Soon enough the British caravanners faced west, in the direction of Pélissanne, the town they had passed just minutes before. Oddly, upon arrival the Cartlands turned both car and caravan around 180 degrees. They were intending to camp out before an early start the following day. The Brits had arrived at a piece of waste ground, a place well-known to local fly-tippers. Towing the caravan through northern Spain and into south-east France, on the evening of Sunday, 18th March the two men decided to pull off the road at La Barben, a small village 50 Km north of Marseille.Īt a place known locally as Jas de Dane, The Cartland’s Hillman Avenger duly branched off the main Route Nationale 572. Cartland senior had also taken the opportunity to collect a Sprite Musketeer caravan he had bought from an associate living on Spain’s Costa del Sol. Part-business, part-pleasure, the trip that spring to the continent had mainly been planned in order for the Cartlands to market their summer courses to contacts in France, Italy and Switzerland. It seemed inconceivable that such a man could have enemies that would want him dead. Who had killed the 60-year-old and for what reasons? Described by the media as a ‘Brighton headmaster’, as well as leasing out various properties, Mr Cartland ran a language school in the Sussex town. Having also attacked Jeremy, the attacker(s) then set the Cartland’s Caravan alight before fleeing the scene. The autopsy revealed evidence of at least a dozen such blows, each of which could have been fatal. Indeed, the manner of death had been particularly violent: the skull had been effectively crushed and whoever had dealt these vicious blows had then gone on to hack the unfortunate man’s throat with an axe in what pathologist’s described as a ‘frenzied’ attack. In Spring 1973 Jeremy and his father, John had been travelling through southern France en route to Italy when the older man had been brutally murdered – ‘decapitated’ according to the tabloid press.
So just how did this aspiring poet (and former English teacher) come to prominence that year? Indeed, rarely a day went by in that unforgettable spring and summer of ’73 without the handsome 29-year old’s face appearing in the papers. Back then “Jeremy Cartland” was as famous as Suzi Quatro, more so perhaps.
Hands up who remembers the name Jeremy Cartland? While the name is virtually unknown nowadays, such was not the case back in 1973 when it was rarely out of the news headlines. author David Sedgwick reveals why he just had to write the story of a brutal, unsolved 1973 murder. Imagining A Murder by Stockton Heath, published today, 1st July
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