A TRUE-CRIME author is in Jersey researching a book which he hopes could lead to a breakthrough in solving the Island’s most intriguing and mystifying unsolved murder.
The killing of 20-year-old Finnish au pair and waitress Tuula Höök on a stormy December night almost 60 years ago has remained unsolved in spite of multiple cold-case reviews and pleas by her family.
“Someone in Jersey must know something and possibly the time may now be right for them to feel able to share what they saw or heard, or pass on something they’ve been told,” author Mark Bridgeman told the JEP.
“Hopefully we can extract some information and give Tuula’s family closure before it is too late – I think everyone recognises that this is the last chance.”
Mr Bridgeman, who has written 14 books covering biographies and true-crime stories, first focused on Jersey after visiting the Island last year to install a plaque on a bench in the People’s Park, opposite the hotel where his parents spent their honeymoon in the 1960s.
“My mum and dad fell in love with the Island, so I’ve always been interested in Jersey and was looking at scope for using it as the setting for a book,” he said.
While he initially envisaged covering a range of different crimes from a “dark decade” for the Island, Mr Bridgeman soon realised there was one particular case that stood out.
Tuula Höök was found face down in a farmer’s field in St Clement, her possessions scattered on the grass and her diary lightly pressed into the muddy ground beneath her right hand. She had been bludgeoned to death.
The killing on 30 December 1966 shocked Islanders when they learned about it from coverage in the JEP over the subsequent days, as well as baffling the police investigative team assigned to the case.
Initiated in 2013, the most recent cold-case review involved an attempt to unearth key evidence. This was unsuccessful, but came to the chilling conclusion that someone in Jersey must have information about the circumstances leading to Miss Höök’s death.
Although he conceded that the case had several of the ingredients likely to stir interest in a true-crime story, with a young, attractive victim who should have had decades of life ahead of her, Mr Bridgeman said there was more to it than that.
“I wouldn’t have progressed the book if Tuula’s family hadn’t been supportive of me taking it on,” he said.
“It’s not simply a case of repeating details about the crime, the intention is to paint a fuller picture including her upbringing, her personal life and other details – she deserves to have her story told.”
After Miss Höök’s mother died in 2021, aged 99, Mr Bridgeman’s contact with the family has been through the victim’s younger sister, now aged in her mid-70s, and her daughter (Miss Höök’s niece).
“They were positive when I made contact and pleased to know someone remembered what had happened and was still hoping to find a solution,” he said.
As well as receiving support from the victim’s family – who he hoped to meet in person later this year prior to the book being published ahead of the 60th anniversary of the murder – Mr Bridgeman has also been helped by officers from the States police.
A visit to police HQ has been among his appointments during a visit to the Island this month, along with interviewing an Islander, now aged in their 80s, who knew Miss Höök, and time spent at Jersey Archive looking through media articles, many of them published in the JEP.
While the 1966 murder is the primary focus of the book, Mr Bridgeman said he would also be reflecting on some of the other crimes committed in Jersey in the 1960s.
“It was a dark decade for the Island, with the ‘Beast of Jersey’ among the other notable cases,” he said. “It was a busy time for the police, and it’s possible this may have led to there being less capacity to investigate the Tuula Höök case.”
Originally from the English town of Swindon but a resident of Perthshire in Scotland for the past 25 years, Mr Bridgeman published his first book in 2019 and now has 14 titles under his belt.
One of his works, focused on crimes in Yorkshire and titled The Dark Side of the Dales, helped prove the guilt of a woman accused and subsequently acquitted of a murder carried out in 1905.
Although he has already written a significant proportion of his latest book, the research stage is not complete and the author hopes that people in Jersey with information will contact him by emailing mark@markbridgemanauthor.co.uk.
