Monthly Archives: August 2014


byemam

Bye Mam, I Love You

Sonia Oatley with Lynne Barrett-Lee

 

On Saturday, 23 October 2010, Sonia Oatley waved off her 15-year-old daughter, Becca, to meet Joshua Davies, a former boyfriend. Becca’s hope was that the two of them would get back together, but it was not to be. By 3pm, oddly, she stopped

answering her mobile. By 7.30 she was officially declared missing. And at 10am the following morning, while Sonia and the family were out searching, came the call that is every parent’s worst nightmare. The police had found the body of a young girl in local woodland: she’d been bludgeoned to death with a rock.

Bye Mam, I Love You is the story of Rebecca Aylward’s murder – a slaying that was described by an incredulous media as having been committed for ‘the price of a breakfast’. But, as soon became clear, this was no crime of passion. Becca’s death had apparently been many months in the planning, by a calculating, cold-blooded killer.

From the immediate arrest of 16-year-old Joshua Davies, to the lengthy investigation and harrowing five week trial that convicted him, this book is both an expression of a mother’s love and her pride in a daughter who had so much to live for, as well as an insight into the mind of a brutal murderer.

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The Girl With No Name

Marina Chapman and Vanessa James, with Lynne Barrett-Lee

 

girlnoname

‘It all happened so quickly. One minute I was squatting on the bare earth, preoccupied with popping pea pods. The next, I saw the flash of a black hand and white cloth, and before I even had a chance to cry out it had sailed towards my face, and completely covered it . . .’

In 1954, in a remote South American village, a four-year-old girl was abducted and then abandoned deep in the Colombian rainforest.

So begins the incredible true story of Marina Chapman, who went on to spend several years alone in the jungle, her only family a troop of capuchin monkeys. Using instinct to guide her, she copied everything they did and soon learned to fend for herself.

At around ten years old, a completely feral Marina was returned to civilisation by hunters, who sold her to a brothel. After being enslaved and beaten daily, she escaped – to live the perilous existence of a Colombian city street kid.

Marina’s life as a wild child wasn’t over. In some ways, it had only just begun. This is her astonishing story.

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