I was playing detective in my armchair – then I discovered the horrific secret
WHEN Anna Allan decided to research her family tree, the last thing she expected was to discover a shocking family secret.
A few days after Anna, from Bridgwater, Somerset, signed up to the Ancestry.com website, she was shocked to discover that her aunt, Patricia Cupit, had been murdered on her way to school. She was just six years old.
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Together with a historian who delves further into Pat’s case, Anna discovers the full story of what happened to her aunt.
Anna, 56, said: “I started researching my family tree because I didn’t know much about my mother’s side of the family.
“My parents split up when I was four and I had limited contact with my mother.
“I was completely devastated when I heard what happened to my aunt. I cried when I read her story.
“Now I am determined to keep her memory alive.”
Shortly after, another family member contacted Anna and told her that Anna’s aunt, Patricia Cupit, had been murdered by a soldier in the 1940s.
She looked up Pat’s name on Google and discovered a website dedicated to ‘Little Pat’, run by local historian Darren Norton.
Darren from Brandon, Suffolk, came across Pat’s story and spent over 20 years meticulously investigating what really happened.
He said: “I was amazed that I had never come across the story before and couldn’t believe it wasn’t better documented.
“My own child was about the same age as Pat, so it really affected me.
“The more I learned, the more determined I became to find out what really happened to Pat.
“It was great to hear from Anna and have her help in uncovering the story.”
Patricia Cupit was born in October 1935 and was spoiled rotten by her parents, Leonard, who was in the RAF, and Anne, a housewife. They lived happily at their home in Mitcham, south-west London.
When war broke out in 1939, Pat was evacuated to live with her parents’ friends, Albert and Flo Pask, in the small Norfolk hamlet of Riddlesworth.
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On Tuesday, May 5, 1942, Little Pat was walking the mile from her home to the local school when she was spotted by Private James Wyeth, who was working at a nearby army camp.
He had a violent past and had previously been convicted of attacking two women. When he was recruited into the army, he was serving a sentence in Borstal.
He had never seen Pat before, but later told police he felt compelled to follow her.
When Pat didn’t come home from school, her foster parents frantically began searching for her. Eventually, they found her bloodied body lying under a tree.
Police quickly identified Wyeth as a suspect after other soldiers reported that he had disappeared from the camp and returned with a red face and ruddy skin.
He initially told police that he had taken a detour to pick up a newspaper, that he had spoken to a coworker and that he had read the paper for 30 minutes, but he eventually confessed to stabbing and strangling Pat.
What is the easiest way to research family history?
How can I research my family tree online?
There are several websites that can help you create your family tree.
The largest in the UK is Ancestry.co.uk, with 2.4 million paying subscribers.
Other services, including genealogy.com, genesreunited.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk, are also available.
How does it work?
To get started, you’ll need some basic information, such as the names, places of birth, and dates of birth of your parents and grandparents.
But soon websites will help you put the pieces of the puzzle together by searching census, military, parish, passenger and even criminal records.
Ancestry.co.uk highlights details of people who are likely to be related to you. You can check these and, if correct, add them to your family tree.
The information you find is organized into an easy-to-navigate family tree, with documents saved for the relevant relative.
Ancestry contains more than 18 billion records worldwide, which have helped create more than 80 million family trees.
Wyeth was sentenced to death by hanging for Pat’s murder, but the Home Office later quashed his sentence on grounds of insanity. He was sent to Broadmoor Close, where he remained until his death in 1983.
Although Pat’s parents had another daughter after the war – Anna’s mother – the trauma had taken its toll on her mother. She was regularly taken home by the police after being found wandering the cemetery in her nightgown in the middle of the night.
Anna added: “I understand why the family didn’t talk about what happened for so long.
“But now that I know about Pat, I think it’s important that we remember her life.
“I discovered that there was no headstone where she is buried in Streatham Cemetery, so I arranged for one to be erected this summer.
Anna and Darren plan to hold a small memorial service for Pat at the cemetery in October this year, on his 90th birthday.
Anna said: “In a way, I owe my life to Pat’s death. If she hadn’t been murdered, her parents probably wouldn’t have had another child and I probably wouldn’t have been born.
“That makes it even more important to me that she is never forgotten.”
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