The hunt for a police killer that would grip the nation and become the largest manhunt in British history reached its violent conclusion on a rain-soaked Sunday morning, when a hail of police gunfire ended the life of a man the press had dubbed the “Phantom of the Forest.”
The 18-day rampage of Barry Prudom, a 37-year-old former electrician and failed SAS reservist, left three people dead, two others wounded, and a country terrified as he used his military survival training to outwit hundreds of armed officers across the rugged terrain of Northern England.
The saga began on a quiet Thursday morning, June 17, 1982, when Police Constable David Hay, a 29-year-old father of three, left Harrogate Police Station in North Yorkshire. He was on a routine mission to deliver a court summons, but his journey took a fatal turn when he spotted a green Citroen GSX 2 parked at the Warren Point beauty spot in Nesbitt Forest. It was an unusual sight for such an early hour on a weekday, prompting Hay to pull over and investigate.
Inside the vehicle, the constable found a scruffy man with curly dark hair and a tan complexion asleep in the driver’s seat, wearing an olive-green military-style jacket. Hay knocked on the window, startling the man awake. Suspicious of his presence, the officer asked for his name and date of birth, jotting the details down on his clipboard.
As Hay turned to radio the information to his dispatcher, he did not hear the man get out of the car. A single shot from a . 22 caliber Beretta pistol echoed through the woodland, and PC Hay fell to the ground, a bullet wound to the center of his forehead.
The gunman calmly got back into his Citroen and drove away.
By 9:30 a. m. , Hay’s colleagues were growing concerned.
He wasn’t responding to radio calls, so PC Mick Clipston was dispatched to retrace his route. Arriving at Warren Point around 10:00 a. m.
, he found the patrol car abandoned with the driver’s door open. A short distance away lay PC Hay, dead. As Clipston waited for backup, he noticed a piece of paper protruding from beneath the body.
The blood-stained page from the fallen officer’s clipboard read: “Clive Jones, date of birth 18th of October, 1944, Leeds, no fixed address, car registration KYF 326P.” The killer had taken Hay’s handcuffs and fled with the weapon.
The investigation, led by North Yorkshire’s Chief Constable Kenneth Henshaw, initially hit a wall. The name “Clive Jones” returned hundreds of matches on the Police National Computer. However, a breakthrough came via the abandoned Citroen, found three days later in a wheat field 25 miles away.
The vehicle had been purchased five months earlier in a shady cash deal at a London Underground station. The dealer recalled the buyer as a man in his early 30s with a northern accent who had given a bogus name. Forensic teams found no fingerprints; the car had been wiped clean, suggesting a suspect who was methodical and experienced in covering his tracks.
The fugitive, still carrying his Beretta and a duffel bag containing a radio, binoculars, a knife, and a machete, traveled 70 miles south into Lincolnshire, partly on foot and partly by hitchhiking. He hid in Laughton Forest over the weekend, an area spanning around 1,000 acres, but hunger eventually forced him to emerge. Using his binoculars, he watched an isolated cottage in the small parish of Blyton Carr.
When he was satisfied that only one elderly woman lived there, he broke in after dark, cut the telephone line, and forced her to cook him egg and chips before tying her up and gagging her. He apologized, took £4 from her purse, and disappeared into the night. The 75-year-old victim, Vida Jackson, managed to free herself and alert police, who suspected her attacker was the same man who had killed PC Hay.
His ability to vanish into the woods seemed almost supernatural, and the media began calling him the Phantom. He walked four miles south to Gainsborough, where he thumbed a lift from a husband and wife. The couple only realized later who he might be and contacted police, describing a man who looked like a serviceman, about 30 to 35 years old, with dark curly hair, a tan complexion, and a quiet, reserved demeanor.
They dropped him off in the village of Tuxford on the border of Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.
The violence escalated on Wednesday, June 23. Just before dawn, the fugitive entered the village of Gerton and reached an isolated cottage belonging to 54-year-old army veteran George Luckett and his wife Sylvia. A neighbor, Rita Ward, was woken by her dog barking and saw Sylvia banging desperately on her window, her face covered in blood.
Sylvia had been shot in the head but had miraculously dragged herself 300 yards across a field to reach help. Police forced entry into the Luckett’s cottage, finding George dead inside. Detectives deduced the man on the run had been trying to steal their car when he was disturbed.
He had forced the couple back inside, cut the phone line, and tied George up. At some point, George managed to free himself and retrieve his shotgun, but the gunman spotted him and fired through a glass door, killing him instantly. Sylvia was shot as she tried to escape.
Ballistics confirmed the bullets matched the one that killed PC Hay.
The phantom was on the move again, heading back towards North Yorkshire. His destination was Dalby Forest, a densely wooded area covering more than 25 square miles. At 5:30 p.
m. on Thursday, June 24, dog handler PC Ken Oliver spotted the stolen brown Rover parked in a lay-by. As he pulled up behind it, the driver opened fire.
A bullet grazed Oliver’s nose, knocking him to the ground. He scrambled up and ran for his van, but the shooter followed and wounded him in the arm. Oliver released his Alsatian, which charged at the attacker but was hit by a bullet.
That brief moment gave Oliver the chance to break away, though a final round struck him in the back. He managed to reach a nearby cottage, ushering two young girls indoors and warning the startled homeowners to lock their doors. The shooter ripped out the radio from the police van and set fire to the stolen Rover before vanishing into the forest.
PC Oliver and his dog both survived, but he was left deeply affected and eventually left the force.
The search intensified, with 450 officers deployed to comb every square mile of Dalby Forest. An RAF search and rescue helicopter joined the operation, and road checkpoints were set up. Marksmen were positioned in the trees, and police sharpshooters commandeered a Forestry Commission tower as a vantage point.
Despite the heavy presence, the gunman remained at large, using survivalist tactics to lay low and conserve energy. Searchers combed the forest around him, unaware they were being observed from the undergrowth.
Back at headquarters, PC Martin Hatton had a theory. He suspected the killer had given a false name to PC Hay, but a date of birth is harder to invent on the spot. He searched the warrant list for someone with the same birthday and found a match: Barry Edwards, born October 18, 1944, wanted for wounding a motorist with a tire iron.
PC Ken Oliver, shown the mugshot, didn’t hesitate. “It was the same man,” he said. Police raided the address linked to Edwards and uncovered his real identity: Barry Prudom, a 37-year-old former electrician.
The picture that emerged was of a man who had once been described as quiet, sensitive, and caring. Born Barry Peter Edwards to a teenage mother, he took his stepfather’s name, Prudom. He married Gillian Wilson in 1965 and had two children.
He had a strong interest in the military and enlisted as an SAS reservist, completing a six-week training course that included firearms and survival skills. He was bitterly disappointed when he was rejected for further service due to his dislike of authority. In 1973, his mother was mugged on her way home from a visit, an event that filled him with guilt.
She later died by suicide. His marriage collapsed after he learned of his wife’s 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 while he was working abroad. He later began a relationship with 17-year-old Carol Francis, and together they led a nomadic lifestyle, even traveling to Canada and the United States, where he bought the .
22 caliber Beretta pistol he later smuggled back into Britain. In May 1982, he got into an argument with another driver, striking him with a tire iron. Facing an assault charge, he failed to attend court, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Instead of surrendering, he went on the run.
Now that police knew who they were hunting, the focus was on bringing him in. But Prudom continued to evade them. On Monday, June 28, suffering from blisters, he hobbled into Old Malton, a Yorkshire village.
He bought food at a local post office, and Sergeant David Winter, a 31-year-old father of a one-year-old daughter, spotted him and decided to approach. Seconds later, Winter turned and ran, with Prudom in pursuit. Three gunshots rang out.
Winter was found dead, shot once in the neck and twice in the head, just 200 yards from the local police station.
Old Malton became the nerve center of the largest manhunt the UK had ever seen. Reinforcements poured in, and marksmen were posted on every corner. Help came from a surprising quarter: Eddie McGee, a former SAS paratrooper and expert survivalist, offered to assist as a civilian volunteer.
It emerged that Prudom had attended one of McGee’s courses and had even bought a signed copy of his book, “No Need to Die.” Chief Constable Henshaw accepted the offer, and the hunt became a battle of wits between teacher and student. McGee’s first discovery was a goat on a nearby farm that had been milked within the last 10 minutes, most likely by Prudom.
The efforts were hampered by a constant stream of reported sightings, sometimes up to 50 a day, many of which turned out to be false alarms, including a scarecrow.
Unbeknownst to the police, Prudom was hiding in plain sight. For 48 hours, he had been less than 300 yards from Old Malton Police Station, lurking behind the tennis and bowls club in a makeshift hideout built from old fence panels. He slept during the day under a blue tarpaulin and ventured out at night to eat tin cat food from an unlocked shed.
On Saturday, July 3, he broke into the home of Morris and Bessie Johnson. He bound the couple and waited for their son, Brian, to return. When Brian arrived, he came face-to-face with the barrel of Prudom’s gun.
“You did the right thing,” Prudom told him. “If you’d run the other way towards the door, you’d have a bullet in your head.” The Johnsons had the impression that Prudom seemed relieved he had not been forced to shoot.
He watched the news bulletins about the search and told them, “Eddie McGee can’t track me, but I can track him.” He untied Bessie and asked her to make sandwiches for everyone. He spent the next 10 hours with the family, leaving at 3:00 a.
m. on Sunday, July 4. Before leaving, he asked Bessie to make him some sandwiches, which he called his “last supper.”
He gave Brian a United States paratrooper ring and asked him to promise to wear it. He shook hands with each of them and said, “It’s nice to meet such nice people. I didn’t realize such people existed.”
The Johnsons freed themselves after two hours and alerted police. Eddie McGee, accompanied by Detective Sergeant Jim Kilmartin and two armed officers, picked up the trail, leading them to the derelict shelter behind the tennis and bowls club. Around 70 armed officers moved into position.
Chief Inspector David Clarkson, protected by a riot shield, crawled across the bowling green and climbed the perimeter wall to get visual confirmation. As he reached forward to lift part of the covering, a gunshot rang out. Clarkson fell backwards, believing he had been fired at.
He warned Prudom to surrender, but there was no effect. He gave the order, and a deafening hail of gunfire ensued. When it ended, officers pulled back the roof to reveal Prudom’s lifeless form, a machete strapped to his chest, a gun in his hand, and 50 rounds of ammunition in his pocket.
The 18-day manhunt was over. Among the police, there was a sense of relief and celebration. But their reaction was later called into question when the postmortem concluded that Prudom had not fired at Chief Inspector Clarkson.
Instead, he had shot himself in the head. The police sharpshooters had put 21 bullets into a man who was already dead. Brian Johnson admitted to feeling sadness when he heard the news, describing Prudom as a “lost young man.”
He said, “I felt sorry because I’d known him. They were for revenge, filled him full of lead. I think that was what happened.
They shouldn’t have done that.” His mother, Bessie, added, “He wasn’t a bit like the picture. He was very kind, actually.”
Carol’s mother, Enid Francis, told the Daily Mirror, “My daughter loved him and he loved her. They had hoped to marry and it would have been with my blessing. He was such a gentleman.
Whatever Barry did, and God knows he did some terrible things in those desperate hours and days, being hunted like a wild animal, he didn’t deserve to be shot down like a stray dog.”
Why did a man described as sensitive, kind, and unassuming turn to violence? Criminal psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Shaw suggested that Prudom’s fascination with the military and his disappointment at being rejected for the SAS may have played a role, prompting him to play an extended cat-and-mouse game with the police to prove himself.
Another interpretation points to a combination of factors, including a growing resentment towards the police linked to their failure to catch the man who had mugged his mother, an event that may have contributed to her suicide. Prudom was buried in an unmarked grave attended by eight family members. The speculation surrounding the case did not end there.
Detectives in Aldershot, Hampshire, wondered if Prudom had been responsible for two other murders: those of 66-year-old Margaret Johnson and 44-year-old Ann Lee, both stabbed while walking their dogs a few weeks prior to the shooting of PC David Hay. A scruffy man in an army-style jacket had been seen nearby. The case remains officially unsolved.
Questions were also raised about the true nature of Prudom’s military connections, with some pointing to the proximity of his crimes to sensitive military installations. But whatever the explanation, it ended on July 4, 1982, and the answers died with him.
