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13/06/93
- Alison's murder 'probably a man'
The Observer
David Rose Home Affairs Correspondent
ALISON SHAUGHNESSY, the victim of the murder of which Michelle
and Lisa Taylor were acquitted last week, was probably killed
by a man, according to a new pathology report. Its author, Dr
Albert Hunt, a Home Office pathologist since 1951 and an authority
on stab wounds, was ready to give evidence at last week's appeal.
But after hearing that the police had suppressed evidence which
discredited the key prosecution witness, and that tabloid newspaper
coverage had prevented a fair trial, three judges led by Lord
Justice McCowan decided to quash the convictions without considering
all the grounds of appeal.
Dr Hunt carried out experiments with a dummy model and a knife.
Yesterday he painted a vivid picture of Mrs Shaughnessy's death,
at her home in Vardens Road, Clapham, on 3 June 1991. He said:
'I have no reasonable doubt that a hand was put over her mouth
from behind, and that she was then stabbed by the same person
in the neck and chest.
Other injuries to her back were inflicted later, when she was
lying on the ground. 'To deal these blows, the killer stood behind
her, holding her mouth with his left hand. The sisters are less
than 5ft 2in tall, less than Mrs Shaughnessy. You can't hold someone
in this way and raise your other hand to stab the throat and chest
if you are shorter than the victim because you simply can't reach.'
The killer, he said, was almost certainly a man, at least 5ft
10in tall. At the Taylors' trial, the Crown argued that they killed
Mrs Shaughnessy because Michelle had been her husband's mistress.
However, there was no forensic evidence linking them with the
scene of the crime, and last week the evidence of the only witness
to put them there at the material time, Dr Michael Unsworth-White,
was discredited.
Defence lawyers learnt only days before the appeal that Det Supt
Michael Burke, who led the police inquiry, did not disclose a
vital statement to the Crown lawyers, suppressing the fact that
Dr Unsworthwhite had changed his story to provide a description
of the Taylors.
The missing document described his telling Det Con Angela Thomas
that one of the women he saw leaving Mrs Shaughnessy's home may
have been black, while the women were walking, not running, as
he said later.
Officers at Scotland Yard's Complaints Investigation Branch will
study the Appeal judgment tomorrow with a view to launching an
investigation, it emerged last night. The Taylors are considering
a civil action for malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.
As he waited outside the court for the judgment, Det Supt Burke
refused to say whether he felt regret for his actions. Asked if
he had not felt uneasy that Dr Unsworth-white's inconsistencies
were not revealed to the trial jury, he said: 'The statement was
clarified. He had said one black one and one white one, and someone
else was sent along and it was clarified that he saw two white
women.'
The case will have wide ramifications, not only for the tabloid
press, which the court referred to the Attorney General, but for
the debate surrounding the report of the Royal Commission on Criminal
Justice.
In advance of the report, police leaders have claimed that the
very broad duty of disclosure established by judgments in the
Guinness and Judith Ward cases imposes an 'intolerable' burden,
adding to workloads and making it impossible to protect informers.
They have also demanded that the defence in criminal cases disclose
its witnesses and argument before trial. Lord Justice McCowan's
judgment highlighted the danger in acceding to the police position:
Det Supt Burke, he said, had decided not to disclose the vital
evidence to the Crown lawyers because he knew they would pass
it to the defence.
Disclosing a defence could, in certain circumstances, also be
fraught with peril. The Taylors had a witness who said she was
with them at the time of the killing. But she changed her story
after being arrested at dawn and told she faced a charge of conspiracy
to murder.
As The Observer revealed last year, one of the weak links in the
Crown's case was the fact that if guilty, the girls had a maximum
of 23 minutes to enter Mrs Shaughnessy's flat, kill her, destroy
the murder weapon and all forensic evidence, and then drive four
miles through rush-hour traffic to the Churchill Clinic, where
they were seen at 6pm.
On the day before the appeal, a traffic officer confirmed that
the busiest part of the shortest route had been reduced from two
lanes to one as a result of roadworks.
The police had claimed they did the journey in 11 minutes when
there were no roadworks, a test drive which journalists, lawyers
and others have been unable to repeat. |
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