The strange true story behind Landscapers, Olivia Colman's new crime drama

by 24britishtvDec. 7, 2021, 6 p.m. 59
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Sky's new true-crime drama Landscapers tells the story of an ordinary, middle-aged British couple who did something rather out of the ordinary.

Olivia Colman and David Thewlis star in the four-part series as Susan and Christopher Edwards, who in 1998 murdered Susan's parents and then buried them in the garden of their home. Unbelievably, they then managed to get away with the crime for more than 15 years.

Their real-life crime story starts back in 1998 when, according to The Guardian, Patricia and William Wycherley (Susan's parents) were shot dead some time over the May Day bank holiday weekend in their home in the Forest Town area of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. As soon as the banks reopened on the Tuesday morning, Susan went in and opened a joint account in her and her mother's names, and transferred her parents' pensions, disability benefits, fuel allowances and savings into it.

Christopher, meanwhile, dug a large hole in the Wycherley's garden then buried William and Patricia – wrapped in duvet covers – in it.

You would expect that Susan and Christopher's crime would have been discovered almost immediately as neighbours realised the Wycherleys were no longer around, or someone saw Christopher paying special attention to his in-laws' garden, but in reality, no one spotted a thing.

The Wycherleys, it seems, were not the most sociable of neighbours and no one really knew much about them or noticed their absence.

Neighbour John Ward – who worked as a police community support officer – told The Guardian in 2014 that it all happened on the other side of the privet hedge in his garden that he shared with the murdered couple.

"You can imagine the stick I got at work," he said. "Worked for Notts police for 25 years and didn't even see a double murder."

He and his wife Lesley said that Bill and Pat kept to themselves – "If Bill was in the garden and I went out cutting the lawn, he'd go in. He didn't seem to want to be spoken to" – and they seemed like an old-fashioned couple, with Lesley remembering that they never walked together. "She was always 10 yards behind him," she said, while John added that "at one stage we actually thought they were brother and sister".

Life in the Mansfield cul-de-sac seemingly went on as normal (well, not for the Wycherleys, obviously), with Susan and Christopher keeping up the pretence that her parents were still alive – cutting the grass, collecting the post and writing letters to Bill and Pat's GP whenever invitations for check-ups and vaccinations were sent. Susan also sent Christmas cards to family members telling them about her parents' holidays, and since the Wycherleys had no other close family, no one noticed they were missing.

Eventually Susan and Chris sold the Mansfield house (pocketing the money, of course), and a new family moved in.

It wasn't until the Department of Work and Pensions sent a letter in 2012 to William Wycherley, asking for a meeting before his upcoming 100th birthday, that Susan and Christopher decided they could not keep up the ruse any longer.

They fled to France, but despite having stolen more than £250,000 via the death of Susan's parents (including the proceeds from the sale of the house), they were virtually penniless, and after a year on the run, Christopher contacted British police and said he and Susan would be returning on the Eurostar to turn themselves in. He also asked that the police pay their train fare as the Edwards had so little money left.

So what had Susan and Chris spent a quarter of a million pounds on?

It turned out that Susan was fascinated by Hollywood movie stars – Gary Cooper in particular – and much of the cash had been spent on memorabilia, including signed photographs and even a short typed letter from him to a fan that they had spent almost £2000 on.

When the couple turned themselves in, they were interviewed separately but told the same story to the police: Susan said she had gone to visit her parents alone on that fateful May weekend, leaving Chris at their home in Dagenham. A row had taken place between Susan, William and Patricia, during which Susan said her mother had shot her father. Her mother had then taunted Susan, saying she was having an affair with Chris, and Susan said she then shot her mother in what was a crime of passion.

Susan claimed she didn't tell Chris what had happened when she returned home the next day, but the following week they went together to the Mansfield house and Susan confessed – over a tea of fish and chips while watching the Eurovision Song Contest on TV – that her parents were lying dead upstairs. Susan told police that she and Chris then buried them.

The police weren't convinced that Susan's story was the truth. They had to piece together evidence on a couple – the Wycherleys – who had kept to themselves, and their possible murderers, Chris and Susan, who led an equally quiet life with no friends to speak of.

In the end, the evidence was stacked against the couple. Their well-rehearsed story had holes in it – for example, if the bodies had been in the house decaying for a week, how did Christopher not notice the smell when he arrived?

Once the bodies were dug up and examined, the shooting didn't seem random, either – both Patricia and William had been shot twice, in the centre of their bodies, leading investigators to believe one person had fired all four shots. They discovered Chris had been a member of a gun club, adding further weight to the theory that he had killed both his in-laws.

During the trial, Susan was portrayed as someone who lived something of a fantasy life, surrounded by her Hollywood memorabilia. It emerged that she had even written a letter to French actor Gerard Depardieu asking for him to correspond with Chris, and when she didn't receive a reply, Susan forged a letter from the actor to her husband in what would be the start of a more than decade-long fake correspondence (she wrote the letters in awkward English so Christopher would believe they were from Depardieu).

It seemed that the motive, therefore, was money – when the couple were arrested, they had memorabilia they had spent £15,000 on in their suitcase, and little else (police later valued the collection at less than £3000).

"They didn't lead a particularly lavish lifestyle," Detective Chief Inspector Rob Griffin told BBC News after Susan and Christopher were sentenced. "It would seem that the vast majority of their money was spent on memorabilia… It's staggering to think that's what they spent their money on, but that's what they did."

The court decided that Susan had held a grudge against her parents, following an inheritance she believed they had cheated her out of, and this may have led to their deaths, along with the couple's dire financial state.

The jury at Nottingham Crown Court found both Susan and Christopher Edwards guilty of murder, and in 2014 they were each sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in prison. Susan was aged 55 and Christopher was 57 at the time of their trial, meaning it is likely they may both die in prison.

Susan has since appealed her case – saying that she had suffered mistreatment at her father's hands from a young age, which should have been considered in the original trial. Her barrister also told the court that Susan "had no one in her life but her husband and she will therefore serve this prison sentence without any prospect of a visit from anybody.

"She will serve it knowing that, whatever the rights and wrongs of her husband's involvement, she feels completely responsible for him becoming involved and feels she has destroyed the rest of his life. The imposition of this minimum term will probably result in her dying in prison."

Susan's appeal was dismissed, with the appeals judge Lady Justice Rafferty commenting (via Nottingham Post) that the original judge had made the correct decision.

"She [the presiding judge] did so having reminded herself that 15 years had elapsed since this young woman had left home, before she returned and murdered the people she said she hated. She also reminded herself of the cynical and determined exploitation of the ill-gotten gains, consequent to the murders, which the appellant had enjoyed over years."

As Landscapers launches on Sky, there will be renewed interest in Susan and her husband Christopher, and the Wycherleys' murders.

Chief Superintendent Rob Griffin, however, has complex feelings about the case being in the spotlight once more.

"I have mixed emotions about the programme being made," he told local news site Chad last year. "It involves victims who have a family and people's lives have been changed forever because of this. Having said that, I understand why people want to hear about this case. It's a unique story and I will be interested to see how it plays out on television."

Landscapers will be available to watch on Sky Atlantic from December 7.

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