Police say sorry as men accused of teenager’s 1991 murder walk free
POLICE yesterday apologised to the family of a young mother who disappeared 24 years ago after the brothers-in-law on trial for her murder walked free from court.
Nigel Barwell and Thomas O’Reilly, both 51, were cleared of murdering Nicola Payne after a judge described the original investigation into Miss Payne’s disappearance – which had identified the defendants as major suspects – as ‘sloppy’.
The 18-year-old vanished in thick fog as she walked to her parents’ home through a patch of wasteland known locally as the Black Pad. Her body has never been found.
Mr Barwell, a landscape gardener, punched the air from the dock and mouthed ‘thank you’ to the jurors. His wife’s brother, Mr O’Reilly, stood motionless in the dock as the verdicts were announced. Miss Payne’s father, John, 70, broke down in tears just yards away.
Last night, Mr Payne and wife Marilyn, also 70, were facing the prospect of never seeing justice for their daughter – despite police vows that the investigation remains ‘live’.
During the trial, it emerged that police lost key pieces of evidence from the investigation, while Mr Justice Openshaw suggested the exhibits officer had not been ‘up for the job’. The court heard Mr Barwell and Mr O’Reilly were arrested and released within days of the teenager’s disappearance in Wood End, Coventry, in December 1991.
They were rearrested in 2013 and eventually charged with the murder this January after advances in DNA testing linked Mr O’Reilly and Miss Payne to a tent said to belong to Mr Barwell.
But the court heard Mr Barwell – a serial offender – denied ever owning the tent, which was recovered in undergrowth behind his home five days after Miss Payne disappeared.
The jury were told that the tent was not formally recorded in the police exhibits log until a month after it had been seized.
The outer part of the tent later vanished while in the possession of the police, leaving only an innertent which was recovered from police stores last year in an unsealed bag, ‘creating a further risk of cross-contamination’.
Mark Dennis QC, for Mr Barwell, said the police’s handling of the tent made forensic examination of the item ‘a worthless exercise then and an even more worthless exercise in 2014’. Rachel Brand QC, for Mr O’Reilly, told jurors that there were ‘more questions than answers’ in the case.
The jury took eight hours to clear Mr Barwell and Mr O’Reilly, an assembly worker, both of Coventry.
Detective Superintendent Mark Payne, of West Midlands Police, said the force was ‘very disappointed’ and will ‘look to learn the lessons of this case’.
Speaking outside Birmingham Crown Court, Nicola’s brother Nigel said: ‘Our family are devastated and broken-hearted. For nearly 24 years we have lived daily with the anguish of not knowing what has happened to our beloved Nicola.’