Murder of Lesley Molseed

The murder of Lesley Molseed, an 11-year-old British girl, occurred on 5 October 1975 in West Yorkshire, England. Stefan Kiszko ( ), an intellectually disabled young man who lived near Molseed in Greater Manchester, was wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering her, and served 16 years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Kiszko's mental and physical condition deteriorated while he was in prison, and he died 20 months after his release in 1992, before he could collect money owed to him for his suffering. His ordeal was described by one British MP as 'the worst miscarriage of justice of all time'. Evidence that Kiszko could not have committed the crime was suppressed by three members of the investigation team, who were initially arrested in 1993 before charges were dropped. However, in 2006, a DNA match led to the arrest of Ronald Castree for Molseed's murder; he was convicted the following year and sentenced to life in prison.
Murder.
Lesley Susan Molseed was a child who lived at 11 Delamere Road, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, part of the Turf Hill Estate. Known as 'Lel' to her mother April, step-father Danny, brother, and two sisters, she had been born with a congenital cardiac condition. When she was three, she had open-heart surgery to rectify her illness, but the procedure affected her health and development, and she remained frail and with a reduced mental level for her age.
Around lunchtime, in 1975, she was asked by her mother to go from her home to a local shop on nearby Ansdell Road to buy bread and air-freshener. The children had a rota for chores and for Lesley, such an errand would have been considered routine in that culture and era. Walking alone in a blue raincoat, and with £1 in cash and a blue canvas bag, she was last seen by witnesses in secluded Stiups Lane. When Lesley failed to return home, her concerned mother sent her siblings out to look for her, and her step-father also joined the search. At 3:00p.m., with no sign of her, and no evidence that she had arrived at the shops, the Rochdale Police were contacted.
A search around the town and the adjacent M62 area was immediately begun. Molseed's body was found three days later, around 8:00a.m. on 8October, in a natural turf shelf 9metres above a remote roadside layby on the trans-Pennine A672 near Rishworth Moor in West Yorkshire. Lying face down in some tall grass, she had been stabbed 12 times in the upper shoulder and back. Some of the wounds were very deep and one had penetrated her heart. There were no defensive wounds, and a time of death could not be calculated. None of her clothing or possessions were disturbed, but the money was missing and someone had ejaculated on her clothing and underwear. Other evidence collected by forensics included foreign fibres, traces of dry wallpaper paste, and 379 other objects in the vicinity.
Prime suspect – Kiszko.
At the time of the hunt, four Maxine Buckley aged 12, Catherine Burke aged 16, Debbie Brown aged 13, and Pamela Hind aged all claimed that Kiszko had indecently exposed himself to them the day before the murder. One of them also said he had exposed himself to her a month after the murder, on Bonfire Night. Kiszko was then a 23-year-old local tax clerk of Eastern European (Latvian) descent. His father, Ivan (spelled Iwan and also called John), had emigrated from Soviet Ukraine and his mother, Charlotte ("née" Slavič), from Yugoslavia (modern-day Slovenia) after the Second World War to work in the cotton mills of Rochdale. West Yorkshire Police quickly formed the view that Kiszko fitted their profile of the sort of person likely to have killed Molseed, even though he had never been in trouble with the law and had no social life beyond his mother and aunt. His father had died of a heart attack in the street in Kiszko's presence on 26September 1970. Evaluation showed that Stefan Kiszko had a mental and emotional age of just 12. Kiszko also had an unusual hobby of writing down registration numbers of cars that annoyed him, which supported police suspicions. The police now pursued evidence which might incriminate him, and ignored other leads that might have taken them in other directions.
Acting upon the teenage girls' information and their suspicions of Kiszko's idiosyncratic lifestyle — and having allegedly found girlie magazines and a bag of sweets in his car — the police arrested him on 21 December 1975. During questioning, the interviewing detectives seized upon every apparent inconsistency between his varying accounts of the relevant days, as further demonstration of his likely guilt. Kiszko confessed to the crime after three days of intensive questioning: he believed that by doing so, he would be allowed to go home and that the ensuing investigations would prove him innocent and his confession false. Prior to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, suspects did not have the right to have a solicitor present during interviews and the police did not ask Kiszko if he wanted a solicitor. His request to have his mother present while he was being questioned was refused and, crucially, the police did not caution him until long after they had decided he was the prime suspect – indeed, the only suspect.
After admitting to the murder to police, Kiszko was charged with Molseed's murder on Christmas Eve 1975. When he entered Armley Gaol after being charged, he was nicknamed 'Oliver Laurel' because he had the girth of Oliver Hardy and the perplexed air of Oliver's comedy sidekick Stan Laurel. Later, in the presence of a solicitor, Kiszko retracted his confession. Kiszko was remanded until his murder trial, which began on 7 July 1976 under Sir Hugh Park at Leeds Crown Court (then at Leeds Town Hall). He was defended by David Waddington QC, who later became Home Secretary. The prosecuting QC, Peter Taylor, became Lord Chief Justice the day after Kiszko was cleared of the murder in 1992.
Trial and appeal.
Kiszko's defence team, led by Waddington, 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 the testosterone he was receiving for his hypogonadism might have made him behave unusually. Kiszko's endocrinologist strongly disagreed with this theory, and if called to testify, would have said that his treatment could not have caused him to act in such a way that would make him carry out a murder. He was never called.
The manslaughter claim undermined Kiszko's claims that he was totally innocent and destroyed his alibis (a defence known in legal parlance as 'riding two horses'). In fact, his innocence could have been demonstrated at the trial. The pathologist who examined Molseed's clothes found traces of sperm, whereas the 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 suppressed by the police and never disclosed to the defence team or the jury; neither was the medical evidence of his broken ankle disclosed to the court.
Kiszko gave evidence that in July 1975, he had become ill and was admitted to Birch Hill Hospital, where he was given a blood transfusion. In August, he was transferred to a Manchester hospital and diagnosed as being anaemic and as having a hormone deficiency. He agreed to injections to rectify the latter problem and was discharged in September. He said correctly that he had never met Molseed and therefore could not have murdered her, and he claimed he was with his aunt, tending to his father's grave in Halifax at the time of the murder, before visiting a garden centre and then going home. When asked why he had confessed, Kiszko replied, 'I started to tell these lies and they seemed to please them and the pressure was off as far as I was concerned. I thought if I admitted what I did to the police they would check out what I had said, find it untrue and would then let me go.'
Kiszko's conviction was secured by a 10–2 majority verdict on 21 July 1976 at Leeds Crown Court after five hours and 35 minutes of deliberation. He was given a life sentence for committing Molseed's murder. The judge praised the three teenage girls who had made the exposure claims, Buckley in particular, for their 'bravery and honesty' in giving evidence in court and their 'sharp observations'. The evidence given by Hind was read out in court. Park said that Buckley's '[s]harp eyes set this train of inquiry into motion'. He also praised the police officers involved in the case 'for their great skill in bringing to justice the person responsible for this dreadful crime and their expertise in sifting through masses of material', adding, 'I would like all the officers responsible for the result to be specially commended and these observations conveyed to the Chief Constable.' DS John Akeroyd and DS Holland were singled out for praise.
Sheila Buckley, whose daughter Maxine played a major part in securing Kiszko's conviction, criticised the police for not arresting him earlier and told the "Manchester Evening News" that '... children are a lot safer, now this monster has been put away'. She also demanded that Kiszko be hanged. Even Albert Wright, Kiszko's solicitor, thought that his client was guilty but that it was a case of diminished responsibility and that therefore he should not have been convicted outright of murder.
After a month in Armley Prison, Kiszko was transferred to Wakefield Prison and immediately placed on Rule 43 to protect him from other inmates, as in the eyes of the law, he was now a convicted sex offender. Kiszko launched an appeal, but it was dismissed on 25 May 1978, when Lord Justice Bridge said 'We can find no grounds whatsoever to condemn the jury's verdict of murder as in any way unsafe or unsatisfactory. The appeal is dismissed.'
Time in prison.
Attacks.
After his conviction, Kiszko was fiercely and bitterly hated by the majority of inmates, receiving taunts and several verbal and written death threats during his first months in prison. He was physically attacked four times in total. The first was on 24 August 1976, just after being transferred to Wakefield Prison, when he was set upon in his cell by five prisoners who stole his watch, smashed up his radio, cut his mouth and injured both his leg and ankle. The attackers said they did it for Lesley and her family. On 11 May 1977, he was hit over the head with a mop handle, leaving Kiszko in need of three stitches to a head wound. In December 1978, he was punched once in the face by another prisoner in an unprovoked attack, whilst in the prison chapel.
In March 1981, Kiszko was again punched in the face by a prisoner in an unprovoked attack whilst in the prison yard, but this time Kiszko retaliated and fought back. Blows were exchanged and a fight broke out. The two had to be separated by guards. Both men were given a loss of privileges for 28 days. On each occasion, the attacks on Kiszko earned him absolutely no sympathy, from either other prisoners or guards, because of the crime for which he had been jailed. Kiszko was not physically attacked or threatened again during his remaining eleven years in prison. During much of that time, he was in the hospital wing of prisons. When he was not, he was placed among less violent offenders.
Mental illness.
In July 1979, the Inland Revenue finally wrote to Kiszko to inform him he had been sacked and from late 1979 onwards, Kiszko 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 so the effects of imprisonment would be tested on him. Over the next decade, any of Kiszko's claims of innocence were labelled as symptoms of his schizophrenic delusions, or attributed to his being in a state of denial. One forensic psychiatrist made a note of Kiszko suffering from 'delusions of innocence'. In January 1980, he said that coded messages on BBC Radio 2's "Jimmy Young Show" were being sent to him. In 1982, he claimed that his parents had a tape recorder hidden in the kitchen and made him sing after turning it on, later selling the songs to Barry Manilow to make money out of his talent.
Remaining years in prison.
In October 1981, Kiszko was put on the punishment block for possessing scissors in his cell. On 11 November, he was transferred to Gloucester Prison. In April 1983, he was told that he would only ever be eligible for parole if he admitted to having carried out the murder. If he continued to deny being a child killer, then he would spend the rest of his natural life behind bars, but this made no difference to Kiszko's stance. 13 months later, while still denying having carried out the murder, he was moved to Bristol Prison. Such was his mental deterioration that a month later, in June 1984, it was recommended by a forensic psychiatrist that he should be moved to either Broadmoor, Park Moss Side Hospital (later Ashworth Hospital, Liverpool) or Rampton, but nothing came of it. Six months later, Kiszko was returned to Wakefield Prison.
In August 1987, Kiszko was transferred again from Wakefield to Grendon Underwood Prison, where, in June 1988, the prison governor tried to persuade Kiszko to enrol on a sex offenders' treatment programme, in which he would have had to admit having committed the murder of Molseed. Having done that, he would then have to discuss what motivated him to do it. Kiszko refused to take part and repeatedly and persistently refused to 'address his offending behaviour' on the grounds that he had done nothing that needed addressing. He left in Grendon Underwood in May 1989, where he was classed as having 'made no progress' and moved back to Wakefield Prison. In July 1990, he said he was striking out a ghost who was trying to sexually abuse him. Finally, on 15 March 1991, Kiszko was transferred to Ashworth Hospital, under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983, after six months of delay, on the grounds of his deteriorating mental health.
Case reopened.
Kiszko's mother continued to profess her son's innocence, but was ignored and stonewalled both by politicians, including her local MP Cyril Smith and Prime Ministers James Callaghan (from 1976-79) and Margaret Thatcher (from 1979-90), and by the legal system. In 1984, Kiszko's mother contacted JUSTICE, the UK human rights organisation which at the time investigated many miscarriages of justice. Three years later, she was put in touch with solicitor Campbell Malone, who agreed to take a look at the case.
Malone consulted Philip Clegg, who had been Waddington's junior at the July 1976 trial. Clegg had expressed his own doubts about the confession and conviction at the time, and over the next two years, Clegg and Malone prepared a petition to the Home Secretary. The draft was finally ready to be sent on 26 October 1989. On the same day, by coincidence, Waddington was appointed Home Secretary. 16 months passed before a police investigation into the conduct of the original trial could begin. Waddington resigned as Home Secretary in November 1990 to take up a peerage and to serve as Leader of the House of Lords; he was replaced by Kenneth Baker.
In February 1991, and with the help of a private detective named Peter Jackson, Malone finally urged the Home Office to reopen the case, which was then referred back to West Yorkshire Police. Detective Superintendent Trevor Wilkinson was assigned to the job. He immediately found several glaring errors. Kiszko's innocence was demonstrated conclusively through medical evidence; he had male hypogonadism, which rendered him infertile, contradicting forensic evidence obtained at the time of the murder. In 1975, his testes had measured 4 to 5 mm, whereas the average adult testicular size was 15 to 20 mm. During his research, Jackson found someone who confirmed that Kiszko had been seen with his aunt tending his father's grave on the day the murder took place. They said they could not understand why they had not been called to give evidence at the trial. Someone else said that Kiszko had been in a shop around the time of the murder.
Also that month, the four girls - now aged 27, 28, 31 and 33, and who were involved in the court trial - admitted that the evidence they had given which had led to Kiszko's arrest and conviction was false, and that they had lied for 'a laugh' and because 'at the time it was funny'. Burke was interviewed at Sowerby Police Station on 14 February 1991. She said she wished she had not said anything, saying she did not think it would go as far as it did. Burke said she went along with what Hind said. Buckley said it was not Kiszko who had exposed himself to her, but she had seen a taxi driver (not Ronald Castree) urinating behind a bush on the day of Molseed's murder; she also refused to apologise. Brown refused to make any statement. Hind was a friend of Molseed's older sister but she was the most remorseful of the four, saying that what they did was 'foolish - but we were young' and that, had she appeared in court, she would have told the truth about Kiszko - unlike her three friends, who all had committed perjury. Hind did not think Kiszko would be convicted. A decision was made by the prosecuting authorities for a senior police officer to caution Hind and Burke for the criminal offence that each had undoubtedly committed.
Acquittal.
In February 1990, the Home Office privately disclosed that Kiszko's first parole hearing would take place in December 1992, by which time he would have served 17 years in custody. However, he would only be released if he admitted to having murdered Molseed and if he could convince the Parole Board that he would not be a danger to children or the public. In August 1991, the new findings in Kiszko's case were referred to Kenneth Baker, who immediately passed them on to the Court of Appeal. On 19 December 1991, Kiszko was moved from Ashworth to Prestwich Hospital.
10 months before his parole hearing, on 17 February 1992, the judicial investigation into Kiszko's conviction began. It was heard by three judges, Lord Chief Justice Lane, Mr Justice Rose and Mr Justice Potts. Present at the hearing were Franz Muller QC and William Boyce for the Crown, who were there to argue that Kiszko was guilty of murder and therefore must remain in prison custody for at least another 10 months; and Stephen Sedley QC and Jim Gregory, to state that Kiszko was innocent. After hearing the new evidence presented by Sedley and Gregory, Muller and Boyce did not put up any contrary argument and immediately accepted its validity.
Also, after hearing the new evidence, 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 cleared, and Lord Lane ordered his immediate release from custody. The 1976 trial judge Sir Hugh Park, who had praised the police and the 13-year-old girls at the original trial for bringing Kiszko to justice, apologised for what had happened to Kiszko but said he was not sorry for how he had handled the court case. Anthony Beaumont-Dark, a Conservative MP, said 'This must be the worst miscarriage of justice of all time. It brings shame on everyone involved in the case.' He then demanded a full, independent and wide-ranging inquiry into the conviction.
The Molseed family, who were convinced of Kiszko's guilt up to the moment of him being cleared, also publicly apologised for the things they had said after his conviction such as demanding that he be hanged in public. (Molseed's father, Frederick Anderson, had hurled a volley of angry verbal abuse at Kiszko's mother outside the court, after her son was convicted). Anderson had also told the media that he would be outside the prison gates waiting for Kiszko should he ever be released.
Molseed's older sister Julie Crabbe said when Kiszko was cleared: 'How could anyone feel about this innocent man who has spent 16 years in prison and they were not very nice to him in prison. At least his mum knows that he will come home. Our Lesley will never come home again.'
In February 1992, Kiszko's mother said that it was Waddington who ought to be 'strung up' for his pro-capital punishment views and for the way he had handled her son's defence at the 1976 trial. Lord Lane, Waddington, Sheila and Maxine Buckley, Hind, Brown and Burke, Ronald Outteridge and prosecution barrister Peter Taylor all offered no apology, nor did any of them express any words of remorse or regret for what had happened. Even the West Yorkshire police, while accepting and admitting they had been wrong, tried to justify the position they had taken in 1975. All Waddington would say was that if this evidence had been available in July 1976, the trial would have taken a very different course.
Dick Holland, the surviving senior officer in charge of the original investigation, said: 'Words can't express the regret I feel for the family and for Kiszko, now it has turned out he is innocent. But the enquiry was done diligently and honestly within the terms that were legally and scientifically available. After Kiszko's arrest, the forensic science service received a hanky which may have had seminal stainings from Kiszko. After his arrest, he produced a sample in the presence of his solicitor and doctor which was sent to the laboratory for comparison. Now how much further can you go?'
On 2 March 1992, Edward Tierney, who ordered the sperm tests that led to the freeing of Kiszko, was dismissed after 25 years because he had demanded that police surgeons should be independent of the police and Crown Prosecution Service.
Release and death.
Kiszko needed further psychiatric treatment and remained in Prestwich Hospital until late April 1992 when he was finally released, but the 16 years of incarceration for something he had not done had both mentally and emotionally destroyed him. Kiszko became a virtual recluse and showed little interest in anything or anyone. He bought a new car (a silver Ford Sierra) and drove it on short journeys to the shops, Morrison's or garden centres or to visit relatives, but other people's apologies for what had happened, encouragement and support seemed to frighten him.
As his mental health had deteriorated over the years, so now did his physical health; in October 1993, Kiszko was diagnosed as suffering from angina. He died at 1:00a.m. on 23December that year, after suffering a massive heart attack at his home, 18 years and two days after he made the confession that helped lead to wrongful conviction for murder. Molseed's sister was one of those who attended his funeral, two weeks later, on 5 January 1994. Four months after her son's death, Charlotte Hedwig Kiszko, died at Birch Hill Hospital, Rochdale, on 3 May, at the age of 70. The two are buried together in Rochdale Cemetery.
After being released from prison, Kiszko had been told he would receive £500,000 in compensation for the years spent in prison. He had received an interim payment, but neither he nor his mother ever received the full amount they were awarded, since both died before Kiszko was due to receive it.
Police exonerated.
In 1994, the surviving senior officer in charge of the original investigation, Detective Superintendent Dick Holland, and the retired forensic scientist who had worked on the case, Ronald Outteridge, were formally charged with 'doing acts tending to pervert the course of justice' by allegedly suppressing evidence in Kiszko's favour, namely the results of scientific tests on semen taken from the victim's body and from the accused. On May Day 1995, the case was challenged by defence barristers, arguing that the case was an abuse of process and that charges should be "stayed" as the passage of time had made a fair trial impossible. The presiding magistrate agreed and as the case was never presented before a jury, the law regards the accused as presumed innocent.
Holland, who came to public prominence as a senior officer on the flawed investigation into the murders committed by the Yorkshire Ripper, retired in 1988, at a time when he viewed the conviction of both Kiszko and of Judith Ward (whose conviction was also viewed as unsafe by the High Court, in May 1992) as being among his finest hours during his 35 years in the police force. However, Holland was demoted during the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry, four years after Kiszko's conviction. He died in February 2007 at the age of 74.
New suspect – Ronald Castree.
In 1985, with the case being closed and the public and the police believing that Molseed's killer was safely behind bars, her clothes - were taken from the crime scene - were destroyed but strips of adhesive tape had been kept; these had been used to remove fibres from the inside and outside of Molseed's semen stained pants.
Scientists from the Forensic Science Service's lab in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, managed to extract sperm heads from this tape. And from these sperm heads, in 1999, for the first time ever, a DNA profile of the man who killed Molseed and ejaculated into her pants was obtained. But he was not in the National DNA Database.
On 5 November 2006, it was announced that a 53-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the murder of Molseed that had taken place in 1975. DNA evidence was alleged to have shown a 'direct hit' with a sample found at the scene of the murder. Ronald Castree (born 18 October 1953 in Littleborough, near Rochdale), a comic book dealer, of Shaw and Crompton was charged with murder and made his first court appearance on 7 November 2006 where he was remanded in custody. At a court hearing on 19 April 2007, Castree pleaded not guilty. On 23 April 2007 he was refused bail. A DNA sample from Castree, taken on 1 October 2005 when he was arrested but not charged in connection with another sex attack, was a direct match with a semen sample found on her underwear, when run through the National DNA Database.
Originally from the Turf Hill estate of Rochdale, Castree lived in nearby Shaw and Crompton and was a taxi driver for many years. He was unpopular with his neighbours, who said he had a very nasty temper. His former wife said 'he was foul with his mouth, and foul with his fists'. Two weeks before Castree killed Molseed, his wife had given birth to a son. Castree was not the baby's biological father; his wife had had an affair in late 1974. On 3 October 1975, Castree's wife went back into hospital with deep vein thrombosis, leaving Castree home alone on the day of the murder. She remained there for the following week. The birth of the illegitimate child may have been a trigger for Castree's murder of Molseed. Castree and his wife had two more children together, but they split in 1996 and divorced a year later. On 3 July 1976, Castree abducted and sexually assaulted a nine-year-old girl. On 12 July, he pleaded guilty and was fined £25 on both counts against him, which were indecent assault and incitement to commit an act of gross indecency. On 17 July 1978, Castree was fined £50 after indecently assaulting a seven-year old boy.
Trial and conviction.
During the trial, a scientist told a jury how DNA taken from the underwear of Molseed was linked to the man accused of her murder. Gemma Escott explained to Bradford Crown Court the chances of the semen samples belonging to anyone other than the defendant were one in a billion. Castree's trial began at Bradford Crown Court on 22 October 2007. He was found guilty on 12 November 2007 and jailed for life, with a recommendation to serve a minimum of 30 years, which is expected to keep him in prison until November 2036 and the age of 83.
Media.
A television film adaptation of Kiszko's story was made and broadcast on ITV in October 1998; "A Life for a Life" was directed by Stephen Whittaker, and featured Tony Maudsley as Kiszko and Olympia Dukakis as his mother Charlotte. A documentary about the case, "Real Crime: The 30 Year Secret", was broadcast by ITV1 on 29 September 2008. In the Channel 4 television series "Red Riding", the character of Michael Myshkin is based on Kiszko, being a simple-minded immigrant who is coerced into confessing the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl before eventually being exonerated. The satirical animated series "Monkey Dust" featured Ivan Dobsky, a character similar to Kiszko, being a simple-minded East European convicted of murder after being tortured by police.
In February 2003, a television appeal for new information was made by Detective Chief Superintendent Max McLean of West Yorkshire Police on the BBC1 programme "Crimewatch", publicly announcing the existence of a DNA profile of the killer for the first time, but no new leads were forthcoming. As revealed in the ITV television documentary "Real Crime: The 30 Year Secret", Castree was convicted in 1976 of gross indecency and indecent assault against a nine-year-old girl in Rochdale; he was fined £25 ().
In May 2018, the crime and the convictions were covered in a two-part series by "Casefile True Crime Podcast".