Seven year old Mark Tildesley became the poster child for missing children throughout the eighties when he went missing from a local fun fair which sparked one of the largest missing person’s searches in British history.
Young Mark Anthony Tildesley was born on 31st August 1976 to John and Lavinia Tildesley in Wokingham, Berkshire, located South-West of London and just 20 minutes drive from Reading. Mark was the third child in the Tildesley family after elder brother Christopher and sister Christina. Mark was a year 3 pupil at the now defunct Palmer Church of England Junior School. Mark was described as being a quiet and shy boy, simply spending his days cycling around town on his chopper bike and collecting Tesco shopping trolleys to supplement his pocket money.
On 25th May 1984 school was out for summer and the fun could really begin. The Frank Ayers Fun Fair came to town as it did four times each year, pitched up as usual at Carnival Field just off Wellington Road in Wokingham.
By the end of the following week, on Friday 1st June, Mark was keen to get himself down to join in on the fun. Mark loved the fun fair, he loved the bright lights, the smell and hustle and bustle of it all. He loved it. However, he did not have enough money. He only had his thirty pence pocket money so, in order to increase the amount to spend at the fair, he gathered discarded shopping trolleys and returned them to the Tesco supermarket on Denmark Street to collect the ten pence coins which shoppers had abandoned along with their trolleys. This would give him a nice little bonus for the evening’s festivities at the fair.
That afternoon, Mark met a man outside a sweetie shop on Denmark Street who gave him a fifty pence piece to buy some sweets with. The assistant who served Mark in the shop, Margaret Hickman, thought it was a little strange as Mark tended to only ever have ten pence pieces whenever he had been in before. The fifty pence stood out to her as being odd. That same man who gave Mark the coin also promised to take him on the dodgems at the fair later that evening.
Who was this mysterious man? Had he met Mark before? Did he know Mark from previous trips to the fair?
After eating his dinner at 5.30pm Mark shouted to his dad John that he was off to the fair and he would meet them there at 8.30pm. Mark hopped on his bike and cycled the half a mile journey from his home at Rose Court to Carnival Field. On his way to the fair he met his friend Charlie O’Malley and his younger brother both of whom wanted to also go to the fair. However, they preferred to go home first and head to the fair later, which they did. Mark carried on regardless and cycled to the fair alone.
During the course of the evening, as the whole town enjoyed the rides, games and refreshments, Mark was spotted walking around the fair with a man described as ‘tall and stooping’. This same man also accompanied Mark on the dodgems. After 7pm Mark left the fair with the ‘stooping man’, walked along Wellington Road, turned left onto Denmark Street and right onto Langborough Road. He was spotted by a witness with the man outside number 51 Langborough Road sometime between 7 and 8pm.
That was the last time Mark was seen alive.
When Mark’s parents Lavinia and John arrived to meet their boy at 8:30pm he was nowhere to be seen. However, they did find his bike which had been tied to a fence, abandoned, with no sign of their son anywhere. Having frantically searched and yelled his name. Reporting his disappearance to the police, Lavinia stated:
“Mark loves the fair – the smell, the noise, the bright lights. He is not the sort of boy to run away or go off with a stranger.”
As part of their search process, fairground workers were interviewed and caravans were searched. The disappearance was a completely mystery.
It was originally reported that Mark was four feet tall, slim with collar-length fair hair. He was wearing denim jeans, an Action Man T-Shirt and cream zip-up jacket with a lion motif on the back (this was later amended correctly to a tiger motif).
Police deployed divers to search nearby rivers as the race to find Mark intensified. Police dogs were called upon to pick up any scents but there simply was no sign of the young boy. It was becoming increasingly worrisome and the detectives in charge of the search were concerned. Superintendent Alan Cussell said:
“We are now very very concerned about him. Murder is one of the possibilities we are considering. It is not in his nature to be disobedient.”
As time passed and concern grew and grew the investigation was scaled up, leading to the British Army becoming involved in the search. However, despite concerted efforts to find the young boy, nothing was found. No sign. No trace.
A major media campaign was launched, with posters of the missing Mark Tildesley being displayed in every police station around the country in a bid to widen the search, as well as front page news coverage in every major newspaper both locally and nationally. Mark soon became one of the most recognised little boys in the United Kingdom. Sadly, this brought very few leads. However, it did bring crank calls or just people seeking attention, such as one male who called to say:
“I have seen your son, but it will cost you get him back.”
When Mark’s father John replied that he had no money, the caller replied “we shall have to see”.
In the aftermath of Mark’s mysterious disappearance, his mother Lavinia had made a desperate appeal for the safe return of her boy.
“I am sure somebody has got him. Whoever has got him, please please bring him home to us. We are so anxious to get him back home.”
About a week after Mark went missing the police made what they thought was a breakthrough. A fairground worker, who was on the team at the Frank Ayres Fun Fair, was brought in for questioning. However, he claimed he was working that day 40 miles away at a fair opposite the West Hendon Police Station in London. His boss confirmed he was an employee which gave him an alibi. Sidney Cooke was subsequently struck off as a suspect.
The most talked about disappearance of the time was mentioned briefly on the first ever Crimewatch UK to be aired on the BBC in June 1984 and one year later as the first anniversary of the vanishing approached, he again featured heavily on the UK’s flagship crime cruncher programme. This time an in-depth reconstruction was broadcast to show Mark’s exact movements and clothing on that day.
On 23rd June 1984 police released a photofit picture of what they believed to be the aforementioned ‘stooping man’ who had been seen with Mark at the fun fair and later on Langborough Road. They also sought to find the owner of a red Ford Sierra car who was seen in Wokingham market the day before attempting to molest two young boys. He was unsuccessful when a passer-by intervened.
Unfortunately time passed, searches and leads petered out and the memory of Mark Tildesley faded slowly in the minds of all those who had dedicated time to finding him.
The first anniversary came and went. Fresh appeals played out. Nothing. By the second anniversary the search had almost completely wound down. Old news. Mark’s name was no longer headline news. He was replaced with more current affairs and only commanded the odd arbitrary paragraph in newspapers from time to time.
As the last remnants of the nineteen-eighties petered out Mark Tildesley was a mere distant dot in the memory of what was a tumultuous decade.
Little did anyone know but Mark’s case was not completely filed away as his name was brought up in a separate investigation into a wider spate of unsolved murders and disappearances of boys during the seventies and eighties. Operation Orchid, dubbed The Lost Boys, were investigating a large network of paedophiles nicknamed The Dirty Dozen by detectives.
One of the main players in The Dirty Dozen was a man by the name of Sidney Cooke. 1989 saw the conviction of Cooke for the very brutal rape and murder of 14 year old Jason Swift during an orgy with several other paedophiles. Such was Cooke’s influence in these circles the judge when sentencing exclaimed:
“Cooke had had the strongest personality. One word from him would have stopped what was happening to Jason.”
Sidney Cooke was a force within The Dirty Dozen and he worked the fairgrounds within the timeframe of Mark Tildesley vanishing. He was even interviewed in connection with the disappearance by police but was released as Cooke’s boss announced he had not been working on the day Mark was taken.
Other members of The Dirty Dozen included Lennie Smith, Leslie Bailey and a man known as ‘Odd Bod’ who was not allowed to be named due to having a mental age of eight years old. Bailey confessed to being involved in Mark’s disappearance in 1990. The details of Mark’s ordeal were horrific. He was kidnapped, drugged, abused, raped and eventually strangled. Bailey, while admitting to his part in the torture and also naming his fellow abusers as Smith and Cooke, claimed he did not know where Mark was buried. It was widely believed that Cooke, the leader of The Dirty Dozen, was the only one who did know.
The following year on 22nd October 1991 Bailey stood on trial for the manslaughter and buggery of Mark Tildesley. Unusually during the trial, Lennie Smith and Sidney Cooke were allowed to be named despite not being charged with the offenses. Bailey was said to be surprised and disappointed his fellow assailants were not standing trial with him.
Bailey received two life sentences for his part in the manslaughter and abuse that Mark received that day. Rather than murder, he received the lesser charge of manslaughter as it could not be ascertained who committed the fatal act.
Why didn’t Sidney Cooke get charged for any part of the abuse and murder? Cooke was already in prison at the time for the torture he committed on the 14 year old Jason Swift so it was deemed not necessary to seek a charge for committing this further crime which they would struggle to prove. They only had Bailey’s word that Cooke was involved and it was thought that the court would not believe the word of a paedophile. Hence Cooke was dropped as a suspect.
In the same vein Lennie Smith also did not face justice for his part in the abuse because again it was simply the word of a fellow paedophile against his.
While Sidney Cooke indicated that he knew where it was, Mark’s body was never found. Detectives believe he was buried in a shallow grave in an abandoned farmland although they may never know for certain.
In Mark’s memory a memorial bench was placed at what would have been the entrance to the old fairground on Wellington Road and a headstone was placed at Free Church Burial Ground in Reading Road.
John and Lavinia Tildesley fought tirelessly to the end of their days to find their son. Sadly, John passed away in 2005 without ever finding answers and Lavinia joined him in 2011.
On 9th January 2011 Mark’s mother finally relented to the Heavenly Gates and her search was finally over. She would be reunited with her son and perhaps would have the answers she had been seeking in the afterlife. Lavinia had dedicated a full quarter of a century to finding her boy or just finding out what had happened to him. Sadly she passed away without receiving those answers.
Mark Tildesley’s body has to this day never been recovered. Many of his assailants took the full details of his ordeal and where he was buried to their graves.
Leslie Bailey, who was the only person to be convicted of Mark’s abuse and death, was given two life sentences for his part in the crime. Bailey was murdered in prison by two fellow inmates on 7th October 1993.
Lennie Smith, who was suspected of being involved in the abuse and death of Mark, died of AIDS in prison for a separate crime in 2006.
Sidney Cooke, who was suspected of being the ringleader behind Mark’s abuse and death, was released in 1998 after serving nine years of a sixteen year sentence for the manslaughter of Jason Swift. This was despite refusing to take part in any rehabilitation exercises while in prison. However, he was re-arrested, charged and convicted in 1999 for the historical abuse and deaths of several other boys. He received two life sentences and told he would only be considered for parole after serving a minimum of five years. Cooke has been refused parole ten times since that minimum term expired. He currently languishes in prison, aged 97 years old.
The Dirty Dozen gang are suspected to have been involved in the abuse, torture and death of twenty boys during the 1970s and 1980s.
Mark Tildesley has never been laid to rest and his family continue to look for answers.
Burning Questions
Where was Mark Tildesley’s body buried?
We assume his body was buried rather than other means of disposal for two reasons. Firstly, Leslie Bailey, who confessed to being party to the murder of Mark, claimed he did not know where Sidney Cooke buried him. Secondly, two other boys who were killed by The Dirty Dozen – Jason Swift and Barry Lewis – had been buried after their murders.
Where was Mark though? and why didn’t his body get discovered while the other two did? In the case of Jason and Barry’s bodies, they were buried in and around the London area, possibly more densely populated with more chance of being found. Mark however, was taken from a more rural location and likely less people who might happen upon him.
It was assumed Mark was buried somewhere within the Carnival Fields or nearby. With the sheer volume of redevelopment of Wokingham over the years it was assumed Mark’s remains would eventually be dug up. However, perhaps diggers or machinery may miss tiny fragments of skeletal remains? I’m not sure the fact nothing has been dug up or found during those redevelopments are necessarily indicative of his final resting place.
Why was Sidney Cooke and others never charged or convicted for the death of Mark?
Despite having a confession and testimony from another member of the gang, Sidney Cooke was never convicted of the abuse and death of Mark Tildesley. It feels wrong and justice not served to see Cooke not punished for his crimes against Mark. Yes, he was already behind bars for murdering Jason Swift and yes he subsequently spent the rest of his days isolated due to all the other rapes, murders and abuse he committed on other boys. However, he never actually spent one single day punished for what he subjected Mark to that day. This is wrong on so many levels.
It seems clear that Cooke was the ringleader of the gang and will have certainly played a major role in the abduction, torture, abuse and eventual murder of Mark.
Why was no murder charge brought to any of Mark’s killers?
Despite Mark’s death being ruled ‘wrongful’ there was no murder charge. Only one person – Leslie Bailey – was convicted for his death. However, this was a manslaughter charge rather than murder, which wrongly suggests the killing was unintentional or, rather, was not pre-meditated. The reason for this is because it could not be ascertained whether Bailey committed the final act of killing Mark or if it was one of his accomplices. My thoughts are Bailey knew what he was doing, whether or not he made the final throttle of Mark’s throat or someone else did, he absolutely knew what was happening and he could have stopped it if he wanted to – or just not participated in the first place.
Sidney Cooke should have absolutely been charged with Mark’s murder as well but by some exceptional lack of judgment or flaw in the legal system he was allowed to get away with it.
There is far too much leeway given between murder and manslaughter. Harsher judgments need to be taken in the case of child killers. Every single one of those involved intended, without doubt, to kill Mark that day. There is no way they thought they would abuse him and simply release him. The killings of Jason Swift and Barry Lewis tells that story.
