by Robert Green
The young woman explained that, during the six years they had lived together, ‘Andy came off drugs and committed no crimes. He admitted I always knew when he was lying.’ After charging him the police pestered her to pretend she wanted to resume their relationship in order to get him to talk. She said she gave him a copy of the book Unsolved Murders, despite knowing he could only read comics. She never met Stephen, and only met Adrian once.
We discovered an extraordinary attempt to intimidate us by the Royal Mail Interception Service. Our hostess in Stafford had already experienced harassment during the trial, twice getting silent phone calls in the middle of the night. Now she phoned in an agitated state to report that a letter had arrived from New Zealand with the envelope slit along the bottom and most of the top. If this had been done before it arrived in the Stafford sorting office, the greeting card inside would have fallen out. Kate instructed her to sellotape it up and redirect it to our Shropshire address.
When it arrived, we were stunned to see that this time one of the shorter sides of the envelope had been completely slit open, while the other was slit two-thirds of its length. This happened after I said publicly that Andrew George’s conviction was unsafe. Here was rare evidence that our hosts’ phones were tapped, and of State security involvement.
The slit envelope became an exhibit at a tense post-trial meeting with West Mercia Police in Stourport on Severn police station. DCI Mick Brunger had fended off our questions before the trial by promising a meeting. Now he stonewalled with a new excuse. Andrew George was appealing against his conviction, so the case was still sub judice.
To our surprise, the police agreed the letter appeared to have been intercepted and opened with a very sharp blade like a box-cutter. Brunger even offered to have it tested for fingerprints and forensically examined for DNA, before quickly adding that a match would be impossible. He suggested it was probably to do with our work. We retorted that the only work we were currently doing was related to the trial. Besides, if it was a safe conviction, why was this happening to us?
When asked if we would like police protection, Kate, my hitherto docile Rottweiler, snarled back: ‘No thank you. Why don’t you just haul off the people who are trying to intimidate us?’ She angrily eyeballed an uncomfortable DC Nick Partridge, summoned from retirement as a safe pair of hands. ‘If anything happens to us, I want you to go back to New Zealand and tell my daughters why.’ He had met two of them during his 2002 visit with Tozer.
We persisted in trying to get answers to our list of updated questions, starting with reports of changes at Hilda’s house by the Friday. Brunger coolly suggested that, as with Ian Scott, many witnesses familiar with visiting the house could all have been mistaken. It was my turn to feel my blood boil.
Of the 20 fingerprints found at the house, he explained that six belonged to Betty Latter and David Williams; two were from Andrew George; four remained unidentified, while the other eight were considered insufficient in detail. The one on the rear window of Hilda’s car was checked against every suspect, including George, with no positive results. Brunger claimed George’s fingerprints could not be matched in 1984. We countered that, as mentioned in the pre-trial abuse of process hearing, the defence’s independent expert concluded it was possible to obtain a match from the two prints at that time. Further, in the prosecution’s skeleton argument responding to Barker, Latham conceded George’s fingerprints had been identifiable in 1984. The police had no answer to this. As the Northumbria Report stated, in the first year alone of the investigation that fingerprint was used to eliminate over 1,200 suspects.
Brunger confirmed there had been a ‘huge investigation’ to identify the one fingerprint in the car. It was from Trina Guthrie’s boyfriend Malcolm Leel when he had helped pack the car while on holiday with Hilda in July 1983. We reminded Brunger that we had suggested they check this possibility in 2002. His lame reply was that ‘Leel should have come forward to have his fingerprints checked as a possible suspect.’
The police could not explain why George did not match any of the descriptions of the driver of the car. They knew of George’s report to his father about the two men putting guns to his head and threatening to kill him, but it gave them ‘no avenues to explore the conspiracy theories’. There was nothing suspicious about the fire at Fron Goch.
Next, I raised the painful issue of returning Hilda’s body parts to us for burial. Brunger had warned me in 2004 that some were missing, including her brain. His response now was callously offhand: ‘Certain parts were held and they were lost. It is the responsibility of the Forensic Science Service. You should write to them.’
When challenged as to whether any toxicology tests had been conducted, Brunger turned to Partridge. At first, he claimed the only test done on Hilda’s blood in 1984 was for alcohol. After pressing him – we had seen a forensic report referred to in the trial – he admitted a test was done for sodium penthanole, but they could not find the report. When it was retested in 2003 there was no evidence of other stupefying drugs, and the coffee grain type substances found in her stomach were a feature of hypothermia, not evidence of drugs.
During the trial, reference was made to a forensic report written by Ian Humphreys in September 2003. This had been in response to our request, during Tozer and Partridge’s New Zealand visit, to analyse Hilda’s blood for the presence of a range of common drugs. Tozer had specifically wanted thiopentone tested because it is used in the induction of anaesthesia of short duration. Humphreys reported:
A positive result was obtained to indicate the possible presence of amphetamine or a closely related substance.
However, because further tests showed the presence of ‘putrefactive compounds which have a similar chemical structure to amphetamine and can give rise to false positive reactions’, he concluded that ‘no amphetamine-related drug or any other drugs listed above were detected.’ He could find no trace of any sedatives. Attempts to determine whether or not thiopentone was present in the blood specimen were unsuccessful. He therefore considered it ‘highly unlikely that any thiopentone had been used by, or administered to, Hilda in the hours prior to her death.’
When we asked to see Hilda’s clothing, we were only allowed a cursory glance at the Totes rain hat, moccasin boots, green skirt and stockings. Partridge admitted that, despite a considerable effort, they ‘never got to the bottom’ of what happened to Hilda’s missing regular handbag and her document satchel. Brunger promised to show us all exhibits at a final meeting if George’s appeal failed and the case was closed. The Northumbria Report could probably be released then too.
As we were ushered out of the police station, I felt that my relationship with the police had reverted to the moment in 1986 when I broke off contact. Their ‘open mind’ had slammed shut, as they resorted to stonewalling, denial, obfuscation and fob-offs. After all my efforts to re-engage with them through the cold case review, the old hostility and mistrust were back. However, though feeling disempowered, we left with some satisfaction that their triumphalism had taken a private knock.
We met the telephone engineers. The first one told us he had spoken out in 1985 on behalf of two colleagues who feared for their jobs. One still worked for British Telecom but the one whose statement was selectively used in the trial, Christopher Mileham, was now freelance. He was prepared to talk.
When shown what Latham had quoted from his 1984 statement, he exclaimed: ‘But my main finding wasn’t mentioned! I’m surprised the defence didn’t challenge this. I thought I was more likely to be useful as a defence witness.’ Mileham vividly recalled the large team of police around him in February 1985 when he was summoned back to Shrewsbury police station after the telephone controversy in the TV programmes. ‘They seemed desperate to make me say it was pulled out.’ He held firm, using his forced supplementary statement merely to clarify the condition of the bedroom phone and confirm his original findings. According to the engineers, BT management admitted they were under pressure from the poli
ce to sack him. Another BT engineer whose job was also on the line suggested they should get advice from their union secretary.
Mileham’s former colleague, who was still working for BT, told us that in 1984 they were viewed as the senior local engineers. Mileham was the authority on what happened at Ravenscroft and he had total confidence in him. ‘His statement would have been solid and correct.’
This third engineer’s memory of the case was clear, because at one point he had also been a suspect in Hilda’s abduction. He was a tall, big man with large feet. In a succession of unfortunate coincidences, he had repaired faults on both Hilda’s phones, at Fron Goch and Ravenscroft, during the previous year or so. On the day of her abduction he had worked on an unrelated fault in the green junction box in Sutton Road where Hilda’s phone was connected. He was then seen that afternoon several miles north of Hunkington on another repair job. The police took his worksheets off him to see whether he had had time to drive Hilda’s car out there. Also, he was wearing trainers.
The hapless engineer made five statements to explain his alibis, and was able to show he and Mileham were doing a joint job in the Army’s headquarters in Shrewsbury at the time of the abduction. Nevertheless, the police made him show them his trainers. Exasperated, he volunteered that he knew they were looking for large ones with an unusual sole pattern, because he had seen a big photograph of them on a wall in Shrewsbury police station – where he had put in ten new phone lines! He added that, if he had killed Hilda, he would have burned his trainers.
The police never checked Mileham’s footwear, despite him standing where the footprints were found close to the telephone. Unlike his colleague, who matched descriptions of the quite big man – over six feet tall and heavily built – driving Hilda’s car, Mileham was short and slim, more like Andrew George.
At our suggestion, Mileham met Brian George. They established that the phone condition changed between when Brian had seen it before the Scene of Crime Unit had taken over the house on the Saturday and when Mileham examined it on the Monday. The police told Mileham the telephone condition was as they had found it. However, as I learned from the 1985 Northumbria Report, the junction box lid had been removed later for forensic examination, and neither Brian nor Mileham saw any damage to the box opening, or broken piece of Bakelite.
Brian felt vindicated that the lid was present when he saw it on Saturday morning, lying not screwed down over the spade connectors at the end of the receiver cord. They were all inside the box with one of them still loosely positioned around its connection. By the time Mileham saw it on Monday, however, all the cord wires with spade connectors intact were clear of the box. Furthermore, I discovered the lid was not re-examined for DNA in the cold case review, because it was assumed it would not have been touched by the man who ‘pulled out’ the phone. Was this a spin-off benefit from police insistence on this scenario?
At the trial the prosecution had shown a police video taken inside Ravenscroft, allegedly on the Sunday afternoon – the day before Mileham examined the phone. The narrator, Detective Sergeant Perriton, described the kitchen extension: ‘White cables have been cut. The white telephone wire was originally stapled along the edge of the timber work. The plastic staples have moved onto the floor in front of the chest of drawers.’ In Hilda’s bedroom he commented that ‘the telephone by the bed is working – we are yet to determine where the line enters the house, in light of the condition of the downstairs phone.’
According to Mileham’s second statement, made under duress almost a year later, the police were not able to make a connection from this phone on the Monday. Yet his first statement confirmed that ‘the bedroom extension was in full working order’, except it would not ring.
In the police photograph of the kitchen phone, shown in the trial and reproduced in the Shropshire Star, the junction box cover was in place as Brian George had seen it. Both Brian and Mileham were certain the redundant cream extension cable was in place stapled to the wall around the end of the window seat when they saw it on the Saturday and Monday respectively. We subsequently saw a police statement confirming that extra photos of the phone were taken at 4.30pm on the Monday after Mileham had done his inspection. This was also when the footprints were photographed. We found differences between some police photographs and video footage, including curtains, furniture and handbags moved, windows open then shut, and a cummerbund over the post at the foot of the stairs but not there in the video. With no date and time on the photographs, it is therefore sometimes difficult to establish what was the original situation.
Perriton made a written statement that on 12 April 1984 he had obtained from 52 Sutton Road the ‘cream coloured telephone wire which had been wrenched from its securing clips in the breakfast room’. Three weeks after the Scene of Crime Unit had finished, and Ravenscroft had been cleared, why was it necessary for the police to return and remove this?
When we were finally able to view copies of the complete statements referred to and quoted from in the trial, we were shocked to make some explosive discoveries which were not put to the jury.
Forensic expert Michael Appleby stated on 11 December 2003 that 1mm of each of Hilda’s fingernails from each hand were sampled for DNA. Partial, mixed DNA profiles were found which matched each other. These were his conclusions, with my emphasis added:
DNA possibly originating from a single male individual was detected on the tips of the fingernails taken from Hilda Murrell, items PA/22, and 23. This DNA – if it is assumed that it originated from a single male individual – could not have originated from Messrs Harold, Steven [sic], Andrew or Adrian George.
This was a forensic bombshell. Until then I had no idea that pathologist Peter Acland had kept all Hilda’s fingernails. In a list of body parts provided by the police, no mention was made of them. Such powerful evidence probably would have acquitted Andrew George, and raised reasonable doubt as to whether Hilda had fought another man. For obvious reasons this had been ignored by the police and prosecution. Apparently the defence team did not raise it because it undermined George’s defence that his brother was the culprit. Perhaps he had hoped the abduction charge would be thrown out, whereupon the prosecution case would collapse. Or was his most mortal fear that proof of another unknown man attacking Hilda would lead to overwhelming pressure to explain what really happened – events to which he had been a key witness?
On our return to New Zealand, I wrote to the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham asking them to locate and return Hilda’s body parts for burial. They included her brain, liver and fingernails, plus samples of her blood, urine and bile.
Two months later David Parry of the Forensic Science Service emailed warning that ‘it is taking longer than anticipated to obtain the necessary information about retained material’. No further communication about the case was received for ten months, when I was informed that George’s appeal would be heard in early June 2006. I faxed and emailed another letter. Almost immediately Parry replied apologising for the delay and listing which body parts had been retained. Then I was horrified to read:
The following items have not been found, despite exhaustive searches at the National Archive, Priory House and Chorley FSS locations:-
PA3 – The body sheet; PA24 – Urine; PA27 – Stomach Contents; PA28 – Bile; PA29 – Liver; PA30 – Brain.
I demanded to know when and where they were last held, and why it was necessary for the pathologist to remove and retain Hilda’s brain. I refused to accept that the missing body parts had been disposed of, but must have been mislaid. I insisted the search for them be continued, so that one day I could complete Hilda’s burial and achieve closure in this respect.
Parry replied that another search was underway; however, while I should direct my second question to the pathologist, he confirmed that in his experience it was common practice ‘to remove the liver and brain in case they were subsequently required for toxicological analysis’. He then launched into a tortuous explanation to try
to justify such incompetence, ending with an apology on behalf of the Forensic Science Service ‘for our inability to locate, or inform you of the fate of the missing samples at this time and for any distress that this is causing you’. I wrote twice to Acland, but received no reply.
When I asked a leading New Zealand pathologist who had worked in Britain if there was any significance about the group of missing body parts and body sheet, he said simply: ‘Toxicology test for drugs’. He was very surprised even one part had been lost, let alone this whole group, in such a high profile case. Challenging Humphreys’ 2003 forensic report on testing for amphetamine and thiopentone, the New Zealand pathologist was adamant there would have been no putrefaction, because all blood samples were always frozen.
On 8 June 2006, we arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for George’s appeal.
Lord Justice Moses was irritated. The three judges began the Appeal Court hearing, only to discover Anthony Barker QC was in another court, having double-booked. His client Andrew George was not in the dock, held up in traffic on his way from the top security prison at Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. Barker turned up after five minutes, whereupon Moses angrily adjourned the hearing for an hour.
I seized the opportunity and confronted Barker about the fingernail DNA counter-evidence. Expressing ignorance, he went back into the court and challenged Brunger about it who, switching to damage control mode, undertook to email him details. After conferring with prosecution counsel and the Crown Prosecution Service, we overheard the police tell Barker the DNA was ‘only partial’ and ‘probably contaminated’.
