Lesley Susan Molseed was an English schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered by Ronald Castree on 5 October 1975 in West Yorkshire. An intellectually disabled man who lived near Molseed's residence in Greater Manchester, Stefan Kiszko ( ), was wrongly convicted of her murder and served sixteen years in prison before his conviction was overturned. His mental and physical health had deteriorated in prison, and he died twenty-two months after his release in February 1992. Kiszko's ordeal was described by one British MP as "the worst miscarriage of justice of all time."
Evidence exonerating Kiszko in the crime was suppressed by three members of the investigation team, who were initially arrested in 1993 before charges were dropped. In 2006, a DNA match led to Ronald Castree being charged with Molseed's murder; he was convicted the following year and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Murder
Lesley Molseed was born on 14 August 1964 and lived with her family mother April, stepfather Danny, and three siblings at 11 Delamere Road, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, part of the Turf Hill council estate. Known as 'Lel' to her family, Lesley was born with a congenital condition that included cardiac complications. Despite open-heart surgery at age 3, Lesley was undersized and frail with a reduced mental capacity for her age.
On the early afternoon of Sunday 5 October 1975, Lesley was sent by her mother to a local shop on nearby Ansdell Road to buy bread and air-freshener. The Molseed children had a rota for chores and for Lesley, such an errand would have been routine (as it was for most school-aged children from urban/estate households in that era). Wearing a blue raincoat, carrying a blue canvas bag and £1 in cash, Lesley was last seen by witnesses in Stiups Lane, a pedestrian alleyway leading towards the shop. When she failed to return home, her concerned mother sent her siblings out to look for her. Her stepfather also joined the search Lesley had been stabbed twelve times in the upper shoulder and back: one wound had penetrated her heart. Other evidence collected by forensics included foreign fibres, traces of dry wallpaper paste, and 379 other objects in the vicinity. He had an unusual hobby of writing down registration numbers of cars that annoyed him, which supported police suspicions. Investigators now pursued evidence which might incriminate him, and ignored other leads that might have taken them in other directions.
Acting upon the teenage girls' information and their suspicions of Kiszko's idiosyncratic lifestyle – and having allegedly found girlie magazines and a bag of sweets in his car – police arrested him on 21 December 1975. During questioning, the interviewing detectives seized upon every apparent inconsistency between his varying accounts of the relevant days as further demonstration of his likely guilt. Kiszko confessed to the crime after three days of intensive questioning: Kiszko's endocrinologist strongly disagreed with this theory, and if called to testify would have said that his treatment could not have caused him to act in such a way that would make him carry out a murder. He was never called.
The manslaughter claim undermined Kiszko's claims that he was totally innocent and destroyed his alibis (a defence known in legal parlance as "riding two horses"). In fact, his innocence could have been demonstrated at the trial. The pathologist who examined the victim's clothes found traces of sperm, whereas the sample taken from Kiszko by the police contained no sperm. There was medical evidence that Kiszko had broken his ankle some months before the murder and, in view of that and his being overweight, he would have found it difficult to scale the slope to the murder spot. Kiszko agreed to injections to rectify the latter problem and was discharged in September. He said correctly that he had never met Lesley and therefore could not have murdered her, and he claimed he was tending to his father's grave with his aunt at the time of the murder, before visiting a garden centre and then going home. When asked why he had confessed, Kiszko replied, "I started to tell these lies and they seemed to please them and the pressure was off as far as I was concerned. I thought if I admitted what I did to the police they would check out what I had said, find it untrue and would then let me go." Even Albert Wright, Kiszko's solicitor, thought that his client was guilty but that it was a case of diminished responsibility and that he should not have been convicted of murder.
After a month in Armley Gaol, Kiszko was transferred to Wakefield Prison and immediately placed on Rule 43, a segregation policy to protect prisoners from other inmates, as in the eyes of the law, he was now a convicted sex offender. Kiszko launched an appeal, but it was dismissed on 25 May 1978 when Lord Justice Bridge said "We can find no grounds whatsoever to condemn the jury's verdict of murder as in any way unsafe or unsatisfactory. The appeal is dismissed." On 11 May 1977, he was hit over the head with a mop handle, leaving Kiszko in need of 17 stitches to a head wound. In December 1978, he was punched once in the face by a prisoner in an unprovoked attack while in the prison chapel.
In March 1981, Kiszko was again punched in the face by a prisoner in an unprovoked attack while in the prison yard, but this time Kiszko retaliated. Blows were exchanged and the two had to be separated by guards. Both men were given a loss of privileges for 28 days. On each occasion, the attacks on Kiszko earned him no sympathy from prisoners or guards because of the crime for which he had been jailed.
Mental illness
In July 1979, the Inland Revenue finally wrote to Kiszko to inform him he had been sacked. From late 1979 onwards, he developed signs of schizophrenia and began to have delusions, one for example being that he was the victim of a plot to incarcerate an innocent tax office employee so the effects of imprisonment would be tested on him. In January 1980, he said that coded messages on BBC Radio 2's Jimmy Young Show were being sent to him. In 1982, he claimed that his parents had a tape recorder hidden in the kitchen and made him sing after turning it on, later selling the songs to Barry Manilow to make money out of his talent. Throughout the 1980s, Kiszko's claims of innocence were either labelled as symptoms of his schizophrenic delusions or attributed to his being in a state of denial. One forensic psychiatrist made a note of Kiszko having "delusions of innocence".
Remaining years in prison
In October 1981, Kiszko was put in the punishment block for possessing scissors in his cell. On 11 November, he was transferred to Gloucester Prison. In April 1983, he was informed that eligibility for parole required an admission of guilt: if he continued to deny murdering Lesley, he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. This made no difference to Kiszko's stance. Thirteen months later, still denying having carried out the murder, he was moved to Bristol Prison. His mental deterioration was such that in June 1984, a forensic psychiatrist recommended his transfer to a high-security psychiatric hospital. Nothing came of it. Six months later, Kiszko was returned to Wakefield Prison.
In August 1987, Kiszko was transferred to the specialist Category B Grendon Prison where, in June 1988, the prison governor tried to persuade him to enrol on a sex offenders' treatment programme. This would require him to admit he murdered Lesley, followed by an exploration of his motives and behaviours. Kiszko refused to take part, persistently "refusing to address his offending behaviour" on the grounds that he had done nothing that needed addressing. Having been classed as making "no progress" he was returned to Wakefield Prison in May 1989.
In February 1990, the Home Office privately disclosed that Kiszko's first parole hearing would take place in December 1992, by which time he would have served seventeen years in custody. However, he would only be released if he admitted to having murdered Lesley, discuss what led him to murdering her, and if he could convince the Parole Board that he would not be a danger to children or the public.
It was now over a decade since Kiszko had developed signs of mental illness and six years since it was recommended he be sent for psychiatric hospital treatment. His health continued to deteriorate; in July 1990, he said he was striking out a ghost who was trying to sexually abuse him. After a further eight months of delays, in March 1991 Kiszko was transferred to Ashworth Hospital under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
Case reopened
Kiszko's mother continued to profess her son's innocence, but was ignored and stonewalled both by politicians, including her local MP Cyril Smith and Prime Ministers James Callaghan (from 1976 to 1979) and Margaret Thatcher (from 1979 to 1990), and by the legal system. In 1984 she contacted , the UK human rights organisation which at the time investigated many miscarriages of justice. Three years later, she was put in touch with solicitor Campbell Malone, who agreed to take a look at the case.
Malone consulted Philip Clegg, who had been Waddington's junior at the July 1976 trial.
Acquittal
In May 1991, Kenneth Baker ordered Kiszko's case to go to the Court of Appeal. On 19 December 1991 Kiszko was bailed to Prestwich Hospital.
Ten months before his parole hearing was due, on 17 February 1992, the judicial investigation into Kiszko's conviction began. It was heard by three judges, Lord Lane (Lord Chief Justice), Mr Justice Rose and Mr Justice Potts.
Kiszko's mother said that it was Waddington who ought to be "strung up" for his pro-capital punishment views and for the way he had handled her son's defence at the 1976 trial. Neither, Lord Lane, the then Lord Chief Justice, the four girls, Ronald Outteridge and the prosecution barrister Peter Taylor offered any apology, nor did any of them express any words of remorse or even simple regret for what had happened. Even the West Yorkshire Police, while accepting and admitting they had been wrong, tried to justify the position they had taken in 1975. Waddington said that if the evidence had been available in July 1976, the trial would have taken "a very different course".
Dick Holland, the surviving senior officer in charge of the original investigation, said: "Words can't express the regret I feel for the family and for Kiszko, now [that] it has turned out he is innocent. But the enquiry was done diligently and honestly within the terms that were legally and scientifically available. After Kiszko's arrest, the forensic science service received a hanky which may have had seminal stainings from Kiszko. After his arrest, he produced a sample in the presence of his solicitor and doctor which was sent to the laboratory for comparison. Now how much further can you go?"
Release and death
Kiszko needed further psychiatric treatment for another month and remained in Prestwich Hospital after his acquittal. He was fully released in March 1992 but the sixteen years of incarceration for something he had not done had both mentally and emotionally destroyed him. Kiszko became a virtual recluse and showed little interest in anything or anyone. He bought a new car (a silver Ford Sierra) and drove it on short journeys to the shops, Morrisons or garden centres, or to visit relatives, but other people's apologies for what had happened, encouragement and support seemed to frighten him. As his mental health had deteriorated over the years, so now did his physical health; in October 1993, Kiszko was diagnosed with angina.
Kiszko died at 1:00a.m. on 23December that year, after a heart attack at his home, eighteen years and two days after he made the confession that helped lead to his wrongful conviction for murder. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Rochdale Infirmary. Lesley's eldest sister Julie attended his funeral, held on 5 January 1994. Four months after her son's death, on 3 May, Charlotte Kiszko died at Birch Hill Hospital, Rochdale, at the age of 70.
After being released from prison, Kiszko had been told he would receive £500,000 in compensation for the years spent in prison. He had received an interim payment but neither he nor his mother received the full amount awarded. Holland subsequently attained public prominence as the second-in-command of George Oldfield on the flawed investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper but was sidelined during the late stage of the investigation and moved back into uniform to a desk job during the subsequent inquiry into WYP's failings. He retired in 1988, at a time when he viewed the conviction of both Kiszko and of Judith Ward (whose conviction was overturned by the High Court in May 1992) as being among his "finest hours" during his 35 years in the police force. He died in February 2007 at the age of 74.
Ronald Castree
In October 1985, to mark the 10th anniversary of Lesley Molseed's murder, with the case being closed and the police and the Molseed family firmly believing that the killer was long behind bars, Lesley's clothes – which were taken from the crime scene – were destroyed but strips of adhesive tape had been kept; these had been used to remove fibres from the inside and outside of Lesley's semen-stained knickers. Scientists from the Forensic Science Service's lab in Wetherby managed to extract sperm heads from this tape. And from these sperm heads, in 1999, for the first time ever, a DNA profile of the man who killed Lesley and ejaculated into her knickers was obtained, but he was not in the national DNA Database. DNA evidence was alleged to have shown a "direct hit" with a sample found at the scene of the murder. Ronald Castree (born 18 October 1953 in Littleborough, near Rochdale), a Shaw and Crompton comic book dealer, was charged with murder and made his first court appearance on 7 November 2006, where he was remanded in custody. At a court hearing on 19 April 2007, Castree pleaded not guilty. On 23 April 2007 he was refused bail. A DNA sample from Castree, taken on 1 October 2005 when he was arrested but not charged in connection with another sex attack, was a direct match with a semen sample found on Lesley's knickers, when run through the national DNA Database.
Originally from the Turf Hill estate of Rochdale, Castree lived in nearby Shaw and Crompton and was a taxi driver for many years. He was unpopular with his neighbours, who said he had a "very nasty temper". His former wife said "he was foul with his mouth, and foul with his fists". On 12 July, he pleaded guilty and was fined £25 on both counts against him, which were indecent assault and incitement to commit an act of gross indecency.
Trial and conviction
Castree's trial began at Bradford Crown Court on 22 October 2007. During the trial, a scientist told a jury how DNA taken from Lesley's knickers was linked to Castree. Forensic expert Gemma Escott explained to Bradford Crown Court the chances of the semen samples belonging to anyone other than Castree were one in a billion. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of thirty years, which is expected to keep him in prison until at least November 2036 and the age of 83.
Media
A television film adaptation of Kiszko's story was made and broadcast by ITV on 4 October 1998; A Life for a Life was directed by Stephen Whittaker, and featured Tony Maudsley as Kiszko and Olympia Dukakis as his mother Charlotte. A documentary about the case, Real Crime: The 30 Year Secret, was broadcast by ITV1 on 29 September 2008. In the Channel 4 television series Red Riding, the character of Michael Myshkin is based on Kiszko, being a simple-minded immigrant who is coerced into confessing the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. The animated comedy series Monkey Dust (2003–05) featured a character named Ivan Dobsky, a simple-minded immigrant convicted of several grisly murders, in a parody of Kiszko.
In February 2003, a television appeal for new information was made by Detective Chief Superintendent Max McLean of West Yorkshire Police on the BBC One programme Crimewatch, publicly announcing the existence of a DNA profile of the killer for the first time, but no new leads were forthcoming. As revealed in the ITV television documentary Real Crime: The 30 Year Secret, Castree was convicted in 1976 of gross indecency and indecent assault against a nine-year-old girl in Rochdale; he was fined £25 ().
In May 2018, the crime and the convictions were covered in a two-part series by Casefile True Crime Podcast.