a murder only takes place possibly once every hundred years, when the offender returns he is warmly welcomed by a great deal of the local people. Maybe there is something in the point he is trying to make about not being guilty.’
A copy of the trial judge’s summary then arrived from Nottingham Crown Court. I had told Jackie to ask for a full transcript, but was informed there wasn’t one, which I found strange. A check with the court clerk confirmed that no full record of the trial existed. As a result, all I could do was work from the judge’s summing up.
The Honourable Mr Justice Nield began his summing up on 15 February 1974. He reminded the jury of their duty, pointing out that Downing, who was soon to have his eighteenth birthday, had a ‘perfectly clean record’.
They were informed that manslaughter did not arise, because ‘it is agreed that this unfortunate woman was murdered’. He explained, ‘The issue is whether the Crown has proved it was this man who committed that murder.’
Turning to Stephen’s confession he continued, ‘One of the main planks of the prosecution case is the statement made by the accused and signed over and over again.’
He stressed that the prosecution had to establish that the statement had been ‘voluntarily made’ and ‘accurately recorded’, and went on to explain, ‘If the jury thought there had been oppression, any improper conduct by the police to induce this young man to make a statement, or to threaten him if he did not that such and such things would happen, then the statement is valueless.’
While there was much to pore over in the judge’s summing up, the most striking contradictions between Stephen’s confession and the prosecution case were found in the medical and scientific evidence presented by the prosecution.
At 2.40 Mrs Sewell reached Chesterfield Royal Hospital. Mr Stillman, the surgeon, found multiple lacerations of the skull, and an X-ray confirmed there were fractures. Doctor Usher, the pathologist, performed a post-mortem examination on 15 September, the day after this woman died, and he found ten lacerations to the skull as if she had been violently assaulted by someone using the pickaxe handle. He took the view there must have been at least seven or eight or more violent blows and, whoever did it, would seem to have been in a frenzied state.
The judge pointed out that several witnesses had described Stephen Downing as ‘calm and cool, certainly not frenzied’ just moments after he was supposed to have carried out the attack. One witness, however, PC Ball, the first policeman to the scene, had not regarded him as cool. He had said, ‘He was very excited. I told him to calm down.’ This contradicted the evidence of other witnesses, who had seen nothing abnormal in Stephen’s demeanour.
The judge turned to a report that the prosecution case relied upon heavily. It was written by Mr Norman Lee, a Home Office forensics expert. Mr Lee’s evidence concerned the bloodstaining on Stephen’s clothing and on the pickaxe handle, the murder weapon. He said:
There were stains on his trousers on the knees where he might have kneeled, and on the front of the trousers mainly on the lower legs. There were also a large number of splashes and heavy smears.
There was some blood on the right leg as high as the thighs. He said these stains would have been visible to the people in the cemetery. In addition, there were small spots of blood on his T-shirt and his gloves. An examination of Stephen’s boots showed a lot of smears and small spots of blood, mainly at the front.
Stephen claimed at trial that, after finding Mrs Sewell, he knelt down and turned her over, whereupon she raised herself up and began to shake her head violently. That was the explanation, he said, for the blood on his clothes.
Mr Lee conceded that the blood on the boots ‘might arise from somebody getting up from his knees and pressing on his toes on the ground’. He also went on to say that ‘the blood-staining on the clothes, some of it, is consistent with someone turning over the body’.
However, the very small spots and splashes found on the clothes, boots and gloves were not consistent with turning someone over. And he did not accept Stephen’s explanation that the small spots of blood flew on to his clothing from her head and long hair as she violently shook her head about.
He said, ‘I cannot imagine how you could get splashings as small as those in the way Downing is suggesting,’ and added, ‘If she had flung herself about, then for such tiny spots a lot of energy must have been applied.’ His preferred explanation was that the spots came from Mrs Sewell being beaten, ‘and the harder you hit, the smaller the spot of blood’.
This was a complicated yet very vital point. I read and reread it to make sure I understood his argument. Norman Lee seemed to be saying that violent force produces a spray of blood, which would appear as tiny, almost microscopic spots, on any surface hit by this spray, such as clothing.
He did not believe Wendy Sewell could have shaken her head so violently as to produce these minute spots found on Stephen’s clothing. He claimed they must have come from the blows of the pickaxe handle.
I could not see why Norman Lee was so sure. When cross-examined, he repeated that she could not have shaken her head so violently as to produce that result.
And yet it was not only Stephen who had described the victim thrashing around in an aggressive manner. The judge pointed out that the senior ambulanceman, Clyde Bateman, who arrived on the scene had also reported that, on the journey to the hospital, ‘she became very restless, moving about a lot, throwing out her right arm all over the place, and his uniform was covered in blood but, according to that witness, she was not shaking her head’. And PC Ball told the court that ‘she resisted violently with her arm’.
Although the ambulanceman had not noticed her moving her head, I believed this might have been due to her worsening condition. Stephen found her just after the attack, whereas she was in the ambulance almost an hour later. She soon fell into a coma due to her head injuries, from which she never recovered.
Norman Lee said of the murder weapon, ‘The stains on the boots and lower legs of Downing’s trousers were similar in size and proportion to the stains on the pickaxe handle.’ He went on to conclude, ‘There was very probably a close relationship between the handle and this man’s trousers and boots, and I do not think this would come from offering succour. The boots and trousers were in close proximity when the deceased was battered.’
But doubt had been cast on Lee’s conclusions even before the trial. I had been rummaging through Ray Downing’s paperwork a few days previously and come across a forensic report written in January 1974. The contents were very dry and technical, and I had not realised its significance immediately. Now, as I retrieved it, there were things I urgently needed to check. The report, by Mr G.E. Moss of Commercial and Forensic Laboratories in Reading, had been written at the request of Stephen’s defence team.
Mr Moss examined the murder weapon and various other exhibits in the presence of Norman Lee and police officers.
He found the pickaxe handle heavily bloodstained at the thick end, the end used to hit the victim, while the handle end was smeared with blood.
He agreed with the pathologist, Mr Usher, that at least seven or eight violent blows had been struck. He pointed out that, therefore, this was inconsistent with Stephen’s confession.
I grabbed the Home Office summary of the case and turned again to the confession to double check. There it was in black and white: ‘I hit her twice on the head, on the back of the neck. I just hit her at the back of the head to knock her out.’ Two blows! The confession, relied on as the main plank of the prosecution case, contradicted the pathologist’s evidence – also used by the prosecution – on this vital detail.
