Author Topic: Barry George revisited.  (Read 167497 times)

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Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #90 on: April 23, 2018, 08:33:51 PM »
Michael Burke, Barry George's uncle says in his book "Mikes story" about Michelle Bates.

"I turned on the TV to see GMTV at 6.00. Michelle and Don were being interviewed. Michelle was speaking and suddenly departed from the agreed script. She made serious allegations which for legal reasons I cannot repeat but I had to laugh at the male interviewer vainly tried to stop her on love TV. The allegation was not repeated or broadcast again but it was made nevertheless.

I'm unsure what the date of this interview was or what Michelle Bates said but according to the uncle, they were "serious allegations."

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ltgorwROQfwC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=barry+george+mike+story&source=bl&ots=Osv77JEYgK&sig=wMLxHQUzDrrwdZhrvyhIfhiX8U8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDnsyJtc7aAhXWFsAKHYwwAr8Q6AEwBHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=barry%20george%20mike%20story&f=false

Michael Burke continues:
"I thought of the allegation Michelle has made and felt a little uneasy.

.. but it made me think that what Michelle had said was not very wise. She was safely at home in Cork, while my family had to live in London, and I would be travelling over and back alone for the foreseeable future.

Relations between some members of my family became strained as most felt that as Barry was convicted and appealed we should leave it as that. But I was convinced the conviction was unsafe.

I accepted that there was a possibility that Barry was the man, but the evidence used to convict him was unconvincing.

In late October I sent a strongly worded letter to MOJO complaining about their tactics. By now the website was taking shape, and I was involved in a struggle as to what direction it should take. The webmaster Mick Lynch wanted to portray Barry as innocent but I insisted we should question the safety of the conviction, rather than call it a Miscarriage of Justice. I wanted people to judge for themselves and in the end I won out.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2018, 08:54:01 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #91 on: April 23, 2018, 09:05:50 PM »
"Michelle Diskin was in the front room at her home in Cork listening to the morning radio when she first heard that her brother Barry George had been charged with Jill Dando's murder.
She says she felt numb - completely numb. 'I thought: "No, no, it can't be." 'I wanted to phone my mother, but she is a very quiet and private person. How do you ring your mother and say: "Mum, has my brother been arrested for murder?" she says.

Michelle, a deeply religious woman, finally decided to phone and ask if she should pray for her brother. It seemed a more gentle way of dealing with the appalling news. 'Mother said: "It's all rubbish. He didn't do it. It will die down". I didn't know what to do and said to myself: "Could Barry have done this?"

'Could I see anything in the Barry I knew that might be guilty of this - and I couldn't. I thought about his behaviour. He can be aggravating. But no, not murder.'

But on July 2, last year, Barry George, 42, an educationally-subnormal fantasist with an IQ of just 76, was found guilty of the murder of BBC TV presenter Jill Dando.

She was killed with a single shot to the head. The gun was pressed so hard against her skull that the imprint of the muzzle remained on her scalp afterwards.

There was, however, not one overwhelming piece of evidence to link George to the crime. In the year since the case ended, no other criminal verdict has excited quite so much interest and there has been an endless debate over whether he was indeed guilty 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

Last month, an appeal against his conviction was rejected by three of the country's most senior judges.

Michelle continues to insist upon her brother's innocence. She is determined to take the case to the House of Lords and, should that fail, to Europe, believing his conviction to be a dreadful miscarriage of justice.

In fairness, she doesn't believe her brother to be an angel, but she insists that does not make him a murderer.


Michelle is a warm, articulate woman with a strong sense of right and wrong. Being in the public eye does not sit easily with her. She is, by nature, a home-builder, a wife and mother to three teenage children.

Their terraced family house near Cork is tidy, comfortable and perfumed with scented candles. It is a tactile household where hugs and kisses are easily exchanged.

Her own London childhood had been tough, often violent. In her late teens, she moved to Ireland to work with mentally disabled children. She had little need to dwell upon her past - until her brother's arrest
.

Initially, Michelle believed the courts would clear her brother and she resolved not to speak out on his behalf. Indeed, she didn't want to drag her family into the unholy mess, and, in any case, no direct evidence linked her brother to the crime.

No confession. No apparent motive. No eyewitnesses. No murder weapon was ever found.

There was virtually no scientific evidence, except for minute traces of firearm discharge found in one of George's pockets and described as a 'close match' to particles found in Dando's hair. There was also a risk, acknowledged at the trial, that even this evidence was contaminated.

The prosecution case seemed to be simply that George lived locally and was an oddball with unhealthy obsessions. He was said to be 'fixated' with Princess Diana and to stalk women.

He had been convicted, many years earlier, of attempted rape and impersonating a police officer. He used different names (he was arrested as Barry Bulsara, using the real surname of one of his idols, Freddie Mercury) and lived in a world of fantasy. He was said to be 'obsessed' with guns.

George also happened to be near Dando's Fulham home on the morning of her murder. His own home, a chaotically untidy flat, happened to be just a few streets away. Michelle says: 'Barry was in Belmarsh Prison on remand when I first saw him. I had to see him through a glass screen. It was like being in a confessional box. There was a dark, dingy glass between us and you could hardly hear a thing.

'He looked terribly vulnerable and scared. Almost the first thing he said was: "Shhh, don't talk."

'Then he said: "I have not done what they are saying."

'I was asking questions and he kept telling me to talk to my solicitor. I cried. I think he did too. He said he was sorry that he had put us in this. I couldn't touch him but I wanted him to know he was being supported.

We held up our hands against the glass. I felt utterly overwhelmed that this could be happening to us. At each step along the way I thought it would be stopped. It's unbelievable it wasn't.

'There was no evidence. They just lumped everything up and made out he was one big psycho. Timeframes were forgotten, facts were distorted to make a picture - a very bad picture.

'The police needed somebody, and Barry looked, on the surface, as if he would disappear and nobody would fight for him.

'That's why I have to support him. I have always loved him very much.'

Michelle was the eldest of three children, raised in a cramped highrise flat in White City, West London. The bath was in the kitchen and she shared a bedroom with both her sister, a mentally handicapped epileptic two years her junior, and Barry, the baby of the family.

It was an uneasy household with frequent violent rows. 'Barry and Susan were always very special because I had to look after them when I was small.

'There were a lot of pressures living in such close quarters with people on both sides of you and underneath you. My parents fought all the time so I would take the kids out - sometimes for hours on end.

'It was very difficult. Because Susan had very definite problems that were so big, Barry's were pushed to one side.

'He was a gorgeous baby and, as a boy, was into cars and buildings. He sometimes got into trouble, but he could never seem to understand why.

'He couldn't concentrate for long periods of time and was taken out of school and sent to special school. But his disability didn't become really apparent until he got older.

'Barry has a rigidity of thought. He gets a thought and isn't able to change tack. If you changed the topic of conversation, he wouldn't be able to stop focusing on the first one.'

Michelle was 12 when their parents separated. She says it was a relief, an end to the dreadful rows. Her relationship with her mother was not easy and by the age of 15 she was living with her father.

'My mother was warmer earlier in the marriage,' she says. 'And less warm towards the end of it.'

When Barry asked to move in with his father, he was refused. 'I'm sure Barry saw it as a rejection. Probably the first of many,' she says.

By the age of 18, Michelle was living in Ireland with her grandmother. She kept in contact with her family and her brother visited for a holiday. 'He was 14 and so sweet I didn't want to send him back. I remember he used to hang about this place called Barry's Tea and wanted to work there in the yard but he was too young.

'But he would pester people, so this man sent him home with a letter saying he would take him out as his helper if I said it was OK. He said that he could see Barry needed special attention.

'The man gave Barry some pocket money and he came back with sausages, milk and bread so he could help with his keep.'

Michelle displays a certain pride when she repeats this story. It becomes clear that achievements which most people would take for granted were enormously special when accomplished by Barry.

For example, she tells how he arrived at her wedding 'all by himself' and had 'even hired his own suit so he wouldn't show me up'. She saw him handing out buttonholes to guests and was 'proud'.

By this time, he had started to create fantasies about himself and, intriguingly, she recalls a relative having to steer him away from talking about the SAS.

During their phone calls, Barry would talk of his obsession about being a stuntman. He tried to join the Territorial Army under the name Steve Major.

'It seemed perfectly innocent. He said he'd chosen it because the Six Million Dollar Man had such a name. When he later changed his name to Barry Bulsara, it wasn't something I was happy with. But he said he really loved Freddie Mercury and he was doing it as a tribute.

'He wanted to be a special person. He wanted to have friends. I can only speculate that these inventions were ways of opening a conversation. Let's face it, it's a bit more of a conversation grabber than "I'm classified disabled and I can't do anything".'

The prosecuting lawyers made much of George's fantasies. 'They tried to turn him into the Anti-Christ,' says Michelle. 'They spoke about his so-called obsession with guns after joining the Territorial Army. But the TA realised he had problems and Barry didn't handle guns. The only ones he's had are a starter pistol and a plastic gun that was stolen and broken.

'They said he had an obsession with Diana and stalked and photographed women. It was mentioned that he was discovered by police in Kensington Gardens with a rope and a knife dressed in Army gear. He told me that he was "doing manoeuvres".

'But he was never charged and there are no records of him being in the grounds by Diana's apartment as has been suggested.

'Even being "on manoeuvres" in the park, is not the normal behaviour of a grown person, but still pretty ordinary if you think like a child. He was going through his ex-SAS stage then - and it was almost 20 years ago.

'When police examined his flat they found a pile of 736 newspapers on the floor. Of course, there were some articles about Jill Dando, but there were more about Manchester United, although he's a Fulham supporter.

'There were also never any photos of women pinned up on the wall as has been suggested. The police found rolls of undeveloped film - 2,597 photographs showing 419 women.

'He wasn't using the photographs to satisfy some strange obsession. He was playing a role - that's all to do with the childish part of his life. And he'd just thrown the rolls of film in the corner - as he dropped everything in his flat and forgot about things.

'When Barry was in custody, the police had nothing to charge him with. They knew he'd been convicted of attempted rape in 1983, which he'd owned up to at the time, but he wouldn't admit to Jill Dando's murder.

'They were allowed to keep him for extra time, but still he wouldn't say he was responsible.

'If you know my brother, he's not capable of not caving in under that sort of pressure. But he does know when he's done something wrong and when he hasn't. The next thing that happened was that a particle (of firearm discharge) turned up in a coat - it was the only reason they were able to charge him.

'But the integrity of the coat had been corrupted. It was put in an evidence bag, sealed, carted away from his flat, photographed on a dummy in a police studio with an officer's shirt underneath and put back in the crate before it was examined by forensics.

'And as far as identification is concerned, there was only one person who said she was certain she saw Barry at 7.30am. She said she saw him by a car, but Barry can't drive.

'Barry has been described as a loner. But he's not. He was always out seeing people. He had friends, people who loved him - who accepted Barry with his differences. They didn't know about the attempted rape, but that happened almost 20 years before.

He paid his price to society for what he did and he'd turned his life around. And, despite his disabilities, he had made a life for himself. He discussed his friends and would say: "There's a guy down the road and he's my friend. I wash his car for him." After he was charged, I started piecing things together.

'There was a big, motherly Jamaican woman who lived across the road. When I went to see her, I could see she really loved Barry.

'She was really pleased to see me and said she hadn't known if anyone was going to help him. She was going to get some friends together to stand outside Hammersmith police station with placards saying: "Free Barry Bulsara."

'She's adamant he didn't carry out the crime.'

Michelle gathers strength from such support. She knows her brother, not as a psychopath, but as 'quiet, softly-spoken and wellmannered'.

During medical examinations before his trial, it was discovered that George had suffered severe brain damage from a physical injury while in his 20s. Michelle says he does not know how it occurred, although she conjectures that perhaps it was something to do with his 'Steve Majors' phase.

In the early Eighties, he was registered disabled and suffered increasingly from epileptic fits. If the problem was not properly controlled he would often stumble around.

Michelle is not convinced that he would have had the ability to plan or dexterity to carry out such carefully executed crime and getaway. Indeed, the case confounded police for a year before Barry's arrest.

'I knew right from the beginning, from his whole demeanour that he's innocent. I could tell when I saw him in Belmarsh - through his body language, his eye contact - before and after his conviction.

'He said to me: "They had to have someone. I didn't do this and I don't know why I'm here. But you do realise I am here for the rest of my life?"

'I said he wouldn't be - that the sentence would be reduced and he replied: "Oh no, not for me. I can't ever say I'm sorry for doing it - because I didn't do it."

'At night, things play over and over in my mind. When you realise this is a miscarriage of justice, it becomes enormous. They have grabbed Barry's life and taken it away from him. They have also taken my life.

'It wasn't an easy thing to decide to become vocal. But I have to stand up for Barry's rights. I'm determined to at least do that.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-135212/My-brother-didnt-kill-Jill.html#ixzz5DQUKMFv4

Michelle Bates: "They said he had an obsession with Diana and stalked and photographed women. It was mentioned that he was discovered by police in Kensington Gardens with a rope and a knife dressed in Army gear. He told me that he was "doing manoeuvres". 'But he was never charged and there are no records of him being in the grounds by Diana's apartment as has been suggested.

Michael Burke: "I asked him why he was arrested at Kensington palace and he said that he had fallen asleep in the grounds as he made his way back from Chelsea barracks in 1983.

On June 26th the Daily Express did a two page spread on Scotts book. A couple of days later Michelle featured in an Irish evening paper, and appeared to dismiss the value of Scott's book, saying that a book would not get Barry out.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2018, 09:16:41 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #92 on: April 23, 2018, 09:24:04 PM »
"But his Irish sister – who recently launched an appeal for witnesses to
help her brother – said last night that although the family had
investigated the possibility of him doing one, they have been advised by
doctors against it.

Speaking from her Cork home, Michelle Diskin said: “We have thought
about it and taken medical advice but we have been told a lie test
wouldn’t work properly because of the condition he is in.

He has suffered brain damage as a result of his years of having
epilepsy and it was main reason why he didn’t take the stand in his own
defence at his trail.


“It’s not so much that a lie test wouldn’t work, but it’s more that it
would have a better chance of not working properly because of his
condition and then Barry would just end up in a worse position than he
already is.
https://randomirishnews.com/2006/04/21/jill-dando-killer-barry-george-too-sick-for-lie-test/


"During medical examinations before his trial, it was discovered that George had suffered severe brain damage from a physical injury while in his 20s. Michelle says he does not know how it occurred, although she conjectures that perhaps it was something to do with his 'Steve Majors' phase
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-135212/My-brother-didnt-kill-Jill.html#ixzz5DQUKMFv4
« Last Edit: April 23, 2018, 09:36:44 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #93 on: April 23, 2018, 09:48:03 PM »
"But his Irish sister – who recently launched an appeal for witnesses to
help her brother – said last night that although the family had
investigated the possibility of him doing one, they have been advised by
doctors against it.

Speaking from her Cork home, Michelle Diskin said: “We have thought
about it and taken medical advice but we have been told a lie test
wouldn’t work properly because of the condition he is in.

He has suffered brain damage as a result of his years of having
epilepsy and it was main reason why he didn’t take the stand in his own
defence at his trail.


“It’s not so much that a lie test wouldn’t work, but it’s more that it
would have a better chance of not working properly because of his
condition and then Barry would just end up in a worse position than he
already is.
https://randomirishnews.com/2006/04/21/jill-dando-killer-barry-george-too-sick-for-lie-test/


"During medical examinations before his trial, it was discovered that George had suffered severe brain damage from a physical injury while in his 20s. Michelle says he does not know how it occurred, although she conjectures that perhaps it was something to do with his 'Steve Majors' phase
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-135212/My-brother-didnt-kill-Jill.html#ixzz5DQUKMFv4

Yet more and more contradictions and inconsistencies
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #94 on: September 16, 2018, 06:02:16 PM »
I ask again, why has Barry George's sister Michelle (nee Diskin) Bate's become Patron to mass murderer & child killer Jeremy Bamber's campaign? https://www.change.org/p/rt-hon-amber-rudd-mp-home-secretary-essex-police-release-all-documents-withheld-under-pii-to-jeremy-bamber-s-legal-defence/u/17935097

They are no similarities in either case

Michelle Bates is apparently up in arms by the fact her brother has not been compensated as he had been found to be not innocent enough.

"Michelle is backing a Campaign to amend the Criminal Justice Act, section 133, which affects many whose convictions have been overturned, or who have been found not guilty at retrial. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/33/section/133

Is she not concerned her brother could be re-tried in the future if new evidence were to come to light?

Her brothers over turned conviction is similar in parts to the Gary Dobson and David Norris convictions.

https://www.ft.com/content/45d351a2-3715-11e1-b741-00144feabdc0

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2013/712.html

https://www.criminallawandjustice.co.uk/blog/No-Coincidence

https://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=1351642

Michelle Bates has written a false and indeed misleading blog about her memories following the WHF murders.

On this basis, what has she said or written about her brother which is as equally false and indeed misleading?


Michelle Bates 🎀
@Michelle_Diskin
People hate to think there has been a wrongful conviction, it shakes their confidence, therefore they attack the people campaigning for justice, like journalist Chris Mullin, or in this case, Sandra Lean.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Michelle_Diskin/status/1041002046386790401
« Last Edit: September 16, 2018, 06:10:07 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline John

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #95 on: September 28, 2018, 04:11:35 PM »

Michelle Bates
@Michelle_Diskin
People hate to think there has been a wrongful conviction, it shakes their confidence, therefore they attack the people campaigning for justice, like journalist Chris Mullin, or in this case, Sandra Lean.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Michelle_Diskin/status/1041002046386790401

Getting it wrong once was bad enough but Sandra Lean got it wrong twice that we definitely know about. She went to great lengths to campaign for killers Adrian Prout and Simon Hall yet both men eventually admitted their guilt. I for one would certainly question her judgement.

Michelle Bates involvement in the Bamber case is surprising given what we know about the conviction.  Jeremy Bamber is certainly no Barry George, the two cases couldn't be more different.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2018, 04:14:19 PM by John »
A malicious prosecution for a crime which never existed. An exposé of egregious malfeasance by public officials.
Indeed, the truth never changes with the passage of time.

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #96 on: September 29, 2018, 07:39:11 PM »
Michelle Bates involvement in the Bamber case is surprising given what we know about the conviction.  Jeremy Bamber is certainly no Barry George, the two cases couldn't be more different.

Did Barry George sue those responsible for the following https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-to-examine-confession-from-killer-of-dando-9159153.html

And is the alleged confession why he failed the legal test for compensation or something else?

"a jury, properly directed, could have found him guilty.’
« Last Edit: September 29, 2018, 11:51:58 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #97 on: September 29, 2018, 09:53:44 PM »
Can you point me to the trial transcripts and the Judgement handed down in the original trial please

I've found this http://www.scienceandjusticejournal.com/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext but I want to go back to the beginning before the media muddied the waters..

Sandra Laville Crime Correspondant for the Guardian reported in June 2006 the following:

"Scientific evidence which helped convict Barry George of the murder of the BBC presenter Jill Dando six years ago has since been codified by the government's Forensic Science Service as "of no value", the Guardian understands.

The guidance on the evidence, a speck of firearms residue found deep in the pocket of George's coat, was circulated internally by the Forensic Science Service early last year in a paper on gunshot residue.

The paper was seized upon by lawyers at the Criminal Cases Review Commission who have spent five years examining various theories in the George case.

It is the scientists' opinion that single speck ballistics evidence is of no value which formed the basis of yesterday's decision by the review commission to refer the case to the court of appeal, where George's lawyers will argue the murder conviction must be quashed as unsafe.

The Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday it was examining the evidence. It is understood the CPS and the Metropolitan police will contest the appeal, which is likely to be heard this year
.

The headline read - "Six years on, evidence that helped convict TV presenter's murderer is deemed valueless

However emerging research in 2013 by N Fenton et al "When ‘neutral’ evidence still has probative value (with implications from the Barry George Case) suggests, among other things, that the single particle of gun shot residue was of significant probative value.

"Justice is best served when the evidence and hypotheses under con- sideration are accessible and clear to all parties and are unambiguously defined. In particular, this is the only way to assign correct meanings to the likelihoods provided by expert witnesses. Furthermore, because the probative value of a piece of evidence on source-level hypotheses may be very different from its probative value on offence-level hypotheses, the relationships between source-level and offence-level hypotheses must be made clear. We have demonstrated that an efficient way to achieve such clarity will require the construction of causal models through the aid of tools such as Bayesian networks. This approach helps to improve legal reasoning and by doing so demonstrates how hypotheses can be clarified, related and made precise enough for reliable quantification. Central to this approach is the distinction between hypotheses that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive and those that are not.
We contend that, in order to determine whether evidence has probative value – and therefore whether it should be excluded from proceedings or not – it should be evaluated against offence-level hypotheses. Any diversion from this key principle will carry the risk that evidence might be presented to the jury merely as a diversionary tactic, and persuade it to make decisions based on superfluous source- level hypotheses.
We have demonstrated serious concerns about the Barry George Appeal Court judgement. The case document suffered from oversimpli- fication: what appeared as a superficially simple set of hypotheses were actually a set of ill-defined, but related, assumptions and vaguely defined hypotheses

Under these circumstances the ‘simple LR rule’ inadequately captured the probative value of the evidence. We have shown that evidence with a LR equal to the one in this case was not necessarily ‘neutral’.
The errors we highlight are taken from a judgement document, and although this may not always have accurately recorded what was said in court, the fact that it contains so much erroneous reasoning is cause for concern. Clearly, if a case judgement can be wrought with so many fail- ings, similar problems are likely to occur in courtroom judgments too. Additionally, it is a concern that the careful and rigorous presentations of statistical evidence made by conscientious expert witnesses can become distorted in a case judgement.

https://www.scienceandjusticejournal.com/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext?code=scijus-site

https://www.scienceandjusticejournal.com/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext#/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2007/2722.html
« Last Edit: September 29, 2018, 11:55:37 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #98 on: September 30, 2018, 01:23:40 PM »
Has anyone considered the possibility that contents of Michelle Bate's forthcoming book could lead to the re-arrest of her brother for JD's murder?
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #99 on: October 01, 2018, 06:01:12 PM »
Michelle Bates writes and I quote,

"Justice is never served by the conviction of the innocent" by Michelle Bates on the 31st Anniversary of the tragedies (Jerrmy Bamber case)

"Becoming aware of a breaking-news story I began to listen in more closely. A siege was taking place at a farmhouse in England. The broadcaster relayed that five people were inside and there was great fear for their safety. As the story unfolded it became apparent that this was an older couple. A farmer and retired Magistrate, Nevill Bamber and his wife, June; their daughter, Sheila, and her six year old twin sons. Jeremy, their son, was outside with police who were trying to communicate with someone inside the house who had been seen pacing back and forth in front of an upstairs window and carrying a firearm. The reporter said that police were reluctant to get too close to the house for fear of causing that person to become more agitated, thereby, escalating the danger to the family. I watched for an hour or so but there was no resolution and, heavily pregnant, I became exhausted and had to go off to bed.
No one was seen pacing back and forth carrying a firearm - this is a lie
Awaking early I was anxious for news
, hopefully of a rescue, so I put the News on immediately. The siege was over, police had stormed the house and five bodies had been found inside. I was heartbroken, a whole family! My heart went out to the young man who had waited all night long with the police for news of his family; this was not what he wanted to hear.
There was no live TV coverage during the time Bamber was outside the farmhouse with the police - another lie 
My own child was born a few days later and I became engrossed in motherhood. It was a real shock to hear, sometime later, that the son, Jeremy Bamber, had been arrested for the killings…how was that possible when he was outside during the siege and everyone knew that? I presumed the police knew something we did not; there must have been strong evidence to convict a man of killing his entire family…I pushed my unease aside and got on with motherhood and my own life.

Since then I have revisited the facts of this case in light of so many high-profile miscarriage of justice cases coming to light, including that of my own brother, Barry George, for the murder of Jill Dando. More recently we’ve heard of the lies and cover-ups in the Hillsborough deaths and The Chilcot report exposing the same type of cover ups in the Iraqi war scandal. In the Bamber case I can find no evidence to convince me of the guilt of this man. Nothing that can account for a man languishing in jail for more than thirty years. How did a jury convict a young man without proof?

Our justice system is predicated on the ‘presumption of innocence’ and also on ‘beyond reasonable doubt,’ but there is so much doubt surrounding this conviction that this case must be looked into again, urgently. The CCRC and the Court of Appeal seem to be reluctant to do this, and the police, for their part, have been withholding evidence from the defendant. It will cost thousands of pounds to, again, take them to court to force them to hand over the papers and forensic results that the court has already told them they must do. They have also effectively ‘locked down’ documents in the case under a PII* order; what is there to hide? Meanwhile, a man is fighting a conviction for multiple murders that there is no proof he committed. Surely this is not the justice system his father, a Magistrate was proud to be a part of? https://jeremybamber.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/justice-is-never-served-by-conviction.html

Mrs Bates further claims in the Bamber case:  "Dead people don’t walk (and two only became one at marriage!). Sheila alive, even when police stormed the building. Tragic murder/suicide. 😢 https://mobile.twitter.com/Michelle_Diskin/status/917077719749361664

Det Ch Insp Bent added: "A murder investigation is never closed until the conviction of those involved
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-45707524



"Yesterday, his legal team and Scotland Yard officials argued over the handling of the case.
Supporters of Barry George became embroiled in a feud with police over fears her killer may never be caught and jailed.
William Clegg QC, who represented Mr George, accused the Metropolitan Police of abandoning objectivity and "closing their minds" to other suspects over the murder of the television presenter in London nine years ago.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2491773/Jill-Dando-murder-Feud-erupts-over-verdict.html



On 9th Jan 2018, in response to the following https://innocent.org.uk/2018/01/09/luke-mitchell-launches-fresh-innocence-appeal/ on the Luke Mitchell case Michelle (Diskin) Bates states

"There never was any evidence to link Luke to this terrible killing, just supposition and wild fantasy."

http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=595.msg490903#msg490903
« Last Edit: October 01, 2018, 08:43:57 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #100 on: October 02, 2018, 01:17:03 PM »
Sandra Laville Crime Correspondant for the Guardian reported in June 2006 the following:

"Scientific evidence which helped convict Barry George of the murder of the BBC presenter Jill Dando six years ago has since been codified by the government's Forensic Science Service as "of no value", the Guardian understands.

The guidance on the evidence, a speck of firearms residue found deep in the pocket of George's coat, was circulated internally by the Forensic Science Service early last year in a paper on gunshot residue.

The paper was seized upon by lawyers at the Criminal Cases Review Commission who have spent five years examining various theories in the George case.

It is the scientists' opinion that single speck ballistics evidence is of no value which formed the basis of yesterday's decision by the review commission to refer the case to the court of appeal, where George's lawyers will argue the murder conviction must be quashed as unsafe.

The Crown Prosecution Service said yesterday it was examining the evidence. It is understood the CPS and the Metropolitan police will contest the appeal, which is likely to be heard this year
.

The headline read - "Six years on, evidence that helped convict TV presenter's murderer is deemed valueless

However emerging research in 2013 by N Fenton et al "When ‘neutral’ evidence still has probative value (with implications from the Barry George Case) suggests, among other things, that the single particle of gun shot residue was of significant probative value.

"Justice is best served when the evidence and hypotheses under con- sideration are accessible and clear to all parties and are unambiguously defined. In particular, this is the only way to assign correct meanings to the likelihoods provided by expert witnesses. Furthermore, because the probative value of a piece of evidence on source-level hypotheses may be very different from its probative value on offence-level hypotheses, the relationships between source-level and offence-level hypotheses must be made clear. We have demonstrated that an efficient way to achieve such clarity will require the construction of causal models through the aid of tools such as Bayesian networks. This approach helps to improve legal reasoning and by doing so demonstrates how hypotheses can be clarified, related and made precise enough for reliable quantification. Central to this approach is the distinction between hypotheses that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive and those that are not.
We contend that, in order to determine whether evidence has probative value – and therefore whether it should be excluded from proceedings or not – it should be evaluated against offence-level hypotheses. Any diversion from this key principle will carry the risk that evidence might be presented to the jury merely as a diversionary tactic, and persuade it to make decisions based on superfluous source- level hypotheses.
We have demonstrated serious concerns about the Barry George Appeal Court judgement. The case document suffered from oversimpli- fication: what appeared as a superficially simple set of hypotheses were actually a set of ill-defined, but related, assumptions and vaguely defined hypotheses

Under these circumstances the ‘simple LR rule’ inadequately captured the probative value of the evidence. We have shown that evidence with a LR equal to the one in this case was not necessarily ‘neutral’.
The errors we highlight are taken from a judgement document, and although this may not always have accurately recorded what was said in court, the fact that it contains so much erroneous reasoning is cause for concern. Clearly, if a case judgement can be wrought with so many fail- ings, similar problems are likely to occur in courtroom judgments too. Additionally, it is a concern that the careful and rigorous presentations of statistical evidence made by conscientious expert witnesses can become distorted in a case judgement.

https://www.scienceandjusticejournal.com/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext?code=scijus-site

https://www.scienceandjusticejournal.com/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext#/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/fulltext

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2007/2722.html

abstract
"The likelihood ratio (LR) is a probabilistic method that has been championed as a ‘simple rule’ for evaluating the probative value of forensic evidence in court. Intuitively, if the LR is greater than one then the evidence supports the prosecution hypothesis; if the LR is less than one it supports the defence hypothesis, and if the LR is equal to one then the evidence favours neither (and so is considered ‘neutral’—having no probative value). It can be shown by Bayes' theorem that this simple relationship only applies to pairs of hypotheses for which one is the negation of the other (i.e. to mutually exclusive and exhaustive hypotheses) and is not applicable otherwise. We show how easy it can be – even for evidence experts – to use pairs of hypotheses that they assume are mutually exclusive and exhaustive but are not, and hence to arrive at erroneous conclusions about the value of evidence using the LR. Furthermore, even when mutually exclusive and exhaustive hypotheses are used there are extreme restrictions as to what can be concluded about the probative value of evidence just from a LR. Most importantly, while the distinction between source-level hypotheses (such as defendant was/was not at the crime scene) and offence-level hypotheses (defendant is/is not guilty) is well known, it is not widely under- stood that a LR for evidence about the former generally has no bearing on the LR of the latter. We show for the first time (using Bayesian networks) the full impact of this problem, and conclude that it is only the LR of the offence level hypotheses that genuinely determines the probative value of the evidence. We investigate common scenarios in which evidence has a LR of one but still has significant probative value (i.e. is not neutral as is commonly assumed). As illustration we consider the ramifications of these points for the case of Barry George. The successful appeal against his conviction for the murder of Jill Dando was based primarily on the argument that the firearm discharge residue (FDR) evidence, assumed to support the prosecution hypothesis at the original trial, actually had a LR equal to one and hence was ‘neutral’. However, our review of the appeal transcript shows numerous examples of the problems with the use of hypotheses identified above. We show that if one were to follow the arguments recorded in the Appeal judgement verbatim, then contrary to the Appeal conclusion, the probative value of the FDR evidence may not have been neutral as was concluded
N Fenton et al "When ‘neutral’ evidence still has probative value (with implications from the Barry George Case) 
https://www.scienceandjusticejournal.com/article/S1355-0306(13)00059-2/pdf

Gunshot Residue Evidence – A Loose Canon?
by Angela Shaw - The Forensic Firearms Consultancy Ltd 2016
"The Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC) in 2006 requested a review of the oral and written evidence in relation to the significance of the single particle and the way in which the case would have been reported today. While employed at the FSS I carried out this review in conjunction with a colleague. We concluded that the GSR evidence was inconclusive; it was no more likely that the particle had originated from the shooting of Ms Dando than it had come from another source. This was based on the information that the coat in which the particle had been found was not recovered until a year after the shooting. The CCRC referred the case to the Court of Appeal stating that the GSR particle that was given great significance by the Prosecution at the trial in 2001 was, in reality of no probative value
http://forensicfirearmsconsultancy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/GSR-Evidence-A-Loose-Canon.pdf


"That forensic remnant did not appear in the retrial, however, after the court of appeal ruled that the jury had been misled about the significance of the microscopic speck in his coat. The single thread attached to her coat was the only remaining forensic detail before the jury. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/aug/01/jilldando.ukcrime2
« Last Edit: October 02, 2018, 02:31:05 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #101 on: October 02, 2018, 07:43:35 PM »
Lynn Hales said: "George has now claimed to be a reformed man. If that is true he should tell the police who did this"
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/who-pulled-trigger-mum-daniel-8257691

Ex Manchester gangster Dwaine George pleads innocence over murder conviction
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ZQbYtGlwE

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/r-v-dwaine-george.pdf

Gunshot Residue and The Cardiff Innocence Project
"Dwayne, who had always protested his innocence, had the good fortune to write to and involve the Innocence Project at Cardiff University. Over successive years volunteering law students studied the case, and considered various avenues which might lead to the overturning of the conviction. The case of  Barry George [2007] EWCA Crim 2722 with its staunch criticisms of the standards which had applied to gun shot residue evidence, and its recognition of the important revision of those standards under the auspices of the FSS and in particular their lead scientist Angela Shaw, led to the students securing the services of a firearms expert to write a report on the impact of the Barry George decision on Dwayne George’s case. Detailed submissions to the CCRC were prepared by the many students, into all aspects of the case. Impressed by the work involved the CCRC themselves commissioned Angela Shaw to write a report on the GSR findings in the case, and the approach which had been adopted to them. As a result the Commission referred the case back to the Court of Appeal. http://doughty-street-chambers.newsweaver.com/Appeals/1cisha3cvxh?a=1&p=456432&t=174031

The Justice Gap
"Barry George’s conviction was quashed in the same year that Kevin Lane’s legal team made a third application to the CCRC. It was overturned followed a referral by the CCRC after a Panorama investigation identified concerns about a single speck on George’s coat which had convinced the jury that murdered Jill Dando. It was Cardiff Law School that identified the vulnerability of the gunshot residue evidence in the Dwaine George case as reported on the Justice Gap (here). The CCRC referred that case on the grounds there was ‘a real possibility’ the evidence of gunshot residue ‘does not now attract the value attributed to it at trial, and therefore does not support the identification evidence’. That conviction was quashed in 2014
Sir Brian Leveson, giving judgment in the Court of Appeal, pointed to new guidelines on firearms residue issued by the Forensic Science Service in 2006, two years after George’s conviction. If the new guidelines were followed ‘the number and type of particles of residue found on the coat were so small so as to be at or near the level at which they could not be considered to have evidential value’, according to the judgment. If the judge at the original trial had access to the new guidelines his directions to the jury ‘would have been couched in terms of much greater circumspection and caution,’ it added. https://www.thejusticegap.com/unmanageable-workloads-and-substandard-investigations-that-fail-to-put-right-miscarriages-of-justice/

National Training Conference on Investigating Miscarriages of Justice 2018
Organised by the School of Law at The University of Manchester, sponsored by Clyde & Co. and LexisNexis.
The 2018 National Training Conference for students in pro bono innocence projects, Miscarriages of Justice Review Centres, and independent case investigators will take place at the University of Manchester on Friday 16 and Saturday 17 February. The students and other investigators give their own time to help with cases of people who claim to be innocent of crimes of which they have been convicted, and who cannot afford to pay lawyers to review their cases. This Conference gives them unique opportunities to hear and meet some of the UK’s leading experts who can help them find out what might have gone wrong in police investigations and prosecutions, and what evidence can be found to support claims of innocence.
We are delighted to have a major contribution from the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body which has the powers to obtain the fresh evidence needed to overturn wrongful convictions, and to refer cases to the Court of Appeal. The CCRC will explain in detail how it carries out its work and lead workshops for participants.
Experts giving presetations and leading discussions include:
Professor Allan Jamieson, Director of the Forensic Institute in Scotland. Allan is often called to give expert evidence about DNA in the UK and the USA. His evidence was of key importance in the Omagh bombing trial.
Andy Townsend of Footprint Investigations, leading experts on the analysis of phone call data which pinpoints where users are located.
Eric Allison, prisons correspondent of the Guardian who writes on miscarriage of justice cases.
Neil Smith, perhaps the UK’s foremost expert on using the internet to trace people and find information about them.
We will debate and explore the problem of joint enterprise prosecutions, in which innocent people are convicted just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, with:
Felicity Gerry QC, who contributed to rectifying the highly controversial law on joint criminal enterprise in the UK Supreme Court case of Jogee. She continues to work on joint enterprise cases and campaign for changes in the law on accessory liability. Felicity will speak via a video link from Australia;
Dwaine George who was himself wrongly convicted in a joint enterprise murder case. His conviction was overturned with the help of Cardiff Innocence Project. He now studies law at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The chaotic state of the disclosure system, responsible for many wrongful convictions because evidence gathered by the police which would help suspects is not passed on to them, will be explored through recent high profile cases, including those of Defence barrister Julia Smart from Furnival Chambers will be present to explain what happened when Liam Allan nearly went to prison for rape that he did not commit and was saved from this fate when undisclosed evidence was found.
Danny Kay, whose rape conviction was recently overturned thanks to the work of barrister Philip Rule who discovered important undisclosed material.
Philip Rule was called to the bar in 2001 and is a barrister at No 5 Chambers. Philip is renowned for his work in public law, civil liberties and human rights and was named Legal Aid Barrister of the year in 2017. He was recently involved in Danny Kay’s case discovering important evidence that overturned his conviction.
Mark Newby, solicitor advocate, possibly the UK's foremost criminal appeal lawyer and a long term active supporter of innocence projects MJRCs, will talk about his recent successes and the technicalities of putting together an appeal case. Andrew Green, is the Director of the Miscarriages of Justice Review Centre at the University of Sheffield. Andrew also runs INNOCENT and has a long history of working with the families and victims of Miscarriages of Justice.
Hannah Quirk, has worked at the University of Manchester since 2005. Her research interests in are mainly in criminal justice and criminal evidence. Hannah worked as Senior Researcher at the Legal Services Research Centre (the research unit of the Legal Services Commission), and as a Case Review Manager at the Criminal Cases Review Commission, investigating claims of wrongful conviction and sentence. Hannah also spent six months on a research sabbatical at the Innocence Project New Orleans. Finally, students, experts, leading lawyers and MPs will come together to discuss how to take forward the campaign to eradicate the scourge of miscarriage of justice.
Mark George QC, head of Garden Court North Chambers, who represented families at the Hillsborough, who will help students, as he has for many years, to understand cases make progress with them.
Brigid Baillie, is a defence advocate at Garden Court North Chambers, experienced in the most serious types of criminal cases and appeals including murder, serious sexual offences (such as paedophile rings and historical sex allegations), drug importation and terrorism. Brigid has a particular interest in vulnerable defendants and those with mental health conditions and is skilled at dealing sensitively with demanding clients in those circumstances.
Michael O’ Brien, spent eleven years in prison for a crime he didn't commit - the so-called Cardiff Newsagent Murder. Since having his conviction quashed in December 1999, Michael has worked tirelessly to ensure that those falsely convicted of crimes are exonerated.
Sarah McGill, headed the Cardiff Innocence Project student team responsible for the 2010 casework that led to Dwaine George’s conviction being quashed R v George 2014 EWCA Crim 2507. Sarah joined 15 Winkley Square Chambers in 2016 having been Called to the Bar as a transferring duty qualified Solicitor-Advocate. She routinely appears in serious cases covering the criminal and regulatory spectrum, including multi-handed prosecutions and those involving complicated expert evidence.
Danielle Manson is a barrister at 25 Bedford Row and was part of the Innocence Project at The University of Sheffield. She has been a clerk at Doughty St Chambers and worked at Justice.
Nazir Afsal was the Chief Crown Prosecutor of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for North West England from 2011 to 2015. He was the first Muslim to be appointed to such a position and was Britain's most senior Muslim lawyer within the CPS of Manchester. . Nazir was also the prosecutor who reopened the sex trafficking gang case in Rochdale which saw nine men jailed in 2012. He is Honorary Lecturer in law.
Dr Dennis Eady, works as Case Consultant to the Innocence Project at Cardiff University Law School and has been an active campaigner on miscarriage of justice issues for 20 years with South Wales against Wrongful Conviction (formerly South Wales Liberty). He has many years of experience on the topic of miscarriages of justice including the appeal process, particularly the CCRC and applications to them.
Professor Julie Price, heads the Cardiff Law School Pro Bono “Law in the Real World” schemes, including the Cardiff Law School Innocence Project, teaming law students with local criminal law practitioners to look at cases involving possible miscarriages of justice.
Henry Thompson, is the father of James Thompson. Battered, bloodied and concussed James ended up in prison. He is now serving a life sentence for murder, a crime he did not commit. He was a victim of assault. Students at the University of Manchester are now working with the family to get this case back to the Court of Appeal.
Finally students, experts, leading lawyers and MPs will come together to discuss how to take forward the campaign to eradicate the scourge of miscarriage of justice.
Book tickets for the conference via Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/national-training-conference-on-investigating-miscarriages-of-justice-2018-the-school-of-law-at-the-tickets-42046234419


"Eric Allison: Show me a miscarriage of justice and, nine times out of 10, I will show you the blueprint that caused it. There is a pattern, a template, in virtually all of these cases, made up of the following strands.....
http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=8523.msg456531#msg456531

Angela Shaw
Angela added: “We concluded that, given the coat from Barry George’s home was not recovered until a year after the shooting, the likelihood that the particle would remain in a pocket of the coat a year after the shooting would be very small.
“But the likelihood that the particle originated from another source was also very small – in other words, the GSR evidence was inconclusive

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/crime/scots-forensic-firearm-expert-who-2319573
« Last Edit: October 02, 2018, 09:01:09 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #102 on: October 09, 2018, 05:42:34 PM »
Whilst Barry George's "odd" behaviour may not make him a murderer, doubts still remain.

Investigative journalist Mark Williams Thomas looked again at the the case and presented his findings which appeared to point away from George. But how do any of us know whether he had been influenced in any way by his bias?

Barry George is not innocent enough for compensation!

High Court judges ruled “There was indeed a case upon which a reasonable jury, properly directed, could have convicted the claimant of murder."

To what evidence were the judges referring?

Published On: Tue, Aug 29th, 2017 *Legal | By David Wells
Are you a victim of a genuine miscarriage of justice?

https://insidetime.org/are-you-a-victim-of-a-genuine-miscarriage-of-justice/

"As an example, he has worked on trying to assist Barry George, wrongly convicted of the murder of Jill Dando, and with his quest to obtain the justice it is strongly felt he deserves by getting compensation for having served a 9 year sentence for a crime he did not commit.

Re: Mark Williams Thomas

Cass says:
28th September 2017 at 2:42 pm
"I’m surprised David that as a qualified Solicitor and Barrister who has worked on some high profile cases that you haven’t done your homework on Mark Williams Thomas.
A bit of research will tell you that he was only a Detective for a year in Surrey then left, though I have heard he jumped before he was pushed.
He is not an expert in child protection, and a Masters in criminology, with no other post grad degree, doesn’t make him an expert in that field either.
His various CV’s about investigating or leading high profile cases are I would argue also untrue as Senior officers lead investigations.
Credit due for his dogged work in the Saville case, but he was invited on board by Merrion Jones after a lot of ground work was done. In fact he told Merrion by e-mail he was ‘keen to be involved’ as he started the Jonathan King investigation, which actually started after he left the force and was investigated by other officers.
Merrion thought MWT would be useful as an ex Surrey officer to find out if they had carried out an investigation into Saville. MWT agreed to ‘dig around’… it’s all in the Pollard Review.
As for ‘The Investigator’ the show revealed nothing that wasn’t already in the public domain and was edited to make MWT look good. It’s all in the Court of Appeal decision at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2003/1840.html
Anyway I don’t wish to harp on, but I often wonder if those who purport to be what they are not actually have a strong belief in justice for others…. or simply a desire to boost their own ego and line their own pockets.
Purporting to those who have suffered the loss of loved ones to be a seasoned and experienced investigator is not for me in the interests of justice. It is called giving false hope… as he did in the Investigator.
If David, as MWT said himself, you ‘dig around’, you’ll come to see he’s not all that he purports to be. In fact why not ask him face to face and see what he says. He knows what it’s like to be grilled after standing trial for Blackmail and being found not guilty.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/2957264.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/2963918.stm

Top barrister sparks social media row with telly-copper over Janner ‘trial of facts
"The hack that dug up the dirt on Jimmy Savile has described some of Pump Court man’s Twitter followers as “pro paedophile”
Commenter says: "Remember that it was Mr Williams-Thomas who visited Oscar Pistorius during his trial and used the media to declare him innocent!"
https://www.legalcheek.com/2015/06/top-barrister-sparks-social-media-row-with-telly-copper-over-janner-trial-of-facts/

Was the Pistorious interview designed to manipulate?
https://allafrica.com/view/resource/main/main/id/00100764.html
« Last Edit: October 09, 2018, 07:05:04 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Barry George revisited.
« Reply #103 on: October 09, 2018, 07:07:08 PM »
Was Mark Williams Thomas involvement in this case designed to manipulate?
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

« Last Edit: October 09, 2018, 07:55:20 PM by Stephanie »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation