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Please respect our Debbie’s memory

14/ 5/2008

A GRIEVING couple are being harrassed by someone plaguing them with post addressed to their dead daughter.

Jean and Tony Aston of Redbrick Court, Ashton, say their lives have been ruined by regular phone calls asking to speak to their daughter Debbie, who died in 1995 of a brain harmorrhage.

They also regularly receive replies to newspaper adverts in her name.

"The worst one was to our Debbie thanking her for investing in her child. Her little boy was only two-and-a-half years old at the time," said dad Tony Aston, 65. "She’d been dead eight years when this started happening. She was only 24 when she died of a brain haemorrhage. We’ve had jewellery ordered in her name, we got sent a bill asking for the money."

Mrs Aston, 68, has even had lewd phone calls. She said: "I was scared more because I was on my own.It’s awful, I’m even scared to go to our special garden at the cemetery. We go every Sunday and I’m frightened that we’ll get followed and they’ll desecrate her grave."

To add insult to injury, the pensioners, who say their health has suffered as a result of the upset, were conned out of hundreds of pounds after paying fraudster Gene Anthony Morrison, jailed last year for posing as a forensic scientist with no qualifications, to analyse handwriting from coupons sent to newspapers in their daughter’s name.

The police say there is a lack of evidence to pursue the matter and the grandparents are now pursuing a civil case.

Mr Aston added: "I just don’t know how much evidence we need to have to have a case."

A police spokesman said: "A thorough inquiry has been carried out and a number of officers have spent time investigating the claim of harrassment by Mr Aston. However, despite robust inquiries there is insufficient evidence at this time to arrest anyone in connection with the investigation. A fingerprint was found on one of the leaflets which has been forensically examined but it does not match anyone on our database. Inquiries are ongoing to identify this fingerprint and the investigation as a whole remains open. As a force, we have expressed our deepest sympathies to Mr Aston."