After nearly four decades of marriage and four children, Richard and Sarah Pitkin upped sticks from their comfortable, semi-detached house in East London and embarked on a new life in a quaint market town in the country.
Their new home, 17th century Harlequin House on the outskirts of Stowmarket in Suffolk, was painstakingly restored by skilled builder and carpenter Richard after they moved there in 2006.
Sarah, a keen amateur dancer, opened up part of the double-fronted house as a chintzy tea room, serving traditional lunches and cream teas. She later immersed herself in the community and worked at a charity shop in the town.
The Pitkins, pictured at their team rooms, were found dead in their home after Richard stabbed his wife and hanged himself
The Pitkins appeared to be relishing their new lives — but no one ever truly knows what goes on behind closed doors, beyond the facade of a seemingly robust marriage. This week an Ipswich inquest heard how in February this year Richard, 65, stabbed his 58-year-old wife to death at the couple’s home before hanging himself after receiving an anonymous note claiming she had been having an affair.
But while the coroner described the deaths as a ‘tragic situation’, Sarah’s lover, friends and a women’s charity have condemned his choice of words, telling the Mail it implies no one was to blame for what happened.
Sarah’s secret lover has also spoken exclusively to us, telling of his ‘hatred’ towards Richard Pitkin and expressing his disbelief at the sympathy shown towards him.
‘He could have walked out,’ said the man, speaking on condition of anonymity. ‘He could have tried to be a better husband during the last ten years of their marriage. My feelings towards him are of hatred and yet he’s been portrayed as the good guy, as if he couldn’t help himself.’
Keen dancer Sarah Pitkin had been having an affair with a man who revealed she was frightened of her husband
The deaths have devastated the couple’s four children, the youngest of whom is only 18, and cast an uneasy pall of sorrow and anger across this quintessentially English town.
Who penned that spiteful — and deadly — letter revealing Sarah’s secret to her husband? And how on earth did this couple’s apparently solid 37-year marriage descend so rapidly into bloodshed?
This week the Mail visited Stowmarket to uncover the truth about the events leading up to this terrible crime.
There, Sarah’s 57-year-old lover confirmed they had been having a relationship since meeting two years ago in a pub in the town. He insisted their relationship ‘was not a sordid affair’ and that he’d loved Sarah very much. ‘She was very unhappy in her marriage and she’d been unhappy for a long time,’ he said, adding that Sarah had confessed she was afraid of Richard ‘a couple of times’.
Yet, it seems, no one else in the town had an idea anything was wrong in the marriage.
Friend and local historian Steve Williams got to know the Pitkins not long after they moved to Stowmarket. He said news of their deaths ‘shook the bones of us’.
Steve had seen Richard just a few weeks before the killings, when he’d fixed a leak in his conservatory roof, and said he had seemed his ‘normal, chirpy self. Nothing seemed different about him,’ says Mr Williams. ‘Nothing was said.’
In Newham, East London — where the couple met, married and raised children Kelly, 32, Lauren, 29, Tommy, 26 and 18-year-old Patricia — locals were equally shocked.
Former neighbour Brenda Owen says: ‘They seemed very happy to me. I didn’t see anything that made me think otherwise.
‘When they were here, they were always together. You didn’t hear any raised voices, nothing.’
Ship captain’s daughter Sarah, who was born on the Isle of Wight, had worked as a classroom assistant in a primary school. She was devoted to her children and loved organising big family parties and barbecues in the summer. The family enjoyed outings in their old camper van.
The Pitkins are shown in Suffolk at the time they opened their Harlequin House tea room after moving from East London
‘They were always going out,’ recalls Mrs Owen, 67, adding how excited Sarah had been about the move to Suffolk. ‘She said she’d found this house that they loved.
‘She showed me pictures of it and it looked lovely. They wanted to move out to the country and get away from the town. They were really excited about the move and the property looked really picturesque.’
Their ‘new start’ had been promising at first. They’d quickly integrated into the community. Richard — described by a friend as a ‘cheeky Cockney sparrow’ — earned a reputation as a skilled operator after working for the town council as well as the parish church.
And while, at first, Sarah was preoccupied with raising the two younger children still living at home, according to Steve Williams she wanted ‘a better chance to spread her wings’.
The couple launched Harlequin House Tea Rooms in May 2009 with a flurry of local publicity and an appearance by the town mayor. Sarah served tea in bone china cups and saucers, and home-made cakes on three-tier stands. Her love of the Forties meant customers were often regaled with Glenn Miller records.
But the reality of running a business on the edge of town proved much tougher than they had anticipated. According to Mr Williams: ‘Once they had the tea room, people would go there on a regular basis but its downfall was it was the wrong side of the inner relief road. One day they’d be busy, the next quiet.’
Having spent thousands setting up the business, the Pitkins closed it after just two years. ‘Sarah was desperately sad to give up on it,’ says Mr Williams.
In the aftermath of that disappointing venture, Sarah turned to voluntary work, first at a charity shop in nearby Needham Market and later at the St Elizabeth Hospice Shop in Stowmarket, where she was second in command.
Master builder Richard Pitkin stabbed his wife to death over the affair and her secret lover has condemned sympathy he says was shown to the killer, who hanged himself
Mr Williams’s wife Sue, 74, remembers Sarah’s eye-catching window displays. ‘They were so different that sales went up as a result. She wanted to be involved with people and the people loved her there. Everybody had a great deal of respect for her.’
Outside of work, the petite, dark-haired woman was known for her love of dancing and regularly attended Forties dance nights. She often dressed in retro skirts with tiny waists and wore her hair in a ponytail.
‘She’d been a stay-at-home mother for a while,’ said a friend. ‘She’d got a job at the shop and started to socialise with some of them. You’d go into the shop and they’d all be laughing in there.’
Sarah and her manager, Hannah King, were often seen at The Stag pub, just a few hundred yards away from the charity shop.
Forensic teams attended the tea room after Mr Pitkin stabbed his wife to death over her affair
But while Sarah became a regular at the pub, Richard did not. According to evidence given to the inquest by Detective Superintendent David Cutler of Suffolk Police, the couple ‘started to grow apart’ and Sarah developed a new group of friends.
According to Mr Williams, Richard joked about being unsociable because he was an early riser and often went to bed early.
Another female acquaintance says: ‘Sarah and Hannah used to go to the pub straight after work. You always notice two women sitting in a pub on their own. They used to attract attention. They were regulars.’
It was here that Sarah met her new man and embarked on an affair.
The anonymous letter, exposing the relationship, arrived in late January. As a result, Sarah moved out of the house and went to stay in her 88-year-old mother’s cottage next to St Peter and St Mary’s Church in the town centre.
Sarah’s lover said: ‘She was very angry about it. She had an idea who the letter might be from but she didn’t know for certain.’
Weeks later, Richard persuaded her to return to the marital home to discuss their finances. But he was already planning to kill her.
The inquest heard how a forensic examination of his computer’s history revealed he’d been researching depression and suicide.
A mourner lays tributes at the tea room after Mrs Pitkin was stabbed to death and her killer husband hanged himself
And before Sarah even arrived at Harlequin House that Sunday lunchtime, he had constructed a noose for himself and attached it to the loft hatch in their bedroom.
The couple’s son Tommy told the inquest that on the day his parents died, his father had seemed fine. They were ‘laughing and messing around as normal’. His father then said that his mother was coming round to talk and he was asked to ‘make himself scarce’.
When Tommy returned a few hours later, he found a note on his parents’ bedroom door saying that he should call the police and not go inside.
Officers then forced their way into the barricaded room and found a scene of unimaginable horror. Sarah was lying face down on the bed. Richard had hanged himself.
An identical copy of the note was found in Richard’s study as well as a third, addressed to his son. According to DS Cutler: ‘It was written by Richard and gave details of his thoughts and concerns and some rationale for his actions together with some consideration and thought for the rest of the family and their future.’
That letter was the just the beginning of the investigation into the murder-suicide. As Coroner Dr Peter Dean said: ‘He had thought through his actions before undertaking them. It’s difficult to envisage a more tragic situation.’
Sarah’s lover criticises the coroner’s use of the word ‘tragic’, claiming he is speaking out because he cannot bear the implication that Sarah was somehow to blame for her husband’s actions. ‘It was a tragedy for Sarah, not for him.’
A friend of Sarah’s agrees: ‘It’s not a tragedy, it’s a disgrace,’ she says. ‘He is a coward. I’m sick to death of people saying what a lovely man he was.
‘He could have killed himself and not taken her with him if he didn’t want to live without her. But through sheer petulance and bloody-mindedness, he left their children without their mother. It was an act of sheer brutality from a man she was supposed to have trusted.’
The charity Women’s Aid has also questioned the use of the word ‘tragic’ around the murders of women by partners.
Chief executive Katie Ghose says: ‘We often hear the murder of a woman killed by a man described as “an isolated incident” or “a tragedy that couldn’t be predicted”, yet the data shows this is not the case. It highlights a repeated pattern of male violence against women.’
Statistics produced by the charity show that last year 113 women were killed by men — 78 of whom were a current or former partner.
According to Suffolk Police, there is ‘some suggestion Richard was abusive to Sarah’ although ‘there is no complete consistency with different sides of the family having different views.’ Certainly, Sarah never contacted them to say she had been assaulted or to express any fear about her husband.
Others appear to be far more sympathetic to the plight of both husband and wife.
Steve Williams insists: ‘I couldn’t say a bad word about either of them. They were just lovely, both as a couple and as individuals.’
Their children have also expressed love and support for both parents, whose funerals at Seven Hills Crematorium in Ipswich took place on the same day — Sarah’s in the morning, Richard’s in the afternoon. Some of Sarah’s relatives are said to have left before the afternoon service.
The agony faced by the children is summed up in a tribute posted on social media by one of their daughters beneath a photo of herself with her father.
‘Call your parents every day, tell them you love them whenever you get the chance and always treasure the moments you share, however insignificant they may seem.
‘I miss my parents more than I can possibly describe and if I could have anything in the world it would be to relive the moment in this photo.’