Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

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.

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Adolph 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's 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]

David Cooper, Michael McMahon, and Patrick Murphy  were convicted of murdering a Luton, England post office clerk during an attempted robbery of the post office.  An unusually large amount of money was being held in the post office overnight.  The victim, Reginald Stevens, a sub-postmaster, had locked up the post office and was shot to death in a nearby parking lot (car park) after he refused to hand over his keys.

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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.

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Roy Burnett was convicted of raping a 20-year-old student nurse.  The alleged victim said Burnett had followed her home from a bus, dragged her into the woods and threatened her with a knife before raping her.  Burnett was jailed for life and his applications for parole were consistently denied because he refused to admit guilt.  In 1998 the same woman made another rape complaint, but gave inconsistent accounts of being attacked by two men in a car.  The complaint damaged the woman's credibility and caused police to re-examine her previous complaint against Burnett.

A re-examination of evidence against Burnett revealed many inconsistencies in the woman's accounts. Scratch marks on her body, shown in photographs taken of her at the time, were, according to fresh expert testimony, "typical of self-inflicted injury."  A judge later added that the absence of other injuries, which would have been expected if she had been attacked in the way she claimed, was "surprising to the point of incredulity."  The woman's current boyfriend, with whom she has just had a child, described her as "attention seeking."  Burnett was released from jail after being cleared by the Court of Appeal.  Scotland Yard is considering whether to file perjury charges against the woman.  (Innocent)  [9/08]

England

Ryan James was convicted of the murder of his 39-year-old wife, Sandra James.  Sandra died from drinking a glass of orange juice that contained a fatal dose of immobilon, a horse tranquilizer.  Ryan, a veterinarian, had access to the drug.  He also been having an affair with another woman, Catherine Crooks.  The lovers had left their spouses to live together, but the cost of running two homes drove Ryan back to his wife.

Sandra's death would have allowed Ryan to start a new life with Catherine on the proceeds of a £180,000 life insurance policy.  Besides these proceeds, £143,000 in debts were wiped out by Sandra's death.  At trial, Ryan's defense argued that Sandra had committed suicide, but made it look like murder.  However, the crown argued that it was murder made to look like a suicide.  Ryan was sentenced to life in prison.  His trial judge, Justice Anthony Hidden, told him he was "the most evil, selfish, and criminally callous man" he had ever sentenced.

While in prison Ryan married Catherine, who never believed he killed his wife.  While going through her new husband's belongings, Catherine found a handwritten note stuffed inside one of Ryan's professional journals.  It was in Sandra's handwriting and said, "Ryan, I leave you absolutely nothing but this note - if you find it in time, Sam."  Sam was Sandra's pet name.  Because the note indicated suicidal intent, Ryan's conviction was quashed in 1998 and he was released from prison.  There was some additional evidence that Sandra was depressed.  She had taken anti-depressants in the 1970s.  At the time of Sandra's death there were puncture wounds in her foot.  It was alleged that she had experimented with the immobilon drug by injecting it into her foot, then injecting herself with the antidote shortly thereafter.  (Innocent)  [10/08]

Mark Dallagher was convicted of the murder of 94-year-old Dorothy Wood.  Wood was found dead at her home on Whitby Avenue in Huddersfield.  She had been smothered with a pillow.  A burglar had entered the home through a transom window above her bed.  Wood was profoundly deaf and slept downstairs because of a heart condition.

Ear prints were found on the glass immediately below the transom.  West Yorkshire police sent these prints along with prints of Dallagher's ears to Cornelis Van der Lugt, an alleged ear print expert.  Police suspected Dallagher might be the culprit because he was a small-time burglar who lived in the area.  Van der Lugt was Dutch police officer for 27 years and a lecturer at the Dutch Police College.  He had no formal qualifications, but he had become interested in ear print identification and read what was available on that topic.  He had built up a portfolio of about 600 photographs and 300 ear prints.

At trial, Van der Lugt testified that he was "absolutely convinced that the prints of [Dallagher's] left ear were identical with the prints of the left ear on the window."  Another Crown expert, Peter Vanezis, considered Van der Lugt to be the ear print expert in the world, and testified that "it was very likely that it was this defendant who made those prints," although he could not be one hundred percent certain.  Vanezis was Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine and Science at the University of Glasgow.

Following Dallagher's conviction, two other criminal convictions that relied on ear print evidence were overturned, one in the U.S. (David Kunze), and another in the Netherlands.  Both relied on Van der Lugt's testimony.  In 2002, an appeals court also overturned Dallagher's conviction because it found fault with the manner in which the experts expressed their opinion of Dallagher's guilt.  Following the reversal, an initial report given by Van der Lugt surfaced in which he stated that the ear prints found on Wood's window were definitely not those of Dallagher.  The words "definitely not" were underlined twice.

A retrial for Dallagher began in 2003, but it was halted after 10 days as the prosecution sought to gather additional evidence.  However, additional evidence was not forthcoming and DNA tests of the ear prints showed they did not belong to Dallagher.  As a result, charges against Dallagher were dropped in 2004.  He was released from imprisonment after serving seven years of a life sentence.  (Innocent) (Forensic-Evidence)  [11/09]

Sirfraze Ahmed was convicted of robbery.  Three masked men stole more than £30,000 from Neil Bateman outside his home in Bodenham, England.  Bateman had organized a classic car show in Derbyshire that weekend.  In Feb. 2006 two brothers, Khalid and Mohammed Khan, pled guilty to the robbery.  The two denied being at the scene of the robbery, but admitted supplying items used in the robbery.  Although the brothers did not implicate Ahmed, he was also charged in the robbery.  Four of his fingerprints were found on a black plastic bag left at the crime scene after it had been worn as a mask by one of the robbers.

At his Oct. 2006 trial, Ahmed testified he was almost 50 miles away in Birmingham.  Several witnesses corroborated Ahmed's alibi. He said he knew the Khan brothers, and had helped Khalid fix cars at the house the brothers shared.  Ahmed said that they would put plastic bags on the seat of a car to prevent oil stains, and that is how his fingerprints could have gotten on the bag found at the crime scene.  In June 2007 the Court of Appeals quashed his conviction on the basis there was insufficient evidence that he was involved in the robbery.  (Hereford Times) (Hereford Times #2)  [9/08]

Amilton Nicolas Bento (aka Nico), a Portuguese immigrant, was convicted of the murder of his 26-year-old Polish girlfriend, Kamila Garsztka.  The alleged crime occurred in Bedford, England in or near the River Great Ouse.  A CCTV security camera caught Garsztka walking alone on the embankment of the river toward Priory Lake which adjoined the river.  Garsztka's coat, scarf, and shoes were found by the river bank about an hour later.  Bento reported Garsztka missing and pestered police to step up their search for her and keep him informed.  He told police Garsztka had left her handbag in his apartment, which police later retrieved.  Seven weeks after she went missing, canoeists found her body floating in Priory Lake.

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Edward Owen Browning was convicted of the murder of Marie Wilks, a 22-year-old who was seven months pregnant.  Wilks' car had broken down on the eastbound M50 carriageway near Bushley, Hereford and Worcester.  She had used an emergency phone on the side of the road to summon help, but was abducted and stabbed shortly thereafter.  The phone was left dangling from its cord and blood was found nearby.  Two days later her body was found three miles away down an embankment on the eastbound carriageway.  Her throat had been cut.  She also had a broken jaw from being hit or kicked on the left side of her head.

Browning was identified as the perpetrator by witnesses after a composite sketch was made.  In 1994, Browning was released from jail after an appeals court found that his conviction was unsafe.  Judges ruled that the jurors might have changed their mind if they had known of police evidence about the murderer's car that was not disclosed at the trial.

Peter Clarke, an off-duty West Mercia officer, was filmed four days before Browning's arrest. He described the murderer's car as a silver-grey nonmetallic non-hatchback Renault car, with chrome bumpers and the registration number C856 HFK.  Browning's car was a hatchback Renault, with plastic bumpers, and the registration number C754 VAD.  Police had also failed to disclose two earlier statements from Clarke as well as one by another witness.  These statements described what the witnesses saw on the M50.  Browning was later awarded an undisclosed sum, believed to be in excess of £600,000.  (BBC) (Timeline)  [9/08]

David Asbury was convicted of murdering 51-year-old Marion Ross and stealing a biscuit tin containing £1800.  The victim's ribs were crushed and she was stabbed in the eye with scissors. The scissors were left embedded in her throat.  There was no signs of forced entry, but police discovered that some builders, including Asbury, had had access to her home the previous year.  During a search of Asbury's apartment, Detective Shirley McKie found a biscuit tin in his bedroom containing £1800.  Asbury maintained the tin and the money were his.  However the Scottish Fingerprint Service, a division of the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO), found Ross's fingerprint on it.  Since the tin provided a possible motive of theft for the murder, police believed the tin had belonged to the victim.  At Asbury's trial for murder, expert witnesses from the SCRO testified that a fingerprint found on the tin was that of Ross.

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