by Odell, Robin
George Jones, who had convictions for burglary and housebreaking, took three days to die in hospital. During that time, he made a dying declaration. He said that he had met Adams but could not understand why he wanted to stab him: “I have done nothing to him,” he said. He confirmed the presence of the mysterious Charlie Smith.
William Adams was tried for murder at Guildford Assizes. The jury found him guilty but, possibly believing him to be feeble-minded, added a recommendation to mercy. The sentence of death passed on him was commuted to life imprisonment by the Home Secretary.
CHAPTER 5
Justice Delayed
Several high-profile murder cases have been solved in recent times after having lain dormant for long periods. This has been due to a combination of factors such as the re-examination of crime-scene evidence under cold-case reviews and the benefits of groundbreaking advances in DNA technology.
The murder of elderly Hilda Murrell in 1984 made big headlines but lapsed into an investigation mired in conspiracy theory. The solution which emerged eighteen years later from a cold-case review aided by DNA evidence, proved to be a killing as a result of a bungled burglary.
The death of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in 1992 also seized the headlines. The investigation into her murder faltered on bungled procedure and was finally resolved in 2008 after a cold-case review, again aided by DNA evidence, pointed the finger of guilt at a man already convicted of rape and murder.
Thirty-two years was the time delay in solving the murder of eleven-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975. This was another high-profile case which led to a miscarriage of justice when Stefen Kisko was wrongly convicted of murder and served fifteen years imprisonment before his innocence was established. The forensic sample collected at the crime scene, which proved Kisko’s innocence, ironically, also led to the identification of Ronald Castree as the real killer after a further fifteen years had lapsed.
The elements of delayed justice in such cases serve many purposes, not least in demonstrating that crimes will be pursued resolutely for the benefit of society. There is also the benefit of closure for the families of victims and satisfaction for those working in the many disciplines charged with implementing investigative procedures.
More important than capturing the guilty perhaps, is freeing the innocent. The processes involved are often very similar. In the case of “The Cardiff Three”, new developments in DNA techniques applied to crime-scene evidence collected nine years previously irrevocably confirmed their innocence. This was vindication after they had been released from prison sentences based on unsafe convictions. A bonus for the judicial system was that a re-examination of the original evidence led, via the national DNA database, to identification of the murderer. This process took thirteen years.
While DNA has become an indispensable part of the crime-scene matrix, there are other powerful factors at work that serve the cause of justice. One of these is the nationwide scope of the news media and the part played by public information. Television programmes such as Britain’s “Crimewatch” and “America’s Most Wanted” stir memories of things seen and heard which can provide vital investigative clues. Eighteen years after he had murdered his family, John List was recognized by a member of the public from a description broadcast on US television. Thus was the murderer of five brought to justice.
Another American fugitive from justice was Ira Einhorn who remained on the run for twenty-five years. He was tracked down in Europe due to the vigilance of the international justice system. He too eventually faced the consequences of his crime. Ronald Jebson was on the run for thirty years before he was brought to book for the “Babes in the Woods” murders. Jebson was a dangerous paedophile with a string of offences but it took investigators three decades to put all the pieces in place and secure a confession.
Sometimes the truth emerges too late to confront the perpetrator. The murder of Rita Sawyer in 1970 was solved twenty-nine years later by a cold-case review of DNA evidence which established the killer’s identity. Although investigators had solved the case, they failed to bring the murderer to justice. He defeated them by dying before he could be confronted with his guilt.
Freeing the innocent is not always possible due simply to the passage of time. The young soldier convicted of killing Nellie Trew in 1918 was wrongly judged and, over eighty years later, a fresh analysis of the evidence showed that another man was the likely murderer. While such cases alter nothing, they show that the drive to achieve justice, no matter how long delayed, is an unending and worthwhile quest.
No Conspiracy
The murder of seventy-eight-year-old Hilda Murrell in 1984 raised a storm of controversy alleging involvement of British intelligence services and a cover-up. The reality of the elderly rose-grower’s death, when it was revealed eighteen years later, proved to be rather more mundane, although no less tragic.
Hilda Murrell was a spinster who lived on her own near Shrewsbury and was well known for her successful participation in local and national flower shows. The fact that she was an active campaigner in CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) won her a reputation as being mildly eccentric.
On 21 March 1984, she was abducted from her home and, three days later, her partly-clothed body was found six miles away on Haughmond Hill. She had been repeatedly stabbed and there were semen traces on her body. Police discovered that her telephone had been tampered with and the initial presumption was that she had been killed by a burglar in a crime that had gone tragically wrong. This view was supported by evidence that her house had been systematically searched and there was evidence of a struggle having taken place.
When the dead woman’s involvement in anti-nuclear campaigning came to light, conspiracy theories began to emerge. Speculation increased when it was learned that her nephew had served with naval intelligence during the Falklands War. Theorists had a field day with the idea that the elderly lady was killed by agents looking for hidden documents about the sinking of the Argentine battleship, General Belgrano.
The inquest into Hilda Murrell’s death concluded that the most probable cause was hypothermia. In December 1984, the Coroner returned a verdict of unlawful killing and West Mercia police stuck to their view that she had been the victim of a random burglary.
Speculation about the death of the rose-grower continued over the ensuing years and became something of a cause célèbre. New developments in DNA testing were to be applied to forensic traces collected at the crime scene. Questions were asked in Parliament and the Home Secretary acknowledged that new DNA tests would be carried out.
In April 2002, West Mercia police launched a cold-case review in the hope of clearing up the unresolved matter of Hilda Murrell’s death. Apart from the DNA evidence, the police had fingerprints and a footprint that had possibly been left by the killer.
This intensive re-examination of evidence led the police to Andrew George, a thirty-seven-year-old labourer who, at the time of the murder, was sixteen years old. Semen traces at the crime scene matched George’s DNA profile. He was arrested in June 2003.
George was tried for murder at Stafford Crown Court in April 2005. He protested his innocence. The prosecution argued that he broke into Hilda Murrell’s home and was disturbed when she returned. She was a feisty women, despite her age, and probably grappled with the intruder. After sexually assaulting her and attacking her with a knife, he drove to the spot where her body was dumped. The DNA match proved George’s guilt and the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. He was distraught and abusive when the verdict was announced. Mr Justice Wakerley sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Pleased at the outcome and vindicated in their original assessment, West Mercia police acknowledged that the case would have been solved more quickly had modern DNA techniques been available at the time. As it was, it was open to the free rein of wild conspiracy theories which consumed acres of newsprint.
Kill, And Kill Again
The murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common i
n the UK in July 1992 was finally solved in 2008 when a serial rapist and murderer confessed to the crime. This followed a controversial police investigation involving a false accusation and bitter recriminations.
Twenty-three-year-old Rachel Nickell was walking with her young son on Wimbledon Common on 15 July 1992 when she was subjected to a frenzied knife attack. Her assailant stabbed her forty-nine times before getting clean away. She was found dead with her two-year-old son clinging to her body.
News of the murder committed in a public park in London that was frequented by many people for recreational purposes caused outrage and demands for action. A massive investigation was mounted and psychological profiling was used as a means of identifying the type of individual likely to carry out such a crime. A number of likely attributes were suggested. These included a fascination for sadistic sex and an urge to seek domination over women. It was thought such a person would be a low social achiever and probably living alone close to the murder location.
A profile based on these considerations was aired by the BBC’s “Crimewatch” programme in September 1992 and photofit images of two men seen on Wimbledon Common on the day of the murder were screened. Following the programme, four viewers called the police to say they recognized the man in one of the photofits as Colin Stagg.
Thirty-one-year-old Stagg lived at Roehampton and admitted being on Wimbledon Common with his dog on the day Rachel Nickell was murdered. Many of his personal characteristics seemed to match those of the psychological profile. This influenced the police in setting up an unprecedented undercover operation – a so-called “honey trap”. A policewoman befriended Colin Stagg and attempted, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to draw him into making a murder confession.
Despite the failure of this strategy, Stagg was charged with the Wimbledon Common murder in August 1993. His trial at the Old Bailey in the following year collapsed when Mr Justice Ognall ruled that the prosecution evidence was inadmissible. The police were criticized for attempting to manipulate a suspect and trap him into self-incrimination. Colin Stagg was declared innocent and discharged. He was subsequently awarded over £700,000 in damages.
Running parallel with the enquiry into the murder of Rachel Nickell was an investigation into the activities of a serial rapist in southeast London. It would take sixteen years before the two enquiries converged to produce a common suspect.
In May 1992, a few weeks before Nickell was murdered, a young woman out with her child was raped in Eltham. This was one in a series of attacks in which a rapist targeted young women and which culminated in murder in November 1993. Samantha Bisset and her young daughter were killed in their home at Plumstead by an intruder. The four-year-old had been raped and suffocated while her mother was subjected to a frenzied knife attack.
DNA found at the Plumstead murder scene matched forensic traces left by the serial rapist during his earlier attacks. He was identified as Robert Napper, aged forty-two, a man with a history of mental problems. He had also been identified by two members of the public who recognized him from photofit images compiled from victims’ descriptions of the rapist.
Napper, it seemed, had led a charmed life. When questioned by the police, his failure to provide a blood sample was not followed up and he was eliminated from enquiries because he did not match the height of the suspect rapist. A search of his bedsit turned up a pistol, ammunition, knives and documents, which suggested a sinister agenda. He was given an eight-week custodial sentence for firearms offences.
Two years later, he was charged with the Bisset murder on the basis of DNA evidence. Even then, with striking similarities between this murder and that of Rachel Nickell, the crimes were still being treated as separate enquiries. In October 1995, Napper admitted the murders of Samantha Bisset and her daughter and, in addition, acknowledged two attempted rapes and one actual rape. He was committed to Broadmoor high-security hospital.
Forty-two-year-old Napper had a history of psychiatric illness from an early age. He committed his first criminal offence in 1986 and, three years later, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with a tendency towards delusions. By the time the police started to connect Napper with the Wimbledon Common murder, he had been in Broadmoor for nine years.
In 2004, as the result of a cold-case review, the police made the connection between Napper and the murder of Rachel Nickell. At his trial in 2008, he pleaded guilty to diminished responsibility manslaughter and he was returned to spend the rest of his days in Broadmoor.
The fall-out from the trial was considerable. The police admitted errors in the handling of evidence, which had left Napper free to continue his violent attacks and, in particular, to commit the murder of Rachel Nickell. A public apology was offered to Colin Stagg, acknowledging that he had been wrongly accused of murder. Rachel Nickell’s family also received apologies for failures in police procedure, which had left Napper at liberty to kill again.
Matching DNA
The murderer of a young girl was convicted by DNA evidence thirty-two years after the crime was committed. In the meantime, an innocent man, wrongly imprisoned, spent fifteen years behind bars.
Eleven-year-old Lesley Molseed left her family home in Rochdale, Lancashire, UK on a shopping errand on 5 October 1975. She did not return and her body was found four days later on isolated moorland between Oldham and Halifax. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed.
An intense police investigation resulted in the arrest of Stefan Kisko on suspicion of murder in December 1975. He was a man of low mental age who worked as a clerk and lived with his mother. During questioning, he confessed to killing the child. Kisko was tried at Leeds Crown Court in July 1976, found guilty of murder and jailed for life.
Kisko’s mother mounted a fierce campaign protesting his innocence and his conviction was quashed on appeal in 1992. It was clear that Kisko could not have committed the murder because he was infertile, while forensic traces gathered at the time from the dead child’s clothing including semen containing sperm. Stefan Kisko, the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice, was released from prison after serving fifteen years and he died two years later.
In 2005, fifty-three-year-old Ronald Castree, a local man, who lived in the same area as the Molseed family, came under public scrutiny. He had been convicted of abducting and assaulting a nine-year-old child months after Lesley Molseed’s murder. Thirty years after the event, he gave a DNA sample following an alleged sex attack on a woman in Oldham. As a matter of course, this sample was computed with forensic material from other cases. Castree’s DNA proved to be an exact match with the semen traces found in 1975.
Castree was arrested and denied killing the girl, claiming that the DNA had been contaminated. Lesley Molseed died in an era before DNA profiling was possible but evidence from the crime scene preserved in a forensic laboratory provided retrospective proof of his guilt.
Tried for murder at Bradford Crown Court in November 2007, Castree heard that the odds against an error in the DNA evidence that linked him to the crime thirty-two years previously were described as a billion to one. He was convicted of a murder for which an innocent man was wrongly imprisoned and for which, no doubt, he believed he had escaped suspicion. Castree was convicted and sentenced to a minimum of thirty years’ imprisonment.
The Cardiff Three
In a case that made criminal history, a miscarriage of justice was corrected when Jeffrey Gafoor pleaded guilty to murder. In November 1990, at Swansea Crown Court, three men were convicted of the murder of Lynette White on evidence that was unsafe.
The Cardiff Three were Stephen Miller, Yusef Abdullahi and Anthony Paris. Along with two other men, they were charged with murdering twenty-two-year-old Lynette White, a sex worker who lived at Butedown in Cardiff’s docklands. On 14 February 1988, the young woman was found dead in her flat, the place where she took her clients. She had been savagely attacked. Her body bore fifty-seven stab wounds and her throat had been cut.
The trial was the largest
in British criminal history at that time. The prosecution agreed that Stephen Miller, the dead woman’s boyfriend, owed money to Abdullahi and Paris. They alleged that he needed her earnings to pay off the debt and when she declined to co-operate, they killed her. Lynette White had been a prostitute for three years, living and working in the murky sub-culture of the docklands. The miserable room in which she met her death bore ample evidence of the horrors enacted there. Traces of blood, hair, saliva and semen were collected, together with fingerprints.
Forensic tests on the three defendants all proved negative and each had an alibi. Convictions were secured on Miller’s confession, which he later retracted. Witnesses had seen a dark-haired man with blood on his hands near the murder scene. He disappeared and a photofit failed to produce a suspect. The Cardiff Three were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
There was considerable unease about the trial and the lack of convincing evidence. In December 1992, the Court of Appeal quashed the murder convictions in a landmark decision. Lord Taylor, the Lord Chief Justice, accused the police of using oppressive and bullying tactics in their interview with Miller and had taunted him when he repeatedly denied the accusations made against him. There were emotional scenes outside the court when the Cardiff Three, proven innocent, regained their freedom.
The final twist in the story came five years later. A campaigning journalist who had written a book about the case was convinced that a re-examination of the crime scene evidence would bear fruit, especially in light of new developments in DNA testing. Profiling of material collected at the crime scene in 1988 was found to give a partial match with the DNA of a fourteen-year-old boy on the national DNA database. This meant that the murderer was a close relative of the boy.