Former 'Hostages' Reg Dudley, Bob Maynard, Kathleen Bailey, and Edward Clarke, convictions quashed.

Two cleared of torso murder after 25 years

By Christopher Walker and Stewart Tendler

Two men who served more than 20 years in jail for what became known as the "torso murder" had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in London yesterday.

Reg Dudley, now 77, and Bob Maynard, 63, both from Islington in London, were given life sentences in 1977 for killing the underworld figures Bill Moseley and Micky Cornwall.

Yesterday Lord Justice Mantell, Mr Justice Holman and Mr Justice Gibbs declared the convictions unsafe. The two men could now be in line for compensation awards. Mr Dudley has pledged to give any award to charity.

The Old Bailey trial, which became a cause célèbre, ran for 135 days, making it Britain's longest criminal trial. There were no witnesses to the murders and no scientific evidence. The two were convicted on the basis of alleged confessions made to the police and in boasts made to a fellow prisoner while on remand.

The case was heard by Mr Justice Swanwick, who told the jury: "Without the evidence of the alleged oral confessions, there would not be evidence on which the Crown could ask you to convict."

The appeal court was told that the police had added quotes to the "confessions", and that the man who had reported the boasting later admitted that he had been lying.

The case dates back to 1974, when Moseley's dismembered torso was washed up in the Thames at Rainham in Essex. His head was found three years later in an Islington public lavatory, disproving the prosecution's theory that he had been shot in the head.

A year later Cornwall, a friend of Moseley known as the "laughing bank robber" because of his perpetual smile, was shot and dumped in a shallow grave in Hertfordshire.

The police concluded that a major criminal gang was at work in North London, although no hard evidence for its existence was ever found. Eighteen people were arrested: seven were charged and four convicted, two for lesser offences.

These convictions - of Mr Dudley's daughter, Kathleen Bailey, and Edward Clarke, who died in 1995 - for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm, were also quashed yesterday. The reasons for the decisions will be given later.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-357809,00.html