When the body of a missing 11-year-old girl was tragically discovered by the roadside the authorities, keen to hold someone to account for the atrocity, arrested and detained a young man with a mental age of 12. After three days of questioning without the assistance of a solicitor, he admitted the killing and justice appeared to be done. Or was it?
Transcripts
00.34
Early one autumn afternoon in:
01.00
When Lesley didn’t return home, mother sent her brother and two sisters to look for her. Her step-father also joined in the search. By three o’clock Lesley still hadn’t been seen and it was established that she never arrived at the shop. The police were called.
01.21
Three days later a driver who had stopped on a layby near Rishworth Moor, discovered Lesley’s body lying face down in tall grass nine metres above the carriageway. She had been stabbed 12 times in the upper shoulder and back and one wound had penetrated her heart. The money was missing and, from the staining on her clothes, it was clear that she had been sexually assaulted.
01.50
A huge police investigation followed and statements were taken from girls who said a man had exposed himself to them during the weeks before Lesley was killed. Two of them identified Stefan Kiszko as the man who had exposed himself.
02.07
Stefan was 23 years old. He had never been in trouble with the law. He worked as a local tax clerk and lived with his mother and aunt. Beyond that, he had no social life. His mental and emotional age was 12. He had the habit of taking down car numbers that annoyed him.
02.32
In December Stefan was arrested and questioned about the murder. He was not asked if he wished to have a solicitor present. He asked for his mother but this was refused. Neither did the police caution him until they had made up their mind that this is who they had been seeking.
02.52
After three days of questioning, Stefan admitted killing Lesley. He was later to say that he thought he would be allowed to go home if he did so. He was charged on Christmas Eve. Later, when permitted a solicitor, Stefan retracted his confession.
03.12
At trial Stefan pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility it being asserted that testosterone he was receiving for hypogonadism may have made him behave unusually.
03.29
By a majority of 10-2 a jury at Leeds Crown Court found him guilty of Lesley’s murder. He received the only sentence that was open to the trial judge, Mr Justice Park, and that was life imprisonment. Although he appealed, the Court of Appeal could find no grounds whatsoever to condemn the jury’s verdict of murder as in any way unsafe or unsatisfactory.
03.56
Once in prison Stefan was subjected to the sort of attacks that are frequently made upon child molesters and child killers. Five prisoners attacked him soon after his arrival in Wakefield prison, his property was destroyed and injuries received to his face and legs. Some time later he needed stitches to the head when he was assaulted with a mop handle.
04.22
Other attacks led to him receiving face injuries. There was no sympathy for him from prison officers or inmates. He was despised for the crime for which he had been convicted.
04.35
From late:
05.00
By:
05.40
In the late eighties Stefan was transferred to Grendon Underwood prison where the prison governor tried to persuade him to enrol on a sex offenders’ treatment programme. But if required an admission of guilt so that his motivational behaviours could be explored. So Stefan refused to take part maintaining that he had done nothing that needed addressing. He was categorised as making no progress and returned to Wakefield.
06.10
In February:
06.35
She contacted JUSTICE and by:
06.52
Malone contacted junior counsel who had been part of Stefan’s defence team at trial. Over a period of two years they compiled evidence and presented a petition to the Home Secretary.
07.05
By February:
07.19
For the first time it was demonstrated conclusively that Stefan had male hypogonadism which rendered him infertile and contradicted forensic scientific evidence obtained at the time. Witnesses were discovered who could give alibi evidence.
07.38
different man. By late summer:
08.04
In February:
08.33
The 16 years of imprisonment had taken its toll on Stefan’s health. He suffered serious mental and emotional harm as a result of which he became a recluse and showed little interest in life.
08.48
in bad shape too. In October:
09.23
It wasn’t until the end of:
09.53
It is difficult to conjure appropriate words to describe this horrific story. It started with the brutal and senseless killing of an innocent child running an errand for her mother. It was followed by a totally inadequate investigation and inhumane treatment of an innocent man with a mental age of 12 who was hounded into confessing to a crime he did not commit by a police force keen to convict somebody for this atrocity. Then, like an unstoppable juggernaut, the judicial machinery of the State swung into action and the life of another innocent was gradually destroyed and finally lost.
