Jewellery belonging to Mrs. Bolshaw was found in a telephone box in Romiley, near Manchester on 11.10.83. The prosecution claimed John had taken the jewellery to make it look as if Mrs. Bolshaw had been killed by a robber, and had left it in Romiley to conceal the fact that the killer was a local man.

• The stocking in which the jewellery was found had been cut from the lower end of a stocking or pair of tights, knotted at one end.
  
  
• It did not match any stockings or tights belonging to the deceased.
  
  
• The stocking mask contained a purple fibre from the bedspread in Mrs. Bolshaw’s bedroom, and also contained the same brown cotton fibres found on the bed sheet, negligee, bedroom stool, and the driver’s seat of the car.
  
• Therefore the stocking mask was foreign to the scene but must have been present in the bedroom when Mrs. Bolshaw was killed.
  
  
• This indicates that the assailant had taken the stocking mask to the house. Such a degree of premeditation is inconsistent with that person having engaged in consensual sexual intercourse with the victim of the crime shortly before killing her.



• It is likely that the killer was fully clothed, wearing (as assumed by the forensic scientist) clothing that shed brown cotton fibres.
  
  
• Red/brown stains, which according to the forensic scientist, might have been shoe polish, and small particles of grey stone were found on the bottom bed sheet. This suggests that the killer had recently entered the house and his shoes had been on the bed.
  
  
• The telephone box where the jewellery was found was in Romilley, Stockport. This was 50 miles away from Heswall, but it so happened that some years previously John had worked for a firm based five miles or so away from the telephone box.
  
  
• This allowed the prosecution another area of dubious speculation, that John had chosen to leave the jewellery in a ‘phone box in an area he’d worked in some time previously. But why would he have done so?
  
  
• Why would John keep the jewellery until the following Tuesday, with all the attendant risks of discovery, rather than disposing of it quickly, for instance by throwing it in the nearby River Dee? Why risk driving fifty miles to leave it in a ‘phone box? It does not make any sense.

The prosecution made great play that John is an intelligent man who had entered into a cold, calculating plot to conceal his identity as the killer.

In fact, as the defence explained, all of the above points away from someone who had consensual sexual intercourse with the deceased, but points towards someone who had gone to the house with some degree of premeditation, and wanting to conceal his identity by using a stocking mask.

Why, if John had taken the jewellery, in the hope of making the killing look like a burglary, would he have first risked being seen burying clothes in his garden in full view of the neighbours, then have risked taking the stolen jewellery to a point fifty miles away. He could have thrown the items into the nearby River Dee. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Also, if the intention was to make it look as if a burglary had been committed, why was there no disturbance in the house, why were no drawers ransacked etc.?