by Robert Green
When George arrived, the hearing resumed. Barker introduced his skeleton argument for the appeal. Suddenly, he departed from his text and raised the fingernail DNA, on the grounds that ‘members of the victim’s family have just brought it to my attention.’ Wanting it put on the public record, he repeated the police line: ‘There was DNA under her fingernails which proved it was not from his brother or him – but it was only 11 of 20 alleles, and a mixed specimen. In those days, the mortuary attendants used devices which weren’t sterile, and on the deceased’s fingernails there was DNA of unknown origin…’ Moses looked sharply at Barker, nodded but made no comment; whereupon Barker resumed his prepared argument. It was a bizarre moment. This was probably the most important single statement in the entire proceedings. None of the few media present seemed to notice, let alone realise its significance.
The basis of the appeal was that Justice Wakerley – who had recently died – had misdirected the jury in his summing up regarding George’s bad character, and too much weight was given to the police informant Mr A’s evidence. Moses commented wearily: ‘When the Crown calls this sort of person there are problems… It rebounds… No police force can resist calling them. One day they’ll stop.’
After Latham had given his counter-arguments, Moses announced he would give judgment at 10am the next day. When he did so, his concluding words were: ‘We refuse leave to pursue the renewed grounds of appeal. In relation to the substantive grounds, we dismiss them. We are not persuaded that the verdicts were unsafe. This appeal is dismissed.’ He directed that a transcript of the judgment be sent to the victim’s family. In it I was not surprised to find no mention of the fingernail DNA. On enquiring with George’s solicitor, I was told it was dismissed because it was not part of the defence’s grounds for appeal.
The police were jubilant. We had to stop them telling the media how relieved Hilda’s family were that the case was formally closed. As Barker hurried to a taxi, Kate asked him for his view on the outcome. ‘It’s a stitch-up’ was all he said before making a quick getaway.
In April 2006, before the appeal, an unexpected email had arrived:
Mr Green,
I apologise for contacting you like this and would like to have spoken with you in court but I was not allowed. I was Mr A at stafford crown court. If you have any questions you would like to put to me I would be more than happy to talk to you.
(Mr A)
I was intrigued, particularly by his claim that the police had forbidden him from speaking to me. In my careful reply I suggested he leave a message with our Shropshire friends, warning him that our mail had been interfered with and email and phone were insecure. Mr A responded: ‘Forwarded brand new unregistered mobile to your friends.’ On arriving to stay with them after the appeal, we phoned him. Once he was satisfied who we were, he texted a rendezvous. We proposed another closer to Shrewsbury. He accepted this – then stood us up.
Subsequently, a BBC TV reporter tipped me off that Mr A had been to see him, and he had seriously considered making a programme about what he told him. Apparently, the police did not want me to know George had indicated that at least three others were involved, and that a white van had followed Hilda’s car as back up. I recalled that one witness, driving a truck along Telford Way when the car overtook him, said his view was obscured by a white van tailing it. This threatened the police line that George had acted alone, and corroborated the fingernail DNA evidence.
Determined to get answers to questions on which the police had stonewalled at our post-trial meeting in May 2005, I demanded a final meeting. On 20 June 2006, we returned to Stourport on Severn police station where we spent three hours with newly promoted Detective Superintendent Brunger, DI Rik Klair and retired DC Partridge. Once again, Kate took detailed notes.
Brunger assured us that, although the case was finally closed, the police would retain the 600 boxes of material and all the exhibits forever. In response to my allegation of a potential miscarriage of justice, he declared: ‘This is about the search for the truth. If you thought there was some form of injustice, how could I and all the other officers sleep at night? There were over 60 officers on this case. If you ask each one of them if they have any doubts that Andrew George was the sole person, there will not be any. We all agree we’ve done the right thing – don’t we Rik? Nick?’ Vigorous nods. After all, careers, reputations and pensions were on the line.
I presented them with copies of the Forensic Science Service replies to my letters about Hilda’s missing body parts and body sheet. Again Brunger was offhand. ‘I’m not surprised they’re missing – not surprised at all; if some items deteriorate, they get rid of them.’ Kate challenged him that there must be records available which showed where body parts had been stored, which ones had been destroyed, and why. The records seemed to have gone missing too. His excuses were unbelievable: ‘In those days there were lots of missing body parts’; ‘It was complete chaos’; ‘There was room for human error’; ‘No request was made for them to keep anything’; and ‘Forensics are dealing with lots of murders.’
After the fingernail DNA evidence episode at the appeal, I demanded a detailed explanation. Brunger explained that tests on nail clippings from both Hilda’s hands had resulted in a partial, mixed response of 11 alleles for someone other than Hilda. ‘Therefore you could not identify it to a specific person, but you could eliminate suspects.’ Partridge had identified over a hundred suspects, collected their DNA and eliminated them.
A Besford House inmate in 1984, who was 11 years old at the time, later told us the police admitted to him in 2003 they did not believe George committed the crime alone. Evidence for this was that, after he was charged with Hilda’s murder, many staff and inmates – including him – were fingerprinted, photographed and DNA samples taken. Using this procedure, they also cleared ‘Cock-eye’ and ‘Laney’, mentioned by Mr A as George’s accomplices, and the rest of his family.
Brunger tried unsuccessfully to convince us that the fingernail DNA was contaminated. He claimed the mortuary procedures were not sterile; the pliers used to extract the whole fingernails on each hand could have been used in previous post mortems and not properly cleaned. DNA ‘could have come off the top of the fingernails, or off someone touching the body – it could have even come off her hands, or even have got under her nails from another body which had previously been on the slab.’
We were incredulous. Suddenly all-conquering DNA was no better than a fingerprint. Did they think the cadaver had somehow scratched DNA off the mortuary table? Surely the mortuary staff would have been wearing gloves when handling the body and would have cleaned down the table after each autopsy? We understood fingernails were only removed in a murder case, so the pliers would not have been in regular use. DNA from under Hilda’s fingernails or from her hands would most likely be from her male assailant. If it was sufficiently uncontaminated to eliminate over a hundred suspects, surely it should have been good enough to eliminate George?
To our surprise, Brunger suddenly agreed the fingernail DNA was not Andrew George’s. An intense exchange ensued between him and my enraged Rottweiler, while furiously touch-typing on her laptop.
Kate: ‘Matching male DNA from under fingernails from both hands is highly significant evidence.’ This proved Hilda put up a fight. ‘Hilda would have done that – she was a feisty person. She said she would fight to protect her papers. Remember how I sent you extracts from her diaries recounting how she threatened boys stealing her fruit?’
Brunger blustered: ‘Hilda may not have put up a fight – I know a lot of women in rape cases who didn’t fight back. Some people are petrified in a frightening situation. They don’t always act to personality. Police officers who are big men can suddenly panic, whereas small men can sometimes become aggressive. It’s not an exact science. Some people can become petrified by a knife.’
Kate: ‘Hilda may have been petrified, but she had defensive wounds when she put her hands up to stop the knife – surely s
he would have tried to stop a rape as well? Anyway, how can you hold a knife and try to rape someone at the same time?’ She pressed harder: ‘Was Dr Acland’s DNA checked against the fingernail DNA and eliminated?’
Brunger seemed well briefed for this question. ‘Yes, but his two assistants have since died and their families would not want their bodies exhumed in order to eliminate them.’ This was off the wall.
Kate: ‘Was there a report about how hygienic the mortuary and instruments were at the time? When had the previous post mortem taken place?’
Brunger ducked for cover. ‘You can write to Acland directly for answers to these questions.’
I did, but received no reply. We subsequently learned that two other autopsies were performed on Friday 23 March, and Hilda’s was the only one done over the weekend. Moreover, it was standard practice to sterilise all tables, floor and equipment after autopsies on a Friday.
Finally, we asked to view the exhibits. Kate, determined to shield me from the stress of examining Hilda’s bloodstained clothing, took the lead, while I gratefully made notes. As she interrogated the police from a woman’s viewpoint, they became increasingly uncomfortable.
The Totes rain hat was nothing like the wide-brimmed, brown felt hat many witnesses saw Hilda wearing. We were not allowed to see the car keys found in the coat pocket. When asked if they had done a fingerprint test on them, Klair seemed surprised and asked why they should have. Kate: ‘The driver would have touched them.’ He looked embarrassed: ‘They were probably the spare set, and you have to have special sorts of surfaces to have fingerprints taken off.’ This was farcical nonsense. Caught out, now the police were dismissing the one piece of evidence suggesting Hilda had been abducted in her own car.
The suspender belt was found 24 yards from the body towards the overgrown former gateway through which Hilda was supposed to have crawled. Probably made by her, it was very worn and frayed. There were three tears, not cuts, in the front, and the right rear clip was missing a rubber grommet. It was done up and there was no obvious blood or mud. Kate remembered a grommet was found on the bed in the small back bedroom where the sexual attack was purported to have happened.
Kate’s request to view the stockings produced a perverse response: ‘No, you might put your DNA on them.’ She retorted that she could prove she was living in New Zealand in 1984 looking after three daughters under five, and she would relish having her DNA eliminated. The stockings were held up – but she was not to touch them. They were extraordinary. The one found on Hilda’s left leg was caked in mud and bloodstained around the ankle area; but the other one found nearby was not. Both were darned with brown wool in various places, and one had a big hole near the top.
Kate’s mind raced. Hilda would not have worn such old, holed stockings for shopping, let alone to go out to lunch. If her suspender belt came off where it was found, surely both stockings would have come off at the same time still attached to the grommets? So why was the missing grommet not found in the copse? As it was found in the bedroom, then perhaps its suspender belt was with it awaiting repair, along with the stockings? How could Hilda have pulled the belt off if it was still done up as it was found? Her hands were too arthritic and painful from the knife cuts, and she had a broken right collarbone and was right-handed. Had she done so, there would have been more blood on it from her injuries. If Andrew George had pulled both belt and stockings off her in some form of frenzied sexual activity in the copse, as insinuated by Latham, would he have first unclipped both stockings, leaving one on the body, before doing up the belt again and throwing it away nearby? During the trial, forensic expert Mark Webster observed correctly that a suspender belt is not designed to come off the body easily. With all these unanswered questions, our suspicions grew that it, too, had been planted.
Hilda’s boots, made of beige-coloured soft quilted cotton, were like slippers with rubber soles. The left one had slight bloodstaining on the outside near the ankle, but otherwise was surprisingly clean – which tallied with the bloodstained stocking found on Hilda’s left leg. The right one had more blood on the back flaps and was caked in mud right up the heel to the ankle, yet the right stocking had no blood or mud on it. The boots were found 185 yards from Moat Copse, 30 feet apart lying in the furrows of unplanted ground skirting the field. If she had crawled all the way to the copse, why did the stocking ostensibly from Hilda’s right leg have hardly any mud on it?
Her spectacles were found broken in half five feet apart. The lenses were intact, but there were about eight broken pieces of the rims in the forensic bag. They were found 20 feet from the other side of the hedge from Funeral Field, and 23 feet from the rain hat and knife in the ditch on the road side of the hedge. Did this indicate her assailant took her along the far side? If so, how did she get through the hedge? Or did her assailant throw them over? Or were they planted by the sinister man in a suit seen following the far side of the hedge by tractor driver Bryan Salter on the Thursday afternoon?
It was unlikely Hilda was wearing spectacles when she returned to Ravenscroft after visiting Mary O’Connor. Neither Mary nor any other witness commented that she was. No one seemed to have asked why she would have worn them during the car journey. She did not need them for walking, and most witnesses said she looked unconscious in her car. Another pair was found smashed in the back bedroom where she was supposed to have been sexually assaulted. So was this more planted evidence to suggest a struggle upstairs, and then by the hedge – when probably she had been quickly overpowered, drugged and abducted to a safe house?
Next, Klair and Partridge held up Hilda’s multi-coloured cardigan made of thick, loosely knitted white wool, with rainbow stripes of pink, blue-green and yellow. The large brown wooden buttons down the front were all done up. There were cuts and extensive bloodstaining around where her arm had been stabbed, and slightly above and to the right of where her navel would have been.
Kate could not resist the temptation. Looking directly at both detectives, she asked if all pieces of clothing had been tested for semen. Klair replied they had, but nothing was found other than on the slip and hanky. Partridge, clearly rattled by her question, took some time before contradicting his colleague. ‘Yes, there was a weak positive for semen on the cardigan, but we couldn’t tell if it was aspermic.’ When asked if it had been DNA tested to eliminate the George family like the fingernail evidence had, he said ‘No’. He would have been unaware that by then we knew the forensic expert had concluded the semen on the cardigan, as well as the fingernail DNA, could not have originated from any male member of the George family. Despite the weak samples, here was enough corroboration of the fingernail DNA to prove other men were involved, and probably to acquit Andrew George.
The aubergine mohair jumper Hilda was wearing under the cardigan had little buttons down the V neck. Like the cardigan, the cuts and bloodstains matched the body wounds. Her vest was cream, long, very old and worn, with its left shoulder strap broken at the back. It was soaked in blood around the cuts near the liver, and there was diffuse bloodstaining down the right hand side.
The very thick old brown coat was slightly muddy down the front where four large buttons were done up. A 2cm knife cut in the right sleeve clearly matched the wound in Hilda’s arm. There was no mud on the underside of the sleeves: we had expected to see some because of the police theory, backed by Acland, that she had crawled across the field.
In the trial, Webster had noted several small cuts in the lining which had not penetrated the outside of the coat, and which did not correspond with the wounds to the body. Latham made the obvious point that if there were knife wounds with no matching holes in the coat, ‘the knife can’t have gone through the coat to the body.’ However, cuts in the coat that did not match the wounds raised the possibility that the coat cuts had been made afterwards.
The inside of the coat, on the right-hand side, was heavily bloodstained. If she was stabbed standing up, being frogmarched as the police suggested, we would have expe
cted blood dripping down her body to have stained her skirt and suspender belt.
The light green skirt, found zipped up and inside out near Hilda’s body, had no obvious mud or bloodstaining on it. It had a silk lining, elastic waistband, a brand name tag at the back, and would have been above the knee on Hilda. There were three holes close together at the back of the skirt near the tag, and another half inch cut in the front above the hem.
When Kate checked her trial transcript she was surprised by Webster’s detailed account of the cuts to the skirt. Crucially, he did not state these were in the back. Later we discovered the police were aware of some of these very significant anomalies. An extract from the transcript of the interrogation of George by two police officers at Shrewsbury police station in June 2003 follows:
… Because there’s some cuts in her skirt you see that coincide with the cuts on her body but if they were to coincide, match up, she would have to have been wearing it the wrong way round.
Kate also spotted that the cuts on the skirt bore no relation to Hilda’s wounds, even if she had worn it back to front. The wounds were too high on her body. A more plausible, but sinister, explanation is that the skirt cuts had been made after it had been taken off Hilda – if she was ever wearing it during her abduction.
At the trial, Webster had confirmed there was no trace of semen on the skirt or suspender belt. However, it was never established whether the staining on the slip was on the underside or skirt side. He could not determine whether the semen staining was deposited when the skirt and suspender belt were being worn or after they had been removed. Was either garment even being worn by Hilda in her house during the alleged attack? This becomes more plausible when Webster stated the staining could have been produced by contact with a semen-wet object, for instance another garment or a hand bearing wet semen.
