Final journey of top police chief

Funeral of former top policeman Jeff Meadows at Lytham Crematorium

Former Chief Supt Jeff Meadows, from Marton, died at Trinity Hospice at the age of 80 last month after a battle with prostate and bladder cancer.

His funeral took place at Lytham Crematorium yesterday morning.

Family, friends, and fellow police officers who gathered to pay their respects then headed to Fairhaven United Reformed Church for a celebration of his life.

Jeff Meadows, lead officer in the handless corpse case.

Mr Meadows worked as a butcher’s boy on Harrowside before joining the Blackpool Borough force in 1957.

He rose through the ranks to become one of the senior detectives responsible for cracking the infamous handless corpse’ mystery in 1979, when the body of drug dealer Martin Johnstone in a water-filled quarry in Eccleston, near Chorley.

It was a case that would lead to the discovery of a 90-person strong drug smuggling ring spanning from Australia to Asia, and five more murders carried out by contract killers.

Mr Meadows also took a lead role in the investigation into the murder of Judge William Openshaw, who was stabbed to death in the garage of his Garstang Road home, in Broughton, in 1981 by a man he had sentenced to borstal 13 years before.

In later life, Mr Meadows became a member of the Blackpool South Rotary Club, and was the chairman of the Superintendent Gerald Richardson Memorial Youth Trust.