In the first 33 years after the abolition of the death penalty in England and Wales the Home Office admitted that 71 [THAT IS SEVENTY ONE] released murderers killed again. [Perhaps you are old enough to remember the empty promise that the alternative to hanging would be that "Life would mean life." Piffle - and it was always going to be.]The 71 is of course, only those we know about.
A senior, retired probation officer wrote a letter to the Mail some years ago and claimed that currently, the true figure is one such per fortnight. I do not have sufficient evidence to take sides here but it seems that there is a somewhat large discrepancy between the two positions and I am far more inclined to believe one rather than the other.
The abolitionists insisted on creating 'martyrs'; innocents executed. Let us review the 4 main ones used between the end of World War 2 and 1965:
1] Timothy Evans. Lived in same tenement as mass murderer Christie therefore 'assumed to be innocent' of murder of wife and daughter. Subject of a disgraceful whitewash in the film "10 Rillington Place" and a cause celebre for leading abolitionist Ludovic Kennedy.
The book "The Two Killers of Rillington Place" by Eddowes, a son ashamed of his own father's part in the Evans -is-a-martyr-conspiracy, is definitive in showing Evans' guilt. [Recommended - available on Amazon.]
2] Derek Bentley was executed for the murder of a Police Officer not having actually pulled the trigger. He was guilty in Law as a death was caused on an armed raid and morally guilty as he had bought the bullets for the gun. Police witnesses say he urged his partner to kill the officer who had arrested him. He shouted "Let him have it!" The abolitionists cleverly claimed that he was telling Craig to surrender the gun. The injustice was more in the fact that Craig could not hang as he was only 16 and he had pulled the trigger.
Unfair to Bentley? - Only arguably.
3] Ruth Ellis cold bloodedly butchered her lover in the street. She was pretty so many felt sorry for her. Unfair? - Only to ugly people who did not get as good a press.
4] James Hanratty, the A6 killer was put forward as innocent even after being identified by Valerie Storey, the woman he had raped over a sustained period and who had clearly identified him. He shot Michael Gregsten dead. He was the darling of the abolitionist left. The one 'innocent' nobody dared argue with - the subject of a silly campaign led by the even sillier Paul Foot.
For me it was quite exciting to learn, long before the public, that Wetherby Forensic Lab had proved his guilt through DNA from Miss Storey's clothing - I met somebody working there who told me what had happened some 2 years before this news was released.
[The BBC was exposed in the Daily Express in the 70s for having paid 'witnesses' to attest to Hanratty's false alibi that he was in Rhyl at the time of the murder. Good old Beeb!]
Four 'dodgy' executions - but only apparently. The case for actual martyrs is beyond extremely weak. The 71 dead that even the Home Office admits to are ALL real victims; what I call martyrs!
It is also worth noting that juries were more careful whom they convicted in those days - they had to be.
In order to maintain the 'innocents' cry, we have had a spate of spurious claims for 'doubtful convictions' since 1965 of which only one, the case of Stefan Kisko had any undisputed truth.
Having been part of the judicial system, I can say that those whose convictions are overturned as 'unsafe' are seldom innocent - it is just that the Law, rightly, bends over backwards to help a defendant so not a great deal can be read into such media-inspired hokum.
Photo: Timothy Evans, 1950.
