After 40 years, ex-soldier guilty of killing schoolgirl
A FORMER soldier who thought he had got away with killing a schoolgirl 40 years ago was finally brought to justice last night.
Stephen Hough raped and strangled 15-year- old Janet Commins in 1976, when he was aged just 16.
He stood by as police arrested and prosecuted another man – who was jailed for 12 years for her manslaughter. Hough joined the Army and was posted to Germany, but returned 15 years later and carried on with his life – living for years close to Janet’s grieving parents, in Flint, north Wales.
Only after Hough’s DNA was entered into the police national computer last year was he finally caught. It matched semen samples taken from the body of Janet that had been stored away for four decades and enhanced following a cold case review in 2006. Mold Crown Court heard the odds of the DNA being from anyone other than Hough, who was kicked out of the Army after being jailed for five years for GBH in the 1980s, was a billion-to-one.
Hough denied any involvement in the crime, but yesterday a jury found him guilty of Janet’s rape, serious sexual assault and manslaughter after just over five hours of deliberations. He was cleared of the alternative charge of murder.
Janet’s mother, Eileen Commins, 75, a retired nurse, whose husband, Ted, died three years ago, is thought to be in poor health and was too unwell to attend court.
But last night Janet’s uncle Derek Ierston, who identified her body at the time of her death, said his family were struggling with the fact that her killer had been free and living amongst them for ‘all these years’.
North Wales Police is now under investigation by the police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, over how it handled the 1976 investigation and dealt with Noel Jones, the innocent man who was prosecuted at the time of Janet’s death.
Remanding Hough, of Flint, into custody, Mr Justice Clive Lewis said: ‘It is critical, after 40 years, that justice is done.’
He will be sentenced next week.