Man admits murdering Dudley woman missing for 28 years

A 66-year-old man has admitted murdering a Dudley mother who vanished nearly three decades ago, confessing to police that he hid her body in a cellar before throwing her skeleton in the household rubbish.

Trevor Dunkley pleaded guilty at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday to the murder of Patricia Lashley, who was 33 when she disappeared in September 1998. He also admitted a charge of preventing her lawful burial.

For 28 years, what happened to Lashley remained a mystery. Her body was never found. On Friday, the court heard the grim details of why.

Dunkley's barrister, Balbir Singh, told Judge Michael Chambers KC that Lashley’s body had decomposed after Dunkley initially hid it in his cellar.

"When he was moving about nine months to a year later, the skeleton was disposed of into the bins," Singh told the court.

Dunkley, of Himley Road, Dudley, showed no emotion in the dock. The court heard that the charges against him were brought entirely because of admissions he made during a recent police interview. Several of Lashley’s family members sat in the public gallery to hear those admissions laid bare.

Both charges cover the period between 22 September and 28 September 1998. Lashley, a mother of seven, was last seen near her home on Hall Street in Dudley.

According to West Midlands Police, Lashley had moved to the area in the 1990s and it was understood that she and Dunkley knew each other. Over the years, police worked on the theory that she might have started a new life elsewhere. She had known links to London, Newcastle, Wales, and Scotland, and was known to use several different names, including Pat, Jade, Vanessa, Tricia, and the surname Bradford.

In 2017, her family made a fresh public appeal for information, hoping someone might have seen her. They now know she died in the town where she went missing.

Remanding Dunkley in custody, Judge Chambers ordered a pre-sentence report before sentencing on 6 November.

"You have had the courage to plead guilty to these matters and will get appropriate credit in due course," the judge told Dunkley. "As you are aware, the sentence for murder is life imprisonment."

The judge added that it was in Dunkley’s interests to co-operate with probation officers ahead of his sentencing.