Mark Billington

Mark Billington was found hung in a tree and an open verdict was delivered by the inquest jury but his death was later considered to have been a murder.

Mark Billington was found hanging from a tree 9 weeks after he vanished in a small wood near Meriden off the A45 in Warwickshire, on 11 November 1984, 7 miles from his home.

He vanished from his home in South Yardley, Birmingham, after going out on his bicycle on 1 September 1984 to fly his stunt kite.

The alarm was raised after he failed to turn up for his afternoon paper round at 5pm and the newsagent called to find out where he was.

His parents then found that his bike and kite were missing and a search for him began.

When the open verdict at the inquest was returned, his mother said:

However, they added that they didn't think that the police had handled the investigation correctly, saying:

The inquest heard that there was no reason for Mark Billington to have taken his own life.

The Detective Chief Inspector at the time said that there was nothing suspicious about Mark Billington's death, adding that witnesses had come forward to say that they had seen a bicycle near the spot on the day he disappeared, 1 September 1984.

It wasn't until 2002 that the police announced that they were treating his death as a murder inquiry, after they received what they described as 'significant' new information. They then carried out a full-scale reopening of the case. However, Mark Billington's parents stated that the development dictated the case had been mishandled to start with.

The police said that they decided to reopen the case after re-examining it in 2001 following the conviction of Brian Field for the murder of a 14-year-old boy, Roy Linzee Tutill. Brian Field was known to have once lived within a 10-15 minute walk of where Mark Billington was last seen, although the police said that at the time of the disappearance he had been living in Oswestry, about a 90 minute drive away. He had also just been released from prison a few months before the disappearance.

However, when the police were asked about Brian Field, they said:

Mark Billington had been a adopted child. He was also noted for having a developmental delay, a mental disability and a weakness on one side of his body. However, he managed to do a paper round each morning and afternoon.

The police said that they were still trying to trace his silver-blue racing bicycle, and promised immunity from prosecution to whoever took it.

His parents noted that with Mark Billington's developmental delay, that he would not have been able to have tied the complicated knot used in the rope he was found hung by, or been able to have cycled the 7 miles to the place where he was found.

Although the convicted murderer had been considered a suspect, the police said that their main line of enquiry was that of a sighting of a group of teenagers that had been seen in a park behind Mark Billington's house as he flew his kite, and who were also seen later outside a building society whilst he was inside.

It was noted that following the verdict at the inquest, items of evidence were disposed of, as at the time, the police were not required to keep items of evidence.