Glyn Maddocks: Criminal justice won’t face up to miscarriages
‘The long-serving campaigner for historic appeals fears that the commission is too weak to right past wrongs, he tells Catherine Baksi
“In every other walk of life, if something goes wrong an independent inquiry looks into failures and errors - the criminal justice system doesn’t”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/glyn-maddox-criminal-justice-wont-face-up-to-miscarriages-dj2v7gz2w
’Criminal justice won’t face up to miscarriages’ or -
those working within the ‘miscarriage of justice/wrongful conviction’ arena won’t face up to having been conned/getting it wrong
Righting a wrong‘
A solicitor who fights to free innocent people from jail and champion the cases everyone else has given up on has become the Western Mail Welsh Lawyer of the Year in Private Practice. Glyn Maddocks tells Anna Morrell what motivates him
Page 2 - Cases from Glyn Maddocks's portfolio
“DAVID BURGESS was convicted in 1967, when he was 19, of the murder of two girls in Berkshire. He has been in prison for the past 38 years. Throughout he has protested his innocence.
"Again, the evidence against him at the time was not particularly strong," says Maddocks. "But in those days, it was very unusual to challenge a conviction, and he has always found it very difficult to articulate his position.
"This case is in its early stages and it is obviously very difficult piecing together what happened almost 40 years ago, obtaining appropriate documentary and forensic evidence."https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/righting-a-wrong-2359141Yolande Waddington: David Burgess guilty of nanny's murder”A convicted child killer has been found guilty of the murder of a teenager in Berkshire 46 years ago.
Yolande Waddington, 17, was found strangled in the village of Beenham in October 1966.
David Burgess, 64, was jailed for life in 1967 for the killing of nine-year-old girls Jeanette Wigmore and Jacqueline Williams in Beenham.
He was charged with Yolande's murder following advances in DNA techniques and convicted after a five-week trial.
The jury at Reading Crown Court convicted Burgess by a majority verdict of 11 to one.
Jurors had been deliberating since Monday.
Speaking on behalf of the family outside court, Yolande's brother Giles Waddington broke down as he read from a statement.
He said: "We're grateful that justice has now been completed and that Yolande's murderer has been identified after more than 45 years.
"Yolande's murder had a traumatic and irreversible effect on our family life and has cast a long shadow over nearly five decades."
Yolande had only recently moved to the village to work as a nanny at a farm when she was killed.
She was last seen alive at the Six Bells pub on the evening of Friday, 28 October 1966.
During the trial, the jury heard Yolande's naked body was discovered in a ditch beside a farmer's barn two days later.
She had been stabbed and strangled and tied up with a jumper knotted around her face.
Blood from Yolande's attacker had been found on a number of items, including her comb and hair band.
Detectives from Scotland Yard were sent to Beenham to help with the investigation and carried out the first ever mass blood screening, with samples taken from 200 males in the area aged between 16 and 60.
A sample supposedly from Burgess was also taken, but it failed to meet one of the tests and was deemed not to be a match.
Police believe he may have got someone else to give a sample on his behalf or the specimen was labelled incorrectly.
Last year, Thames Valley Police carried out a review into the case and using a new technique obtained a partial DNA profile which matched Burgess's.
Pete Beirne, the force's principal investigator of cold cases, said:
"David Burgess has never accepted his guilt despite confessing to the crime to prison officers on three separate occasions.
"He has never fully explained how or why he killed Yolande."https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-18861198Murder Map Feb 2019 (Source: Real People mag)
‘The bright moon shone over the sleepy village. It illuminated a pictureperfect scene. Quaint homes were dotted for more than a mile across the ridge of the Kennet Valley, looking out over the rolling farmland of the North Wessex Downs.
They housed just a few hundred people. This is Beenham, Berkshire.
It’s 50 miles from London but, in 1966, it may as well have been a million miles from the ’60s swinging in the capital.
Back then, this little village had one primary school, a 12th-century church, no shops and a solitary pub, The Six Bells.
So it was to the pub that 17-year-old Yolande Waddington went looking to buy a pack of cigarettes at 10pm on 28 October.
Beenham was the sort of place where doors went unlocked. Why bother? Everyone knew everyone. But Yolande’s face was new. Having only arrived in the village from nearby Newbury five days earlier to work as a nanny, she must have drawn some attention that night.
After buying her cigarettes, she stood in an oatmeal coloured jumper, her dark curtain of hair pushed back by a white headband, and smoked a single fag in the pub.
Then, she stepped out into the night.
It was less than a mile back to Hall Place Farm, where she worked.
The next day, farmhand Alfie Woodley found some clothing scattered in a barn on the farm. He thought nothing of it.
The barn was a well-known spot for ‘courting’ couples.
Not long after though, Yolande’s employer reported her missing. She’d failed to return from the pub.
To the local police, the missing person’s report was shocking. Nothing ever happened in Beenham. The most they had to deal with was the odd pub fight.
As officers began hunting for Yolande, the farmhand told his employer about the clothes in the barn. And on 30 October, her boss, farmer Peter Jagger, went out looking for her on his land.
Down near the barn, he made a horrifying discovery.
Yolande’s body lay on its side, half submerged in a water-filled ditch. She was naked, but for a pair of socks. Her hands were tied behind her back, her bloodstained jumper stuffed in her mouth.
She’d been stabbed in the chest and back, but the superficial wounds hadn’t killed her. Her death had instead been caused by the ball of twine tightly wrapped four times around her neck.
Many of the local police had only read about murders in textbooks. Now, there was a dead teenager in their village and an actual murderer on the loose.
Due to the remote location of the barn, it was felt that the killer had to be local. But who in this quiet, innocent hamlet could do something like this?
Officers from the Met Police were immediately drafted in to help in the hunt.
Everyone was desperate to catch the monster in their midst.
Locals reeled from yet another tragedy
Statements were taken from more than 4,000 people in and around the area. Every single Beenham villager was interviewed. Nineteen-year-old David Burgess was one of them.
A bully who’d spent his school days picking wings off insects, David was bad news. An air pistol accident had left him with a glass eye and a menacing glare.
The landlady of The Six Bells confirmed he’d been in drinking when Yolande visited.
He’d left the pub soon after her. The next day, he’d had scratches on his face and a cut to his finger. When questioned, he admitted recently losing a penknife of the sort found at the murder scene.
It was incriminating. But the police needed firm evidence. Their tests showed some of the blood on Yolande’s jumper wasn’t hers.
But back then, blood screening was in its infancy.
It couldn’t be definitive proof of who had committed a crime, but could rule people out. So police launched a national first
– a mass blood screening. All men in and around Beenham aged 16 to 60 were tested.
Of the 200 in this group, just four matched the blood type found at the scene. None of them were David Burgess.
He wasn’t Yolande’s killer.
All four of the men – including David’s brother, John – were investigated, but ruled out, too. Police were at a loss.
Six months later, on 17 April 1967, the investigation had just been wound down when two nine year-olds left their Beenham homes looking for primroses.
Yet Jeanette Wigmore and Jacqueline Williams never arrived home with their flowers. On high alert after Yolande, 20 police and a crowd of villagers were soon out scouring their streets for the girls.
Surely, evil couldn’t possibly strike twice?
Yet, within half an hour, a searcher came across two tiny bodies in Blake’s Pit, a lonely disused gravel pit on the edge of the village.
Jacqueline had been sexually assaulted and drowned, Jeanette’s throat was slit.
Locals reeled from yet another unthinkable tragedy.
Children’s bedroom windows were locked at night, plain-clothed officers sat in the pub listening out for clues and neighbours viewed each other with suspicion.
The murders were heard about across the world. Everyone was looking to Beenham. And they all wanted justice.
Police didn’t have to look far. In the crowds that’d been hunting for the girls was a familiar face – David Burgess.
He’d gone on to talk to television reporters, even extending his condolences to Terence Williams, Jacqueline’s father.
It was suspicious.
After all, David worked as a dumper truck driver at Fisher’s Pit, neighbouring Blake’s Pit.
He’d also been missing for 20 minutes around the time of the murder.
Police hauled him in for questioning. His clothes were seized. On one boot, some blood was found that matched the blood grouping of one of the murdered children.
In July 1967, just four months after the killings, Burgess was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Jacqueline and Jeanette.
But did Beenham still hold another killer?
In 1968, while in Durham prison, Burgess made a brazen admission to prison officers. On three separate occasions, he confessed to killing Yolande.
When detectives arrived at the jail on 3 April 1968 to quiz him though, Burgess refused to repeat what he’d said.
Instead, he taunted them, smirking, ‘You’ll have to prove it.’ A line later used by child killer & mass murderer Jeremy Bamber during his murder trialThe blood on Yolande’s jumper was once again tested. Yet again, it wasn’t a match for Burgess! Police were back at square one.
Time marched on. Yolande’s mother died without ever seeing justice for her daughter. The press clippings on the murders grew yellow, faded.
But, to the people of Beenham, their lost girls were never forgotten, the town’s innocence never regained.
In September 1996, Burgess escaped from Leyhill Open Prison in Gloucestershire. Did the villagers he’d once counted as neighbours, look over their shoulders after the news?
Burgess was only recaptured 17 months later in February 1998, when he brazenly robbed a bank for £2,500. In 2011, Thames Valley Police carried out a cold case review of Yolande’s murder, due to advances in DNA technology.
However, the cold case team faced an immediate blow. Yolande’s jumper, that’d held the blood stains, had been lost in the 45 years since the crime.
Yet the police refused to give up. They re-tested all the available evidence for blood that wasn’t Yolande’s. New blood stains were found on a polythene fertiliser sack from the scene and Yolande’s white headband.
The samples were tiny, but lab work had advanced incredibly since the initial investigation. This time, experts found that the blood matched David Burgess.
In fact, they estimated that the likelihood of the DNA coming from anyone other than Burgess was ‘smaller than one in a billion’.
Rock solid proof.
Police suspected that in the chaos of the pioneering blood screen back in the ’60s, Burgess had got someone else to give his sample, or the blood had been incorrectly labelled.
Either way, a mistake had left Burgess free to kill again.
But would a jury believe it? In June 2012, a bored looking Burgess, now greying and overweight, began a new trial at Reading Crown Court. The jury were told to disregard his conviction for the murder of the nine-year-old girls.
His defence, Mr Bennathan QC told the jury, ‘Do not start off being so horrified that the man standing over there is a double child murderer. The temptation is just to say we know he’s a monster, we know he killed them [Jeanette Wigmore and Jacqueline Williams], he must have killed someone else. Life is more complicated than that.’
As for the new DNA match, he told the jury not to be ‘blinded by science’. After all, hadn’t it been wrong back in the ’60s?
But times had moved on, and this jury trusted technology. After 45 long, painful years, David Burgess was convicted of Yolande’s murder in July 2012.
The now three-times convicted killer was jailed for an additional life term, and ordered to spend a minimum of 27 years in prison.
Burgess, 65, checked his watch and sighed loudly as he was told he’d be locked up until he was at least 92 years old.
As he was led from court, he laughed loudly, the final petulant act of a heartless old man.
After nearly half a century, Yolande’s family and the residents of Beenham finally have answers.
Three girls died, an idyllic village was changed for ever, but Burgess is paying the full price for his evil debauchery at last.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/real-people/20190221/281547997161066