South Yorkshire murdered man’s sister meets his killer in prison and tells him: "You’re the lowest of the very low"

22-year-old Jamie Cockayne was stabbed to death after being lured into a flat in the Worsborough area by Peter Goodliffe, on 27 July 1995.

His sister Nicola has been speaking exclusively to Andy Kershaw.

Nicola said: “Goodliffe saw Jamie leaving a post office and probably thought he had some money. He approached Jamie and then invited him back to his flat.”

“Something happened and a fight occurred. Goodliffe overpowered Jamie, he then cleaned him up then beat him up again, stabbing him and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough he then dragged him into the cellar where he bound and gagged him, then slit his throat with a knife”.

Jamie’s body was then wrapped in an old carpet and dumped in the River Dearne at Darfield, only to be discovered by a dog walker some days later.

Jamie’s bungalow in Barnsley was also burgled by the killer and an accomplice. Goodliffe, was arrested shortly after the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, he’s now awaiting parole in a Category D open prison, which may eventually lead to his release back into society.

Jamie’s sister Nicola, then aged 48, and now a mum herself, decided to seek a meeting with Goodliffe in prison to discuss her brother’s death and the circumstances surrounding it and the charity Remedi, based in Sheffield, arranged the visit.

“Jamie was a lovely young man, he really was, says Nicola. He had lots of friends and family support and everybody knew him; everybody still knows him.

He had more friends than I have now, but we’ve never ever been given a reason why he did what he did to Jamie, not that any reason will ever be good enough”.

“You see,” she says anxiously, “it’s a procession of I’m going to beat you, then I’m going to clean you up and then I’m going to beat you again and then I’m going to stab you until you die and then I’m going to do this to your body and then I’m going to discard you like you’re nothing. And during this process I’ve took your money and your keys and then I’m going to go and rob your home. It’s disgusting, absolutely disgusting and the lowest of the low.” She says angrily.

Nicola remembers going to Jamie’s home several times looking for him on the day of the murder. They’d agreed to meet to go on a shopping trip to Meadowhall for Jamie’s birthday present. She arrived only to find the lights on and shadows which she knew weren’t Jamie’s, in the lounge.

“I got to the door and a youth was there and I asked where Jamie was and he told me that he’d taken the dog for a walk, Jamie had a ​dog at the time. “But in the living room I could see there were all his things piled up and realised he was being burgled.”

Nicola also played a part in catching his killer after following the car Goodliffe’s accomplice was driving and contacting police who took up the pursuit, later apprehending the accomplices and eventually Goodliffe.

I asked Nicola if Goodliffe filled in any gaps for her during their meeting or showed any remorse or shame or offered any kind of apology.

“He did say he was sorry, but I wasn’t there for his apologies, the damage had already been done, she says. Remorse, no, I honestly do not think the offender understood how deep and how wide his actions actually went.”

Asked what she came away with from the meeting, she says, “I wanted him to acknowledge that 24 going on 25 years, he’s no need to lie any more, I told him you’re not going to lose or gain anything and that reflection is a fantastic thing if you can deal with it and it’s a hard reflection for you. I just wanted him to be honest and tell the truth and say yes I did X, Y and Z to Jamie, she adds.

“We knew most things anyway” she adds resignedly, “but I needed to hear it from him and I needed him to understand the massive impact that he had created when he killed Jamie.”

“I don’t think he realised that Jamie had a big family and he most definitely didn’t realise that he had so many friends that this affected. So, I needed to vent that at who deserved it and I did that.

“I was a bit worried that it would rake up a few emotions that I really didn’t want to come back, like the anger, upset and hating the world.”

I ask Nicola if it was worth all that effort, knowing she couldn’t bring Jamie back.

“For me, yeah", she says confidently. “He got what he deserved from me, every bit of it. You see I wasn’t a parent when Jamie died but we were really close siblings, I’m a parent now and I would be destroyed if anything happened to my son, so I do understand things differently now.”

I ask Nicola if there was any sense of relief about meeting Goodliffe.

“Yes” she says “I really don’t care how he feels, he’s done his damage to me, my family, and Jamie’s friends; he’s not going to do any more mental damage to me.

“That monkey on my back that is the offender, that’s had so much influence over my life choices and my attitudes that often stank, because I didn’t like people, or people who caused issues in my life, that depression, that upset, is gone.

“I aimed everything that I needed to aim at him and it wasn’t for revenge, it wasn’t to belittle him, it was for him to understand and to see and hopefully grasp the damage he did to me, so imagine everybody else in my family, my mum, my dad, my sisters, my brothers’ aunties, uncles and cousins and friends, they’ve all had that too”, she adds.

I asked her whether she felt she’d done it for Jamie too. “For both of us” she responds quickly,”although I got nothing from Goodliffe to clarify anything. All he would say was, ‘I can’t remember, there was a red mist’. Which I personally think still shows a lack of accountability.”

“After the meeting I can remember going to the toilet and just being sat there when everything just went ‘click, click, click’ and he’s gone and at that moment I felt he no longer has any mental influence over me. For the first time in 24 years, I felt a weight had been lifted.”

In deciding to speak out about the encounter, Nicola says they didn’t really discuss anything about Jamie’s death in the family and how he died. “It was too hard, all the focus was on Mum and making sure she was ok, but looking back we should have. We should have made people more aware that there are people like this in our society” she added.

”But also if it makes someone think about the terrible consequences and it stops one person’s actions from killing or seriously hurting

somebody else, then it’s a result.”

Nicola was referred to Remedi after requesting that she would like to meet Goodliffe face to face as he starts going through the system to be released on

parole and says.

“It all went from there. It’s called ‘Restorative Justice’ and it was a really quick process for me”.

She also mentions that it’s helped unlock all the emotions she bottled up for 25 years when Jamie was first murdered.

“You see all the support was for parents not for siblings or wider family members, so we got no help. But, she says, all that has changed now. I’m getting all the support I need from Remedi and some very good friends, they have been absolutely fantastic”, she said.

“The opportunity to be supported by Remedi has made such a massive difference to me and it’s definitely something I’d recommend for anyone affected by crime in their families”, she concludes.