Mansfield Chad journalist publishes true crime novel about the Wycherley Murders - soon to become a major new drama starring Olivia Colman

A Garden of Bones tells the true story of the Wycherley Murders, as it has come to be known - which saw the skeletal remains of two elderly people unearthed from the rear garden of the house they had mysteriously vanished from in Forest Town some 15 years earlier.

William and Patricia Wycherley had been murdered by their daughter and son-in-law, Susan and Christopher Edwards, and then ‘kept alive in the eyes of the world’ - the pair sending letters and cards to relatives, responding to letters from doctors, and from the government.

And all the time, the Edwards had banked money owed to the Wycherleys, stealing their savings, taking out loans in their names, and finally selling the house that hid their bodies.

Andy Done-Johnson, who was a reporter on the Mansfield Chad newspaper when the story first emerged, was the first journalist at the scene, and broke many of the major details that emerged about the killings, in a case that saw the national press scrum descend on a town that hadn’t seen a camera crew since the Miners’ Strike.

A Garden of Bones is a true crime novel and features a cast of characters both real and fictional to truly get under the skin of the murders, and is told through the eyes of three distinct narrators - a down-on-his-heels journalist looking to revitalise his career; an ambitious young detective hoping to make the next step up the slippery career pole, and Susan Edwards, whose fantasist personality makes it hard to know what is real and what is not.

The book is based on Andy’s experiences of covering the case, extensive interviews carried out throughout the case and in the months and years afterwards, his own notes from the time and the 23 days he sat through the murder trial.

“At the time, the Wycherley Murders attracted massive media interest, with all the major national broadcasters and publishers descending on Mansfield to get to the bottom of what had happened,” Andy said.

“I got lucky, I suppose. We got a tip-off before the police alerted the rest of the media and I made it down to the murder scene first. I got a head start and, as I spoke to neighbours and people who remembered the Wycherleys and the day the pair vanished, the

whole macabre story came spilling out. As a journalist, it was the story of a lifetime.”

Andy now works as a court reporter around the North Midlands and South Yorkshire areas, spent three years researching and writing A Garden of Bones.

He added: “I’d always hoped to write a book but it was only after I was contacted by producers who wanted to make true crime documentaries about the case, and the BBC, which was thinking about making a drama, that I realised that the Wycherley Murders and

the crimes of Susan and Christopher Edwards was the story I had to tell.

“It’s difficult to know what to compare it to - it’s part memoir, part novel and part true crime book. It’s a novel that is based on fact, on real events. It features real people and only gives them the words they said at the time, all preserved in a few hundred pages of shorthand notepads.”

In January, it was announced that Olivia Colman will play Susan Edwards in a major new four-part drama called Landscapers, written by her husband Ed Sinclair.

A Garden of Bones is available on Amazon in print and ebook formats.