Convicting Britain’s Most Ruthless Criminals: Case Files for the Prosecution

By Vivien Holland

Safely convicting criminals relies on finding the truth. But what is the truth and can we ever get the complete picture? Convicting Britain’s Most Ruthless Criminals is a collection of serious crime cases in modern Britain. It gives a detailed insight into the amassing of evidence for the prosecution and how the truth can be uncovered, given that there is always a piece of evidence missing, whether it is a hidden fortune, an elusive murder weapon or even an undiscovered body.

Drawing on unique access to the case files and speeches of a leading crown prosecutor combined with expert witness information, these are fascinating stories of criminal acts, their perpetrators, and how they were brought to justice by putting together a jigsaw of evidence, much of which has never been revealed before, which includes ballistics, pathology, mobile phone records and CCTV analysis. Enough to get as close to the real truth as possible, given that the picture of each jigsaw is never completely revealed.

There is the case of an appeal by woman who was convicted of killing her husband decades ago, a bungled robbery that ended up as murder, a staged gem heist only uncovered years later during a plea-bargaining exercise, a death in police custody, a serial killer who decided to confess, and a brothel keeper maintaining that he was simultaneously providing a community service whilst servicing the Greek national debt.

The cases are intertwined with stories and anecdotes including the juror who ended up being convicted, how the gangland drugs scene became big business and why there is so much dressing up in court.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Jul 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399092272

Vivien Holland

VIVIEN HOLLAND has had a life-long fascination with crime. Her role as a lay member of the judiciary has opened her eyes to the way that the British justice system works. Looking at cases from the perspective of the prosecution, she has observed many criminal trials. Her interest in how different pieces of evidence are collected and pieced together to secure a safe conviction led to the idea for Convicting Britain’s Most Ruthless Criminals, her first book.

Book preview

1

Nothing But the Truth

The truth is often stranger than fiction. Especially when it comes to crime. But what is the truth exactly? And, when it comes to uncovering and punishing a crime, can we settle for somewhere on the spectrum between absolute truth and lies, at a place we feel is acceptable, given that the full picture may never be revealed?

Finding the truth can be labyrinthine, time consuming and resource intensive. But the prosecution of criminals necessitates looking for it in order to seek safe convictions. There are many different strands of evidence that can be pieced together to build up a picture of what happened, by whom and how. The ‘why’ is sometimes the most difficult to uncover.

To set about building up this picture, as well as witness testimony, the prosecution will draw on a range of evidence including CCTV footage of a crime, DNA evidence left at the scene, pathology reports explaining how a life was extinguished, and the clues left behind by a gun after it has been fired. Detection methods assisted by new technology have developed over time to make the picture more complete; for example mobile phones now provide a means of tracking someone’s whereabouts and who they have been contacting. These methods are not necessarily more accurate – for example DNA evidence may give a false positive – and they can become crowded with conflicts. There could also be gaps, such as CCTV footage which may record various scenes relating to a crime but not the vital moment that a murder is committed. These technologies don’t lie, but they are not a panacea. It is for the human mind to piece together whatever is available and view the whole picture. Gathering as much evidence as possible is necessary for society to feel that justice is done.

What is acceptable or not in today’s society is different from that of bygone eras and being in tune with this has always been important. One of the first recognitions of this was in a paper entitled The Zeitgeist and the Judiciary written by a brilliant young lawyer called Felix Frankfurter in 1913. Seen as an acknowledgement of progressive jurisprudence, he articulated the zeitgeist as the ‘spirit of the age’, the authority to be obeyed and our guide in society. The zeitgeist was, he said, ‘actual conditions of life and current dominant public opinion’. This spirit was not to be quenched but, ‘allowed to flood the sympathies and the intelligence’ of all political officials, including judges. There needed to be respect for this zeitgeist; a flexibility and changeability to accommodate new ways of thinking over time.

As a result, we have moved on from previous norms of acceptability. Children no longer sweep chimneys, wives are no longer the possessions of their husbands and homosexuality is no longer a criminal offence. The death penalty has long since disappeared as a sentence for murder and corporal punishment is no longer administered in prisons. The statute book has been updated to ensure that acts such as hate behaviour are a criminal offence, reflecting the needs of a modern civilised society, along with greater use of restorative justice to help rehabilitate criminals. These are progressions in line with the current zeitgeist, but with terrorism and knife crime on the streets, the debate continues regarding how best to punish the perpetrators. In the days of hanging, some commentators felt that society could feel a sense of closure by meeting ‘horror with horror’. This debate sparks up whenever there is a new atrocity. But while this might feel like an atonement, if there is an error in convictions, the wrong person has gone to their grave. Sending someone to prison is also not a duty carried out lightly. So ensuring convictions are safe is vital.

The cases covered in detail in this book all have different features and outcomes. The prosecution has gathered a mass of evidence in each one, as the burden of proof is on it to demonstrate guilt. Some cases have yielded more evidence than others, but inevitably there are missing pieces. Where there has been an appeal or a cold case has been resurrected, new techniques in studying evidence have been used to enable further investigation and provide a clearer picture.

However, even the more recent cases are not immune from some uncertainty. There has been enough evidence in some of them, but not all, to reach a conclusion resulting in a safe conviction. Some of them will probably never be resolved, to the dismay both of defendants and victims. One aspect they all have in common is that they each have at least one missing piece of evidence, whether that is a hidden fortune, a murder weapon or even a body. As a result, we will never reach the concrete, absolute, cannot-be-denied truth.

2

The Missing Piece of the Jigsaw

The fatal mistake made by a man named John Haigh in the 1940s was to believe that if you didn’t have a dead body, there was no case to answer. He noticed that what was needed for a conviction was a ‘body of evidence’, taking this to mean an actual body. But he was wrong. The body of evidence could mean anything that proves someone was murdered, and who committed it. These crimes are not uncommon – a small number of murders every year are successfully prosecuted without a body.

Haigh didn’t set out with murderous intent, but his taste for the high life led him to commit fraud and this in turn made him into a killer. A serial killer, in fact. Having been sent to prison for fraud earlier in his criminal career, he’d learned a new skill. While working in the prison workshop, he had access to sulphuric acid. By experimenting with mice, he discovered that a rodent’s entire body could be dissolved in acid. This was an interesting discovery, and he calculated how much acid would be needed to dissolve a human body, multiplying the quantities by the necessary factor. After being released from prison, he stepped up his quest for life’s luxuries, which necessitated the abduction of wealthy people by telling them he was an inventor and luring them to his workshop to show them his work. There, he would cosh them over the head or shoot them and place the bodies in oil drums containing the acid. Then he’d wait for the bodies to disintegrate. The remaining sludge could simply be poured away down a drain. Now he knew he could get rid of the evidence, a life of murder seemed simple. But the trouble was that there is always a remnant, such as a gallstone, which is difficult to dissolve. And when he moved to a new workshop, a further problem arose when he discovered that there was no drain in the yard outside to dispatch the remaining evidence. It was the identification of such small clues that incriminated him and he was sent to the gallows in 1949, after being convicted of six murders and admitting a further three.

In cases where somebody has simply vanished, it is the strength of these clues that will lead to the killer and prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that they are responsible. It is like a jigsaw. Imagine a picture on the box and a jumble of pieces inside. The central piece – the body – is missing. But other pieces are there. Some fit together neatly. You build up a picture. It tells a story. Although there are gaps, you can see the picture and what it is telling you. That can be enough to unravel the mystery and get to the truth.

Michelle Gunshon, a 38-year-old security guard from London, disappeared in Birmingham in 2004. Her body was never found. But there were enough pieces in this jigsaw to establish that she had been killed and who had done it.

To understand how someone died, it is vital to understand how they lived. Michelle, like all missing persons, had certain characteristics which held some of the clues to solving her disappearance. She wasn’t the type of person to vanish of her own accord. She was settled with a long-term partner, she had three children and she was happy in her job.

The only problem she seemed to have at the time she went missing was the relationship with her ex-husband, which was troubling her, but this seemed to be more of a nuisance than anything else. Her GP confirmed that she wasn’t suffering from depression.

In the course of finding out everything they could about Michelle, the police talked to her friends and family to establish what type of person she was. Knowing what Michelle was like as a person, and what had happened to her in her life, was an important starting point for the police in trying to understand her fate. Two aspects of her personality came out. On the one hand she was loving, caring, constantly in touch with her family and friends, never missing a birthday, always sending a card, friendly, tactile and warm. The picture painted of Michelle by her family and friends was that she valued them and would not simply disappear without any contact, even if she were in trouble.

On the other hand, in her professional life, Michelle was streetwise and had a strong, outgoing personality. She could take care of herself. She worked hard and thrived on pressure. As she gained experience, in particular in the self-defence training she received for her job, she got used to handling difficult people in potentially dangerous situations. She was also used to staying away from home when travelling to different parts of the country.

The Clothes Show Live exhibition was on at the NEC (National Exhibition Centre) in Birmingham at the beginning of December 2004. Michelle and her colleagues, Richard and Michael, were assigned this job.

Michelle drove to Richard’s house in the early hours of Friday 3 December, left her car there and the three travelled to Birmingham, in Richard’s car, to arrive at the NEC for 8 am. Accommodation for the next few nights had been arranged at a small, budget hotel. However, it was cancelled at short notice due to flooding. A frantic hunt for something equivalent led to the booking of The Dubliner public house in the Digbeth district of Birmingham, a short distance from the city centre. It was a lively Irish bar, which often hosted live music nights and had a loyal regular clientele. It offered accommodation above the bar area consisting of three self-contained flats, each with two bedrooms and a communal bathroom.

Michelle was allocated one room to herself in one flat and Richard and Michael were to share another room in one of the other flats. The room on the upper floor of the flat Michelle occupied was accessed via the same staircase as her room and had shared bathroom facilities.

After their first day of work, the three security guards travelled back to The Dubliner in Richard’s car. Once settled into her room, Michelle went to the bar and had a drink with her colleagues. But her long day was far from over. Richard received a call from his wife, who told him that a busybody neighbour had stuck an officious notice on Michelle’s car, which was outside their house, to say that it would be clamped and the police would be contacted because it had no tax disc.

Michelle thought she had better return to London to fetch her car. With Richard’s permission, she jumped in his car and drove off. On arrival, she had a cup of coffee with his wife before heading back to Birmingham in her own car, a blue Ford Escort. She got back to the pub in the early hours of the following morning, Saturday 4 December.

That morning, the three drove to the NEC in Michelle’s car and returned to The Dubliner in the evening. She parked opposite the pub and locked it. Michael knew she had because later, when he had to go back to it to get some cigarettes, he needed to ask her for the keys. The car was parked a matter of yards away, just up from the pub and across quite a narrow road.

The colleagues went into the bar for a quick drink before going up to their rooms. The men were not sure if Michelle would be coming down again, because she said that she was very tired after the comings and goings of the previous night. However, Richard and Michael did return to the bar. Approximately an hour later, Richard realised he’d run out of cash and went up to Michelle’s room to borrow some money from her. When he knocked on her door, she invited him in. He noticed that the door was not locked. She gave him her card and pin number. They chatted briefly. She said she might join him and Michael in the bar later.

He noticed that her room was as you would expect of someone who had unpacked and was settling in for the night. She was still dressed but her shoes were off and her hair was down. She was sitting on the bed watching TV, and told Richard she was ‘just chilling’.

When he left, Michelle had a phone conversation with her daughter. They always spoke on the phone four or five times a day, chatting about what they were up to. They discussed plans for Christmas. Michelle sounded exhausted; she wanted to get her head down and signed off with her usual, ‘I love you’. Not long afterwards, at