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The memoir of a man wrongfully convicted of murder and his 27 years spent in the U.K. prison system until his conviction was overturned. On September 12, 1973, seventeen-year-old, naïve gardener Stephen Downing returned from his lunch break to discover the badly beaten, unconscious, thirty-two-year-old Wendy Sewell lying on the footpath of Bakewell Cemetery close to Catcliff Wood and the consecrated chapel where she had been attacked. Stephen ran to the nearby workmen’s building, and in the meantime Wendy’s attacker returned and dragged her body to a second location where she was subsequently found soon after. Despite having learning difficulties, Downing was immediately taken into cust...
Don Hale's fight to clear Stephen Downing of murder, and the trail of clues the authorities want to hide. In 1973, a woman was brutally murdered in a graveyard in a picturesque market town. Stephen Downing, aged seventeen but with the mental age of eleven, was working as a gardener in the graveyard. He was charged with the crime and served 27 years in prison. Six years ago, Don Hale, the editor of the local newspaper, began his own investigation into the murder. This is the story of one man trapped in a web of evil, and of another's courageous fight to free him.
A gripping true crime investigation into the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. In September 1973, Stephen Downing was convicted and indefinitely sentenced for the murder of Wendy Sewell, a young legal secretary in the town of Bakewell in the Peak District. Wendy was attacked in broad daylight in Bakewell Cemetery. Stephen Downing, the 17-year-old groundskeeper with learning difficulties and a reading age of 11, was the primary suspect. He was immediately arrested, questioned for nine hours, without a solicitor present, and pressured into signing a confession full of words he did not understand. 21 years later, local newspaper editor Don Hale was thrust into the case. D...
In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper', was convicted of thirteen murders and seven attempted murders. All his proven victims were women: most were prostitutes.Astonishingly, however, this is not the whole truth. There is a still-secret story of how Sutcliffe's terrible reign of terror claimed at least twenty-two more lives and left five other victims with terrible injuries. These crimes - attacks on men as well as women - took place all over England, not just in his known killing fields of Yorkshire and Lancashire.Police and prosecution authorities have long known that Sutcliffe's reign of terror was far longer and far more widespread than the public has been led to believe. But t...
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A gripping true crime investigation into the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. In September 1973, Stephen Downing was convicted and indefinitely sentenced for the murder of Wendy Sewell, a young legal secretary in the town of Bakewell in the Peak District. Wendy was attacked in broad daylight in Bakewell Cemetery. Stephen Downing, the 17-year-old groundskeeper with learning difficulties and a reading age of 11, was the primary suspect. He was immediately arrested, questioned for nine hours, without a solicitor present, and pressured into signing a confession full of words he did not understand. 21 years later, local newspaper editor Don Hale was thrust into the case. D...
Just over eighty years ago on the East Coast main line, the streamlined A4 Pacific locomotive Mallard reached a top speed of 126mph – a world record for steam locomotives that still stands. Since then, millions have seen this famous locomotive, resplendent in her blue livery, on display at the National Railway Museum in York. Here, Don Hale tells the full story of how the record was broken: from the nineteenth-century London–Scotland speed race and, surprisingly, traces Mallard's futuristic design back to the Bugatti car and the influence of Germany's nascent Third Reich, which propelled the train into an instrument of national prestige. He also celebrates Mallard's designer, Sir Nigel Gresley, one of Britain's most gifted engineers. Mallard is a wonderful tribute to one of British technology's finest hours.
The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen—a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely? In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Down...
The relationship between politicians and broadcasters has always been fraught with tension. Today, every word and act of those who wield power is instantly broadcast and dissected on 24-hour rolling news channels, blogs and Twitter. But in the past, broadcasters were banned by law from debating anything newsworthy and Parliament imprisoned those who dared to report what MPs had said. Since that censorship ended, the two sides have clashed repeatedly. Live From Downing Street takes us on an absorbing journey through the history of this power struggle, dwelling in fascinating detail on the charismatic key players from radio and television - the Dimblebys, Day, Frost, Walden, Paxman, Humphrys - and those who fought back - Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher and Blair. As the BBC's Political Editor, Nick Robinson is uniquely placed to add his own perceptive insights into the controversial issue of impartial reporting, providing a colourful and gripping account of the hard-fought battles for the right to tell the public about the decisions taken on their behalf.