Reader's Digest Australia Dec/Jan 2025

74   December 2025/january 2026 reader ’ s digest house was a hoarder. Seemingly every piece of paper that ever passed through David Davis’s hands had been kept: bank documents, legal documents, correspondence – even old train tickets. Yet nothing seemed to go back beyond six years. He seemed a man without a substantial history. He was not, however, without money. In boxes, briefcases and suitcases they found loads of cash – thousands and thousands of British pounds and Swiss francs. Among the discoveries was a receipt dated July 8, 1996, for the purchase of a number of items at a sporting- goods store called Sport Nautique. On it was a notation for a ten-pound anchor. The police didn’t know what significance the receipt had, but they filed it with the mountain of other documents. By November 3 investigators had gathered enough evidence to warrant Davis’s continued detention. Noël was released. On November 4, David Davis was formally charged with the murder of Ronald Joseph Platt. Meanwhile, the investigation, now involving up to 70 officers, contin- ued. More clues took police to other locations. At a place called Solu- tions in Therapy, where Davis was a therapeutic-counselling partner, police found five gold bars stashed away in an office; at Genstar Storage they found more cash and gold, and a Global Positioning System (GPS), her husband, David, had been a friend of her father’s. The police questioned her again and again. Finally, she told the truth: David Davis was in fact her father. After Platt and Boyes had left for Canada, Noël explained, she and her father assumed their identities. The Davises moved to Devon, where she gave birth to the first of two children. Because there was a baby, her father suggested they should present them- selves as husband and wife. As for the real Ronald Platt, she said, she hadn’t seen him since they ate Christmas dinner together in 1995. She had no idea that he had been in Devon during July. In fact, she had no idea that he was dead – until now. Mounting Evidence Sincock had his people working around the clock. He had Davis’s fin- gerprints sent to the US authorities via Interpol to see whether he was wanted there. His yacht, Lady Jane , was impounded for forensic testing. The police pored over his personal phone records. Everything gath- ered up during the investigation was transferred onto HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System), a computer database that would give each detective working on the case easy access to every bit of informa- tion available. As Phil Sincock had suspected, Little London Farm was laden with intriguing material. The man of the readersdigest.com.au   75 Bonus Read fetched it, it fitted the description of the one Davis had bought on July 8 at Sport Nautique. Elsewhere, forensic experts dusted Davis’s yacht Lady Jane , thoroughly for fingerprints and painstakingly searched for evidence. Incredibly, there was not a single print to be found. Eventually it dawned on the police to check the Sport Nautique shopping bag that had been found aboard the boat. There they found the fingerprints of Ronald Joseph Platt. Something else was found: blood. There were three microscopic drops discovered on the rolled-up sails, and on cushions they found a small bit of hair and scalp, which tests showed as being similar to Platt’s. Police examined the GPS unit taken from Genstar Storage. The manu- facturer explained to them that that particular model stored the precise time and the last navigational refer- ence point registered when it was shut off. When investigators downloaded the data inside the GPS, the last time and date recorded on it was 8.59pm, July 20, 1996, the approximate day of Platt’s death. It placed Davis’s boat six kilometres from where Copik netted the body. There was still no evidence linking for navigation; at Chelmsford Stor- age, they turned up a set of suitcases. They were filled with Ronald Platt’s personal belongings. Sincock sent his detectives to inter- view John Copik. The fisherman went over again everything that happened on July 28, 1996. Th i s t ime he re - called that a colleague had come by, taken an anchor out of Copik’s nets and walked away. The two police of- ficers looked at each other. “An anchor?” Ye s , he s a i d , an anchor. After the police took the body away, Copik explained, he and his son were scrub- bing the deck down. Just then another fisherman, Derek Meredith, spotted an anchor tangled in Copik’s nets. It was small, about 75cm long, with a rather sinister plough-shaped blade. “Do you want it?” Meredith asked. “You’re welcome to it,” Copik said. Detectives, intrigued by this new fact, tracked the fisherman down. “I gave the anchor to my girlfriend,” Meredith said. “She and her mother, Patricia Johnson, put it in a rummage sale, I think.” By midafternoon the officers were knocking on Patricia Johnson’s door. She confirmed she had put the anchor in a sale, but hadn’t sold it. When she In boxes, briefcases and suitcases they found loads of cash – thousands and thousands of British pounds and Swiss francs