Musical Career

Whittaker played guitar and wrote lyrics for a succession of thrash metal bands in the late 80s and early 90s, including Restorative Art, Devilheart and Necromantic.^[3][4]

Personal Life

In 1991 Whittaker met Leda Strike, ex-girlfriend of Jonny Rokeby and Rick Fantoni, who was working for the record company considering signing Necromantic.^{[citation needed]} Whittaker and Strike were married in 1992. In December of that year she gave birth to a son, Switch LaVey Bloom Whittaker.^[5] In 1993 Whittaker was sacked from Necromantic due to his drug abuse.^{[citation needed]}

When Leda Whittaker died of a heroin overdose in 1994, Whittaker was charged with her murder. He was found not guilty.^[6][7][8][9]

In 1995 Whittaker was re-arrested for assault and attempted kidnap of his son, who was in the custody of Whittaker’s grandparents. He received a suspended jail sentence for the assault on his grandfather.^{[citation needed]}

In 1998 Whittaker threatened a coworker with a knife and received a three-month jail sentence.^[10][11]

In 2002 Whittaker was jailed for preventing the lawful burial of a body. Karen Abraham, with whom he had been living, was found to have died of heart failure, but Whittaker had kept her body in their shared flat for a month.^[12][13][14]

In 2005 Whittaker was jailed for dealing crack cocaine.^[15]

Robin read the page twice. Her concentration was poor tonight. Information seemed to slide off the surface of her mind, failing to be absorbed. Parts of Whittaker’s history stood out, glaringly strange. Why would anyone conceal a corpse for a month? Had Whittaker feared that he would be charged with murder again, or was there some other reason? Bodies, limbs, pieces of dead flesh… She sipped the hot chocolate and grimaced. It tasted of flavored dust; in the pressure she felt to be slim in her wedding dress, she had forsworn chocolate in its true form for a month now.

She replaced the mug on her bedside cabinet, returned her fingers to the keyboard and searched for images of Jeff Whittaker trial.

A matrix of photographs filled the screen, showing two different Whittakers, photographed eight years apart and entering and exiting two different courts.

The young Whittaker accused of murdering his wife wore dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail. He had a certain seedy glamour in his black suit and tie, tall enough to see over the heads of most of the photographers crowding around him. His cheekbones were high, his skin sallow and his large eyes set unusually far apart: the kind of eyes that might have belonged to an opium-crazed poet, or a heretic priest.

The Whittaker who had been accused of preventing another woman’s burial had lost his vagrant handsomeness. He was heavier, with a brutal crew cut and a beard. Only the wide-set eyes were unchanged, and the aura of unapologetic arrogance.

Robin scrolled slowly down through the photographs. Soon the pictures of what she thought of as “Strike’s Whittaker” became interspersed with pictures of other Whittakers who had been in trials. A cherubic-looking African-American called Jeff Whittaker had taken his neighbor to court for allowing his dog to repeatedly foul his lawn.