I helped nail some of UK’s most notorious killers from Levi Bellfield to Suffolk Stranger thanks to my plant knowledge

WHEN the bodies of missing Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were discovered the police immediately called an expert known as Pollen Pat.

Forensic ecologist Professor Patricia Wiltshire has helped nail some of Britain’s most notorious killers including Roy Whiting, Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright and Levi Bellfield.

Using her expert knowledge of plants, pollen and soil — she is believed to be the only person in the world carrying out such work — she has aided 300 criminal investigations over the past three decades.

So when the two youngsters’ bodies were found in a ditch near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk following a two-week manhunt in August 2002, detectives got straight in touch.

They were keen to establish how the killer had got into the irrigation ditch so they could recover evidence.

Patricia, 82, says: “The police said they couldn’t work out how the offender had got into the ditch. It’s important for the police to have what they call the offender approach path. If you can show them that, they can look for clues.”

Spotting a clump of trampled nettles and using her trained eyes, she skilfully revealed the path.

She recalls: “I found Jessica’s hair on a twig. It was a long golden brown strand.”

Patricia made her way down the steep bank to examine the bodies — which were lying side by side — and collect vital evidence.

She recalls sadly: “I can see them there now in my mind’s eye.”

After conducting a series of experiments, Patricia was able to tell police the nettles had been trampled 13 and a half days before the grim discovery, helping them to build a timeline.

She also linked pollen found on the shoes and vehicle of suspect Ian Huntley to that in the ditch.

At the Old Bailey in 2003, Huntley, a caretaker at a secondary school, was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.

His girl­friend, a classroom assistant at the girls’ primary, admitted perverting justice and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison.

Patricia is speaking to The Sun ahead of the publication of her book The Natural History Of Crime, which is out tomorrow and details the grisly cases she has helped to solve.

When we meet, at her home in the village of Ashtead, Surrey, she reveals she fell into her un­usual line of work after a detective contacted her for help on a murder case in 1994.

At the time she was working as an environmental scientist for University College London.

Patricia says: “He had called Kew Gardens and they said they knew someone who could help.”

A burnt body had been found in a ditch in Hertfordshire. There were tyre tracks in a nearby field and the police wanted to establish if their suspects’ car had been present.

Despite doubting she could help, Patricia was able to match maize pollen at the scene to the car’s footwell and pedals.

She says: “I couldn’t believe it myself.”

From then on, the phone didn’t stop ringing and Patricia, originally from a mining village in the South Wales Valleys, has since worked with police forces across the UK.

She is known for closing her eyes at a crime scene so she can imagine the events unfolding and the plants the offender might have touched.

Patricia explains: “I can tell what happened at a scene, such as ‘he knelt there and put his hand over there’. I can re-enact scenarios for the police.

“I always work on the corpse because they reveal lots of evidence. I’m there before the pathologist does anything.”

In her study, she shows me one of the microscopes she used to help catch Huntley.

It also helped convict Roy Whiting, who kidnapped and murdered eight-year-old Sarah Payne.

The youngster had disappeared one Saturday evening in July 2000, while playing with her three siblings in a cornfield near her grandparents’ home in West Sussex.

Patricia was involved from the off.

She recalls: “A police officer came to see me asking if I could help. They needed to find her. Everyone was out searching for this little girl.”

Sadly, Sarah’s body was found 16 days later, 12 miles away in a shallow grave off the A29 at Pulborough.

'You can’t let things affect you'

Examining the little girl’s body in the mortuary, Patricia was able to match pollen, spores and soil on suspect Whiting’s jeans, trainers, sweatshirt and spade to the vegetation at the site where he buried her.

He was jailed for life in December 2001 after being found guilty of her abduction and murder.

Patricia is straight-talking and robust, saying: “You can’t let things affect you.”

Asked if writing her book had a cathartic effect, she says: “I thought it might, but it almost had the opposite effect in that it dredged up all my memories and I was quite depressed.

“All these horrible things are in little compartments in your mind. These little drawers have been opened and all the stuff came out. That was quite shocking in a way, to have to remember things when I thought they’ve been put away.

“When I had to remember it, to write it, all the jagged spikes came back — and that was quite hard.”

One of the cases that affected her the most was of Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright, who murdered five sex workers in and around Ipswich in late 2006.

The body of Gemma Adams, 25, who had disappeared on November 15, was found on December 2 in a river at Hintlesham.

Then, over the next ten days the bodies of Tania Nicol, 19, Anneli Alderton, 24, Annette Nicholls, 29, and Paula Clennell, 24, were discovered in rural locations nearby.

Patricia says: “That was a hard case for me. I’d get home then the phone would be ringing again. I’d be rushing off to East Anglia because another body had been found.

“Body after body. There were five victims and I went to all of them. I worked on every corpse in the mortuary.

‘It gives me flashbacks’

“At the scene, it’s just a job. I prefer not to know about the victims because you will be thinking ‘how awful’.

“I felt so sorry for these women. They didn’t deserve to be cut off by some thug. But you can’t let every case get you, otherwise you would be a nervous wreck.

“One affected me deeply and so badly, it does give me flashbacks.”

But Patricia says: “The most upsetting ones for me are when they look perfect — the perfect babies or perfect girls, when they look as though they are just asleep.”

Patricia was able to match the pollen on Wright’s gloves and shoes in the woodland where some of his victims were discovered.

In 2008 Wright was found guilty of all five murders and handed a whole-life term.

Patricia says: “I think my evidence was quite damning.”

She also helped police probing the murder of Milly Dowler, 13, who was snatched as she walked home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, by Levi Bellfield in March 2002.

Milly’s body was found six months later, 25 miles away in woods.

By analysing leaves and other nature nearby, Patricia helped to establish a timeline for the murder.

Tragically, Patricia knows the pain of losing a child — her own daughter Siân died aged 19 months from an autoimmune disease.

The loss is one reason that spurs her on to help get justice for others.

Patricia has received thank-you letters from the mothers of murder victims Karen Doubleday and Joanne Nelson.

“I just wrote back and said I’m glad I was able to help,” she says.

Karen, 41, was found in a wood near her home in Manchester in April 2002.

The mum of one had been strangled with her own bra by her boyfriend Adam Hamilton.

He was jailed for life in 2004.

Joanne, 22, was strangled by her boyfriend Paul Dyson, who then dumped her body in a Yorkshire ditch in February 2005.

He was later jailed for a minimum of 16 years.

Patricia says: “With Joanne Nelson, he told police he couldn’t remember where he had put her.

“He remembered a metal gate and that there were Christmas trees.”

Using her expert knowledge, Patricia was able to identify the site where Joanne had been dumped.

She recalls, humbly: “The police asked me how I knew. It was common sense.”

With a laugh, she adds: “Some people call me the Welsh Witch but it’s common sense — with a bit of botany.”

Patricia often works on cases with her husband, Professor David Hawksworth, 77, a specialist in fungi.

She says: “He jokes it’s buy one, get one free.”

The couple teamed up to help on the notorious “Jigsaw Murder” of 2009, when several male body parts were found scattered across Hertfordshire and Leicester.

It was later discovered they belonged to kitchen salesman Jeffrey Howe, 49, of Southgate, North London.

Patricia recalls: “The police thought a leg found wrapped in blue plastic had been there for two weeks but we did an experiment in our back garden which proved it had been there less than five days.”

The couple were also able to prove that, contrary to assumptions, the body parts had not been distributed at the same time.

Stephen Marshall, a per­sonal trainer from Boreham­wood, Herts, was jailed for life for the murder of Jeffrey, his landlord, in 2010.

So do the couple have any plans to retire? Patricia vigorously shakes her head and says emphatically: “No. We have done a lot of good, David and I.”

• The Natural History Of Crime, by Patricia Wiltshire (John Blake) is out tomorrow, £22.