CASE 1 - RAY GILBERT – ALLEGED MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

INTRODUCTION

The roots of this case stretch back to 1981 when Mr Ray Gilbert was arrested, charged and found guilty in Liverpool of the murder of a bookmaker named John Suffield.

From the outset of this case Gilbert contented he was innocent – however, halfway through the trial in Liverpool, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to Life imprisonment.

In 2003, the IJP’s founder, Eamonn O’Neill, was contacted by Mr Bruce Kent, a well-known human rights campaigner, via a letter to the Guardian. This letter followed O’Neill’s high profile role in investigating another case involving a man named Robert Brown. See:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,912899,00.html

The gist of the letter was that Mr Gilbert’s claims of innocence should be investigated by a journalist with an interest in this field, O’Neill responded and his investigation into this case began.

In 2004 O’Neill published an article on the Gilbert case in The Herald’s Saturday Magazine. This article was based on an exclusive interview with the victim John Suffield’s family. Groundbreaking information previously undisclosed by the Suffield family came to light during the investigation into their son’s murder.

Following publication O’Neill attended several public meetings in Liverpool which were organised by Bruce Kent (pictured left), and which asked the public to come forward with any new material or information.

Summary of Investigative Journalism Students’ Findings on Ray Gilbert Case:

• Holes in Ray Gilbert’s [‘RG’] confession were spotted by several students. This indicated that RG didn’t seem to have ‘specialist knowledge’ of the crime that you might expect from the assailant.

• Dubious photofit evidence was also mentioned by several students.

• The identities of TWO men who made threats against the victim John Suffield [‘JS’] were also revealed by students from archive press reports and police reports from the timeframe.

• The statements made by Ray Gilbert and John Kamara were analysed and found to be full of inconsistencies.

• The identities of two people RG named as the real murderers in 1981 are revealed.

• One student also tracked down and identified an individual who self-incriminated themselves in the murder.

• It was noted that RG made differing claims in statements to detectives – than he then went onto make in his confession.

• Witnesses statements were analysed – discrepancies in what they saw are noted. Timings, for example, differ significantly. Descriptions of the men involved and the number seen also differ dramatically. Why?

• One students wanted to know why RG mentioned a white cord in his evidence, yet his relative denied such a cord existed at home as claimed by RG.

• A student with specialised legal knowledge made some valuable contributions after analysing the evidence: The issue of the insert-safe, a detail from the crime scene never mentioned by RG in his confession, might fall into ‘exceptional circumstances’ a category of possible Appeal material mentioned by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC); The police’s failure to get a lawyer for RG in 1981, might allow him to appeal under European Human Rights Law; non-disclosure of evidence might also be used a a means of having this case Appealed… etc.

• One student noted that the date of the murder was significant because 24 hrs earlier the Cheltenham Gold Cup had taken place, so there would have been lots of money in the safe: was this a possible motive for an attempted robbery which went disastrously wrong and ended in John Suffield’s murder?

• The Identification Parades issue is examined; new research noted by students says that 20% of all witnesses pick the wrong person out of parades. It’s noted, for example, that a witness picked out John Kamara, RG’s co-accused who was later freed by the Appeal court, but not RG.

• One students spent a great deal of time analysing RG’s various confessions and revealed in a time-line the detailed inconsistencies in the claims he made. The student asked whether RG wrote the confessions himself?

• Ray Gilbert always claimed he couldn’t have done the crime because he had an alibi – he was with his girlfriend June Bannon. Students tried various ways to trace her: voting registers; phone-books; even calling a local post office. All to no avail. But one student did uncover a statement which showed that she retracted alibi support for RG – then re-instated it. She claimed she’d wobbled in her support because of intense police pressure. This, it was noted, often features in miscarriage of justice cases.

• Several students also noted with some amazement, that despite the violent murder of John Suffield that resulted in a bloodbath at the murder scene, NO forensic evidence linked RG to the crime.

• The original statements at the time of the murder revealed that witnesses saw other people hanging around the murder scene on the day of the murder – none of this material was ever disclosed to the Defence at the 1981 trial. (NB: This comes against the background of now knowing that 201 statements were not disclosed by the Crown to the Defence at the original trial).

• The timing of RG’s police statements were noted by one student: The police got crucial information at midnight about an aspect of the case – by 2.30 am RG was suddenly spouting the same details – could the police have fed this to him?

• One student focused heavily on the issue of Ray Gilbert’s clothes. The student notes that RG kept changing his description of his own clothes which he claimed he’d word during the killing and also notes that his description of who washed his clothes changes several times. He varies his claims regarding his sweatshirt, jeans and jacket. The latter – the jacket – changes colour twice – from black to green and in style also – from bomber jacket to anorak.

• Timings from RG’s statements are also noted: simple information regarding how RG and JK got to the murder scene is not established. RG changes his arrival times and the scene description (was the betting shop door open or closed?) several times.

• The murder weapon issue is also noted by students in several areas: the most detailed analysis comes from one student in particular who notes how many times RG changes his claims and how different the information he gives police is. The student notes RG claims he put the murder weapon knife down a grill behind the betting shop; but he also claimed he’d taken it home and dumped it in a bag; then again, he also claimed he’d washed the knife and put it behind taps in the kitchen. The knife, however, was never found in any of these alleged locations and therefore, was never established as the murder weapon which killed John Suffield nor was it linked to Ray Gilbert in any shape or form whatsoever.

• The inconsistent claims by RG about the money he claims he stole were also noted and analysed: it ranged from ‘a couple of hundred pounds’ to ‘over £500’ to ‘£100’ to ‘just over £80…’ If RG had been the murderer surely, this student asks, he’d have known from the outset how much he robbed?

• RG’s claims about his post-murder movements are also analysed and shown to be totally inconsistent: he changes his time when he left betting shop by almost 2 hrs in different statements; he changes timings and whether or not Kamara accompanied him in statements; he adds others to the narrative in later statements as well; he changes his claims regarding whether they ran or walked from the betting shop in different statements. Throughout, the only consistent aspect of the statements is his manifest inconsistency.

• One student spent a lot of time analysing RG’s movements in the run up to this crime and notes, incredulously, that RG was provably out drinking until 2 am – yet we’re meant to believe he was up and ready for a robbery around 7 am? And that he was alleged to have managed to exit his flat without waking his girlfriend in the process? He finds this an unlikely scenario based on the evidence he’s read.

• Another student did some significant original digging into press reports of crimes in the area at the time of this crime in 1981 and found that shopkeepers in the general area were experiencing a wave of violent crimes during robberies. Could this murder be part of that spate of crimes as opposed to a targeted killing?

• A handful of students completed their assignment and arrived at the conclusion that maybe Ray Gilbert was indeed the murderer – several interesting points were made to support this: RG wasn’t really denied a lawyer since he simply didn’t ask for one, it’s argued; Why didn’t RG claim he was under duress during the trial?; Were RG’s differing claims about the amount of money stolen given to throw police off his trail?…

Eamonn O’Neill
July 2006.