Catalogue of cop blunders left murderer to roam free
A STRING of blunders led to Rikki Neave’s mother being charged with his murder while the real killer escaped justice for more than 27 years.
Blinkered detectives lost or discarded 45 key exhibits, including the coat used to strangle Rikki and the rest of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.
Watson thought he had got away with murder after Cambridgeshire Police became convinced Rikki’s mother, Ruth, was the killer despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.
Watson’s barrister Jenni Dempster, QC, told the Old Bailey that some senior officers continued to believe Ms Neave killed her son even after she was cleared at trial.
Ms Dempster said this meant no “proper investigation was made before 2015”.
MISTAKES
She told a pre-trial hearing, which can now be reported: “One example of the catalogue of failures and mistakes was the destruction, and sometimes loss without trace, of key exhibits.”
Ms Dempster said no cold case reviews were conducted for 20 years after Ms Neave was cleared.
A total of 18 body tapings taken during the postmortem examination have vanished along with urine, stomach contents, nail clippings and a nasal swab.
Ms Dempster said the original investigation did not treat Watson as a suspect or even significant witness despite him telling police a week after the murder that he had seen Rikki the day he died.
Former assistant chief constable Paul Fullwood, who led the review, said the original hypothesis of how Ms Neave was supposed to have killed her son was “fanciful”.
He added: “As a new team we can’t say why some evidence was not used originally but we know that this would not happen now and our re-investigation has resulted in the person responsible for Rikki’s death finally being found and dealt with.”