Both Dr Unsworth-White and Dr Ford had asked about a reward offered by Barclays, but police revealed only that Dr Ford had inquired. year-old Rowbotham, a former member of the bands The Durutti Column, The Mothmen and Motivation, was axed to death in early November in his flat on Grangethorpe Drive, Burnage. [100] [101]

The court said that the DNA was somehow more scientific and overrode the fingerprint, which is really a ridiculous observation," explained Dr Zakaria Erzinçlioglu, former director of the forensic science research centre at the University of Durham. "You have to touch something to leave your fingerprint; you don't have to touch something to leave your DNA, especially when there's a severed artery and blood spurting all over the place." For even if it is clear that the existing law was shamelessly broken by the tabloids in the Taylor case, it is possible that the law itself is wrong – that, in truth, the press has very little effect on the way that jurors behave. And while the Attorney General has a clear duty to enforce the law against everyone, including the Government’s allies, it may be that in the longer term, all newspapers would have a reasonable case for arguing that the law itself should be removed. Jurors cleared two brothers of the murder of the Turkish drug dealer, who had been shot on Monday, 11 March – first inside a betting shop, then again in the street after leaving the building. [62] Lisa and Michelle Taylor grew up in Forest Hill in south east London in a stable family in a quiet street. They went to school, went out dancing, went to work, planned to get married one day and never threatened for a moment to break out of the obvious course which life had planned for them. The press were always going to love the trial of the Taylor sisters. There was violence: they were accused of taking a knife to Alison Shaughnessy and stabbing her 54 times in the hallway of her flat in Battersea, south London. And there was sex: the motive was supposed to be jealousy. Michelle Taylor had once gone out with the dead woman’s husband, John Shaughnessy, and, according to the police, she had decided to kill to retrieve her man. Lisa had gone along to help her, they said.

The 51-year-old taxi driver vanished on 3 February and his Ford Sierra was found abandoned with bloodstains inside it in a car park at Heathrow Airport (some miles from Whyteleafe, the Surrey village where he lived) on 12 February. A forensic re-examination of the car in 2012 did not give detectives the breakthrough they were hoping for. [7] In July 2000, it was revealed that the Taylors had instigated a compensation claim against police for their imprisonment after they were freed, but they then dropped it because a civil case investigation had begun to expose evidence that witnesses had been intimidated by their defence team. [32] At that stage they were the only victims of a miscarriage of justice in the UK to have ever been denied any compensation. [32]

year-old Glover and 23-year-old Hanlon were two of three men due to stand trial for the August 1991 murder of Arthur Thompson Jnr when they were fatally shot on the night of 18 September. Their bodies were left near a Shettleston pub after the killings – killings thought to have been carried out in revenge for the murder they were suspected of involvement in. [91] [82]In September 2000, the Metropolitan Police began an 18 month reinvestigation into Alison Shaughnessy's murder. No new evidence or suspects were found, and it was decided to no longer investigate the case as no more could be done. [1] The police considered whether Michelle and Lisa Taylor could be charged with perjury or perverting the course of justice (they could not be re-charged with murder because of the double jeopardy laws in place at the time). [34] Alison's family never wavered from their view that the Taylors were guilty of the murder. [1] Evidence was also heard at the trial that the pair had an interest in violence: Lisa had once stabbed a dog to death in Southend-on-Sea, and Michelle had an interest in knives and other weapons which she slept by in her room at night. [20] It was known that both took part in jujitsu, a martial art which teaches fighting with bare hands and knives. [21] Colin Evans: A Question of Evidence: The Casebook of Great Forensic Controversies, from Napoleon to O.J. Wiley 2002, ISBN 978-0-471-44014-7. Gibb, Frances (26 July 2008). "Human rights lawyer Keir Starmer named as new prosecution service chief". The Times. London . Retrieved 4 August 2008. Jones, Gary (4 April 2001). "SISTERS QUIZ; Pair who had murder sentences quashed face new police probe". The Mirror. p.14.

How life changed for the grieving relatives and blundering police". The Independent. 19 December 2008 . Retrieved 21 August 2021. Michelle Taylor was imprisoned at HM Prison Holloway, while Lisa Taylor was sent to a young offenders institute (being under 21 when sentenced). [9] [23] A number of journalists embarked on a campaign after the trial to try and free the Taylors, believing that the sisters' character showed they must be innocent. [1] The case has been repeatedly discussed as a high-profile example of when the media have put criminal trials in jeopardy. In 2001, the case was highlighted as such when a trial of professional footballers Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer collapsed due to press and media intrusion. [38] [39]MLA style: "ALISON WAS STABBED, BUT I LOST MY LIFE TOO; Woman cleared of Irish murder tells of her pain.." The Free Library. 2002 MGN LTD 26 Nov. 2023 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/ALISON+WAS+STABBED%2c+BUT+I+LOST+MY+LIFE+TOO%3b+Woman+cleared+of+Irish...-a082452614 Still it was obvious that JJ had lied at some point, either in her first three statements or in her later interview with police. Ann and Del Taylor commissioned a speech expert, Peter Wright, to analyse her final interview with police. “She seems at times an accomplished liar,” he said. She vacillated, she was weak and suggestible, she was obviously frightened and was, he concluded, an unsatisfactory witness. If JJ would admit that her original alibi was the truth, it would be the end of the Crown’s case: Michelle and Lisa could not possibly have been in Battersea at all. But when the Taylors’ lawyer wrote to JJ asking for help, she refused to meet them and when I called her, she slammed the phone down and, within 48 hours, she had changed the number. Someone strangled 23-year-old Whitehouse, a mother-of-two, and left her body in bushes in Wolverhampton's red-light district. Convicted serial rapist David Williams was acquitted of her murder in 1993. [36] [37]

The Taylor sisters were found guilty of the murder in 1992, but one year later their convictions were overturned by the Court of Appeal because the prosecution had failed to turn evidence over to the defence, and because the sensationalist media coverage may have influenced jurors. Reinvestigations of the case by the Metropolitan Police did not identify any other suspects, and in 2002 it was decided to no longer formally investigate the case. Royal, 58, was killed with a shotgun in the porch of his house on 19 March 1990. The science teacher had himself killed someone in January 1987, although a jury accepted his claim that he had been acting in self-defence and found him not guilty accordingly. In April 1990, a local man was charged with Royal's murder. The 21-year-old's sister had, at the time of his death in 1987, been the partner of the man killed by Royal, and this was viewed as a motive. However, he was cleared in June 1991. [12]

Interviewed about his affair in 1998, John said "I made a terrible mistake and I'm paying a terrible price. But show me a man who hasn't had an affair", while his new wife Caroline Kenneally said: "John made a mistake in the past. Show me anyone without a skeleton in their cupboard." [33]