The truth will out
We examine the shocking real-life crimes given the Hollywood treatment
He was a tall, strong man – with the mind of an 11-year-old
In summer 1933, Derek Bentley was born in Norbury, south London.
As a child, he had developmental and health problems, wasn’t able to read or write. He got into trouble for theft and was sent to a correctional school.
Yet, despite having the mind of an 11-year-old, Derek grew into a tall, strong man.
After being sacked as a binman for the council, he was rejected for National Service, being declared mentally unfit.
His family, including older sister Iris, were supportive.
But Derek found a kindred spirit in gun-loving thug Christopher Craig, a teenager with a love of American gangster movies.
On the freezing cold night of 2 November 1952, what the pair did would go down in the history books for all the wrong reasons.
That night, Derek,
19, grabbed a knife and knuckleduster, while Christopher, 16, packed a gun.
They set out to burgle, and jumped a gate to clamber onto the roof of a warehouse.
Across the road, a little girl spotted them and her mum dialled 999.
The police arrived speedily and Derek Bentley was apprehended.
While the officers tried to capture Christopher Craig, Bentley was reported to have shouted, ‘Let him have it, Chris!’
Seconds later,
Craig shot and killed PC Sidney Miles with a bullet to the head.
He fired at the others until he was out of bullets, wounding another officer, then leapt 30ft to the ground in a bid to escape. The fall broke his back, but he survived.
The pair were charged with murder under the ‘joint enterprise’ law.
At 16, Craig was too young to receive the death penalty but, if convicted, Bentley would almost certainly be facing the hangman’s noose.
Just three months later, the teenagers both stood trial.
The jury heard the cocky, boastful evidence of Craig. He admitted owning 40 guns and instigating the crimes that resulted in PC Miles’ murder.
In contrast to that was Bentley, 19, who lacked any understanding of almost every question asked of him.
His low IQ, rated in prison after his arrest as just 77 – between
sentencing Bentley to death.
Christopher Craig, who fired the fatal shot, was jailed, due to his young age, and served 10 years before his release, getting married and becoming a plumber.
Meanwhile, appeals to reduce Bentley’s sentence to imprisonment were rejected. On the eve of his execution, 200 MPs signed a petition urging the Home Secretary to show mercy.
Outside the House of Commons, over 100 people shouted, ‘Bentley must not die.’ By 9am, the scheduled time of the execution, crowds gathered outside Wandsworth jail, singing the hymn Abide With Me. Despite the last-minute appeals, the execution went ahead. But, according to the executioner, Bentley was hopeful of a reprieve until the last moments of his life. After, his devastated family fought to have his body exhumed from the prison graveyard, and he was buried at their church. The words A Victim of
British Justice were etched on his gravestone.
In the decades after, Bentley’s family campaigned to clear his name. When his parents died in the 70s, his sister Iris took over, giving moving interviews, writing to politicians, penning a book.
And when her daughter Maria was old enough, she joined her mother’s quest – and after Iris’ death in 1997, continued the legal fight.
Finally, in 1998, Derek Bentley’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal, and he was given a full pardon.
It was found he’d not been given a fair trial, and that the judge had been biased.
It’s still not clear whether he ever uttered, ‘Let him have it, Chris.’
Maria Dingwall-Bentley celebrated the verdict, taking the court’s ruling to Derek’s grave.
Along with the words A Victim of British Justice on the solemn black gravestone are four more words: The truth will out. The Bentley family’s fight, lasting over four decades, made sure of this.