Innocents

Copyright

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublisher Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Fourth Estate

This edition published in 1998

Copyright © 1997 Jonathan Rose, Steve Panter and Trevor Wilkinson

The right of Jonathan Rose, Steve Panter and Trevor Wilkinson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9781857028454

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008193270

Version: 2016-05-26

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

1 The Ghost of Christmas Past

2 Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread

3 Of Science and Pounding Feet

4 Needles in Haystacks

5 Bye Bye, Baby

6 Of Sugar and Spice

7 Stefan Ivan Kiszko

8 … And All Things Nice

9 Of Suits and Fear

10 Three Days

11 The Prosecution of Stefan Kiszko

12 Oliver Laurel

13 The Trial of Stefan Kiszko

14 Riding Two Horses

15 Innocence?

16 Prisoner 688837

17 The First Appeal

18 Prisoner 688837, Continued

19 A New Legal Team

20 Some of My Best Friends are Policemen

21 The Freeing of Stefan Kiszko

22 Who Killed Lesley Molseed?

23 Jesus in Heaven

Epilogue

About the Authors

About the Publisher

Prologue

The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble;

But every decent man is concerned if an innocent man is condemned.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE LES CARACTÈRES, DE QUELQUES USAGES

On 10 November 1949, 1-year-old Geraldine Evans was strangled to death, but it was not her father, Timothy, who tightened the ligature around the baby’s neck. Timothy Evans was executed for a crime he did not commit.

On 23 August 1961 Michael Gregsten was killed by a shot to the head, but is was not petty thief James Hanratty who pulled the gun’s trigger. James Hanratty was executed for a crime he did not commit.

On 5 October 1975, Lesley Molseed was abducted and stabbed to death. Stefan Kiszko was innocent of her murder. Stefan Kiszko was imprisoned for sixteen years, for a crime he did not commit.

The terrible price of innocence.

The twentieth century has produced a significant number of cases in which innocent men have been convicted of murderous crimes of great repugnance. At least two men, Evans and Hanratty, paid with their lives for miscarriages of justice.

Consideration of such miscarriages tends to focus, almost exclusively and with much justification, on the innocent man. But to follow this path is to ignore those other people, equally innocent of any wrongdoing, who pay a high price for the failings of others. The families of those guiltless men whose lives are decimated by the imprisonment (or execution) of their loved ones, who then give years to clear the innocent’s name. Iris Bentley, Anne Whelan, lives devoted to a single struggle. The victims are buried and forgotten to all but their relatives but how can they rest in peace whilst their killers live on unpunished? What rest is there today for the family of Michael Gregsten and the parents of Carl Bridgewater? And of Lesley Molseed?

Each time the scales of justice are unbalanced, by police misdemeanour, by inadequacies in the legal system or by the dishonesty of others, the implications extend far beyond the man or woman who has been wrongly convicted of the crime. Publicly there is criticism of ‘the System’, ‘the Police’ or ‘the Law’ but, as is evident from the case with which this book is concerned, such criticism has not resulted in positive change. Changes to systems have not eradicated miscarriages of justice, and there is little will to punish those who contribute to such miscarriages. The fact that innocent individuals, who have been convicted and punished for crimes they did not commit, have received compensation payments or pardons should bring little comfort to society, for each one of us remains at risk of wrongful accusation until the will for change and the momentum for change grow strong.

There lives today a man who took the life of Lesley Molseed. That he enjoys his liberty, his freedom and his life is cause enough to abhor the repercussions of the wrongful conviction of Stefan Kiszko. That he remains unpunished is reason enough for the family of Lesley Molseed to feel that justice has not been done. That he may kill again is quite sufficient for all to look at the case of Stefan Kiszko with anxiety and unease.

The Kiszko/Molseed case revealed painful truths about the inadequacies of the English legal system, and few of those truths have been adequately addressed more than twenty years after Kiszko was convicted. Many questions still remain unanswered:

 Why is there still no independent authority responsible for objective assessment of evidence prior to criminal charges being brought? Why has the procedure of ‘Old Style Committals’, whereby evidence may be assessed prior to Crown Court trial, been abolished, so that there are fewer, not more safeguards in place?

 The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 made failure to permit a suspect detained by the police access to a solicitor a ‘breach of the Codes of Practice’ which might render a confession inadmissible. Why, instead, did it not make it a mandatory requirement that such a suspect have legal representation, whereby any failure to provide such representation would render any confession obtained inadmissible?

 Why is the Court of Appeal still reluctant to make incompetence of counsel a valid ground of appeal?

 Why is there still no truly independent body to examine and take action on alleged miscarriages of justice?

This book is not about the innocence of Stefan Kiszko, nor the innocence of Lesley Molseed. It is not about the innocence of the families of that man and that child. It is about a series of events in 1975 and 1976 which destroyed the innocence of so many people.

And it should serve as a reminder that innocence remains a precious commodity, which can still be stolen.

As the twentieth century draws to a close, the innocents still suffer, the guilty still walk free.

CHAPTER ONE

The Ghost of Christmas Past

It was a snapshot of traditional Britain, Christmas Eve 1975. A small, neatly furnished room, its lighting dim, as if to enhance the atmosphere of peace. The green fir tree pointed symbolically heavenwards. Bedecked with tinsel and baubles, its myriad of fairy lights twinkled so much brighter in the half-gloom. Surrounded by gifts, brightly wrapped, unopened – as they would surely now remain. A solitary, poignant angel stood aloft, wings spread, embracing the scene below, gazing down, beatifically, upon the chair.

The chair. Where the man-child had sat until a few hours ago, staring at the presents with the same excitement he had shown as a young boy. His mother looked, without comprehension, at the vacant seat, as if staring upon some ancient royal throne. The king had gone, for surely he had been a king to her. Her only son, her only child. Her boy-child.

They had come for him earlier. Three wise men. Not kings, but surely men of power. He had risen from the chair, his massive frame dwarfing her, dwarfing them, but bent and stooped as if already shamed. Posing no threat, he had stood and listened, barely responsive to the words spoken.

‘Stefan Ivan Kiszko. I must caution you that you do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but that anything you say will be taken down and may be given in evidence against you.’

He had said nothing.

‘I would like you to accompany us to the police station at Rochdale.’

He had demurred, but for a moment only. Then he had nodded his bowed head. More of a shrug than a nod. He may have understood or he may not, but the nod was acquiescence and compliance, it was not agreement.

She had watched him leave with them. Leave the sanctuary of her home; leave the protection which she had always given him; leave the safety which their family had always afforded him. Now, for the first time, he was alone.

CHAPTER TWO

Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread

On the spindly legs of a frail 11-year-old girl, Lesley Molseed skipped down to the corner shop on a simple enough errand for her mother. She would return home from that errand one month later, in an oak coffin.

She was a tiny girl, barely four feet tall, and so small that, as her mother would later say, you could push her over with your finger. Perhaps it was her heart defect which had contributed to the child’s small stature. That Lesley had suffered ill health since birth was a fact of life with which she had already learned to cope. On days when she felt able to run a simple errand, like other children in the street, she was joyous, but Lesley also knew the torment of having to sit still by a window of her home, short of breath, watching other children playing tag or squabbling in the street. She had endured surgery for a faulty heart valve when only three years old, yet Lesley Susan Molseed was a cheerful, smiling, ordinary, happy child.

Her home, too, was not extraordinary. Her stepfather, Danny, was a working man, employed at an engineering factory where the vagaries of shift work meant that he had to work on Sundays. At seven forty-five he had put his head round the bedroom door, to see his sleeping stepdaughters Laura, aged 14, and Lesley, aged 11, before he left the house in Delamere Road, Rochdale, to catch the bus to work. It was not unusual for her mother to be washing in the kitchen of the family’s council-owned home – not unusual on any day, not unusual on Sunday, 5 October 1975.

An ordinary Rochdale family, with the man working and the mother attending to the household chores. But in the middle of her work, with one eye on the laundry and one on the cleaning and somehow still finding a free hand to cook the Sunday lunch, April remembered that they had run out of bread.

With six mouths to feed you cannot wait until the next trip to the supermarket, nor do you need to. Just ask one of the kids to nip round the corner to Ryders grocers’ shop, pick up a large loaf ‘and don’t dawdle coming back’. She shouted up to her daughter, ensconced in the bedroom she shared with sister Laura. They were doubtless listening to a Bay City Rollers record, whilst staring at a poster of the pop group both girls idolised. ‘Lel!’ came April’s cry, using the family’s name for Lesley. ‘Lel,’ shouted April for the second time, and then Lesley appeared, with her wide, tooth-filled grin, always eager to help, grasping the pound note in her tiny hand, Bay City Rollers tartan socks around those skinny legs, and shouting ‘Back soon mam’, the door slamming behind her. Clutching the money given to her as her reward for running the errand. Three pennies. Lel had wanted six, but her mother had haggled her down. It was really Freddie’s turn to go, according to the family’s errand rota, but he was at football practice. Lesley did not mind. She welcomed the chance to be outside when she was feeling well enough to take a walk. Perhaps the shopping expedition would give her an opportunity to spot Jinxy, her missing cat. She had accepted the lesser sum with her usual impish grin. And then she was gone.

It was 1 p.m.

This was an era, after John Kilbride, after Lesley-Ann Downey, after Pauline Read, after Keith Bennett, when parents sent their children out to play alone, without fear.

Dinner-time passed, with no bread on the table and no Lesley at the table. Sister Laura is sent out to look for her: traces her likely routes along Delamere Road and Birkdale Road, crossing Turf Hill Road and into Ansdell Road. Lesley is not at Ryders corner shop, nor at the Spar shop, nor is she at Margaret’s, the sweet shop on Broad Lane. Laura returns home. Brother Freddie joins the search, and when the two children can still find no trace of their sister, nor even anyone who has seen her, Freddie is sent to get Danny.

This was an era, before Susan Maxwell, before Caroline Hogg, before Sarah Harper, when mothers sent their children to corner shops, without concern.

Freddie finds Danny, his day’s work as a maintenance electrician at an end, in the Plough public house, playing darts. The game is abandoned. Lesley is still not home, she has been gone for one and a half hours.

It had taken a far shorter time for Lesley to disappear. She had found Ryders closed, and had cut along a narrow dirt-path between Buersil Avenue and Ansdell Road, her navy-blue canvas shopping bag with the yellow Tweety Pie motif hanging from her bone-thin arm. She wore a blue coat with a white synthetic fur-lined hood, which she pulled over her head. Underneath, a blue woollen jumper, a red and white T-shirt, a pink skirt and brown shoes, and those blue and white hooped and tartan socks, emblazoned with the name of her heroes, the Bay City Rollers. She was heading for the Spar shop on Ansdell Road, but she never arrived there.

It must have taken only seconds for Lesley to cross the short pathway, but in the few strides between Ryders and the Spar she was intercepted. Lesley Molseed was a quiet, shy and home-loving girl, well-disciplined by her parents not to talk to strangers. It was also true that Lesley was both vulnerable and suggestible. Robert Whittaker, Lesley’s teacher at High Birch School was later to give his assessment of her mental age as being ‘about 6’, and he was to add his ominous opinion that ‘She would have gone off with someone if they had approached her in the manner that suited her.’ So what alluring bait was used by the man who took her? Did he tempt the child with sweets, or with the promise that he could help her find the missing Jinxy?

Of this Danny Molseed was then, of course, unaware. Alerted to Lesley’s out-of-character disappearance he is swiftly out of the house again, searching. April Molseed had at first been vexed that her youngest child had ignored her directive to return quickly from the simple errand. Then, as the minutes passed, she grew ever more fretful for the girl’s safety. By the time an hour had passed, her anxiety had become feverish, so that Danny’s eventual return was to a woman verging on panic.

Danny Molseed was determined to bring Lesley home. In his own mind, indignation dominated. Unable to conceive that harm would come to her, he walked the route she had earlier taken. Surely she had become distracted, seen a friend, stopped to play, seen a cat and thought that it was Jinxy, and followed it away. He passed Ryders and turned on to the dirt path. Walking firmly, but unhurriedly, he paced towards Ansdell Road, calling her name, ever more strongly. As the ideas in his mind revolved to thoughts more sinister, to fears more real, the steps became shorter and the voice became a shout, until he was running running running, shouting Lesley Lesley LESLEY. In to every house along the lane, he demanded ‘Have you seen her?’ ‘Is she here?’ ‘Did she go past?’ ‘A little girl in a raincoat?’ but there was no reply to help him. At the end of the path he was greeted by an empty Ansdell Road: there was no sign of her.

Phone calls to the police brought an immediate response but no results. Julie Molseed, Lesley’s older sister, came to the family home which she herself had left some eight months earlier, to live with her natural father after friction had developed between her, April and Danny. Now she was pregnant by her boyfriend James Hind, and they were planning to return to the Turf Hill Estate. The family gathered round in a show of collective security, collective strength, collective fear.

Danny ventured out again, believing that he and only he would find this child and bring her safely home. By daylight and by night he searched, alone or with others. No anxious father could have done more, still thinking first ‘I’ll tan her hide when I get her home’ and then, ‘Dear God let her be safe.’

The police search extended across the estate and the surrounding area. Photographs of the missing child were shown, and residents and passers-by were questioned. At the same time, news of the little girl’s disappearance spread, along with tales of suspicious men in vans and cars loitering where local children met and played, trying to entice them into their vehicles.

As the police searched and Danny searched, small armies of neighbours and friends formed to play their own part, a spontaneous gathering of volunteers taking to the streets, with fear for the child and empathy for the family their only motivations. The armies became swollen, until scores of people were engaged in the chaotic and frantic covering of the streets and snickets.

A cluster of sightings was reported. Once those obviously not of Lesley were discounted, attention turned to the more likely reports. Julie Molseed ignored her heavily pregnant state to join her boyfriend and their friends in scouring the streets. Two of those friends, Steven Scowcroft and Brian Statham used their motorbikes to add speed and efficiency to the search.

At 8.30 p.m. Julie returned to her mother’s home to telephone her father, Frederick Anderson, to break the news of Lesley’s disappearance, and to assure him that she would keep him informed. Then Julie stepped back, whilst police officers spoke to April with delicacy and tact, prying into the family’s background, squeezing out details of the missing child’s character, habits and behaviour. Who were her friends? Where might she go? Was there any reason they could think of why Lesley might not return.

The police instituted a discreet search of the house, to ensure that the child was not, somehow, hidden there. It would not be the first time that a report had been made of a missing child, when in truth the child was trapped, hidden or even killed within the home, and the body secreted there. April confirmed that Lesley had not taken a change of clothing with her, and thus provided a complete answer to any suggestion that the little girl’s failure to return was voluntary.

By 10 p.m. there was widespread and serious concern. The police officers’ street searches had now condensed into house-to-house enquiries, looking for the child, looking for clues, looking for answers. At 11 p.m. the police called on John Conroy, Danny Molseed’s best friend, at his home on Neston Road. Alerted of Lesley’s disappearance, Conroy and his wife went immediately to their friends, where they joined a further search party of friends and neighbours which remained out on the streets until 4 a.m. the following day.

The night slowly passes. The younger children are put to bed, unaware of high drama and mounting fear. But there is no sleep for the parents, their minds filled with thoughts of Lesley, and of how she could never cope with being away from her family all night. She would certainly be unable to spend a night outdoors. Each tries to comfort the other, but true optimism is in short supply. Sunday runs into Monday.

At dawn, the police resume their searches, governed by routines honed by experience, experience which usually brings results. They are joined by community members who do not have to work that day, and even some who have elected not to go to work so that they can assist. The search is extended beyond the strict limits of the estate, to wasteland and farmland which border it, and to abandoned freezers and fridges where a body might be hidden. That evening, the expertise of the local youth was brought to bear, when club leader Dennis Wilkinson asked the youths to search those – mainly secluded – areas where they might sometimes go, including Kays Field, derelict houses and garages of the Deeplish and Ashfield Valley areas, and numerous hidden spots where young people wanting privacy would sometimes disappear. This fruitless search continued until 2 a.m. the following day.

The estate rumour machine continued to grind out its seemingly endless ribbon of tales, of men in vehicles on the estate trying to entice young children into their cars, of indecent exposure and of attacks on lone women. These tales, inevitable consequences of a crisis in such a close-knit community, served only to heighten the fears of the Molseed family. And as the tales spread, so did the fear, so that other families watched their children with more than usual care, and an orchestrated curfew was imposed on local children. The searchers, whilst concentrating on their primary task of finding the child, now looked equally for the suspicious or out-of-the-ordinary. Find Lesley; protect the children. These were the priorities under which the Turf Hill Estate was now operating.

Day three: no sign, no word, and it is hard, even for optimists, to believe. All but the occupants of Delamere Road have given up hope. ‘Any news?’ the neighbours ask, or turn their heads to avoid having to frame that question, hear the reply, see the shaking head, notice the tired face and ragged looks that speak the words that no one dares to say.

Fred Anderson had arrived at the Delamere Road house on Monday morning, and he and April were to remain there throughout, neither wanting to take the chance of missing some news. Each member of the household is eager to reassure the others, but the ticking of the clock accompanies the growing fear that, unbelievably, this tiny child may not be seen again. That thought remains unspoken, but by Tuesday night such optimism as had once existed is strained to its limits.

Inevitably, the police operation was starting to wind down, although a police officer remained with the family throughout. The search was being downscaled, as all possible locations had been covered, every street searched, every house visited. The mobile loudspeakers stopped blaring Lesley’s description, and the enquiry incident room was moved to Rochdale Police Station, away from the immediate vicinity of the estate. The incident room’s role as the centre of a missing person enquiry was gradually being changed in anticipation of it being needed for an enquiry of a different kind.

Incredibly, Danny Molseed still walks and searches and asks. But as Tuesday reaches midnight, he and the neighbours and friends who have walked, unstintingly, since Sunday, looking for new areas to search, new stones to turn, come together and agree to meet the following morning to regroup and resume. With the thanks of the Molseed family in their ears and their hearts, they head off for much needed sleep.