True crime book by journalism lecturer to be developed for TV
The first-hand account of a notorious murder case written by an ex-newspaper reporter and Manchester Met journalism tutor is published this month – and is already being developed for television.
Jeremy Craddock’s true crime book, The Lady in the Lake: A Reporter’s Memoir of a Murder, is the first to tell the full story of the Coniston Water murder in the Lake District.
The case began in 1997 when Craddock was a young local newspaper reporter covering the story of a suspicious package discovered by amateur divers and found to be the body of Carol Park, a woman who’d been missing for 21 years.
Craddock was thrust into the biggest story of his career in which he interviewed key players in the case including the chief detective. Following twists and turns that spanned decades, the legalities of the case finally reached their conclusion in 2020.
Published on 10th October by Mirror Books, The Lady in the Lake is already being developed for television by West Road Pictures, which has produced dramas for ITV and Channel 5.
Craddock, who teaches on the multimedia journalism undergraduate and postgraduate programme, said: “This is a case I could never forget because I was so closely involved from the start when Carol’s body was discovered.
“It’s been fascinating to look back at the timeline of events, right back from newspaper reports when she was first reported missing, to my own reports when covering the case for the Westmorland Gazette, then my more recent interviews including with the main detective and the family of the pathologist who has since died.
“I’ve been pleased to pass on my long-form journalism techniques to students. They’ve been interested to learn how to report in an accurate, respectful, and ethical way, while maintaining the narrative and story flow. We will all be interested to see how the book plays out as a TV drama.”
Shortly after Carol Park’s body was found, police arrested her husband Gordon Park on suspicion of murder. At the time of his arrest he was a respected 53-year-old retired teacher married to his third wife.
What might have seemed an open-and-shut case would prove to be one of the most complex and challenging in British legal history, taking another two decades to conclude, not least because of Gordon Park’s insistence of his innocence and the eroding effect of time on the evidence.
The Lady in the Lake and the development of its television drama follows Craddock’s first true crime book, The Jigsaw Murders. This tells the story of the landmark investigation into the crimes of Lancaster doctor Buck Ruxton in 1935.
The book was nominated for the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. It is also being developed as a television drama by the team behind ITV’s Vera and BBC’s Shetland.
Craddock is one of several Manchester Met lecturers whose work is being shown on both the big and small screen. Creative writing lecturer Andrew Hurley’s novel Starve Acre was adapted into a film starring Dr Who’s Matt Smith and is currently showing at UK cinemas, while the BBC drama series adaptation of fellow creative writing lecturer Alex Wheatle’s best-selling children’s novels Crongton is soon to be broadcast.
Earlier this year, Hoard, a film produced by filmmaking senior lecturer Loran Dunn, was rolled out across UK cinema to great critical acclaim.
