UK UK - Fred Handford, 56, New Mills, Derbyshire, March 1976

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'Hypnosis revealed I killed the farmer who raped me,' Extraordinary claim of woman,
64, who has been questioned by police about 'crime which took place 37 years ago'


A woman claims that hypnosis revealed she shot dead a farmer who she believes raped her - nearly 40 years ago.

Janet Holt, 64, has been questioned by police over her claim that she had buried the memories of the killing until she went for therapy decades later.

Her business partner Fred Handford, then 56, vanished from Ball Beard Farm in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1976. Despite a huge police search he was never found.
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Miss Holt said the recollection was terrifyingly clear - she shot Fred after he twice raped her, then put his body in a wheelbarrow and buried him on their farm.

Police arrested and interviewed her in 2011 after she went to officers and told them where she believed she buried the body.

But after extensive searches of the 50-acre farm, she was released.
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She said, 'I wished I had remembered at the time and confessed and got on with my life.

'The nightmares and uncertainty have been horrendous.'
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The case remains open.
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much more, with pictures, at Sunday Mail link above
 
Could be. She has a book to sell. But she doesn't exactly strike me as an Arias case groupie. Nor did a significant amount of the UK public clamor for more.
 
Steely, if she shot him on the grounds, blood would soak into the ground fairly rapidly. And since it was a farm, I would expect that she either removed the dirt with the body or simply dug the dirt up...on a farm, you expect to see overturned dirt and whatnot. It's not unusual at all.

The man *is* missing...it very well may have gone down the way she claims.

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Herding Cats
 
Steely, if she shot him on the grounds, blood would soak into the ground fairly rapidly. And since it was a farm, I would expect that she either removed the dirt with the body or simply dug the dirt up...on a farm, you expect to see overturned dirt and whatnot. It's not unusual at all.

The man *is* missing...it very well may have gone down the way she claims.

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Herding Cats

I think she claims she shot him indoors.
 
Steely, if she shot him on the grounds, blood would soak into the ground fairly rapidly. And since it was a farm, I would expect that she either removed the dirt with the body or simply dug the dirt up...on a farm, you expect to see overturned dirt and whatnot. It's not unusual at all.

The man *is* missing...it very well may have gone down the way she claims.

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Herding Cats

She says she shot him in the kitchen, so that doesn't work at all.

I don't believe a word of it. Maybe they'll turn up a body and I'll have to eat my words, but I generally disbelieve "memories" which are "recovered" under hypnosis. She's experiencing false memories IMO.
 
This is such a hard call. I have had PTSD and spontaneously recovered memories from childhood abuse - I know how those nightmares can wake you in the night, many years after an event, and seem so horribly real..

I -do- think something went on on that farm. Whether the man killed himself and she found him, went in a fugue.. Or she killed him. I don't know, can't guess.

But IMO the hypnosis has muddied the waters of her memories, and that's a bit sad. First, there's always the chance her memories are faulty, and then there's the people who dismiss the whole story once they hear 'recovered memory'.

I was told I made all the abuse up, because I didn't remember it all until I was in my 30's.. by friends and doctors both. Thing is, it was only the very worst of the sexual and physical abuse that I'd blocked out. I hadn't 'suddenly recalled' all the other rapes and beatings, the attacks with weapons and other stuff - I could always remember that. It hurt to be told my experiences weren't "real" because of some kneejerk perception that all recovered memory is 'false memory syndrome' (a 'syndrome' highly promoted and supported by a lot of pedos, I might add..). I was pretty angry about that.

So that's why I am more inclined to give this lady the benefit of the doubt. --Something-- very bad has happened to her. I just hope she finds peace.
 
Does she claim hypnosis brought out the memory of rape and killing him or just the killing?
 
From what I can make out, she has four days of missing time when the farmer vanished all those years ago.. along with inexplicably muddy shoes when she woke from this fugue state (ie, this was highly abnormal behaviour, to truck mud into her bedroom) and later on, experienced PTSD-like nightmares concerning the farmer, which did not involve her shooting him (but clearly worried her).

This led the woman to seek professional help, which involved hypnosis to recover those missing days, which is when she recalled the rapes and shooting.

I don't have much doubt she was traumatised by -something- fairly significant at the time, and feels a deep level of guilt over it. That's why I can't come at insta-judgment that hypnosis = she made the whole thing up.

But IMO it's risky to approach memory via hypnosis alone, and especially risky to label conclusions drawn after a single session with a single therapist (of unknown skill and qualification) as hard fact.
 
I wonder what sort of business partners they were, or if she gets his half of the land or something if he is declared dead.
 
The Sun says she's sold the farm. So I suppose it was hers to sell already.

Retired Janet, who sold the farm, hopes one day Fred’s body will be found. But cops pointed out a thorough dig gave no clues.

They added: “No evidence was found to connect her to Mr Handford’s disappearance.”

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4970808/Hypnosis-showed-I-was-a-killer.html#ixzz2WUhO9NV8


Did she have EMDR? Or hypnosis? Or both? They are not the same thing.

I am confused by her story of how she found out that FH was missing.

One morning, she woke up to find that he was missing and she had no memory of the past four days.

She said: 'I knew something was wrong when I saw my muddy wellington boots by my bed, as I would never have dragged all that mud through the house.

'I felt delirious and when I found out Fred was missing I was beside myself wondering where he had gone.

'But never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd have hurt him. I took my mother to the farm with me. Fred was nowhere to be seen.

'I called his name and looked for him in the farmhouse.

'It was unlike Fred to leave the farm apart from when he visited his sister. So, I called her and she said he wasn't there.

'My mother and I waited a few hours for Fred to return but after a while we became worried and we called the police.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-farmer-raped-37-years-ago.html#ixzz2WUigkgkW
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

This sounds like she woke up at her parents' home and supposedly doesn't remember anything but she knows that Fred is missing before going to the farm.

Did the police examine the shotgun at the time? Did they examine the wheelbarrow? Did they examine any freshly dug graves at the farm? Does she remember where she buried him? Do people in traumatic fugue states who are going to develop amnesia about their experience methodically clean up blood, other evidence and hide bodies?

It is very unfortunate that she is not able to point out where the remains are.

'It was the oddest feeling. I had mourned for my friend for more than 30 years without knowing that actually he was a rapist and I was a killer.

'I wished I had remembered at the time and confessed and got on with my life.

This statement is a little odd to me as I don't think it's as simple as that to confess and get on with your life if you're convicted for murder. It doesn't sound like self defense if she really shot him in the back while he was making tea.

IDK about this... It could be real repressed memories, or false memories, or she made it all up to sell a book, or she did really kill him and remembered it all along but is now ready to make a half-confession to ease her conscience but not all the way because she doesn't want to go to jail.
 
http://www.thestrangerinmylife.co.uk/
There is a sample chapter available on the site and she says that the therapist's name is Dr Belinda Browne-Thomas.

Can anyone find this therapist online? Any traces that she exists?
I googled "Dr Belinda Browne-Thomas" and got about 700 hits, all from Janet Holt's book.

http://authonomy.com/books/47210/the-stranger-in-my-life/read-book/?chapterid=453296#chapter

Edit:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/131764286/The-Stranger-In-My-Life-An-Autobiography
An author's note here says that she changed the names of most of the people and made some characters up for her book (well, she terms those people "amalgamations" but I think it equals made up). Maybe the good ole doctor's name has been changed too which is unfortunate as no one can check her credentials.

It also says here that her best friend Mary got her to see a therapist but in this article
http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/c...len-parker-in-real-life-drama-59067-33302449/
it is said that the co-author of her autobiography, Helen Parker, got her to see a therapist.

The co-author's note here http://authonomy.com/books/47210/the-stranger-in-my-life/read-book/?pg=4&chapterid=470359 says that Janet Holt was arrested for wasting police time in 2012. She also notes that it is too late to start any court proceedings in the case.
 
She was too traumatized to tell the police about the rape because she couldn't have coped having to relive it. I am glad to see that she is not too traumatized to write a book about it or give interviews to the tabloids though.

http://authonomy.com/books/47210/the-stranger-in-my-life/read-book/?pg=1&chapterid=453335

Pffft. Makes total sense.... Not.

I call BS.
Not sure if she killed him or not but I bet that large chunks of this book are totally fictional.
Also note that apparently she decided to write an e-book before she decided to go to the police and confess.

And why is she hoping that Dr Belinda's notes will be produced eventually? She is the client, she can ask the doctor to write a statement about her treatment and then give it to the police.

In chapter 50... she's moping because she can't contact anyone since the police have her phone and laptop in their possession. Luckily she remembers that she wrote down some email addresses and can write emails to her friends... using her laptop :p .
Maybe she bought a new one but if so this is not very well written.
 

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In chapter 9 she says that the police originally found some disturbance in a mine shaft and concluded that Fred had thrown himself down there. Also confesses to stealing 50 000 pounds from her job and falsely implicating Fred's sister's granddaughter in the crime.

In the following chapters she says he was worried about money, and says the police told her that a neighbor had said Fred was worried about money and had spoken about suicide.
She decides to lie to the police about the missing days. Then she tells them that Fred fell off a horse 9 months previously and was a changed man after that, gloomier A couple of paragraphs later she is shocked at the police suggesting a suicide and says he was right as rain. She describes the police suggesting that they had an affair and a falling out and mentions a missing whisky bottle. She speaks of Fred in past tense in the police interviews soon after the disappearance. But then it is bound to be a largely fictional conversation anyway, no one can report things verbatim after three decades or more. Apparently they didn't have access to the police files.
...
 
The farmer is, aside from anything Janet Holt claims, still 100% missing for all these years. And it's quite probable that he's dead.

Assuming he hasn't just fallen down an old mine shaft, never to be found:

If money was an issue for Janet, there's a motive for homicide.

If he was insured and she was she was a major beneficiary - there's a motive for both homicide and covering up a suicide (most policies won't pay out in the case of suicide).

It does seem the woman is great at lying through her teeth and is also somewhat 'unstable'. But it remains - the farmer is missing, body never recovered, and so -something- has happened to him.

Janet's behaviour, even given that she is a bit odd and her story is all over the place, reeks of guilt. My question is - guilt over what, exactly? And why would she confess to a murder she didn't commit? Maybe she sees spending her life in prison preferable to where she is now..?
 
Janet's behaviour, even given that she is a bit odd and her story is all over the place, reeks of guilt. My question is - guilt over what, exactly? And why would she confess to a murder she didn't commit? Maybe she sees spending her life in prison preferable to where she is now..?

Maybe she really believes she did it. False memories - usually induced by bad therapy - are a real phenomenom, not just something promoted by paedophiles. I'd love to know the real name of her therapist, I'd bet good money you'd find a trail of wild stories from her patients.
 
This is such a hard call. I have had PTSD and spontaneously recovered memories from childhood abuse - I know how those nightmares can wake you in the night, many years after an event, and seem so horribly real..

I -do- think something went on on that farm. Whether the man killed himself and she found him, went in a fugue.. Or she killed him. I don't know, can't guess.

But IMO the hypnosis has muddied the waters of her memories, and that's a bit sad. First, there's always the chance her memories are faulty, and then there's the people who dismiss the whole story once they hear 'recovered memory'.

I was told I made all the abuse up, because I didn't remember it all until I was in my 30's.. by friends and doctors both. Thing is, it was only the very worst of the sexual and physical abuse that I'd blocked out. I hadn't 'suddenly recalled' all the other rapes and beatings, the attacks with weapons and other stuff - I could always remember that. It hurt to be told my experiences weren't "real" because of some kneejerk perception that all recovered memory is 'false memory syndrome' (a 'syndrome' highly promoted and supported by a lot of pedos, I might add..). I was pretty angry about that.

So that's why I am more inclined to give this lady the benefit of the doubt. --Something-- very bad has happened to her. I just hope she finds peace.

I believe that you can bury bad thoughts of PTSD for what was done to you. I find it hard to believe in fognesia for murders. JMO

She was too traumatized to tell the police about the rape because she couldn't have coped having to relive it. I am glad to see that she is not too traumatized to write a book about it or give interviews to the tabloids though.

http://authonomy.com/books/47210/the-stranger-in-my-life/read-book/?pg=1&chapterid=453335

Pffft. Makes total sense.... Not.

I call BS.
Not sure if she killed him or not but I bet that large chunks of this book are totally fictional.
Also note that apparently she decided to write an e-book before she decided to go to the police and confess.

And why is she hoping that Dr Belinda's notes will be produced eventually? She is the client, she can ask the doctor to write a statement about her treatment and then give it to the police.

In chapter 50... she's moping because she can't contact anyone since the police have her phone and laptop in their possession. Luckily she remembers that she wrote down some email addresses and can write emails to her friends... using her laptop :p .
Maybe she bought a new one but if so this is not very well written.

Yeah, this whole thing smells.
 
I didn't say false memory isn't real - I was saying that automatic assumptions that memories regained through hypnosis are likely to be false is something that bothers me, and I believe I also explained why.

Yep, it's possible she really believes it. But she's also claiming she had reasons to suspect her own guilt prior to the sessions, so the seed of the idea didn't come from therapy alone.

What I'm finding interesting (as I read through her book) is that Janet worked in a probate law office prior to Fred Hanford's disappearance. There's also a lot of stuff in her book regarding inheritance. I'll wait til I finish the whole thing to say much more on it, but my thoughts right now are - all these recovered memories came shortly after she sold the farm (I'm looking forward to the chapter where it explains how she got full ownership of the property) ... what if Janet is rather elaborately covering her *advertiser censored*, just in case the new owners dig up either Fred or some hard evidence that she killed him?

If the police have actually charged her for being a nuisance over it, and the consensus is that she's a tad delusional - maybe she thinks she'll beat a lifetime in prison?

I'm finding her narrative really quite strange, like it's leading the reader by the nose to several conclusions.. idk, just something's quite off about it.
 
I do think she believes she killed him, although she may also be mad as a hatter.
 

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