Lesley Molseed murder case

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The Lesley Molseed murder occurred in Great Britain in 1975 . The case acquired special criminal history significance and great media interest because Stefan Kiszko, who was innocently convicted of murder, was imprisoned for 16 years and the real perpetrator was convicted 32 years after the crime and 15 years after Kiszko's rehabilitation.

Murder case

On Sunday, October 5, 1975, around 12:30 p.m., 11-year-old Lesley Molseed from Rochdale was sent by her mother to do some shopping in a store that she never went to. Her body was found three days later on a moor in the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale about nine miles away . The girl was stabbed with twelve stab wounds, traces of semen were found on her underwear . The following large-scale investigations by the police initially led to no result for weeks.

Investigation against Stefan Kiszko

On the evening of October 3, 1975, the police received a complaint that a man in front of a youth club in Rochdale allegedly showed himself to several young girls in an exhibitionist manner . On the afternoon of October 4, a man is also said to have exposed himself in front of two twelve-year-old girls who were involved in the previous day's incident. One of the girls reported to the police on November 5 that she recognized the exhibitionist as the 23-year-old Stefan Ivan Kiszko (born March 24, 1952 in Rochdale).

Kiszko, whose father Ivan, who died in 1970, came from the Ukraine and whose mother Charlotte, with whom he lived, had to emigrate from Slovenia after 1945 because of her German mother tongue , was employed by the tax authorities. He suffered from hypogonadism and was considered an outsider who, apart from his mother and aunt, had no social contacts, was conspicuous for his unworldly and naive behavior and served children and young people as a target for ridicule. During police interviews on November 5 and 10, 1975, Kiszko rejected the girls' allegations as untrue. Since he fit into the profile of a sexually disturbed man because of his suspicion of exhibitionism and his status as an eccentric , he became a suspect in the Lesley Molseed murder case in the following weeks for the police, who were under great pressure to succeed. Although there were no reliable suspicions of the murder against Kiszko, the police summoned him to the Rochdale Police Station for interrogation on the morning of December 21, 1975. The officers initially did not inform Kiszko, who was only expecting another questioning about the alleged case of exhibitionism, that he was to be questioned as the (at the time the only) suspect in a murder case. With Charlotte Kiszko's consent, his room and car were searched. Erotic magazines, a bag of candy and balloons were found in the car. From this, the police developed the theory that Kiszko used the magazines to sexually arouse himself and then tried to attract little girls with the candy and balloons. In addition, Kiszko was in the habit of writing down the license plates of drivers whose behavior he felt threatened. A note had the number of a car that was seen at the location of Lesley's body around the time of the murder. From this, the investigators concluded that Kiszko must have noted the license plate at this point at that time. The interrogation continued through the night and the following day, with short pauses, when Kiszko had no legal counsel.

On the afternoon of December 22nd, after more than 24 hours of interrogation and without sleep, Kiszko confessed to having shown himself to be an exhibitionist on October 3rd in front of the youth club and to kidnapping Lesley Molseed on October 5th, ejaculating on her body and then stabbing her . As for October 4th, although he was at the specified time at the specified place, he had not exposed himself to the two girls. In the early evening of the same day, meanwhile in the presence of a lawyer hired for him, Kiszko revoked his confession on all points. The reason he gave for the confession was: “When I told my story during interrogation, they wouldn't believe me, so I started telling lies and they seemed to like it and the pressure was gone as far as I was concerned. I thought the police would check what I had said and find out that it was wrong and then let me go. ”Kiszko spent the next two nights in police custody, on the morning of December 24th he was arrested before the magistrate ' Court in Halifax charged with murder and taken to Leeds Prison for pre-trial detention .

  1. ↑ Innocents (1997), p. 89: “There was nothing of substance to make him a suspect.”
  2. ↑ Innocents (1997), p. 183: “During the interrogation when I was telling what was my story they would't believe me, so I started telling lies and that seemed to please them and the pressure was off so far as I was concerned. I thought the police would check out what I had said and find it was untrue and would then let me go. "

process

On July 7, 1976, the Leeds Crown Court trial began against Peter Murray Taylor . Kiszko was represented by three lawyers: David Waddington and his junior partner Philip Clegg appeared as barrister , and Albert Wright worked as a solicitor , who had been Kiszko's legal advisor since December 22, 1975. In the absence of forensic evidence, the main focus of the prosecution was on Kiszko's initial confession. To treat his hypogonadism-induced deficiency in male hormones, Kiszko had received testosterone injections since the late summer of 1975 . Two medical experts took the view in court that these could have led to excessive sex drive and unmanageable aggressiveness. Kiszko's mother and aunt testified that at the time of the crime he first visited his father's grave with them, and then they drove to a grocery store together. Since Kiszko had been involved in contradictions with regard to an alibi since the beginning of the investigation against him and this was already the fifth version of an alibi, Peter Murray Taylor classified the statement as untrustworthy. Kiszko himself insisted that he was innocent, that he had never met Lesley Molseed in his life and that the later revoked confession had been submitted under pressure to be questioned. Against this background, the strategy of his defense lawyers, who apparently believed in Kiszko's guilt and did not explicitly demand his acquittal, had a very unfavorable effect. On the one hand, Waddington pointed out that there were indications that Kiszko was not the culprit. On the other hand, he put the main focus on the fact that Kiszko, should he have committed the act, because of reduced sanity due to the testosterone injections, could not be convicted of murder, but only of voluntary manslaughter . Prosecutor Taylor tried to reduce this strategy to absurdity with the catchphrase riding two horses . On July 21, 1976, the jury found Stefan Kiszko guilty of the murder by 10-2 votes, and Judge Hugh Park declared a life sentence .

  1. ↑ Innocents (1997), p. 142: “The criticism of David Waddington's handling of Stefan Kiszko's alleged confessions is based [...] upon the unusual tactic he did employ. Rather than simply cross-examine the police officers, and call Kiszko himself to give evidence to the effect that the confession was involuntarily made and / or untrue, the defense in this trial took a most curious - and dangerous - note. "

Kiszko's years in prison

Kiszko spent the first four and a half weeks after his conviction in Leeds prison, on 23 August 1976 he was transferred to the maximum security prison in Wakefield . On the day of his arrival, he was seriously injured by five inmates. On May 11, 1977, he was beaten again and had his head sewn. An application by his lawyers to revise the judgment was not approved by the competent court on May 25, 1978. The practicing Catholic has not attended church services since the beginning of 1979 because he was beaten by a fellow prisoner in the prison chapel. Also from 1979 on, Kiszko was treated for depression , schizophrenia and paranoia . In particular, his constant assertions that he did not commit the act were interpreted as a pathological “delusional innocence”, ie as a psychological inability to admit guilt to oneself. In 1980, Kiszko's probation officer and his psychiatrist tried unsuccessfully to get him to confess and undergo therapy for sexual and violent offenders, as this was the only way he would ever have a chance of ever being paroled. Kiszko was transferred to other prisons several times, for example in November 1981 to Gloucester , in May 1984 to Bristol , in December 1984 back to Wakefield, in August 1987 to a special prison for the mentally ill in Aylesbury and in May 1989 back to Wakefield. Throughout his years in detention, his mother and aunt visited him twice a month, the maximum number of prisoner visits allowed. In 1990/91, Kiszko's mental confusion had become so bad (among other things, he often lashed out wildly because he felt threatened by ghosts) that on March 15, 1991, when the investigation into his rehabilitation was already underway, he became closed high security psychiatric clinic in Maghull ( Metropolitan Borough of Sefton ). On January 8, 1992, when Kiszko's impending acquittal was already looming, he was transferred to a less hermetically sealed clinic in Prestwich .

Kiszko's rehabilitation and death

After years of unsuccessful attempts to prove her son's innocence, in February 1986 Charlotte Kiszko found Campbell Malone, a solicitor who was ready to look for new paths. Malone contacted Philip Clegg, who was the only one of Kiszko's attorneys in the 1976 trial to have doubts about his client's guilt. Together with Clegg and the barrister Jim Gregory, Malone worked out a catalog of points in the following years, which was to be sent as a petition to the Minister of the Interior. From 1968 to 1995, the UK Home Secretary had the right to order appeal proceedings for criminal cases that had already been decided. A delicate situation arose in the fall of 1989 when Kiszko's former defense attorney David Waddington, who was convinced of his client's guilt, became home secretary. Nonetheless, Malone and Gregory filed the petition on June 18, 1990. On November 21, 1990, it was announced that the Secretary of the Interior, having examined the matter, had ordered the police to reopen the investigation into the Lesley Molseed murder. These led, among other things, to the following results that relieve Kiszko:

  • The alleged exhibitionism in front of the youth club on October 3, 1975 did not take place. In fact, several girls had surprised a man (not Kiszko) in the open air merely while urinating and embellished the incident in childish imagination. The man's name and identity were known to the police and were available to prosecution and defense during the summer 1976 trial through the investigation files. However, neither party appeared to have read these files. Instead, the (partly fabricated) statements of the girls were read out during the trial and brought into connection with Stefan Kiszko by the prosecution. The girl who claimed to have recognized Kiszko as the alleged exhibitionist in the case of October 4, 1975, admitted in a questioning in February 1991 as a now adult woman that Kiszko had not exposed herself to her.
  • A shopkeeper confirmed that Kiszko had been shopping in her shop at the time of the crime on October 5, 1975, thus supporting his mother and aunt's alibi, which was originally disregarded. The witness was not summoned to trial in July 1976.
  • A university professor of endocrinology wrote in a report that, from his point of view, it was inconceivable that a meek and reserved man like Kiszko, who suffered from a significant deficiency in male hormones, could become a brutal sex murderer through testosterone injections.
  • An ejaculate sample that contained no sperm was taken from Kiszko during his pre-trial detention because he was completely sterile because of his undeveloped testicles. However, there were sperm in the semen traces on Lesley's clothes. This finding, which proved that the semen found on the victim could not have come from Kiszko, was known to several detectives in 1976, but was apparently kept under lock and key.

The results of the investigation were handed over by the police on May 10, 1991 to Kenneth Baker , Waddington's successor as Secretary of the Interior, who referred them to the Court of Appeal on May 28 . In September 1991, the prosecution decided not to respond to Kiszko's lawyers' request to overturn the 1976 judgment with a counter-motion due to the new evidence. A preliminary decision had been made that made Kiszko's final rehabilitation very likely. The review process began on February 17, 1992 before a Chamber of the Court of Appeal in London, chaired by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Geoffrey Lane, Baron Lane . The following day, Baron Lane overturned the 1976 verdict on the grounds that Kiszko was proven innocent of his inability to produce sperm and ordered his immediate release.

For the time being, Kiszko stayed at the clinic in Prestwich voluntarily to treat his mental illnesses. In May 1992 he moved in with his mother. He spent the time up to his death largely in a depressed and apathetic state. Lesley Molseed's family publicly expressed dismay at the miscarriage of justice. In February 1992, while Stefan Kiszko was still being treated as an inpatient, a conciliatory meeting of the two families took place in Charlotte Kiszko's house, which was reported in the press. Because of her struggle to rehabilitate her son, Charlotte Kiszko was awarded the Rochdale Woman of the Year award in April 1993 . On December 22, 1993, Stefan Kiszko died of a heart attack at the age of 41. Charlotte Kiszko died in May 1994 at the age of 70. After the acquittal, the state had paid Kiszko a bridging allowance to earn a living. The payment of the compensation due to him, estimated at around 500,000 pounds , was delayed, so that Kiszko no longer received the compensation because of his untimely death.

  1. ↑ Wording of the reasons for the judgment, quoted in according to Innocents (1997), p. 304: “It has been shown that this man cannot produce sperm. This man therefore cannot have been the person responsible for ejaculating over the little girl's knickers and skirt, and consequently cannot have been the murderer. "
  2. ↑ In newspaper articles and on websites, December 23rd is often found as the date of death. Family known journalist Steve Panter, co-author of the book Innocents. who paid a condolence visit to Charlotte Kiszko on the anniversary of her son's death, gives the date of death on p. 334 December 22, around one in the morning.

Further investigation

Immediately after Stefan Kiszko's acquittal, the investigation into the investigation of Lesley Molseed's murder was resumed and, due to lack of success, came to a largely standstill in 1994/95. In the 1980s, the evidence was destroyed as the case was considered solved. This prevented a genetic fingerprint (not yet possible in the 1970s) from being taken from the sperm traces on the victim's underwear and a comparison with the DNA of suspects.

In July 1994, a detective and a were forensic experts who were under suspicion, their knowledge of Kiszkos 1976 infertility having concealed, because of violation of the law accused. In May 1995, the responsible court dropped the case on the grounds that after such a long time a fair trial was no longer possible.

In 1999, an adhesive tape was discovered in the archives of a forensic laboratory that had been used to remove traces of semen from Lesley Molseed's underwear in the fall of 1975. From this a male DNA was isolated that neither matched the DNA of Kiszko nor that of a man who was the main suspect in 1992. The DNA profile also enabled previously known sex offenders, including the “Yorkshire Ripper” Peter William Sutcliffe, to be excluded as perpetrators. After the case was the subject of an episode of the television program Crimewatch on February 5, 2003 on BBC One , which dealt with unsolved criminal cases , numerous reports were received from the population and around 90 men reported as potentially suspicious were checked. However, there was no success.

Solving the murder case

In July 1976, a 22-year-old man was tried for attempted sexual abuse of a child. The married family man, who lived near the Molseed family in Rochdale, lured a nine-year-old girl into his car and encouraged her to engage in sexual activity, and the child escaped. The man was remorseful and was fined £ 25. There was no connection to the Lesley Molseed case because Stefan Kiszko was on trial. In October 2005 a prostitute charged the same man who was now living in Oldham with rape . A DNA sample was routinely taken from him. The rape case was closed, but his genetic fingerprint was found to match the male DNA on Lesley Molseed's underwear. On October 5, 2006, the man, who had not been on the list of suspects before the DNS comparison, despite his previous conviction of 1976, was arrested and charged with murder. The trial began on October 22, 2007 in the Crown Court in Bradford . The 54-year-old denied the allegations, saying he could not explain how his DNA found the evidence. On November 12, 2007, the jury found him guilty by 10: 2 votes. He received a life sentence with the stipulation that he could be released on probation after 30 years at the earliest. In 2008 a request for revision failed. In July 2009 an open letter from the prisoner (like Stefan Kiszko) in Wakefield Prison to the Rochdale Observer newspaper caused a stir in the British press. In it, the convict described himself as an innocent justice victim and attacked the British judiciary and the media as unjust.

Media reception

In February and March 1997, the case-related play Ivan, A Miscarriage of Justice was staged in a Hammersmith theater . In the same year the documentary non-fiction book Innocents was published. How Justice Failed Stefan Kiszko and Lesley Molseed. A film adaptation of the case for television was made in 1998 under the title A Life for a Life. The True Story of Stefan Kiszko with Tony Maudsley as Stefan Kiszko and Olympia Dukakis as his mother. At this point the murder case had not yet been solved. On September 29, 2008, ITV aired the documentary The 30 Year Secret as part of the Real Crime series , which also covered the further investigation into the man's conviction in 2007.

literature

  • Jonathan Rose, Steve Panter, Trevor Wilkinson: Innocents. How Justice Failed Stefan Kiszko and Lesley Molseed. Fourth Estate, London 1997, ISBN 1-85702-402-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf Jonathan Rose, Steve Panter, Trevor Wilkinson: Innocents. How Justice Failed Stefan Kiszko and Lesley Molseed. Fourth Estate, London 1997, ISBN 1-85702-402-8 .
  2. ↑ meeting ended years of bitterness. In: Rochdale Observer. November 14, 2007, November 23, 2011.
  3. ↑ a b Relentless campaigner became the town's first lady. In: Rochdale Observer. November 14, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  4. ↑ Duo avoided court date. In: Rochdale Observer. November 14, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  5. ↑ Silent clue that finally made its voice heard. In: Rochdale Observer. November 14, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  6. ↑ a b Man held over 1975 child murder. on: BBC News. October 6, 2003, accessed November 23, 2011.
  7. ↑ BBC Press Office: Press Releases & Press Packs. February 5, 2003, accessed November 23, 2011.
  8. ↑ a b c Real Crime, Monday, September 29, 2008. ( Memento of September 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on: ITV Press Center. accessed November 23, 2011.
  9. ^ Family man had sinister past. on: Metro. November 12, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  10. ↑ Man on trial for molseed murder. on: BBC News. October 22, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  11. ↑ Man guilty of 1975 child murder. on: BBC News. November 12, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  12. ^ Fiona Barton: Pedophile convicted of Lesley Molseed murder - after evading justice for 32 years. on: Daily Mail online. November 16, 2007, accessed November 23, 2011.
  13. ^ Damon Wilkinson: Lesley killer's letter. In: Rochdale Observer. July 7, 2009, accessed November 23, 2011.
  14. ^ A Life for a Life in the Internet Movie Database , accessed November 23, 2011.