27 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit

ORDEAL Stephen Downing is freed in 2002

IT WAS one of the most shocking miscarriages of justice in British history. A 17-year-old boy, with a reading age of 11, forced to confess to murder.

Stephen Downing languished in a cell for 27 years for something he didn’t do.

“What we should not ignore about the 70s was that there were high-profile miscarriages of justice,” says Prof David Wilson. “Confessions would often be extracted or beaten out of someone.”

At lunchtime on September 12, 1973, typist Wendy Sewell, 32, left her office in Bakewell, Derbyshire, and was seen going into a cemetery.

Next morning, groundsman Stephen found the blood-splattered woman. She’d been struck violently about the head with a pickaxe handle and sexually assaulted.

Her trousers, knickers, plimsolls and bra were nearby with the bloodied axe handle.

Downing quickly raised the alarm and, barely alive, Mrs Sewell, inset left, was taken to hospital. She died two days later. Speculation grew she had been going to meet a lover at the cemetery and had allegedly had numerous liaisons with married men. In 1967, she left her husband for a local man and the couple adopted a baby. But in 1971, she returned to her husband. She was cruelly dubbed The Bakewell Tart.

Downing was dragged in for questioning without a solicitor. Officers pressured him into signing a confession.

When Wendy died, the charge was upgraded to murder. Terrified, Downing retracted his confession but was found guilty at Nottingham crown court. He was jailed for life, with a minimum of 10 years.

He continued to maintain his innocence while behind bars, choosing to remain in jail, even though he would have been released in 1991, as parole couldn’t be granted without an admission of guilt.

But in 2002, three appeal judges ruled the conviction “unsafe” because Downing hadn’t had a solicitor present when he confessed. And despite police saying all evidence had been “lost and destroyed”, the pickaxe was found at Derby Museum.

Forensic examination crucially revealed Stephen’s fingerprints were not present, just a palm print from an unknown person.

“I am still paying for a crime I did not commit,” Stephen, now 63, has said.

Wendy’s killer has never been found.

Ripper incident room in Leeds

It began with a string of sex workers being brutally murdered by a killer who prowled red light districts searching for his next victim. But it soon became clear that no woman was safe as the Yorkshire Ripper killings sent shockwaves through a terrified Britain.

The Ripper’s first victim, on October 30, 1975, had been Wilma McCann. The mother of four, from the Leeds suburb of Chapeltown, had been hit twice with a hammer and stabbed 15 times in the stomach, neck and abdomen.

Her body was found in playing fields yards from her home.

Just 11 weeks later, 42-year-old

Police at Josephine Whitaker murder scene in Halifax. Left, Peter Sutcliffe in his lorry prostitute Emily Jackson was smashed over the head with a hammer and stabbed more than 50 times with a sharpened screwdriver, before being dumped in derelict buildings. This time, the killer left a clue, a boot print on her left thigh.

Irene Richardson, a mother of three, was also battered with a hammer before being fatally stabbed in the neck and stomach.

But the killer was getting sloppy, leaving tyre prints when he dumped her body behind a sports pavilion.

Speaking of the panic that swept across the area, top criminologist Professor David Wilson said: “This case carried a great deal of fear in northern towns and cities. It also drew a lot of attention over the police not being able to catch a serial killer.”

The Ripper murdered his fourth victim, Patricia Atkinson, 32, in Bradford, in April 1977. She’d met her killer at a Carlisle pub and taken him to her flat. As she walked through the door he attacked her with a hammer… and left another clue, a boot print on a blood-stained sheet.

Then 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald’s body was found by two children at a playground. Her death was followed by 20-year-old prostitute Jean Jordan, in October 1977. Detectives discovered a new £5 note inside her bag, which was found 50 yards away.

Sensing a breakthrough, frustrated police traced the note to the payroll

EXPERT Prof David Wilson of Yorkshire hauliers T & WH Clark. They interviewed men who worked there, including a lorry driver named Peter Sutcliffe. But he provided an alibi placing him at a family party.

Police work was hampered by hoax letters that began in 1978, and especially by a voice recording that arrived in June 1979.

The tape from a man claiming to be the killer caused police to shift their focus to Sunderland, leaving Sutcliffe free to kill.

Hoaxer John Humble, aka Wearside Jack, was arrested in 2005 when DNA on an envelope he had sent to police matched a sample in their database. He was jailed in 2006 and released in 2009. He died last year.

Between the £5 note discovery and April 1979, a further four women were murdered – Yvonne Pearson,