Barbara Taft, John’s ex-wife, gave evidence at the trial against John. She told the court that she had married John in 1974, and that they had divorced amicably in 1988. For a time after the divorce they had continued to live in the same house, and even continued to share the same bank account. She maintained that John told her everything she was now recounting during the weekend following the murder, when she returned home from Sussex where she was a student. She said they had not discussed matters afterwards and she had never read any press accounts of the murder. Her evidence was that John had told her the following:-

• He had been at Mrs. Bolshaw’s bungalow at 5, Buffs Lane, Heswall on the day of the murder to do some work – a ‘foreigner’. (i.e. work undertaken out of the normal course of paid employment.)
  
  
• After he learned of the murder he was so worried about being wrongly accused that he had removed distinctive stripes from his car.
  
  
• He had burned footwear and clothing he had been wearing when he was at Buffs Lane and buried it in the garden.
  
  
• He had ripped pages linking him to Mrs. Bolshaw out of a works diary.
  
  
• He had been spoken to by the police at his place of work regarding a business letter and a business card found at Mrs. Bolshaw’s house, and he had denied to the police that he knew her.
  
  
• Mrs. Bolshaw had a black eye and either she or John had applied a cold compress.
  
  
• He had said the man who had given Mrs. Bolshaw the ‘black-eye’ must be the man in the photo-fit which had been in the paper, and he must have returned and murdered Mrs. Bolshaw. (The man in the photofit had been seen with Mrs. Bolshaw in an estate agents office in Chester three weeks before the murder.) ( See appendix 1)
  
  
• John had asked her to give him an alibi and she had refused, but felt quite bad about this as it seemed disloyal.
  
  The defence queried her account regarding the following points:-
  
  
• The photo-fit she referred to was not published until some four months after the murder so John could not have discussed that with her on the weekend in question.
  
  
• A very brief 'interview' with John by the police at his place of work was not until November, so again, he could not have told her about this on that weekend in October.
  
  
• The link with the business card was not discovered until 1999, after she had spoken to the police. John was never questioned about it in 1983.

When these discrepancies in her evidence were pointed out, Barbara Taft observed that after such a period of time, ‘memory can play funny tricks’.

It was also pointed out to her that when interviewed by Merseyside police a few months prior to the trial she had stated that she had ‘gained the impression’ that John had burnt and buried his clothes in the garden, but she was now quite definite that he had told her this.