Sadly, crime history, like history in general, tends to repeat itself. For anecdotal proof we only need look at the tragic story of Rachel Hudson.
The story of how Rachel was abused and then killed by the people with whom she lived is frighteningly similar to the 1965 death of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens in Indianapolis.
Like Sylvia, 20-year-old Rachel was subjected to constant abuse that slowly broke her spirit and destroyed her body. Testimony at the murder trials of the five members of the Hudson family showed that Rachel was held a virtual prisoner, was dominated and controlled by the family, and was physically attacked on a daily basis.
A single mother described by friends as “bubbly and lively,” Rachel met her future husband, Craig Hudson, at a Nottingham fair where he was working as a carny. They married in 2002 and moved in with his family. It would seem that she had nothing to fear at the time — after all, Ronald Hudson, Sr. was a finalist as a “UK Dad of the Year” ten years before he was sentenced to life in prison for killing his daughter-in-law.
“There is really no one like him,” his wife Trudi wrote at the time. “He really is superdad — one in a million.” Trudi was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her part in the crime.
But “superdad” and his wife, along with their children Ron Jr., Craig, Emile, and Charlene, never accepted Rachel. In addition, Elizabeth Hogg, the 19-year-old girlfriend of Shane Hudson (who was in prison at the time of Rachel’s murder), also took a turn at heaping mental and physical abuse on the hapless girl.
The torture took the form of beatings with a baseball bat the family called “Mr. Woody,” and a piece of wood they dubbed “Captain Plank.” The family abused Rachel in less creative ways by shaving her head, slugging her with fists, burning her with cigarettes, and throwing her down a flight of stairs. Once she was stabbed through the feet.
She was so abused, that when authorities found Rachel’s body wrapped in a carpet and dumped on the grounds of Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of the poet Lord Byron, they thought at first she was a Chinese man.
Rachel was also made to write letters to her family and make a video where she admitted to enjoying being a prostitute, stealing from her husband, cheating on him, and neglecting her children.
Of course, none of that was true, but it did give authorities their only inkling into a semi-rational motive — the Hudson family was on welfare and wanted the additional money that custody of Rachel’s children would bring.
“They demeaned her, they insulted her,” said Tim Spenser, QC, who prosecuted the case. “Her will was sapped and her spirit crushed.”
Sentencing the family to various terms of imprisonment for their roles in the crime, Mr. Justice Anthony Hughes described a more base motive:
“She was set upon by the pack, and I have no doubt that each of you was egged on by what the others did,” he said. “You simply destroyed a young woman of 20 with two babies, who should have had her whole life before her.”
Rachel’s grandmother explained why her family did not take action to save her.
“Why didn’t I go over there? But we didn’t know it was going on. We had no idea,” said Doreen Peacock. “You tend to think she is a grown woman, she has got a life to lead, you can’t always be intervening in it.”
The Hudson clan took great pains to make sure Rachel’s kin didn’t know what was happening.
“They took her phone, they took her shoes, fastened her in the bedroom so she couldn’t get out,” Doreen told the press. “There was nothing she could do — and nothing we could do because we didn’t know.”
At one point Craig Hudson specifically warned Rachel’s father not to try to contact her.
The crime began in late October 2002 when Rachel met Craig at a Nottingham fair. Rachel had recently had a baby, but her relationship with the baby’s father cooled and Craig picked her up on the rebound. A whirlwind romance resulted in a November 2002 wedding. Rachel’s parents did not attend the wedding, reportedly because the Hudsons were “hassling them about money.”
Eventually Rachel had another baby by Craig, and the couple tried to leave against the wishes of Ronald Sr. and Trudi, whom the court described as “devious and manipulating.”
The older Hudsons were a controlling, violent couple who “kept a tight rein on their 12 children and disliked outsiders,” Spencer said. “Trudi and Ronald did not even have a bedroom, such was their desire to keep their children in the house.”
When Rachel moved in, she quickly became the target of Ronald Sr.’s rage.
“My dad made out that she fancied all my other brothers,” one of the Hudson children not connected to the crime said. “She just wanted to be a mum to her two kids, but they wouldn’t let her. My dad used to put out cigarettes on photos of her children.”
Rachel became known among the family as “slagbag.”
In November 2003 Rachel’s father received a text message from her saying that the Hudsons had stolen her shoes and that she could not go out. It was the last time he heard from her.
Sometime around the New Year, Rachel Hudson’s body simply gave out. In the last 48 hours of her life Rachel received some 33 distinct injuries on top of her existing wounds. The pathologist conducting the autopsy also counted another 27 were caused more than two weeks before she died. As she lay in the bathtub, she suffered a seizure from an untreated brain injury and died.
“She couldn’t walk and she couldn’t talk,” Emile Hudson told the Nottingham Evening Post in 2006. “I couldn’t stand to stay in that house. When I went in again, the house was noisy. I went upstairs to my bedroom to play on the computer.”
Emile talked to the Evening Post in an attempt to sell his story for £2,000. The newspaper rejected his offer.
After Rachel died the family dressed her and wrapped the body in a carpet which was left at the top of the stairs for several hours while Ronald Sr. drove around trying to find a place to dump the body. After the body was left at the Abbey, the Hudson clan worked furiously to cover up the crime. They painted the house from cellar to attic and subjected the family’s Vauxhaull Vectra to a vigorous cleaning.
“By the time we finished there was no trace of anything,” Emile said.
Rachel’s body was found the next day and police began their investigation. Once they realized that they weren’t dealing with the murder of a young Chinese boy, authorities quickly honed in on the Hudsons, who stonewalled the police. The family produced a letter purportedly sent from Rachel said that she wanted the Hudsons to have custody of them while she left with another man.
Police would have none of that and increased their pressure on the family. As the runaway story lost its veracity, the Hudson clan made up the story that Ronald Jr was mentally ill and had killed Rachel while in a blackout.
“Everyone was scared of him,” Emile maintained long after the ruse was up. “He controlled the entire family. He gave Rachel a countdown to live as her death got closer and closer. He used to say ‘You have 5 days to live’ and stuff like that.”
Junior went along with the idea and checked in to Queen’s Medical Centre in a desperate attempt to create the illusion of insanity.
Police, however, built up a solid case of a murder conspiracy by tracking the family’s cellphone use on the night Rachel’s body was dumped, and through trace evidence on her body that was linked to carpet in the Hudson house. That evidence, combined with recorded phone calls between Craig and his imprisoned brother, Shane, that disclosed a discussion of the violent acts resulted in murder charges against the family.
After a two-month trial, Craig, the two Ronalds, Trudi, and Elizabeth Hogg were convicted of murder.
When the verdicts were returned, Ronald Sr. swore at the jury, and Shane, who was acquitted of murder but convicted of conspiracy, smiled and wished the gallery a Merry Christmas.