'Unforgivable': Man who killed partner, hid body in cellar and kept secret for 28 years until shock confession jailed

A Dudley man who killed a mother-of-seven as she lay in bed then hid her body in the cellar and successfully got away with murder for nearly 30 years has today been jailed for life.

Patricia Lashley’s children were present at Wolverhampton Crown Court this afternoon to see Trevor Dunkley finally brought to justice for killing their mother in 1998.

He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum period of 10 years and six months before he can be considered eligible for release, taking into account 120 days he has spent on remand.

The killer, now 66, only confessed in summer this year to killing Ms Lashley and concealing her body in a cellar for around a year before he moved away.

Dunkley attacked Ms Lashley at the home they shared together in Hall Street, Dudley, later claiming a “red mist” had descended after he got home from work one day in September 1998.

Dunkley, who was 38 at the time, stood over his 33-year-old victim and launched a physical assault with his fists.

After the murder he took Ms Lashley’s child to social services, lying that she had left him and her baby.

Dunkley returned home to sleep on the sofa before he went to work that night, he has told detectives. Upon his return he saw Ms Lashley hadn’t moved and he “knew she was dead”.

Ms Lashley, who also used the names Jade, Vanessa and Tricia as well as the surname Bradford, was originally from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and had lived there and in London before moving to Dudley in the mid-1990s.

She frequented the No Limits club and other pubs in the area, which is how she came to meet Dunkley.

At the time of her death she had family in Ebbw Vale, Wales, and she was reported missing by her sister in June 1999.

Several members of her family, including three of her children, were present in court to see Dunkley sentenced.

Prosecutor Robert Price told the court Dunkley was seen to become emotional on the day of his arrest, before telling police he had “just snapped” and repeatedly hit Ms Lashley around the head.

He also told police he had put the body in the cellar, could then hear rats under the kitchen floor, and had disposed of bones over a period of weeks.

Sentencing Dunkley to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 130 months today, Judge Michael Chambers KC told the former furnaceman that killing Ms Lashley had left her baby son and six other children wrongly believing they had been abandoned.

Judge Chambers, who was told Dunkley took the baby to social services and claimed Ms Lashley had abandoned him, said: “Twenty-eight years ago in September of 1998, you were in a relationship with Patricia Lashley.

“She had, as you clearly knew, a nine-month-old baby who was still breastfeeding.”

Dunkley, who was not the baby’s father, had covered up the killing by lying that his victim had gone away, Judge Chambers said.

He told Dunkley: “You took the child to social services and he was brought up by adoptive parents.

“He grew up thinking, obviously quite falsely, that he had been abandoned by his mother, as did his siblings.

“That is in my judgement a grossly aggravating factor.”

The judge said he accepted that Dunkley was genuinely remorseful, but what he had done was “a dreadful thing” and the passage of time was solely due to untruths he had maintained for 28 years.

In the years following her disappearance West Midlands Police issued appeals for help to find her including in the Big Issue and on Good Morning Britain.

The force’s Missing People Review Team investigated public records and the accounts of people who knew her at the time in the hope of establishing that she had moved away from the area.

The case was still being investigated when one West Midlands Police officer recently went to speak to Dunkley, now of Himley Road in Dudley.

During that visit he made the shock confession, telling the officer: "I killed her. I'm sorry".

Police say it is unlikely Ms Lashley’s remains, which Dunkley covered with bedding and hid in a cellar for a year, will ever be found.

According to Dunkley, he decided to confess in July this year, nearly 30 years after robbing her family of the chance to lay her to rest, because he feared police were “onto him”.

He was arrested and police began forensic examination of the Hall Street property’s cellar.

They had to dig through the results of multiple renovations that had been carried out in the decades since Dunkley moved out.

New West Midlands Police photos show the extent of the operation to excavate the cellar.

Police were spotted in Hall Street in August with several huge bags of rubble cleared from the cellar during the course of the investigation.

The extensive excavation between July and September confirmed no human remains were present, giving investigators no reason to doubt Dunkley’s version of events: that he kept Ms Lashley’s body in the cellar for around a year before disposing of her remains in household waste over the course of several weeks.

Speaking after the sentencing, Detective Inspector Michelle Cordell, from the West Midlands Police homicide unit, said no human remains had been found despite extensive excavation of the cellar.

The senior officer said: “Patricia was reported missing by her sister in June 1999. That investigation had uncovered that she was last seen in around September time in 1998.

“The missing person investigation was active from that point onwards.

“It was most recently investigated by our missing persons unit, and ultimately they have retraced all of the information that was known.

“Over the course of the decades, they have relooked at that information and they have identified Trevor Dunkley as someone that had been spoken to on several occasions.

“There were some questions that they thought he could assist the investigation with. That led them to speak to him in July this year, which is where he made his shock confession.”

She said of the killer’s conduct: “It’s truly shocking. For anybody to be able to use such violence… to conceal his crime in the cruel way that he has done – it’s despicable.

“He has prevented Patricia’s loved ones from having a funeral for her.

“He has left them without answers for decades. It’s just unforgivable.”

For preventing Ms Lashley’s lawful burial Dunkley was sentenced to two years in prison, to run concurrently with his life sentence.

Judge Chambers accepted the defendant had no previous convictions, was clearly remorseful and had a good work record.

Dudley residents who knew Dunkley told the Express & Star he has been employed as a cleaner at a local bookies, and in recent years worked at a town centre discount store.