REVEALED: real killer in TV jury trial — and the defenceless wife he bludgeoned with a hammer
It’s the Channel 4 experiment watched by millions last week. Now the Mail tracks down the sculptor who was in the dock in 2012... and speaks to his victim’s anguished family
AS an exercise in exposing the machinations of the wheels of justice, it was fascinating viewing. For four nights last week, television viewers were gripped by Channel 4’s social experiment in which two juries of 12 men and women — each completely unaware of the other’s existence — were asked to watch the same criminal trial and reach a conclusion.
Guilty or not guilty?
Did mild-mannered sculptor John Risedale murder his wife Helen when he throttled her at their home, before caving in her skull with an industrial hammer, as she lay slumped on the floor? Or was it rather a case of ‘loss of control’, a defence meaning he could be cleared of murder and found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter? The Jury: Murder Trial — played out in suspenseful detail from the wooden benches of Chelmsford Shire Hall in Essex, England — was gripping viewing for two reasons.
In the real world, when jurors deliver their verdicts, their deliberations remain shrouded in secrecy, a permanently veiled mystery. But in this television trial, the intention of programme makers was precisely the opposite: to grant viewers a warts-and-all view of every tortured stage of deliberations.
But what made this televised form of social experiment all the more gripping was the knowledge that John and Helen Risedale were not scripted characters in a television drama, but rather real people — albeit with names, dates and locations changed.
Every detail of the court case played out by actors was taken from actual transcripts of the real murder trial.
‘John Risedale’ is actually a man named Thomas Crompton and his wife Angela Phillips, the beautiful woman pictured here, smiling in a red dress, was killed in a brutal attack at the home they shared — not in Essex, as depicted on screen, but in the tiny village of Arminghall, in Norfolk, in 2012. And the real jury at his actual trial, as the Mail has discovered, ended up finding him guilty of manslaughter, after which he was jailed for seven-and-a-half years, with a minimum of three years, nine months served in prison.
Which is what makes the conclusion to Thursday night’s Channel 4 re-enactment all the more disturbing. For, in the programme, the two juries reached two different verdicts: one guilty of murder and one not guilty, calling into question the efficacy of the trial by jury criminal justice system by which the UK, and so many other countries across the civilised world, stands.
Now out of prison, having served his sentence, today Crompton, 50, bears little resemblance to the man who played him on screen (actor Sam Alexander) or to the man who stood before a jury at Norwich Crown Court 11 years ago. Balding and with a large, grey beard, Crompton is still working as a sculptor, as he was when he killed his wife. We found him working at a foundry on the outskirts of the Suffolk market town of Halesworth, east England, just 20 miles from the scene of the real crime that was so vividly described on television last week.
Reluctant to say anything, and desperate to stay hidden, he said: ‘I haven’t been watching it [the Channel 4 series]. I’ve had nothing to do with it. I have had no contact with them. It’s nothing to do with me.
‘It’s not wise for me to say anything either really. What good can possibly come of it for anybody?’ And then, he added: ‘I’ve been trying to disappear ... I’ve tried really hard.’
Much as he may wish to disappear, the impact of his crime is something that will never fade.
HAVING spoken to witnesses who formed part of the original court case, along with the families of both Crompton and Angela, it is clear the ripple effect of that day — Monday, June 11, 2012 — continue to be felt today, not least in the absence of Angela, who would be 47 this year and whose three children have grown up without their mother.
On that fateful day, Crompton and Angela, each with children from previous relationships, were just three months into married life. Theirs was a difficult relationship, however, as the court, heard. Crompton was ‘obsessed’ with his new wife, who’d lived a troubled life. They’d rowed bitterly that day.
The jury was told Crompton was angry when he came into the house from his workshop and found his wife packing away some of his things so she could decorate; he shoved her against the door frame, attempted to strangle her, and then hit her with the hammer, multiple times. Then he returned to the workshop and confessed to his fellow artist Bjorn Fiskvatn: ‘That’s it. I’ve killed her.’
In fact, Angela, who had worked as a make-up artist, as well as in events, was still alive. She died of her injuries two days later in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge.
Crompton, as viewers this week will know, never denied killing his wife. He’d admitted it to police when they arrived, telling them that he ‘just snapped’.
The question was whether he ‘lost control’, whether this was, in effect, a moment of madness; that under extreme provocation he temporarily lost control of his own actions, in circumstances where a reasonable person might have done the same.
That was what the jury was urged
believe by his defence team. ‘I n’t know what happened. There is bit of fog that surrounds it,’ ompton said, when he took to the ness box. raft of character witnesses also oke in his defence, including his her, Ian, and sister, who worked a vicar at the time. is father told the court his son’s ions were ‘so far removed from e kind of person he is. I can’t derstand it at all and I know that still cannot understand it’. he prosecution case held that ompton never lost control of his tions, that he had enough selfntrol to stop trying to strangle wife when he saw her starting to n blue and enough self-control, , to go and fetch a hammer and e it to break her skull. But the ginal jury clearly accepted the her-of-two’s defence. There were, wever, as in the recent television al, those who were concerned by the emphasis placed on Angela’s background — her troubled life, her former relationships, her ‘demons’, as it was put.
Defence barrister Karim Khalil, in his closing statement, said Crompton has been ‘overwhelmed’ by emotion in the circumstances he found himself in, describing it as a ‘tragedy for all concerned’.
Certainly it was a tragedy for Angela’s family, who released a dignified statement as Crompton was sentenced saying: ‘We are deeply disappointed with the manslaughter verdict in this case . . . The fact the defendant will only serve half of today’s sentence before being released is merely salt in the wound. During the court case it felt that Angela herself was on trial, and in many ways that has been the hardest part for us. We feel Angela and her family have been let down in this case by the justice system.’
Angela’s brother Michael Hulme, who was forewarned of the Channel 4 series, last week reiterated those feelings to the Mail.
‘It’s fair to say that the family’s opinions haven’t changed,’ he told us. ‘I don’t know what Tom Crompton is up to now.’
What he’s been up to, it transpires, is working back in the world he left behind when he was imprisoned.
He is understood to have begun assisting the prominent sculptor Laurence Edwards, creator of the towering naked Yoxman statue, that overlooks the A12 in Britain, in March 2016, soon after his release from prison.
In the village of Arminghall, Norfolk, there is nothing to indicate that the Victorian cottage that sits between a country lane and rolling farmland was ever the site of such horror. But neighbours, whose statements to police formed part of the prosecution case, remember and have been watching.
The couple, who did not want to be named, said Angela had moved into the property, not long before they married. To this day, they recall what happened.
‘Our houses are joined together and we have got a wall between us,’ says the woman. ‘I was in the kitchen and all of a sudden there was an almighty crash as if someone dropped a tray of cutlery.
‘Then we heard nothing after that. The next minute, the ambulance and the police came, and they cordoned us all off. It was all very sad, and ruined the lives of so many people. She lost her life and he lost his life as well, his business and everything.’
Thoughtful people, good neighbours, they had no idea the crime that unfolded on their doorstep was being retold, in a staged courtroom. ‘I just put it on to see what it was all about,’ she says. ‘When they first mentioned a hammer, I thought it sounded a bit like Tom’s case. Then there were other similarities and when it featured a work colleague with a Scandinavian name, I knew it was definitely his case.
‘Tom was lovely. In the programme, they portrayed him really well. It is how I could have imagined him behaving in court.’
Her husband adds: ‘He was as good as gold and I don’t think he had a bad bone in his body.’
But what of the others who found themselves portrayed by actors on screen this week? His father, Ian, said he was ‘dismayed’ that the case has been replayed in the TV programme.
‘I didn’t want it made. I’ve got grandchildren and Angela’s children are making lives for themselves. This is the last thing we need. Everybody was beginning to rebuild their lives and this was the last thing we needed to happen.’
Crompton’s former co-worker Bjorn Fiskvatn has been living back in Norway with his British partner since the tragedy.
When contacted by the Mail, he said: ‘I was approached by the production company and I told them what I will tell you now — that I have spent all of these years trying to put as much distance between myself and that horrible, horrible day. I won’t be watching the TV show.’
AFORMER friend of Crompton, who asked not to be named, has mixed emotions about his erstwhile pal’s crime and about the way his wife was portrayed in court. ‘It is true that she was an extremely difficult person and enjoyed provoking people, and in particular her partners. She had been abused as a child and that messes you up.
‘But when I saw one of the jurors on the programme using the phrase, “She was asking for it”, I felt sick to my stomach. There was a lot of victim shaming in the same way that people try to get off in rape trials by blackening the character of the victim.
‘The TV dramatisation appears to be an accurate depiction of the real trial, but the picture that was created of Tom being a saint is not correct. He is much more human than how he came across.
‘Both the trial and the programme showed a two-dimensional version of him. Some people are angry a lot of the time, but know how to hide it when they need to. Some people would say Tom was in that category.’
The friend remains concerned, as Angela’s family clearly do, that she was on trial, too.
‘Lots of statements were presented to show that she was bad. I have lived with the injustice done to Angela and her children for years. They lost their mother twice. They lost her on the day Tom killed her, and they lost her at the trial.
‘It is just not right what was done to Angela, both when he killed her or in order to get a manslaughter verdict. I can’t tell you whether the jury at the real trial made the right decision, but it was not the whole story.
‘He was not what he appeared to be on the witness stand, and neither was she the person she was made out to be. Both depictions were wrong.’
And that, perhaps, is why Channel 4’s experimental light shone on the nation’s jury system last week is so fascinating.
Two juries, two different verdicts. But there is only one man who knows what happened in that cottage in a Norfolk village. And the only verdict that matters is the one delivered in a courtroom in Norwich 11 years ago.