I CAME FACE TO FACE WITH THE KILLER OF MY TWIN

Brother tells of meeting with murderer

- By BEN HASLAM

SIMON Dawson was brutally killed in a horrific attack that sent ripples across the community in Wirral in 1998.

The computer programmer had been on a night out with friends in Bromborough when he was separated and became lost walking home in Brotherton Park, Spital.

He approached two young men as he tried to navigate his way to a friend's house near to Spital train station but just hours later he was found floating in a pond. The 30-year-old had been badly beaten and then drowned.

Simon's identical twin brother Nick was in Cumbria with his wife Jules when he received a phone call to say he needed to return to his mum and dad's home near Chester.

In the weeks that followed, Nick, now 56, was involved in various televised appeals and reconstructions to help find those responsible for the brutal murder of his beloved brother.

It was 10 days before Nick received a phone call from Merseyside Police to tell him two men had been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Speaking to the ECHO ahead of the 27th anniversary of the death and release of his book, Nick said: "Simon was the life and soul of the party, he was all about going out and having fun.

"As twins, we'd started to do different things. We were still very close but I'd settled down, I'd just got married and I was probably the more serious one of the two. He went out with three friends that night, went to a nightclub and had planned to stay with a friend.

"You didn't have mobile phones in those days so, we don't know how but he lost contact with his friends and walked out this nightclub alone in the early hours of Saturday, August 29, 1998, and he was lost."

Nick continued: "He asked those two young lads that he saw, and it was a tragic meeting. He asked which way to Spital and he was tricked. They said 'we're going that way' and Simon naively walked with them. He was subjected to this horrific attack.