A CROWDFUNDING campaign to raise money for a memorial bench remembering murdered newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater, who was killed 40 years ago today, has reached its target.

Adrian Goodaker, a childhood friend of 13-year-old Carl who was shot dead at Yew Tree Farm near Wordsley on September 19, 1978, launched an online appeal to raise £1,000 to buy a bench in memory of the murdered schoolboy whose shocking death has never been forgotten.

Donations flooded in for the online fundraising appeal – and the target has now been reached as friends and family of the teenager, whose life was so brutally and tragically cut short while delivering newspapers, remember him 40 years on.

Mr Goodaker said: “I think about this young man often and poignantly because I myself should have had the paper round. I was offered the round by my best friend at the time, Jon Hanson, who was giving up the round. Having gone out with Jon to experience the round I declined to take it on and our mutual and dear friend Carl took it on.

“Carl was a wonderful young man who would have grown into a beautiful loving soul but was brutally snatched away at just 13-years-old delivering newspapers for a little pocket money.”

He recalls playing “care free” on their adjoining front gardens and the surrounding area – playing games like Rally 123, TAG, Spotlight, Piggyback Fighting, describing the days as “wonderful innocent childhood times, so cruelly snatched away”.

Mr Goodaker says having consulted with Carl’s parents he hopes to have the memorial bench sited within the grounds of Himley Hall – “hopefully overseeing the lake in which Carl spent much time practising and honing his sailing skills”.

Any excess funds donated through the campaign will be donated to a charitable cause chosen by Carl’s parents, he said.

The horrific murder of Carl remains unsolved after four long decades.

Four men, who became known as the Bridgewater Four, were initially tried and found guilty of the crime, but after almost two decades in prison their convictions were overturned.

In 2016 - following the airing of explosive TV documentary Interview with a Murderer - local MPs called on Staffordshire Police and the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, to re-open the case but police later confirmed they would not be revisiting the investigation as no new evidence had come to light.

The documentary, screened on Channel 4, saw Birmingham City University criminologist Professor David Wilson face off with former suspect Bert Spencer.

A former ambulance officer who spent 15 years in jail for the shotgun killing of friend Hubert Wilkes, Spencer admitted on camera that his whereabouts for the day of the murder could not be corroborated but he vociferously denied killing the schoolboy.