THE true-crime author researching one of the Island’s most notorious unsolved murders has spoken about the “huge response” from Islanders to his appeals for help with the case.
Mark Bridgeman said that while he had originally expected to have completed a first draft of his book about the killing of Finnish au pair Tuula Höök in 1966 by the end of August, he had received an unexpectedly large amount of information from a range of sources.
After two periods living in Jersey in 1965 and 1966, Miss Höök was found face down in a farmer’s field in St Clement on 30 December 1966, 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 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 coldcase 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.
“I’m hoping the first draft will be complete before my next trip to Jersey in late September, but still have quite a bit of further material to work through” he said.
“There’s been a huge response from people in Jersey – it’s been beyond my wildest dreams and I think it shows how much interest there is in a case in spite of how long ago it happened, and how much Islanders would like to see the case cleared up after all this time.”
Recent developments included information about a man whose photofit picture was recently featured in the JEP – this potential suspect had since been ruled out, he said, although some of the information had been passed to the police.
Mr Bridgeman also received a collection of old notes and cuttings from the 1960s, and has been approached about contributing to a forthcoming television series.
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.
