Could appeal judges finally clear Lady in the Lake killer?
A TEACHER convicted of murdering his wife 42 years ago in the notorious Lady in the Lake case could be posthumously cleared.
Gordon Park was jailed in 2005 for killing wife Carol in 1976 with an ice axe then dumping her body in Coniston Water in the Lake District.
He maintained his innocence throughout and committed suicide in his prison cell on his 66th birthday in 2010.
But Park may be cleared after the case was referred to the Court of Appeal yesterday after an eight-year investigation by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) uncovered new evidence.
Mr and Mrs Park’s two children, Rachel and Jeremy, have always maintained their father did not kill their mother and have campaigned for a retrial.
After Park hanged himself his family applied to the CCRC – an independent watchdog that investigates miscarriages of justice – for a posthumous review of his conviction.
Yesterday it said ‘there is a real possibility that the court will quash the conviction in light of new evidence’.
During the trial, the prosecution linked Park to the crime by the knots used to tie up his wife’s corpse. But the CCRC found none of his DNA on the rope. It also said evidence undermining the claim that Park’s climbing axe was the murder weapon was not disclosed.
Mrs Park, 30, vanished in 1976. Her body was found by divers in August 1997, leading to the case being named the Lady in the Lake after the Raymond Chandler crime novel of the same name.
Park was charged with murder but the charge was dropped in January 1998 due to a lack of evidence. He was re-arrested in 2004 and found guilty of murder at Manchester Crown Court. The jury heard that the couple, from Barrow, Cumbria, had a tempestuous relationship.