of the station. But he was never seen alive again.' Their investigations, however, revealed that the victim had worked as a buffet-car steward on Intercity 125 trains out of Temple Meads station and was sometimes on the busy businessmen's run to London. He occasionally visited the British Rail social club near the station, sometimes accompanied by his wife.
The then manager, Terry Lewis, told reporters: 'He sometimes came in after work. Other times he would be with his wife. She often waited for him here with their baby He is a quiet sort of chap who didn't seem to mix with the other stewards.' PC Lester Ayling, of the British Transport Police, said that he had interviewed Mrs Yendell, who had told him that her husband didn't suffer from depression and had no money worries. But she also told him that they had split up several times and that at one point she had worked as a barmaid and lived with another man, Edward Witt, at the Smugglers public house in Bournemouth. Mrs Yendell had, apparently, only just returned to her husband after they had been separated for about a year.
A neighbour told the Post: 'Their marriage was pretty stormy and Mark sometimes came into our house to stay. They had separated a couple of times but they were back together.' It was revealed that he had been married before, to a Mrs Jennifer Barrett of Pitminster, near Taunton. Then, unexpectedly, after the police had interviewed, and then arrested, several Bournemouth people, they decided to hold 43-year-old Witt, then living in Knowie - but who had been the manager of the Rendell's Hartcliffe local, the Rising Sun - and charge him with conspiracy to murder. He denied the charge and was remanded on bail. Another, unnamed man, was also arrested.
Then, in December, in the same week that Yendell's funeral finally took place, charges were dropped and Witt, on the advice of the director of public prosecutions, was cleared. The bitter man, who dismissed the allegations against him as 'rubbish' said: 'They were looking for a motive and I was the only one available.' Susan Yendell, who told reporters that she had moved away from Bristol and was in hiding for fear of her life, said: 'Eddie and Mark were friends, not enemies. I was stunned when police arrested him, but they have a job to do. Eddie knew that I was going back to Mark. 'He helped me move my furniture to Bristol and, at the time I was working for him, I was saving up to buy a house with Mark. For the six weeks that we were together I was very happy. I will be bitter for the rest of my life that he has been taken away from me.' It was hoped that a full-scale reconstruction of the murdered man's final movements would jog someone's memory, especially the six people - two men in a white T-registered Cortina, two women with a pushchair and two other men - seen in the area on the night Yendell disappeared, but no one came forward.
Police were especially anxious to trace two men who travelled on the same Cardiff to Bristol Parkway train as the murdered man. They were seen to be watching the steward and one was overheard saying: 'That's him - the one with the'tash.' Finally, the following January, a reconstruction shown on TV's Crimewatch resulted in numerous phone calls. But they all led nowhere and Mark Yendell's vicious killers have never been brought to justice.
Please feel free to add your own comments to the Guestbook or Forum
Memories of Bristol over the past 100 years including 3000 photographs on-line
This non commercial 'hobby' site, has been evolving and expanding on line since 2001 and is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only.
