Foreign Cases

13 Cases

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On Aug. 21, 1910, in the small town of Osa de la Vega, in the province of Cuenca, José María Grimaldos, known as “El Cepa,” was seen for the last time.  He was on a road to the nearby village of Tresjuncos.  His family feared foul play and reported his disappearance to the Civil Guard (police).  During the investigation the family and others expressed their suspicions that two shepherds, Gregorio Valero and León Sánchez had killed him for his money.  This investigation was closed in Sept. 1911 without any indictments.

In 1913 a new judge by the name of Isasa arrived.  Influenced by the local boss and right-wing politician, the judge reopened the case. The two suspects were arrested by the Civil Guard and, under torture, they confessed they killed Grimaldos, cut his body up, and fed it to pigs.  The ''fiscal'' (DA) asked for the death penalty.  The case took its time in the court system, but on May 25, 1918 a popular jury convicted the defendants of murder.  They both were sentenced to 18 years in prison.  Both were released on account of a general pardon on Feb. 20, 1924 after serving eleven years of imprisonment.

Two years later, in early 1926, it was discovered that Grimaldos was alive after he applied for the necessary papers to marry.  He had been living in a nearby town.  With much legal difficulty, the case was reopened and, after much delay, Valero and Sanchez’ convictions were overturned.

In 1979, a movie entitled “El crimen de Cuenca” (The Crime of Cuenca) was made based on the case.  The movie was initially banned in Spain, because the torture scenes in it are depicted in great detail and crudity.  However, in 1981, the movie was allowed to be shown in Spain and became a box office success.  (FJDB)  [11/07]

William Harrison, the manager of a wealthy estate, went out to collect rent money from tenants.  When he did not return at his usual time, his servant, John Perry, was sent to look for him.  Harrison's hat and comb were found and had been slashed.  Harrison's collar band was also found with bloodstains.  Harrison was presumed murdered and searches were made for his body, but it was never found.

For unknown reasons, John Perry confessed to the murder of Harrison and implicated his brother and mother.  Perry later retracted his confession and his brother and mother professed their innocence, but all were convicted of the murder and hanged.  Two years after the executions, Harrison turned up alive.  He told a story of having been kidnapped and held as a slave in Turkey.  (CWP) (CW) (FJDB)  [12/06]

William Habron was convicted of the murder of Constable Cock, a local lawman.  Habron was a patron of the Royal Oak, a pub near Manchester that was on the constable's beat.  Habron was frequently getting into fights with other patrons, which Cock had to break up.  After one fight Cock threatened to arrest Habron the next time he got into a fight.  Habron replied, "It'll be a sorry day for you, the day you arrest me."  The next time Cock passed the pub and heard sounds of a fight, he entered without waiting to be called and saw Habron and another patron in the midst of a fight.  Cock arrested Habron.  However, Habron had actually been on his best behavior.  The other patron had interpreted Habron's behavior as a sign of weakness and, inspired by liquor, decided that it was a good time to pick a fight.

The next day a magistrate dismissed the case against Habron as it was well substantiated that Habron was blameless in the fight.  In the courtroom following the dismissal, Habron reportedly walked up to Cock and told him, "I promised you a sorry day if you ever ran foul of me. I'll do you in for this." Near midnight the same day Cock was shot to death.

Habron was arrested for the murder.  At trial, the circumstantial evidence against Habron was supplemented by testimony about the perpetrator's boot prints.  A police officer testified that boot prints left by the murderer matched Habron's boots.  The soles of Habron's boots had a row of nails on each side as well as two rows of nails down the center.  The officer testified that the number and the position of nail marks in the boot prints matched Habron's boots.  However, no photographs or casts were made of the prints, so the judge and jury had to rely solely on the officer's testimony.  The defense argued that Habron's style of boots and nails was common.  Habron was sentenced to death by hanging. However, the crown accepted the jury's recommendation of life imprisonment and commuted Habron's sentence.

Two years later, in Oct 1978, another constable was shot while interrupting a burglary in the London suburb of Blackheath.  While this constable was not killed, the suspect was caught.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the attempted murder of the constable.  Following conviction, the suspect was identified as Charles Peace, wanted for the murder of Albert Dyson.  Peace was then convicted of this murder and sentenced to death.  Following his sentencing, Peace confessed to the murder of Constable Cock.  He said that Cock had interrupted him during a burglary.  Peace gave sufficient details of the crime that authorities were fully convinced of his confession.  Habron was pardoned and Parliament awarded him £500.  (CTI)  [6/08]

Beck was convicted of individually defrauding ten women out their jewelry, mostly rings, using the same confidence scheme.  The swindler had posed as the Earl of Wilton and claimed to have a home in St. John's Wood.  Beck was identified by all ten women.  In addition he was identified as John Smith, a man who had been convicted of perpetrating a identical confidence scheme in 1877.  At trial Beck's defence wanted to cross-examine the crown's handwriting expert to established that documents submitted into evidence as having been in Beck's handwriting were actually in the same hand as those attributed to Smith in 1877.  In addition it wanted to present testimony that Beck had been in South America in 1877 and for several years thereafter.  However, the judge prohibited this defence.  Legal rules prohibited the crown from mentioning a prior conviction, so the judge apparently felt the defence should be prohibited as well.

Evidence later surfaced that Smith had been examined by a prison doctor in 1879, who stated in his report that Smith had undergone circumcision.  Beck was examined and found to be uncircumcised.  The only effect of this new evidence was that Beck, who had been assigned Smith's old prison number, was given a new prison number.  Beck was released from prison in 1901.

In 1904, Beck was again arrested for defrauding women using the same confidence scheme.  He was again convicted, but his sentencing was deferred until further investigation could be made.  During this period, while stories of defrauded women were in the newspapers, a pawnshop owner called police about a man pawning rings in his shop.  The man said his name was William Thomas and that he was innocent of any wrongdoing.  However, he was identified by several swindled women who also identified rings in his possession as their property.  Following Thomas' conviction, he admitted that he was John Smith and that he was responsible for the frauds for which Beck had twice been convicted.  Beck was soon pardoned and Parliament awarded him £5,000 for his wrongful imprisonment.  (CTI)  [6/08]

Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney were convicted of murder based on the testimony of a sole witness.  This witness testified the pair murdered a man, but this man was later known to be alive three years after his alleged slaying.

Pinfold served a prior sentence for an unrelated armed robbery and was released from prison in 1970.  After his release, he started a diving equipment company with MacKenney, whom he had met in prison.  In prison, he had also met John "Bruce" Childs and gave him a job upon his release.  In addition, he rented factory space to another ex-inmate, Terence Eve, who used it to manufacture teddy bears and life jackets.

In Nov. 1974, Eve vanished, apparently after finding out that a warrant had been issued for his arrest regarding the hijacking of £75,000 (over $150,000) in stereo equipment.  In Dec. 1979, Childs, who no longer worked for Pinfold and MacKenney, confessed to murdering Eve and implicated them as participants in the murder.  Childs stated that the three of them murdered Eve in his factory on the Saturday morning of the weekend he went missing.  However, Eve's wife, mother, and an employee worked that Saturday morning and reported that they did not see any of the three, nor did they notice anything out of the ordinary.

Besides confessing to the murder of Eve, Childs also confessed to the murder of five other people who vanished between Nov. 1974 and Oct. 1978.  He implicated Pinfold and MacKenney in them, saying the partners ran a discount contract killing business in which Pinfold solicited the orders and MacKenney carried them out.

In 1980, Pinfold was tried for four murders and MacKenney for six.  There was no evidence that the six alleged victims were even dead save for the testimony of Childs.  Pinfold was only convicted of procuring Eve's murder.  MacKenney was convicted of four murders, but was acquitted of murdering Eve.

In 1986, Childs recanted his trial testimony in an affidavit and said he testified falsely because prosecutors had offered him “the inducement that my ‘cooperation’ at the trial would ensure my early release from prison.”  Pending an appeal, Pinfold was released on bail in 2001.  In 2003, new evidence surfaced that was concealed by the prosecution.  This evidence indicated that in 1977, three years after Eve's alleged murder, Scotland Yard knew that Eve was living in West London under an assumed name.  In Dec. 2003, the convictions of both Pinfold and MacKenney were quashed.  (ForeJustice) (BBC) (NK) (JD31 p43)  [12/06]

Malik Taj Mohammad was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Malkani Bibi.  Prosecutors claimed that he killed her over an acrimonious property dispute.  Mohammad claimed that he could not have murdered Bibi, as she was still alive.  However, he did not present any proof and the trial court relied on testimony of Bibi’s relatives who said they had buried Bibi.  In 2006, Mohammad’s supporters discovered that Bibi was alive and imprisoned in the eastern Pakistan city of Gujarat.  She had been imprisoned there on a theft conviction in 2004.

Mohammed petitioned Pakistan’s Supreme Court for a new trial based on the new evidence.  The Court then summoned Bibi to appear before it.  Satisfied that Mohammed had been wrongly convicted, the Court ordered his immediate release.  It also ordered a lower court to investigate how Mohammed had been prosecuted and convicted of a crime that never happened.  (JD33 p28)  [2/07]

Teng Xingshan was convicted of the murder of Shi Xiaorong.  A chopped up body identified as Shi's was found in Mayang County, Hunan Province in April 1987.  Police settled on Teng as the guilty party because he was a butcher and the dismemberment was "very professionally" done.  Teng soon confessed to the murder, allegedly after police beat it out of him.  However, he protested his innocence all the way to the execution ground.  Authorities alleged that Teng had sex with Shi and killed her because he suspected she stole his money.  Teng was executed by gunshot in Jan. 1989.

Teng's family had heard reports that Shi was alive in neighboring Guizhou province as early as 1993, but it took years to verify the reports and Teng's family lacked the funds and the courage to sue the government.  The case first received publicity in May 2005, when the family formally filed a lawsuit with the Hunan Higher People's Court.  News reports of another Chinese murder victim turning up alive in March 2005 may have prompted the decision.  Shi denied ever meeting Teng and said she had been sold into marriage to a man in eastern Shandong Province a month before the chopped up body was found.  Shi returned to her hometown in Guizhou Province in 1993.  Teng was posthumously exonerated in Jan. 2006.  (UPI)  [4/08]

Shimada Tatsuhiro and his common law wife, Aoki Keiko, were both sentenced to life imprisonment for the arson murder of Keiko’s daughter.  On the day of the alleged crime, Tatsuhiro filled the gas tank of his van before returning to his home in the Higashi-Sumiyoshi ward of Osaka.  Ten minutes later he smelled smoke and noticed a small fire in the garage under his van.  Tatsuhiro searched for a fire extinguisher, but the fire quickly grew and spread.  Keiko’s daughter died in the fire after being overcome by smoke in a first floor bathroom.  Keiko had 15 million yen life insurance policies on both her children.  Life insurance on children was not uncommon, but 5 million yen and 10 million yen policies were more typical.  The couple had no financial difficulties at the time of the blaze.

The fire investigation produced no suspicious findings, although police found out that Tatsuhiro was a Korean, a possibly discriminatory fact that was not even known to Keiko’s father.  On Sept. 10, six weeks after the fire, the police separately interrogated both Tatsuhiro and Keiko and demanded that they confess to arson, murder, and insurance fraud.  Police hit Tatsuhiro’s head, kicked his knees, and applied chokeholds.  Keiko was subjected to similar treatment.  Both broke down and signed written confessions.  Unlike other industrialized nations, interrogations have a unique importance in Japan as suspects have no right to summon legal counsel.  In a Japanese magazine, a foreigner who had problems with the law advised revealingly, "If you did it, confess.  If you didn't, fight."  Despite police reliance on confessions, the Japanese Constitution prohibits convictions based solely on confessions.  Nevertheless, 99.5% of defendants brought to trial are convicted.

Police alleged that on the day of the fire, Tatsuhiro stopped in a local store and bought a plastic pump of the kind used for kerosene heaters in the winter. Upon arriving home, police alleged he parked the van, pumped out six or seven liters of gasoline, laid the pump under the van, and ignited the fire with a disposable lighter.  To support their theory, police commissioned a reenactment blaze, but the results differed from the actual blaze.  All evidence showed that the actual blaze started small and gradually grew in size.

In a report, an investigator stated what he thought was the most probable cause of the blaze.  He suggested that the overfilled van leaked gas from a crack in the fuel line, which was then ignited by sparks from an air compressor that was in the garage.  Manufacturers had recalled the air compressor for the spark problem in 1991.  The storeowner who allegedly sold Tatsuhiro the plastic kerosene pump did not remember him buying one nor, for that matter, of any customer ever requesting one in the middle of summer.  (Source)  [6/07]