As they said in Casablanca, "Round up the usual suspects." More usually associated with banana-republic police, it has long been the fallback position for idle and desperate detectives. The friendless, the mentally disabled and the weird are vulnerable when police are under pressure. One such shocking case was the arrest, concocted confession and conviction (helped by the withholding of inconvenient evidence) of Stefan Kiszko (right), jailed in 1976 for the murder of 11-year-old Rochdale schoolgirl, Lesley Molseed.
Kiszko was large, ungainly and did crazy, obsessive things. He had jotted down the number of a car seen near the murder scene - enough to put him in the frame. After languishing in jail for 15 years, shunned and physically assaulted as a child killer, he was exonerated when it was established that he was
|
|
|
  |
 |
|
British police have a dishonourable history of pinning murders on the ‘local nutter’, says
robert chesshyre |
|
|
sterile. Lesley had been sexually assaulted and her attacker left traces of semen. Kiszko died, aged 44, shortly after his release, to be followed six months later by his mother, Charlotte, who had campaigned tirelessly on his behalf.
Now - 31 years after the crime - 53-year-old Ronald Castree of Oldham has been arrested on suspicion of Lesley's murder after forensic scientists produced a DNA profile. If they do now have the right man, the police will have more solid ground than they did in 1975. Since then, safeguards have been introduced that make false confessions and 'verbals' (unsubstantiated police evidence) far less likely.
This is not to say that a Kiszko case can never happen again. Some say Barry George, convicted of TV presenter Jill Dando's killing, fell under suspicion merely because he too was the local weirdo - arrested after months of fruitless inquiry. 
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 7, 2006
|
