THE truth of the saying that a murder has many victims was plain to see this week as the children of convicted wife-killer Gordon Park spoke out for the first time, reports Jennie Dennett.

Jeremy Park and his sister Rachael Garcia remain convinced someone else was responsible for bludgeoning their mother to death in 1976 and dumping her body in Coniston Water.

Theirs is a double tragedy, as they have to live with the grisly murder of their mother and the subsequent jailing of their father for the crime in January this year.

"Sometimes with mum, it just hits you when you are not expecting it," said Jeremy Park, now 35. "You think you are dealing with it, then bang' and you feel really upset, it's the same with dad now.

"It's still there every morning, you know you are not going to come out of this nightmare but you have to be tough. We weren't brought up to wallow in self-pity, we were brought-up to recognise problems, talk about them and support each other and that's what we're doing."

Jeremy, who was six when his mother disappeared, has spent the last nine months putting together the website www.freegordon.com, based on the copious notes he made while sitting in the public gallery during his father's eight-week trial.

It will soon detail all the twists and turns of the so-called Lady in the Lake case and, he hopes, convince readers that his father his innocent.

In a bid to generate media attention, 17 of Park's family and friends donned freegordon.com sweaters and gathered in Albert Square, Manchester, for the National Miscarriage of Justice Day on Saturday.

Holding back tears, Jeremy Park told the waiting press pack: "We have kept a dignified silence but now we feel it is the time to speak out.

"The case against dad is incredibly thin, based on flimsy, circumstantial evidence. We believe there are people out there who know the truth, maybe someone who has kept this secret for many years."

Rachael Garcia, who at 34 is now older than her mother when she died, said she and Jeremy were grieving for both their parents.

The Park children are now urging anyone with knowledge of Carol Park's whereabouts in 1976, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, to get in touch with their solicitors, Forresters in Barrow.

Jeremy Park remains adamant in his belief that his father's trial was not fair. He argued that jurors were prejudiced by the years of coverage of the case after the discovery of Carol Park's body in 1997, when his father was suspect number one.

"It's a sad fact of life, juries do believe what they read in the papers and if everything in the papers is negative, you are automatically at a disadvantage," he said.

He also said the police had been fixated with his father, led by national statistics linking 80 per cent of murders of women to their boyfriends or husbands. The defence case was further hampered by the absence of the original police missing person files from 1976. He did not accept the official explanation that they were ditched as part of a "weeding policy".

"There are other suspects who remain possibilities who could fit the evidence as well. There are some they've not investigated thoroughly at all although they'd refute that.

"In 1997, they probably believed he was guilty and thought arrest him and the evidence will come out of the woodwork' but there was not any evidence. They took samples from the floor at our house Bluestones but they never found any blood stains which hang around for decades. The evidence suggested it wasn't my dad and at some point I think some of the officers thought this is rubbish', but they wouldn't let go of it."

He added: "Someone knows the truth. Someone knows who really killed our mother and an innocent man is in prison."

A spokesman for Cumbria police declined to comment in advance of a possible appeal.

Lawyers posed to appeal...

SUPPORTERS of Gordon Park hope to have enough evidence to push for an appeal to overturn his conviction for murdering his wife within four weeks.

Park's legal team is awaiting a report from a new expert witness to challenge evidence linking a rock, discovered near Carol Park's body, with stones from the couple's marital home at Bluestones, Leece.

Park's solicitor Mike Graham said he hoped to soon have a report from Oxford University geologist Dr Peter Bull, who is an expert in studying sediments using a scanning electron microscope.

Mr Graham expected to be able to review this research and other new information (which he declined to detail) and meet other lawyers in around four weeks to decide if there were adequate grounds for an appeal application.

The rock, which was allegedly found near the body (a matter disputed by the defence), became a key part of the trial. An expert geologist found a rare combination of minerals in the rock rutile anatase growing together with synchisite - which was found in rocks from a garden wall at Bluestones but not in stones from Coniston. However, the defence argued that not enough research had been done to know exactly how common this mineral was.

The slate that came to assume so much importance at the trial is now in pieces after an unfortunate Crown Prosecution Service clerk sat on it during the trial.