The Lady in the Lake : A Reporter’s Memoir of a Murder

A body in a lake. A wife missing for 21 years. A husband’s denial of murder. A crime reporter who was there revisits the shocking crime 25 years on. The Lady in the Lake is a real-life murder mystery and true crime memoir that reads like athriller. A dark secret resurfaces after 21 years in the English Lake District to devastate a family. With powerful themes of murder and denial, the story spans five decades, from the 1970s tothe present day. In August 1997 Jeremy Craddock is a young newspaper reporter in the Lake District. Whendivers discover a suspicious package weighted down in Coniston Water he is thrust into theheart of the biggest story of his career, a haunting murder mystery that will stay with him forthe next quarter of a century. Inside the package is the body of a woman. Police identify her asCarol Park, a young wife and mother missing since 1976. Now – 21 years later – suspicion falls on her husband, Gordon Park, who is on holiday in Francewith his third wife. Shocked, he returns to a media frenzy and detectives’ questions. Park isarrested on suspicion of murder. The press nickname the case ‘the lady in the lake’, borrowingthe title of Raymond Chandler’s classic detective novel. As one of the first journalists on the case, Jeremy Craddock bears witness to a strange anddark murder investigation that grips the world’s media. At Park’s later trial, a picture emergesof Gordon and Carol’s open marriage, their infidelities and Park’s controlling nature towardshis young wife. Park is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. But did he reallymurder his wife and drop her body into the murky depths of Coniston Water? The jury andCarol Park’s brother believe he did. But Park never stops protesting his innocence. With hisnow adult children at his side, he begins a long fight to clear his name. Will he succeed?The Lady in the Lake is a newspaper reporter’s account of a chilling murder case and hisre-investigation a quarter of a century later. Using police and court documents, original presscoverage and new interviews with detectives, witnesses, lawyers and members of the victim’sfamily, Jeremy Craddock tells the full story of this shocking case for the first time.