Stefan Kiszko

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Stefan Ivan Kiszko (24 March 1952–23 December 1993), a tax clerk, was the subject of an infamous miscarriage of justice in the United Kingdom. He was wrongly convicted of the sexual assault and murder of 11-year old Lesley Molseed, which took place on 5 October 1975 in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

1 The crime and subsequent developments
2 Poor defence
3 Unsuccessful appeal
4 Case reopened
5 Further developments
6 References
7 External links

[edit] The crime and subsequent developments

On the day of her murder, Lesley Molseed had agreed to go down to the shop to get some bread. Her body was found 3 days later, on the moors nearby. She had been stabbed 12 times. Her clothing was undisturbed, but the killer had ejaculated on her underwear.

A huge hunt was formed. The police quickly formed the view that Kiszko fitted the profile of the person likely to have killed Lesley Molseed even though he had never been in trouble with the law and had no social life beyond his parents. Three then 13-year-old girls claimed that he exposed himself to them just before Lesley Molseed was murdered. This was one of the things that attracted Police to Kiszko in the first place. They pursued evidence which might incriminate him, and ignored leads which would have taken their enquiries in other directions.

The police arrested Kiszko on 21 December 1975 and questioned him. They seized on any inconsistencies between his various accounts of the relevant days as further demonstration of his guilt. Kiszko confessed to the crime after two days of questioning. The Police did not tell him of his right to have a solicitor present. When he asked if he could have his mother present when he was questioned, they refused and did not caution him until well after they had decided he was the prime suspect.

The trial began on 7 July 1976. Kiszko was defended at his trial by David Waddington QC, who later became Home Secretary. The prosecuting QC, Peter Taylor, who obtained Kiszko's conviction, went on to become Lord Chief Justice, in a coincidence, the day after Kiszko was cleared of murder in 1992.

[edit] Poor defence

Kiszko's defence team made significant mistakes. Firstly, they did not seek an adjournment when the Crown delivered thousands of pages of additional unused material on the first morning of the trial.

Then there was the inconsistent defence of diminished responsibility which Kiszko never authorised, on the grounds that drugs he was receiving for his condition might have made him behave unusually. Kiszko's endocrinologist, if called, would have said that his treatment could not have caused him to act in the way he was charged with.

The manslaughter claim was to undermine Kiszko's denials that he was totally innocent and destroyed his alibis. In fact, his innocence could have been demonstrated at the trial. The pathologist who examined Molseed's clothes found traces of sperm, whereas the semen sample taken from Kiszko by the police contained no sperm. There was medical evidence that Kiszko had broken his ankle some months before the murder and, in view of that and his being overweight, he would have found it difficult to scale the slope to the murder spot. The sperm findings were never disclosed to the jury nor was the medical evidence of his broken ankle.

The teenage girls who made the exposure claims were commended by the judge for their "Bravery and honesty" and "Sharp observations" after the conviction was secured by a 10-2 jury verdict on 21 July 1976 at Leeds Crown Court after a two week trial. Kiszko's denials of murder were not believed. Neither were his claims that the confession was bullied out of him by the Police. He said correctly that he never had met Molseed and therefore could never have murdered her.

The "Bravery and Honesty" statement was somewhat ironic as all three later admitted in 1991, during the investigation of Kiszko's conviction, that what they said was false. They admitted that what they said in 1975 and 1976 was done for "A laugh".

Also praised by the Judge, Mr Justice Park, after securing Kizsko's conviction were the Police Officers whose "Hard work" and "Tenacity" had "Brought Kiszko to justice for the terrible crime he has committed".

[edit] Unsuccessful appeal

As a convicted sex offender, Kiszko was bitterly hated and detested by most other inmates, receiving numerous death threats in the months after his conviction, both verbal and written, and was isolated for his own safety under Rule 43. Despite this, he was still attacked twice during his time in prison. The first time was a few days after his jailing when he was set upon by six prisoners who punched and kicked him repeatedly. Guards had to pull the men off him. The second time Kiszko was attacked was in 1977. Afterwards he needed 17 stitches to a head wound.

Kiszko launched an appeal that failed in May 1978. He later developed schizophrenia whilst in prison and began to suffer from delusions, one being that he was the victim of a plot to incarcerate an innocent tax-office employee in order to test the effects of imprisonment on him.

One prison which held Kiszko also tried to persuade him to go on a Sex Offenders Treatment Programme, in which he would have had to admit the rape and murder and discuss what motivated him to commit the offence. He refused to do so. He also repeatedly and persistently refused to "address his offending behaviour" - a prerequisite for being granted parole which he could have been awarded in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Kiszko also refused to apologize on the grounds that he had nothing to apologize for. All of Kiszko's claims of innocence and denials of committing the murder were put down as symptoms of his delusions.

[edit] Case reopened

In early 1991 his lawyer Campbell Malone, with the help of private detective Peter Jackson urged the Home Office to reopen the case, which was then referred back to the West Yorkshire police after a long campaign by his mother to prove his innocence. This was eventually demonstrated conclusively through medical evidence; he had XYY syndrome, which rendered him infertile, contradicting forensic evidence obtained at the time of the murder.

Kiszko was released on 18 February 1992. Lord Chief Justice Lane said "It has been shown that this man cannot produce sperm. This man cannot have been the person responsible for ejaculating over the girl's knickers and skirt, and consequently cannot have been the murderer". Kiszko was in Prestwich hospital for treatment of his schizophrenia when he was told that he had been cleared of the murder. He had been there since December 1991.

The three girls, by now mature adults, who had made the false allegations in 1975 and 1976, the West Yorkshire police, the law courts and the forensic scientists all refused to apologize to Kiszko after his release. Each of their refusals caused public outrage, as did the fact that, along with being attacked on two separate occasions for something he was totally innocent of, Kiszko had undergone terrible ordeals whilst incarcerated, spending most of his time in either mental hospitals, to treat his mental illness, or solitary confinement to protect him from other prisoners.

In contrast, the Molseed family apologized to Kiszko for the things they had said about him, both at the trial and after the conviction, such as calling for him to be castrated and hanged. They agreed to meet Kiszko's mother and apologized to her as well. Ironically, she said after her son's release that it was David Waddington who ought to be strung up for his pro capital punishment views and the way he handled her son's defence at the 1976 trial.

After he was released, Kiszko was told he would receive £500,000 in compensation for the years he spent in prison. He received an interim payment but neither he or his mother got the full amount as both died before they were due to receive it. Kiszko needed nine months of rehabilitation in hospital before he was fully released in November 1992 but the years of incarceration had destroyed him. Kiszko became a recluse and showed no interest in anything or anyone. Other people's encouragement and support seemed to frighten him on the rare occasions when he ventured out.

Stefan Kiszko died of a massive heart attack in December 1993, exactly 18 years to the day that he had made the confession which led to his wrongful conviction for murder. He was 41 years old. His mother Charlotte died just over four months later.

A TV film adaptation of the tragic story of Stefan Kiszko was made in 1998, A Life for a Life, directed by Stephen Whittaker and featuring Tony Maudsley as Stefan and Olympia Dukakis as his mother Charlotte.

[edit] Further developments

On Sunday 5 November 2006, it was announced that a 53 year old man had been arrested in connection with the murder of Lesley Molseed.^[1] DNA evidence is alleged to have shown a "direct hit" with a sample found at the scene of Lesley's murder.

The man, Ronald Castree of Oldham, Greater Manchester, was charged with the murder of Lesley Molseed and made his first court appearance on 7 November 2006. He was remanded in custody.

The Police Officers who obtained Kiszko's confession were never charged, nor were the three girls who made the false allegations about Kiszko in 1975 and at the trial in 1976. Also, the Police Force and The Director of Public Prosecutions refused to publish the report into how he was wrongfully jailed.