SKY’S MARTIN BRUNT OPENS UP ON LIFE AS A CRIME REPORTER
Martin Brunt has been Sky’s crime correspondent for nearly three decades, having joined the channel when it launched in 1989. He has got scoops on all the top crime stories, from the Fred and Rosemary West murders, to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the 7/7 terrorist attacks. Now, Martin, 68, has compiled his experiences into a memoir, No One Got Cracked Over The Head For No Reason: Dispatches From A Crime Reporter. We spoke him to find out about the stories behind the headlines…
You started your career reporting on war and conflict. What drew you to crime?
I was a general reporter on Fleet Street before joining Sky when it launched. For the first four years there, I covered the first Gulf War and the Balkan Wars, which got that out of my system. War reporting is the most exhilarating thing you can do, but the novelty wore off when the dangers were rammed home with the deaths of several people I’d worked with. I had police contacts from my Fleet Street days, so when the vacancy of Sky’s crime correspondent arose around 1994, I volunteered my services. I’ve been doing it ever since.
What was your first big story?
It was the Cromwell Street murders committed by Fred and Rose West. I was really keen to get stuck into my new role and did so on the first day.
It was – and still – is the worst story I’ve ever covered. The level of depravity of what that couple did to the victims, including their own daughter Heather, is almost beyond imagination. I don’t think anything will ever surpass it in terms of the sheer horror. Listening to Fred’s daughter Anne Marie describing the physical and sexual ordeal she was regularly put through for years, from the age of eight, at the hands of her father and stepmother, who told her it was their way of showing how much they loved her, was chilling. I found it most heart-breaking when she said, “I used to go to school every morning, thinking that all my classmates were going through the same experience by their parents who loved them.” Imagine growing up thinking that was normal behaviour. I’ve heard a lot of things in court, but nothing as bad as that.
Is that the case that defined your career?
If any case defines my career, it’s probably Madeleine McCann [who went missing in Portugal in 2007] because I’ve spent the most time on that story. It’s still an abiding mystery with no answers, and
