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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublisher Ltd
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First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Fourth Estate
This edition published in 1998
Copyright © 1997 Jonathan Rose, Steve Panter and Trevor Wilkinson
The right of Jonathan Rose, Steve Panter and Trevor Wilkinson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9781857028454
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780008193270
Version: 2016-05-26
Contents
2 Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread
3 Of Science and Pounding Feet
11 The Prosecution of Stefan Kiszko
20 Some of My Best Friends are Policemen
21 The Freeing of Stefan Kiszko
The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble;
But every decent man is concerned if an innocent man is condemned.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE LES CARACTÈRES, DE QUELQUES USAGES
On 10 November 1949, 1-year-old Geraldine Evans was strangled to death, but it was not her father, Timothy, who tightened the ligature around the baby’s neck. Timothy Evans was executed for a crime he did not commit.
On 23 August 1961 Michael Gregsten was killed by a shot to the head, but is was not petty thief James Hanratty who pulled the gun’s trigger. James Hanratty was executed for a crime he did not commit.
On 5 October 1975, Lesley Molseed was abducted and stabbed to death. Stefan Kiszko was innocent of her murder. Stefan Kiszko was imprisoned for sixteen years, for a crime he did not commit.
The terrible price of innocence.
The twentieth century has produced a significant number of cases in which innocent men have been convicted of murderous crimes of great repugnance. At least two men, Evans and Hanratty, paid with their lives for miscarriages of justice.
Consideration of such miscarriages tends to focus, almost exclusively and with much justification, on the innocent man. But to follow this path is to ignore those other people, equally innocent of any wrongdoing, who pay a high price for the failings of others. The families of those guiltless men whose lives are decimated by the imprisonment (or execution) of their loved ones, who then give years to clear the innocent’s name. Iris Bentley, Anne Whelan, lives devoted to a single struggle. The victims are buried and forgotten to all but