The prosecution’s case was that at some time between 6.20pm on 8^th October and 10.30am on 9th October 1983, Cynthia Bolshaw was murdered in her home. She was strangled. She had also sustained many bruises, including to her eye. She had been killed in the bedroom and carried to the bathroom and placed in a bath of water. She had been killed before being placed face down in the bath, as she had not drowned.

• Mrs. Bolshaw owned a car which was parked outside her house, 5 Buffs Lane, Heswall on the evening of 8^th October and last seen by a neighbour on the drive at 11.30pm.
  

• At 5.45am on 9^th October it was seen by a police officer parked on the A540 Chester High Road in the entrance to a field. On the driver’s seat were fibres of a type which may have come from brown corduroy trousers. Such fibres were found on the bed at 5 Buffs Lane. The murderer had taken her car and left it for some reason.
  

• On the following Tuesday, 11^th October, jewellery was found in a telephone box in Romiley, near Manchester at about 4.50pm. It was wrapped in a nylon stocking. The murderer had taken it from 5 Buffs Lane and left it there, probably that day; otherwise it would have been found sooner. The murderer had taken the jewellery to make it look as if Mrs Bolshaw had been killed by a robber. In taking the jewellery to Manchester he would disguise the fact that the killer was a local man.
  

• The Crown said they could prove that the person responsible 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’.
  

• In 1999 the police learned that a woman named Barbara Taft had something to tell them about the man she was married to in 1983, John Taft. Once the police knew this they were able to focus their enquiries on to him. He was not a suspect in 1983, although the police had spoken to him about the murder.
  

• John Taft was arrested, and a blood sample using technology not available in 1983 enabled him to be linked to a semen stain on the negligee of the deceased.
  

• After the murder John Taft was behaving oddly. This information came from his ex-wife Barbara Taft, and from his then neighbours the Evans family.
  

• Barbara Taft had been told by her then husband that he had been at the home of the deceased on the day of the murder, doing some work, and asked her to give him a false alibi which she refused to do. He had told her of various things he had done to try to cover his tracks, as he was concerned about being implicated in the murder which he said had been committed by some unknown man. This included burning and burying clothing.
  

• The Evans family who lived next door to John and Barbara Taft at the time noticed something extraordinary one weekend early in October 1983. They saw John Taft late one night in his garden digging a hole.
  

• When interviewed on several occasions, on the advice of the duty solicitor (not his current solicitors) he gave a ‘no comment’ interview.
  

• There were other factors which the jury would hear about which added to the picture of guilt, and that John Taft had entered into a cold and calculating plot to hide his responsibility for the crime he had committed.

It all sounds very damning…but read on.