WHEN seven-year-old Mark Tildesley didn’t return home after visiting a funfair in 1984, the alarm was sounded.
His disappearance triggered every parent’s worst nightmare, leading to a shocking investigation that would uncover one of Britain’s most depraved gangs of child abusers and killers.
One year after Mark’s disappearance, the bodies of two young boys – 14-year-old Jason Swift and six-year-old Barry Lewis – were found in Essex just days apart.
Police quickly connected the dots, launching Operation Stranger to hunt down the monsters responsible.
The investigation resulted in the questioning of a gang of paedophiles, later dubbed the “Dirty Dozen”, who all had a string of previous convictions.
Among their members is the infamous Sidney Cooke, a funfair worker who had been questioned after the disappearance of Mark Tildesley.
A gripping new two-part documentary, Child Snatchers: A Day at the Fair, delves into this horrifying tale and poses the chilling question: could there be more victims?
“There are all sorts of villains, but the worst are those who harm children,” says ex detective David Bright, who worked on the case. “There is wickedness in this world. Some people are evil.”
The harrowing story began on June 1, 1984, when Mark eagerly rushed to the funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire.
The sweet young boy had carefully saved up for the half-term event by returning abandoned trolleys at his local Tesco.
With coins jingling in his pocket, he cycled to the funfair – promising his parents he would be home at 7.30pm.
Tragically, the seven-year-old never made it home. Instead, he met a man – we now know is Cooke – outside a local shop who gave him 50p to buy sweets.
He also promised Mark a ride on the dodgems – the boy’s favourite – at the Frank Ayers Fun Fair later that night.
Police now know he was raped and murdered by the Dirty Dozen, but but even 40 years later, his body has never been found.
While police were investigating the disappearance of Mark, a 14-year-old boy called Jason Swift was abducted from east London in November 1985.
He had been brutally abused and eventually suffocated in a filthy council flat in this block in East London.
Each paedophile had paid £5 to leader Cooke to have sex with Jason in the filthy flat. The boy died when the sickening crime went wrong.
“He was preyed on by these sick, twisted people,” says his cousin Emma Whiteman. “They watched and they followed and they could see he wasn’t going back anywhere.
“They knew he was vulnerable and preyed on him. I’m not going to lie, it gave me nightmares.”
A week later a second body was found – six-year-old Barry Lewis, who had disappeared from south London after being snatched on September 15. He had also been sexually abused before being killed.
The key piece of evidence connecting the murders of Jason and Barry was the presence of a tranquillising drug found in both of their bodies.
The investigation zeroed in on the notorious ringleader Cooke, infamously nicknamed “Hissing Sid.” At the time, Cooke was on remand at Brixton Prison.
“I interviewed Sidney Cooke,” recalls David. “Even with all the charges he faced, including the most horrific offences, he still wanted to be the governor.”
Initially, Cooke denied any involvement in Jason’s death. But after requesting a Salvation Army Minister, he began to admit his role.
“When we finished with Cooke, he (the Salvation Army Minister) said it was the worst day of his life. That stuck with me,” David continues. “It was horrific. I’ll say no more than that.”
Cooke and his gang operated from a flat in Hackney’s Kingsmead estate, preying on vulnerable children.
They either hired rent boys or abducted kids from the streets, subjecting them to unspeakable sexual torture.
Cooke roamed the country, using his “Test Your Strength” machine at fairgrounds to lure boys.
Once he gained their trust, he drugged them before subjecting them to brutal assaults.
You just took a child away and now you’re smirking at the parents in court
Emma Whiteman
In 1989, Cooke was convicted of manslaughter for the death of 14-year-old Jason.
Alongside him, fellow gang members Leslie Bailey, Robert Oliver, and Steven Barrell were also sentenced for their involvement in Jason’s death.
Cooke was identified in court as the leader of a notorious paedophile ring and linked to the disappearance of seven-year-old Mark, whose remains have tragically never been recovered.
The graphic details of Jason’s killing were so distressing that many people in the courtroom broke down in tears as they were read aloud.
The group escaped murder charges only because the prosecution couldn’t definitively prove who was responsible for Jason’s death.
“They were smirking at my uncle and I thought,” recalls Emma, who watched the trial at the Old Bailey, London, with her family.
“Who would do that? You just took a child away and now you’re smirking at the parents and the family.
“I was absolutely unhappy, putting it politely, that they only got done for manslaughter, they know they did it.
“Smirking at everyone. Evil, sick, twisted, that, that’s what comes to mind when I hear their names because they’re nothing else.”
Even with Jason’s killers behind bars, the police knew they still had a long road ahead to solve the cases of Barry Lewis and Mark Tildesley.
They were convinced the gang was involved but struggled to find the evidence needed to secure a conviction.
While serving his sentence for Jason’s murder at Wandsworth Prison, Leslie Bailey confessed to his cellmate, Ian Gabb, about the killings of other boys.
Gabb, a building worker, of Brixton, south London, was sent to prison for three and a half years after admitting wounding his former homosexual lover.
His credible information prompted the police to launch Operation Orchid.
“We needed to concoct a scam where we could go into the prison regularly and not draw attention unnecessarily,” says Robert Brown, a former police officer who worked on the case.
“So I decided that I would masquerade as a vicar. It needed to be covert. The story was that Gabb had seen God and seen the light, instead he saw me.”
Bailey was re-interviewed about Barry Lewis’s death and he finally admitted his involvement in Barry’s murder and the disposal of his body.
Cooke had lured Barry with sweets, abducted him in South London, and taken him to the Kingsmead Estate, where he was abused and drugged by the gang.
A witness reported seeing a man with an unwell child at a petrol station near where Barry’s body was found.
When the police asked Bailey to identify the burial site during the second interview, he led them directly to the location where Barry had been discovered.
In 1991, Bailey – who was known by the nickname Catweazle – was swiftly charged with Barry’s murder, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.
But unfortunately, there was not enough evidence to charge the other two men.
During interviews, Bailey revealed “credible and horrific” details about Mark’s last moments. He admitted travelling from London to Wokingham, where Cooke was waiting.
There are other children in graves hidden around the country that could have been the result of Cooke and his cronies
Ex cop David Bright
Cooke had lured Mark with sweets, promising him a ride on the dodgems.
But instead, the young boy was taken to a dingy caravan on the outskirts, drugged with a spiked milk drink, and brutally abused by the sick gang.
“There’s a side of me that almost wishes I didn’t know what happened to Mark,” says Charlie O’Malley, his childhood friend. “Because I cannot imagine what Mark would have felt in his last few minutes.”
One year later, Bailey was convicted of the manslaughter of Mark.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) chose not to pursue charges against Cooke, because he was already serving time for the manslaughter of Jason Swift.
Cooke was released from prison in April 1999 after serving just nine years. For his own safety, he was immediately placed into voluntary custody.
But cops, convinced that he was linked to other unsolved crimes, kept his file open.
Within months, Cooke faced fresh accusations of abusing two teenage brothers he had befriended while working at fairgrounds decades earlier, as well as the rape of a young woman.
In a shocking turn during his 1999 trial at Manchester Crown Court, Cooke abruptly changed his plea to guilty, admitting to ten offences against the youths and receiving two life sentences.
Four charges of rape, three of indecent assault, and one of buggery were left on the court file.
Cooke is still locked up behind bars. Bailey met a brutal end, murdered in his prison cell in 1993, while Oliver was last spotted living in a bail hostel in Guildford, Surrey.
As for Barrell, his whereabouts remain a mystery.
In March, ex-detective David Bright, the man who got Cooke to confess to Jason Swift’s murder, urged cops to grill Cooke about other unsolved murders before he died.
Detectives believe there could have been as many as 17 other abductions and murders with connections to the Dirty Dozen gang.
David, who firmly believes Cooke should never be released, thinks the ageing predator might be tempted to “clear his conscience.”
“There are other children in graves hidden around the country that could have been the result of Cooke and his former cronies,” he says.
“At 96 and with all but two gang members dead, he might want to clear his conscience and tell all.”
Child Snatchers: A Day at the Fair Channel 5, airs tonight and Wednesday at 9pm. Also available on My5, produced by ITN Productions.
