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.
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.
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