The Guilty Mother

by Diane Jeffrey

  I looked my barrister in the eye and said, ‘I’ll stay put. For now.’

  Chapter 17

  The Redcliffe Gazette

  Melissa Slade: Gross Miscarriage of Justice?

  New facts suggest wrongful murder conviction

  J.Hunt

  Thurs 5 July 2018

  Life Sentence

  Melissa Slade, a former police officer currently serving a life sentence for the murder of her baby Ellie, may soon be released. Mrs Slade’s first appeal, in November 2014, was unsuccessful, but her case has recently been referred back to the appeal court after it emerged that strong evidence pointing to Mrs Slade’s innocence was not disclosed to her defence team at the time of her trial.

  The Twins

  Baby Amber died tragically and unexpectedly in April 2012 aged 3 months. Throughout her brief life, she had suffered from numerous colds, which made her breathing laboured, and a verdict of sudden infant death (cot death) was recorded following a post-mortem.

  When Amber’s twin sister Ellie died just over four weeks later, however, their mother was arrested by her own colleagues and charged with two counts of murder.

  The Trial

  The jury, after initially failing to reach a unanimous verdict, finally delivered a majority verdict of 10–2. In a terrifying coup de théâtre, Mrs Slade was found not guilty of the murder of Amber, but a guilty verdict was returned for Ellie’s murder. Perhaps this baffling finale was caused by the contradictory and confusing expert testimonies given in court concerning the deaths of the two infants.

  “At the very least the two cases should have been tried separately,” Martin May QC, Melissa’s defence barrister, told The Redcliffe Gazette, “but it is my belief that Melissa Slade should never have been tried at all.”

  According to Mr George Moore, Melissa Slade’s father, the burden of proof was reversed in his daughter’s case. He told The Gazette: “Everyone had made up their minds before the trial. Melissa was presumed guilty from the start.”

  New Evidence

  It has since come to light that crucial details from Ellie’s medical records were kept hidden from the police as well as from Mrs Slade’s lawyers. Indeed, high levels of antimony, a chemical commonly associated with cot death, were detected in Ellie’s lungs and liver during the post-mortem. This evidence should have been shared with the defence team and may well have led to unanimous not guilty verdicts on both charges.

  Justice

  The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines possible miscarriages of justice, has now referred the case back to the appeal court.

  Superintendent Simon Goodman, the father of Mrs Slade’s son Callum, is confident that the conviction will be quashed this time.

  “Melissa is innocent and I know that justice will be served this time,” said Goodman, who has been campaigning alongside his son for the release of Mrs Slade, now 45, since she was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2013.

  As shown in cases such as those of Angela Cannings and Sally Clark, who also incurred miscarriages of justice, for a mother who has experienced one cot death, there is a higher probability rather than a lower probability that she will suffer another one.

  Appeal

  Mrs Slade is now waiting for a date to be set for her appeal. If her conviction is found unsafe, she will walk free. She has now spent almost five years in prison, but her family is hopeful she will be home by the end of this year.

  Chapter 18

  Melissa

  July 2018

  I think this will be the last time I write in my diary. For a while, at least. I’ve already passed the rest of it on to Simon, so there seems little point in carrying on with it. Anyway, the past has caught up with the present, as it were. I’ve written an account of everything that has led to me being here – in HMP Haresfield, and now all I can do is wait and hope to get out of here soon.

  This morning I had some news. I was in my cell, reading, when a guard raced in. He was agitated and told me to come with him. My heart stopped and skipped several beats. I thought that something must have happened to Callum.

  But it wasn’t that.

  ‘No. Don’t worry. It’s good news,’ the guard said. But he wouldn’t say any more.

  It was the prison governor who told me. A date has been set for my appeal. The 13th of November. Thirteen. Unlucky for some. We heard back from the Criminal Cases Review Commission in record time and although it’s four months away, it seems imminent.

  Now we have a date, all sorts of questions have been chasing each other around my head. Where will I go if I’m freed? What will I do? Will I be able to make up for lost time with Callum? Will he understand? Does he know why I did what I did?

  I also find myself wondering a lot about that missing toxicology report. My whole appeal hinges on this. Will it be enough to get my sentence quashed? Why has it turned up now? Could it have been an oversight? If not, who concealed it and why? Did Dr Sparks have an agenda? Was he bribed? Who would want to bribe him? I have no answers to any of these questions.

  When I think back to my policing days, I remember sometimes having a theory about a case. A strong gut feeling about something. I knew the truth. I just knew it. And I used the evidence we collected to prove it. Simon, who was probably the best officer I ever worked with, didn’t go about it that way. He was – still is – much more open-minded than me. He used the evidence to get to the facts and reassessed the situation with every piece of information and every clue that was uncovered.

  Maybe someone had it in their head that I was guilty and Dr Sparks looked for evidence to support this, ignoring data – crucial data – that went against this belief. Even if Sparks was convinced I was guilty, he can’t be completely innocent. He must have known his report was incomplete. He would have realised in court that something was very wrong.

  I’ll probably never find out exactly what happened, but I’m sure someone will pay. And I’d rather be in my shoes than theirs. That said, being in my shoes right now means getting prepared mentally for another appeal. I’m dreading it. I have to appear before three judges. They will decide whether to quash my conviction or order a retrial or dismiss the appeal. I don’t know what I’ll do if there’s a retrial. Sometimes I think I’d rather die than go through all that again.

  And yet, I am going through it all again. Every day. I had a go at writing about my trial in my journal some time ago, but it was too painful and not at all therapeutic, so I glossed over the whole experience. But even though I’ve been repressing these memories, crystal-clear images keep coming back to me now. I can see the faces of the jurors in high definition when I close my eyes. Key moments from the trial thrust themselves upon me, forcing me to relive the pathologists’ evidence, Michael’s confession on the stand, the deliberations, the verdict.

  The deliberations went on forever and in the end, a majority verdict was delivered. On count one, I was found not guilty; on count two I was found guilty. Ten to two for each count. It was bewildering. Ten out of twelve jurors thought I hadn’t killed Amber. Were they the same ten who had found me guilty of killing Ellie?

  I’ll never know what went on behind the closed doors of the jury room. I wonder if the jurors themselves were as confused as I was. The foreman turned out to be the elderly man with the friendly face. When he announced the not guilty verdict for Amber, I thought I was going home. No one, least of all me, could have foreseen the bombshell he was about to drop.

  Two jurors had disagreed with that guilty verdict. Who were they? The old man and the black lady? The two women who were around my age? The scrawny one had cried during my trial and I remembered imagining the other one, the plump one, had children of her own. Did they feel, as I did, that it was inconceivable that a mother could commit such a reprehensible crime?

  It’s not just images that I recall. I can still hear, practically word for word, the brutal allegations Eleanor Wood QC made during the trial. She summarised them all during the closing speech fo
r the prosecution, branding me an alcoholic and a serial baby killer. She claimed I resented my daughters for getting in the way of my career and my life. The fact that both Amber and Ellie had died in the evening couldn’t possibly be a tragic coincidence, Wood insisted, not least because babies who died from cot deaths were discovered dead in the morning, almost without exception. She even derided me for failing to get my story straight with my husband the adulterer.

  Did Eleanor Wood QC’s words sting because I didn’t recognise the monster they were describing or, on the contrary, because I recognised the truth? Home truths hit hard right where it hurts.

  I’ve been trying to block these thoughts and block out the memories of my trial. I’ve been working on my mind-set, trying to think positively. I keep telling myself I need to have faith. Not in God or anything like that – I slid from agnostic to atheist some time ago. No, I need to believe in the justice system. I did believe in it once. I used to fight for justice – that’s part of what a police officer does – but the justice system let me down. I have to trust it again. It won’t disappoint me this time. But sometimes I get the uneasy feeling that for the system to work for me, I have to work the system.

  Today got off to a good start with the news that a date has been set for my appeal. I intended that to be my last diary entry, but I’m going to type up what happened just a few hours ago. It was awful.

  Three people entered my cell and shook my new-found faith in the justice system to the core. Two guards were bringing Cathy back. Her conviction was upheld. She looked broken. I crossed the room and took her in my arms as she started to sob.

  Where can she go from here? That appeal had been her last chance. This will be her home for good now. Cathy come home. Poor, poor Cathy.

  I’m gutted for her. And the selfish part of me wonders what this means for me. It means that I’m no longer alone. My friend is back. But if her appeal has been rejected, what hope is there for mine? I can’t shake the feeling that Cathy’s return is a very bad omen for me.

  Chapter 19

  Jonathan

  August 2018

  I’ve never been in a prison before, although I’ve sat outside one plenty of times. A men’s prison. HMP Bristol. I used to drive there regularly when Adrian Pike – the man who killed Mel and Rosie – was jailed for a poxy ten years. I’d sit in my car, on the other side of the wall, picturing Pike lying on a hard bed, staring at the ceiling of a tiny airless cell. I could almost smell the filthy toilet without a lid in the corner. Pike would lose sleep, fearing for his life at the hands of his cellmate, a complete psycho with bulging muscles covered in tattoos. The two of them also shared their cell – and sometimes their respective bunk beds – with an intrusion of cockroaches.

  Even if all this had been true, it wouldn’t have made me feel any better. Nothing could bring back Mel or Rosie. And you can’t move on when you don’t feel justice has been served. Pike will probably be out by the time he’s thirty-five. My wife was thirty-five when she died. She was pregnant. My daughter never got to live in the outside world. Pike may live another forty or fifty years on the outside. Unless I play out my fantasies and kill him. I used to contemplate that in some detail. But a wall keeps people out as well as in, and when I might have been reckless enough to go through with it, he was banged up, safely shut away from me.

  Now I’m sitting outside a women’s prison, in the car park at HMP Haresfield Park, psyching myself up to meet Melissa Slade.

  As I’m early, I go through my interview notes, making sure that I’ve learnt them by heart, and then I flick through the printed pages of Melissa Slade’s memoirs, which I finished a few days ago, rereading the paragraphs I’ve highlighted. I haven’t crammed this much since my A levels.

  I shake my head, trying to dispel the image that my mind has projected of a plexiglass screen separating her from me, both of us clutching old-fashioned telephone receivers to communicate. It’s not going to be anything like this. For a start, my interview has been scheduled outside official visiting times and it is to be held in the visits room.

  It’s time, but I can’t quite bring myself to get out of the car. Dread churns in my stomach. What am I scared of? Maybe I’m reluctant more than scared. I’m just not convinced I’m doing the right thing. I’ve been sent here to help fight for justice, but I may end up helping a murderer escape justice.

  And there’s one thought I can’t get out of my head. It sends a current of rage through my whole body: This woman may have killed her baby girls; mine was killed. By Melissa Slade’s own admission, she was a terrible mother to her daughters. Even if she didn’t actually kill them. I never got to be a father to my daughter.

  But if Melissa Slade is innocent, and I can’t help thinking that’s a whopping if, then maybe her baby girls were killed, too. You can do this. Mel would have said something like that, and indeed the voice in my head sounds a lot like hers. But still I don’t move.

  When I do move, it’s not to get out of the car. Turning the key in the ignition, I let off the handbrake. Then I drive towards the exit of the car park. I haven’t even unfastened my seatbelt and I don’t know if I ever had any intention of visiting Melissa Slade.

  But when I push my ticket in the slot, the barrier doesn’t lift up, the machine spews the ticket back out and an automated voice tells me to pay at the machine. I slam the lever into reverse. Grow a pair, Jon. This time it’s my own voice. Sighing, I park the car in the same space as before and head for the entrance to the visits centre.

  At the gate, I hand over my press card as well as my ID. When the gate buzzes open, I’m taken to a small room, a bit like a cloakroom. Here I have to leave my mobile phone in a locker, but I’ve had the governor’s permission to take in a voice recorder as long as it’s used only as an aide-mémoire and not to broadcast the interview. I’m not allowed to keep my wallet on me either, but there are signs informing me that I may take loose change with me for refreshments from the vending machine. After a rub-down search, I go through a metal detector and finally I’m instructed to stand still while the sniffer dog carries out its duty.

  I’m a full ten minutes late by the time I walk into the visits room. Melissa Slade is already there, sitting at a brightly coloured low table, her hands clasped in her lap and her head bowed. Next to her is a mousy-haired man who appears to be around my age. For a second I’m puzzled, then I remember I was told a media liaison officer would be within sight and sound of the interview at all times.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ Melissa Slade says as I approach, standing up to greet me. I don’t tell her I almost didn’t. ‘I’m so glad you did.’ Her voice is soft, almost musical.

  We sit down opposite each other. The media liaison officer has remained seated and I nod at him. Melissa Slade flashes a smile at me, but it doesn’t quite reach her turquoise eyes, which are dimmer somehow than I remember from the photo her father showed me. Her blond hair is shorter and darker. She’s wearing jeans and a baggy long-sleeved T-shirt that doesn’t disguise how thin she is, almost skeletal. But she’s still hypnotically beautiful. Her face is perfectly symmetrical, right down to her laughter lines, her skin is flawless, her teeth even and white. I realise I’m staring at her, appraising her, and force myself to look away.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I say.

  She laughs at that, a nervous giggle. ‘And here I was, hoping we could be honest with one another,’ she says, the ghost of a twinkle illuminating her eyes. Then it’s gone, her expression serious as she adds, ‘I don’t blame you for not wanting to come.’

  I feel wrong-footed somehow, but it’s undermined by a twinge of guilt.

  ‘Your editor told Simon.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t a great opening gambit.’

  I chuckle, although it sounds a little forced. There’s an awkward pause as I rack my brains, trying – and failing – to remember the first question I wanted to ask her.

  I scan the roo
m. It’s exactly how Melissa described it in her diary. With its low furniture and cheerful colours, it looks more like a café with a misguided attempt at a trendy interior than the visits room of a prison. Its atmosphere is relaxed and everything in it is designed to make prisoners and visitors feel at ease. This meeting with Melissa is having the opposite effect on me, though. I can feel tension in my shoulders and beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead.

  My interview notes come back to me.

  ‘It would help me with my articles if I was in possession of all the facts,’ I begin. ‘I’ve read your journal, but is there anything that’s not in it that I should be aware of?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you still keeping a diary now?’

  ‘No. I wrote one more entry after giving the diary to Simon. It was the day I got my appeal date. It was the same day my friend Cathy’s appeal fell through. I was a bit emotional and so I felt like typing up the day’s events. But that’s all. I’ve decided to stop now. There’s nothing else to say. For the moment, at least.’

  ‘All right. I believe some of what you originally wrote was edited out. Can you tell me what you deleted?’

  ‘I started keeping a diary here in prison. For myself,’ she says. ‘It was therapeutic and a way of passing the time.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I didn’t know anyone else would ever read it. When Simon suggested I should give it to him so he could pass it on to you, I … there were things, personal things … they’re not related to my case. There were also boring things, like what we ate for dinner each day.’

  ‘How much of the journal did you take out?’

  ‘There was so much material. I took out anything I didn’t consider relevant to your investigation.’

  I ponder this. That’s pretty much what Claire said. But Melissa Slade seems to be prevaricating. She hasn’t actually answered my question. And her tales of prison life – when she was held down and tattooed or when another inmate threw a plate of food over her – that’s not relevant and yet she left that in.