'Photo of odd socks led me to my grandad's body; we didn't know he'd been murdered'

Russell Lowbridge hoped this week he would finally discover the and tragic end.

Instead, the exact circumstances of miner remain a mystery with so many twists that his story will soon be brought to life by a documentary crew.

What we do know is that on a cold January night in 1967, Alfred gave his son Gary 10 bob to get in last orders, popped to the outside toilet of his local pub and vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.

As Russell grew up, he knew not to mention Alfred. Most of the family assumed the Derbyshire miner and pigeon racer, recently estranged from his long-suffering wife, had done a runner on her and their six kids.

Only Gary - Russell’s uncle and the last person to see him at the Miner’s Arms in Pinxton village - refused to believe this. But he died in 2012 without discovering the truth.

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Then, in April last year, Russell, 61, saw a social media post about a body that had been dug up in a farmer’s field, and recognised one of his long-lost granddad’s odd socks from 56 years earlier.

DNA tests on family members confirmed it was Alfred and police opened a cold case investigation.

Then, an inquest concluded on Monday with a verdict of “unlawful killing”.

While Russell now knows how his grandfather died, he fears he’ll never discover who killed him.

He says: “I now know more about my grandfather’s last moments, which were quite horrific. It’s not what you want to hear about one of your family members, it was quite distressing.

“For me, it was important that he was registered as murdered. But we’re no closer to getting to know who murdered him, and why? That’s the question that I most want answered. Why on earth would they do this to him? He wasn’t a bad man, he didn't trouble anybody.

“I don’t want this to end here and the police to think there’s been a conclusion and to close the case. My fear is that we’ll never get to know who killed him and that he took the names of his murderers to the grave.”

Russell will feature in the BBC documentary, due to be released on December 13 - one of the many extraordinary developments since a Sutton-in-Asfield farmer dug a ditch next to a copse beside his field in April last year, to deter trial bikers tearing up his land.

Human bones and a man’s clothes, with pre-decimal coins in the pocket, buried 6ft under, began to fall from the claws of his digger.

Russell, who lives just a few miles from the field, remembers having an “incredible flashback” when he saw a police appeal for information, with a photo of two odd socks found with the bones.

He says: “It was the black sock in particular. I suddenly remembered as a kid putting on my granddad’s socks and pulling them up, so the heel came right up to my knee.

“I called police and they came to take a DNA swab. That’s when we found out that it was Alfred. I was shocked and flabbergasted.

“It turns out that he was wearing odd socks on the night he disappeared.”

Police forensic tests found that Alfred had met a violent death, with further details of his last moments being revealed at Nottingham Coroner’s Court on Monday.

Forensic pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton said a post-mortem found that many of Alfred’s bones, including his cranium and his lower jaw, had been broken.

He had also been stabbed in the neck, with such sharp force that his neck vertebrae were broken in several places.

And his assailants had dislocated his cheekbone from the base of his skull and fractured his shoulder blade, collarbone and ribs, leading coroner Nathanael Hartley to record the medical case of death as “multiple traumatic injuries”.

Russell says: “It was a wicked, horrendous killing. He was smashed across the face, which resulted in him breaking his jaw, and was stabbed in the neck. It must have been terrifying.

“What would have made someone want to kill him in that way? Hearing that made me want to know who and why even more.”

Alfred was not spoken about by Russell’s family, with the exception of his uncle Gary.

He shared a love of pigeon racing with Alfred.

Russell says: “My mother never spoke about him (Alfred), nor my grandmother, it was only ever Uncle Gary.

“I think there was some upset because he had left home about a year earlier. He could become quite erratic after a few pints and caused quite a few arguments.

Gary would tell stories about him and often say, ‘I wish I knew where my dad was’.”

Gary even searched abandoned buildings for Alfred.

“He always thought something sinister had happened,” says Russell. “Alfred was just an ordinary simple man, he had no passport, driving licence or car. He couldn’t have started a new life somewhere else.

“But when Gary enlisted solicitors to look for his death certificate, and even a private investigator, they never found anything either.

“When Uncle Gary died my first thoughts were, ‘Oh dear, what happens now? We’ll never find out what really happened.’

“When I heard about the body I knew I had to get in touch, even if the rest of the family didn’t want to. I had to do it for Uncle Gary.”

One cherished photo Russell kept shows his grandfather not long before his death in the background at his niece’s wedding.

Alfred’s youngest son, Frank, is also pictured. Still alive, he helped with the police investigation by providing his DNA and has spoken in the BBC documentary.

Alfred started working at Langton Colliery aged 14, rising to become a ’cutter’ who operated machinery, cutting out large chunks of coal from the coal face.

The 54-year-old was known to most people by his nickname ‘Sparrow’, and also as the ‘Champion Pigeon Man of Pinxton’ because of his love of pigeon racing.

Although he had split a year earlier from his wife Caroline, who had moved to Sutton-in-Ashfield with their children and grandchildren - including Russell and his mother Julie - Gary, then 30, had continued to see Alfred, often meeting up for a drink at the Miner’s Arms in Pinxton.

January 27, 1967, a Friday night, was pay day at the pit.

Russell says: “Gary had gone out with a mate that night and met up with granddad at the pub. He remembers his dad giving him 10 bob to get the last round, and then glancing round and seeing him going out. He assumed he was going to the outside toilets and would be right back.

“The next morning, the man he’d been lodging with came round our house in Ashfield looking for him, because he hadn’t come home the previous night and it was the day he had to pay his board. He thought he’d run away to get out of paying.”

Everyone’s theories about Alfred’s disappearance were blown apart last year by scientific examination of his remains.

Meanwhile, Monday’s coroner’s inquiry heard that he had fought for his life and died with a broken hand, which experts believe could have been sustained fighting his attacker or attackers off.

Experts also believe he was buried in another grave, before being dug up and moved to where his remains were eventually found, because different soil was found within the grave.

But again, many questions remain.

According to Russell, the copse where Alfred’s body was found was a known site for gay liaisons in the 60s - homosexuality was illegal at the time.

“Did they bury him there because they knew no-one would have dared report anything suspicious to the police? Or had grandad found out that the man who killed him was gay, and he was killed so he couldn’t tell?,” Russell asks.

“The police also believe that whoever did it had a car, because of the distance to the field, and there weren’t a lot of cars on the road at that time. “Did they kill him first, or hoodwink him into taking a ride, then stop somewhere and do the deed?”

Tragically, the police’s two main suspects have died and cannot be named.

And Russell is good friends with the grandchildren of both.

“They are people I have daily contact with. It came as quite a blow,” he says, adding that detectives say they would have interviewed the suspects, had they been alive.

“I guess now the only way we will know for sure is if someone comes forward at the last minute, if someone has new information, or if one of those people made a deathbed confession.”

In January, the family finally laid Alfred to rest - on top of son Gary and next to daughter Carol and his wife Caroline, who never remarried - in a Sutton-in-Ashfield cemetery. The funeral was officiated by Stephen Blakeley, who played PC Younger in the TV series Heartbeat and now works as a celebrity celebrant.

Russell says: “It’s some comfort for the family to know he didn’t abandon them, and that he’s not lost anymore. But in so many other ways, the mystery and the torment continues.”

confirmed yesterday that the case remains open.

Appealing for information, a spokesperson said: “Please come forward and do the right thing and help this grieving family get the closure they desperately need and deserve.”

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