Murder in the Graveyard

CHAPTER 4

The Confession

So far, I had only heard the Downing family’s version of events, which, understandably, was all very cosy and supportive. I now had to examine the official papers to get some perspective on this. If Stephen really was innocent, I could only help if I thoroughly understood his best lines of defence.

Jackie had collated a massive bundle of paperwork from the courts and other key sources relating to the case. Among them was the Home Office summary, which included his original, alleged confession taken down by the police.

The police confession was stark and distasteful and gave Jackie second thoughts about becoming involved with the case. I told her to stick with it and wait until we received Stephen’s documents with his version of events.

A copy of his confession was written down by officers on the night of the attack, dated 12 September 1973, and stated:

I don’t know what made me do it. I saw this woman walking in the cemetery. I went into the chapel to get the pickaxe handle that I knew was there. I followed her, but I hadn’t talked to her and she hadn’t talked to me, but I think she knew I was there.

I came right up to her near enough. I hit her twice on the head, on the back of the neck. I just hit her to knock her out. She fell to the ground and she was on her side, and then she was face down. I rolled her over and started to undress her. I pulled her bra off first. I had to pull her jumper up and I just got hold of it until it broke, and then I pulled her pants and her knickers off.

I started to play with her breasts and then her vagina. I put my middle finger up her vagina. I don’t know why I hit her, but it might have been to do with what I have just told you. But I knew I had to knock her out first before I did anything to her.

It was only a couple of minutes. I was playing with her and there was just a bit of blood at the back of her neck. So, I left her, went back to the chapel, got my pop bottle and went to the shop, and then went home to see my mother and asked her to get a bottle of pop for me because the shop was closed. I suppose I did that so that no one would find out I’d hit the woman.

I went back to the cemetery about 15 minutes later and went back to see the woman. She was lying on the ground the same way as I’d left her, but she was covered in blood on her face and on her back. I bent down to see how she was, and she was semi-conscious, just. She put her hands up to her face and just kept wiping her face with her hand. She had been doing that when I first knocked her down.

I went to the telephone kiosk to ring for the police and ambulance so that they would think someone else had done it and I’d just found her. I hadn’t any money, so I went to the Lodge and asked Wilf Walker if he was on the telephone, but he said he wasn’t. So, I told him what I’d supposed to have found. He came to have a look and then he went to ask these other blokes in a white van outside the cemetery if they had seen her, but they said they hadn’t, so one of them went to phone for the police. I just stayed because there was no place to go.

I noticed the immediate inconsistency with what Ray had told me about Wendy Sewell having moved when Stephen returned to the cemetery. There was no mention of this within his confession statement.

In stark contrast to his confession, I then received an interesting report from one of Stephen’s prison officers. It had been sent via a contact of mine at the Home Office. It related to a home visit Stephen had made to Bakewell six months previously, in March 1994 – the first time he had set foot back in the town since his trial almost exactly 20 years before.

Downing had been accompanied by prison officer Clive Tanner, who commented, ‘He coped very well. There were a lot of people there who knew him before and were coming up to him and greeting him. It came across as very strange to me how in a small community, where I assume a murder only takes place possibly once every hundred years, when the offender returns he is warmly welcomed by a great deal of the local people. Maybe there is something in the point he is trying to make about not being guilty.’

A copy of the trial judge’s summary then arrived from Nottingham Crown Court. I had told Jackie to ask for a full transcript, but was informed there wasn’t one, which I found strange. A check with the court clerk confirmed that no full record of the trial existed. As a result, all I could do was work from the judge’s summing up.

The Honourable Mr Justice Nield began his summing up on 15 February 1974. He reminded the jury of their duty, pointing out that Downing, who was soon to have his eighteenth birthday, had a ‘perfectly clean record’.

They were informed that manslaughter did not arise, because ‘it is agreed that this unfortunate woman was murdered’. He explained, ‘The issue is whether the Crown has proved it was this man who committed that murder.’

Turning to Stephen’s confession he continued, ‘One of the main planks of the prosecution case is the statement made by the accused and signed over and over again.’

He stressed that the prosecution had to establish that the statement had been ‘voluntarily made’ and ‘accurately recorded’, and went on to explain, ‘If the jury thought there had been oppression, any improper conduct by the police to induce this young man to make a statement, or to threaten him if he did not that such and such things would happen, then the statement is valueless.’

While there was much to pore over in the judge’s summing up, the most striking contradictions between Stephen’s confession and the prosecution case were found in the medical and scientific evidence presented by the prosecution.

At 2.40 Mrs Sewell reached Chesterfield Royal Hospital. Mr Stillman, the surgeon, found multiple lacerations of the skull, and an X-ray confirmed there were fractures. Doctor Usher, the pathologist, performed a post-mortem examination on 15 September, the day after this woman died, and he found ten lacerations to the skull as if she had been violently assaulted by someone using the pickaxe handle. He took the view there must have been at least seven or eight or more violent blows and, whoever did it, would seem to have been in a frenzied state.

The judge pointed out that several witnesses had described Stephen Downing as ‘calm and cool, certainly not frenzied’ just moments after he was supposed to have carried out the attack. One witness, however, PC Ball, the first policeman to the scene, had not regarded him as cool. He had said, ‘He was very excited. I told him to calm down.’ This contradicted the evidence of other witnesses, who had seen nothing abnormal in Stephen’s demeanour.

The judge turned to a report that the prosecution case relied upon heavily. It was written by Mr Norman Lee, a Home Office forensics expert. Mr Lee’s evidence concerned the bloodstaining on Stephen’s clothing and on the pickaxe handle, the murder weapon. He said:

There were stains on his trousers on the knees where he might have kneeled, and on the front of the trousers mainly on the lower legs. There were also a large number of splashes and heavy smears.

There was some blood on the right leg as high as the thighs. He said these stains would have been visible to the people in the cemetery. In addition, there were small spots of blood on his T-shirt and his gloves. An examination of Stephen’s boots showed a lot of smears and small spots of blood, mainly at the front.

Stephen claimed at trial that, after finding Mrs Sewell, he knelt down and turned her over, whereupon she raised herself up and began to shake her head violently. That was the explanation, he said, for the blood on his clothes.

Mr Lee conceded that the blood on the boots ‘might arise from somebody getting up from his knees and pressing on his toes on the ground’. He also went on to say that ‘the blood-staining on the clothes, some of it, is consistent with someone turning over the body’.

However, the very small spots and splashes found on the clothes, boots and gloves were not consistent with turning someone over. And he did not accept Stephen’s explanation that the small spots of blood flew on to his clothing from her head and long hair as she violently shook her head about.

He said, ‘I cannot imagine how you could get splashings as small as those in the way Downing is suggesting,’ and added, ‘If she had flung herself about, then for such tiny spots a lot of energy must have been applied.’ His preferred explanation was that the spots came from Mrs Sewell being beaten, ‘and the harder you hit, the smaller the spot of blood’.

This was a complicated yet very vital point. I read and reread it to make sure I understood his argument. Norman Lee seemed to be saying that violent force produces a spray of blood, which would appear as tiny, almost microscopic spots, on any surface hit by this spray, such as clothing.

He did not believe Wendy Sewell could have shaken her head so violently as to produce these minute spots found on Stephen’s clothing. He claimed they must have come from the blows of the pickaxe handle.

I could not see why Norman Lee was so sure. When cross-examined, he repeated that she could not have shaken her head so violently as to produce that result.

And yet it was not only Stephen who had described the victim thrashing around in an aggressive manner. The judge pointed out that the senior ambulanceman, Clyde Bateman, who arrived on the scene had also reported that, on the journey to the hospital, ‘she became very restless, moving about a lot, throwing out her right arm all over the place, and his uniform was covered in blood but, according to that witness, she was not shaking her head’. And PC Ball told the court that ‘she resisted violently with her arm’.

Although the ambulanceman had not noticed her moving her head, I believed this might have been due to her worsening condition. Stephen found her just after the attack, whereas she was in the ambulance almost an hour later. She soon fell into a coma due to her head injuries, from which she never recovered.

Norman Lee said of the murder weapon, ‘The stains on the boots and lower legs of Downing’s trousers were similar in size and proportion to the stains on the pickaxe handle.’ He went on to conclude, ‘There was very probably a close relationship between the handle and this man’s trousers and boots, and I do not think this would come from offering succour. The boots and trousers were in close proximity when the deceased was battered.’

But doubt had been cast on Lee’s conclusions even before the trial. I had been rummaging through Ray Downing’s paperwork a few days previously and come across a forensic report written in January 1974. The contents were very dry and technical, and I had not realised its significance immediately. Now, as I retrieved it, there were things I urgently needed to check. The report, by Mr G.E. Moss of Commercial and Forensic Laboratories in Reading, had been written at the request of Stephen’s defence team.

Mr Moss examined the murder weapon and various other exhibits in the presence of Norman Lee and police officers.

He found the pickaxe handle heavily bloodstained at the thick end, the end used to hit the victim, while the handle end was smeared with blood.

He agreed with the pathologist, Mr Usher, that at least seven or eight violent blows had been struck. He pointed out that, therefore, this was inconsistent with Stephen’s confession.

I grabbed the Home Office summary of the case and turned again to the confession to double check. There it was in black and white: ‘I hit her twice on the head, on the back of the neck. I just hit her at the back of the head to knock her out.’ Two blows! The confession, relied on as the main plank of the prosecution case, contradicted the pathologist’s evidence – also used by the prosecution – on this vital detail.

I turned to Moss’s report again. The blood, he continued, ‘on the back of the gloves could only be seen through a microscope and was not visible to the naked eye’. PC Ball and a council workman, Herbert Dawson, maintained Stephen said he was wearing gloves when he turned Wendy over.

Stephen was adamant he never said this, and claimed he told them his gloves remained in his back pocket all along. It was one of many apparent inconsistencies that might have made the jury doubt his account. It seemed to me that if he had been wearing his gloves, they would have been soaked in blood considering the extent of Wendy’s injuries.

Mr Moss went on, ‘The pattern of staining on the front legs of the jeans is consistent with kneeling in blood. This would be consistent with Downing kneeling beside the body some time after the attack.’

Mr Moss was also confirming that the blood was congealed and not fresh when it reached Downing’s jeans. He went on, ‘I assumed the linear markings on the inside right leg were probably caused by rubbing against a bloodied surface, possibly a boot while in the act of getting up from a kneeling position.

‘The smears above knee level would also have been made by rubbing against a bloodied surface. Downing said he had turned the body over. If he did, the smearing might well have occurred at this time.’

Then I saw what I had really been looking for. It was in the matter of how the tiny spots and splashes of blood occurred that Mr Moss and Mr Lee differed most. Moss said, ‘The blood splashing on the clothes could have resulted from head shaking, as Downing got up from a kneeling position.’

He concluded that the bloodstaining overall was consistent with Downing’s version of events, including his assertion that there was a lot of blood about Wendy’s face and on the path. Again, he insisted the forensic evidence was not consistent with the version of events in Downing’s confession.

But there was no reference to Mr Moss’s report or conclusions within the judge’s summing up. I found it incredible that his evidence would not have been put before the jury.

Once again, I regretted the fact that a full trial transcript had not been located. It was so important to know whether Stephen’s defence team used this vital forensic evidence. From the papers available to me it suggested they had not, but I couldn’t be sure. And that was only one question among many that the judge’s summing up would leave me to ponder.

CHAPTER 5

The Witnesses

The scientific evidence had certainly given me plenty to consider, and the witness statements, as presented in the judge’s summing up, only posed more questions.

Mr Justice Nield described how several prosecution witnesses had claimed to have seen Wendy Sewell during the last walk of her life.

This grim story begins thus, does it not? Wendy Sewell, a young married woman, worked for the Forestry Commission at Bakewell. The Commission had an office in Catcliff House in Church Street, and the District Officer was Mr Osmaston.

At about 20 past noon Mr Osmaston was speaking on the telephone, and in came Mrs Sewell and handed him a note to say she was going out for a breath of fresh air.

Now that woman’s movements are followed meticulously, until she reaches the cemetery – you may say, perhaps, it is a tribute to the thoroughness of the investigations.

We learn from Mr Read of the Department of Employment in the same building that he saw this woman leave at about 12.40. It is clear that she made her way along Butts Road. Two joiners, Mr Lomas and Mr Bradwell, who were working in that road and were having lunch at that time, saw her … three, four or five minutes after she left the building … and they exchanged greetings.

At about 12.45 Mrs Hill, in a Land Rover, came up to the cemetery gates where she always turned her vehicle, and saw Mrs Sewell walking into the cemetery, and there was no one else about. At about 12.50 Mr Orange saw Mrs Sewell walking on Butts Road towards the cemetery, and they exchanged greetings.

And about the same time Mr Carman, who was near the telephone kiosk just outside the cemetery gates, said he saw Mrs Sewell through the fence walking along the back path in the cemetery, the path along Burton Edge.

At this point the judge stressed that the timings given by witnesses had to be viewed as approximate. He then turned to the movements of Stephen Downing.

About 1.08 Mr Wilfred Walker, who was the cemetery attendant and lived in the lodge by the main gates, saw the accused who walked out of the main gates with a pop bottle under his arm. He appeared to be perfectly normal – this young man was not hurrying. Mr Walker did not notice anything about his clothing.

The judge pointed out that the jury had heard from Stephen Downing saying that he had greeted Mr Walker and his wife, who were at the door of the lodge. Mr Walker denied any such exchange had taken place. He continued:

At about 1.15 Mr Walker saw the accused again. This time he was coming back to the main gates and there was no pop bottle with him.

Just before that time Mr Fox and Mr Hawksworth, workmen employed by the Urban District Council, had come into the cemetery in order to go to the store.

At 1.20, or thereabouts, the accused came to Mr Walker’s lodge. He seemed very calm. Mr Walker said, ‘He asked if I was on the telephone. I said, “No, what is the matter?” He said there was a woman who had been attacked in the cemetery. I asked where she was. I went with him and he kept pointing down there.’