Failed by the system, grandmother whose ‘killer’ will never face justice
A CONVICTED murderer who allegedly confessed to killing a grandmother in her own home will evade justice because of a legal blunder.
Andrew Kemp was charged with murder in 1993 after his 64-year-old neighbour Norah Smith was beaten and strangled in Falkirk, Stirlingshire.
But a jury found the case not proven, despite a raft of evidence and witness accounts of him running from her flat.
It has been claimed that Kemp has since bragged about the savage attack, which occurred in the early hours on New Year’s Day, to at least three people.
These confessions, which contained specific details only the killer would know, gave Mrs Smith’s family hope they would finally see Kemp go down for the attack.
The authorities also gave the family hope in 2013 when they agreed to reopen the case and establish if he could be retried for murder.
But prosecutors now say he cannot be charged again because the courts have lost the paperwork from the original trial.
Mrs Smith’s granddaughter Lyn Lumsden, 48, told The Mail on Sunday Kemp had ‘got away with murder’.
She said: ‘Justice has not been done. He’s confessed his guilt to three people. Surely that should be enough to face a retrial?’
Mrs Smith was hit on the head with a hammer, had a ligature around her neck and was strangled. The killer then set papers and furniture in her flat on fire to try to cover up the crime. Kemp, her neighbour at the time, was soon arrested. He had previous convictions going back to the age of 12 including setting fire to a school and assaulting a teacher.
During his murder trial in April 1993, the High Court in Glasgow heard Kemp was hosting a New Year party but kept vanishing from his own flat.
Witnesses saw him come out of the bathroom wearing only a towel and stuffing his clothes into the washing machine on a boil wash.
He also tried to fool police by giving officers the wrong clothes as evidence, as well as cutting holes in his shoes.
Kemp claimed never to have been in Mrs Smith’s flat but his palm print was found on her bathroom door and witnesses saw him fleeing from the scene. Yet the jury ruled the case not proven.
Kemp later moved to Nottingham and in 1999 was jailed for nine years for a rape. In June 2012 he was jailed for life for the murder of his ex-partner Leighann Wightman in October 2011. The court heard how he stabbed her eight times and must serve 22 years before applying for parole.
Police investigating Miss Wightman’s death heard from various witnesses how he had confessed to Mrs Smith’s slaughter in grisly detail.
Deputy Crown agent Lindsey Miller said these ‘contained inforstated
‘Confessed his guilt to three people’
mation which was likely only known to the perpetrator’.
Witness testimony tells how Kemp had confessed that when Mrs Smith answered the door, he ‘skelped’ her on the left side of the head with a vodka bottle.
But a Crown Office letter from last December says the retrial cannot happen.
Last month, after the family pleaded for a review, the Crown it would not change its position.
It eventually explained original evidence had been destroyed and there was not enough to be compared with new evidence.
There are no transcripts or shorthand notes left. Diary entries from original trial judge Lord Prosser, who died in 2015, were incomplete and indecipherable.
The victim’s son Stuart, 60, said his mother had been ‘a kind soul who would have helped anyone’.
He added: ‘We were devastated at her murder. Our mother and grandmother is never far from our thoughts, as is the fact that someone took her from us and justice has never been done.
‘All these years they have been stringing us along without telling us they didn’t have transcripts.
‘If that was going to kill any chance of a retrial, why put us through all this and why waste taxpayers’ money?’
The Crown Office declined to comment.