10.1 Crown’s case

The Crown said they could prove that the person responsible for killing Mrs. Bolshaw was John Taft. This was based on two vital pieces of evidence coming to light nearly sixteen years later. Once those two pieces of vital evidence came to light, everything else that had been found in the police investigation suddenly fitted into place with a ‘deadly logic’.

It all looks very damning until the evidence is analysed, and then it can clearly be seen that the Crown did not have a viable case against John.

10.2 Barbara Taft’s evidence

Barbara Taft’s account was called into question by her assertion that everything had been related to her on the weekend of her return from Brighton. This was patently incorrect.

• The police photo fit was not in circulation for at least another three months.
  
  
• The police enquiry had not, at that stage, led them to call at John’s place of work.
  
  
• When she first spoke to the police, she had said she had gained ‘the impression’ that John had burned and buried clothes. At the trial, she was definite about this.

10.3 Evans family’s evidence

The prosecution provided John with an alibi. This showed that while he was supposedly burying clothing worn at the time of the murder, the deceased’s car which he was alleged to have taken after he had killed her was still on her drive, and she was still alive.

• The witnesses from the Evans family who saw John in the garden at 11.30pm saw different things. Watching at the same time from the same window, one said she saw a two-foot hole in the garden,the other said it was so dark she could only identify the figure of a man.
  
  
• Evidence from Mr. Evans showed that the night John was seen in his garden was 8^th October.
  
  
• Regardless of why he was in the garden, being seen by the neighbours gave John an alibi which prior to the trial he did not know existed.

• Mrs. Bolshaw’s next-door neighbour saw her car on the driveway at 11.30pm on 8^th October.

• Two Home Office pathologists concluded that she was killed between 3.00am-6.00am on 9^th October.

10.4 No comment interview

The prosecution pointed out that John, on the advice of the duty solicitor, had given a ‘no comment’ interview (apart from denying that he had killed Mrs Bolshaw, buried clothes or ripped pages from a diary) and had time to make up his story after seeing disclosed evidence. But, while he could have made up a variety of stories linked to available evidence not used in the trial to explain why his DNA was found on a garment belonging to the deceased - which would have sounded more favourable to his defence - he did not do so.

• The forensic scientist said, in 1983, that the semen stain on the negligee, later identified as belonging to John was believed to ‘be old’. The semen, in fact, could not be dated. But John told the court that he had sex with Mrs. Bolshaw on the evening of 8.10.83.
  
  
• John could have said, for example, that he was with Mrs. Bolshaw early on the morning of Saturday 8^th October (which would fit with the beautician’s evidence outlined in section 4.20)

10.5 Another man, not John Taft, was seen with the car at 4.30am

• At 4.30am on Sunday 9^th October, a man, who was clearly not John, was seen with an identical car to that belonging to Mrs. Bolshaw, parked in an identical way at the identical spot where it was seen by a police officer an hour and a quarter later.

• This fits with the time of death given by the two pathologists, 3.00-6.00am, and preferably 4.00am on Sunday 9^th October.
  
  
• This man has never come forward or been identified.

10.6 The missing page from Mrs. Bolshaw’s diary and the fire canopy

The missing half page in the diary of the deceased was linked by the prosecution to the fire canopy fitted in her lounge by the prosecution. This was to tie up the assertion made by Barbara Taft that John had told her he had ripped pages from a works diary. Clearly no pages had been ripped from the works diary.

• There was absolutely nothing to connect John to a fire canopy or to Mrs. Bolshaw’s diary - although this was a central part of the Crown's case.
  
  
• The fingerprints of the person who had fitted the fire canopy which were on the back of it, were not John’s.
  
  
• The prosecution brought the actual fire canopy into the court on every possible occasion, although it was a complete ‘red herring’. Why, if not to introduce doubt based on nothing into the minds of the jury?

10.7 The stocking mask

• The stocking mask in which the jewellery was found was foreign to the scene of crime, as it did not match any clothing belonging to Mrs. Bolshaw. But…it contained fibres from the bedspread, which proved it had actually been at the scene. The obvious inference is that it was taken there by the person who took the jewellery, and therefore had killed Mrs. Bolshaw’.
  
  
• Fragments of stone, and staining which could have been shoe polish, were found on the bed where it is assumed Mrs. Bolshaw died. This suggests that the killer was wearing footwear and had recently entered the house. His shoes were obviously on the bed at some time around the time she was killed.
  
  
• John had consensual sexual intercourse with the deceased before her death. There was no reason why he would have taken a stocking mask, designed to conceal identity, to the house.
  

10.8 The negligee

All the evidence supports John’s claim that consensual sexual intercourse took place between him and Mrs. Bolshaw. The forensic scientist’s evidence was that this was either when she was wearing the negligee, or that she had put it on afterwards, when drainage of seminal fluid onto the garment occurred. The prosecution claimed that after having sex, John had strangled Mrs. Bolshaw and stripped her of the negligee before putting her body in the bath, because of a large damp patch of urine on the bed, thought to have occurred when Mrs. Bolshaw died. This theory was disproved because:-

• Although semen was detected on the negligee, no urine was detected on it.
  
  
• This proves she was not wearing the negligee when she died, although she was wearing it either during sexual intercourse or afterwards.
  
  
• This shows that after having sexual intercourse, Mrs. Bolshaw had taken the negligee off prior to being killed.
  
  
• John’s explanation fits with the findings.
  
  
• The prosecution’s claim showed they had not studied the evidence.

10.9 Other factors leading to doubt

• Unidentified DNA and an unidentified fingerprint at the house provide more doubt as to John’s guilt.
  
  
• Other men known to Mrs Bolshaw have never come forward. Why, if they have nothing to hide? Presumably, if they are innocent they have never come forward for the same reasons John did not inform the police of his involvement with Mrs. Bolshaw. The fear of being ‘fitted up’ for a crime they did not commit, or the fear of wives or partners finding out about an illicit relationship.

The prosecution’s case was very weak and the whole case was based on circumstantial evidence and speculation. All that could be proved was that at some time John had sex with the deceased.

The prosecution’s main thrust was that John was seen in his garden at 11.30pm at night burying clothing worn at the time of the murder, which fitted with the evidence of his ex-wife who claimed John had told her he had buried clothing.

According to the prosecution’s case, John had taken the car, abandoned it several miles away and walked home along a disused railway line.

The defence dismantled this theory, while at the same time showing how the prosecution’s case had given John an alibi which proved he was innocent. There were three witnesses who said John was in his garden at a time when the deceased’s car was still at her home at 11.30pm on 8^th October. Also, according to two home office pathologists, she was still alive when he was seen in the garden. In addition, the sighting of a man who was clearly not John, next to the car at 4.30am, fits with the time of death given by the pathologists as 3.00am-6.00am and preferably 4.00am on 9^th October. The statements of police officers and the GP that the bath water was tepid at 10.45am on the 9^th October, and the GP’s belief that the body was still cooling, point to Mrs. Bolshaw having been killed much later than 11.30pm on the 8^th October. If John had put the body in the bath prior to being seen in the garden, the water would have been stone cold.

After the defence’s summing up, the prosecuting counsel wanted the judge to throw the alibi evidence out on the grounds that John should have informed the police of his alibi under rules of evidence! (Even though this alibi was only established in court by the defence.) The judge did not agree to this. It is intriguing to wonder what the case against John would have consisted of if the judge had agreed to this request.

The evidence which was presented in court should have led to a ‘not guilty’ verdict, and it is appalling that such a miscarriage of justice has been allowed to occur.

It is also of grave concern that leave to appeal, in the first instance, was refused given the weight of doubt as to John’s guilt.