Police to reopen 'Bakewell Tart' murder inquiry

The flawed criminal investigation which saw a man wrongfully jailed for 27 years for bludgeoning a legal secretary to death in a churchyard is to be reopened, the police announced yesterday.

The Derbyshire Chief Constable, David Coleman, said he had decided to re-investigate the 1973 murder of Wendy Sewell, for which Stephen Downing was jailed, after reviewing the case following Mr Downing's acquittal at the Court of Appeal in January.

Mr Coleman said there was no evidence to implicate any new suspects in the murder and in a further indication that the force is pessimistic about securing a breakthrough, he also indicated that the inquiry should be completed by the autumn.

"We acknowledge that, given the passage of time, the task will be difficult. Many of the original witnesses have died and people's memories may well have faded," he said.

The re-investigation, which begins next month, will be carried out by Derbyshire Constabulary and overseen by an independent advisory committee, including a representative from the Crown Prosecution Service, a senior barrister with an extensive background in criminal cases and a recently retired senior investigating officer from another police force.

Mr Downing was 17 and working as a gardener in the churchyard at Bakewell, Derbyshire, when he was confronted with the sight of the 32-year-old Mrs Sewell's bloodied and battered body. He raised the alarm and led police to where the woman lay over a gravestone, naked from the waist down. But when she died three days later, Mr Downing, who had a mental age of 11, became the chief suspect and signed a confession.

It is understood that the re-investigation, led by Detective Superintendent David Gee, will pick through information provided by Don Hale, the former editor of the Matlock Mercury newspaper.

His dossier includes a badly-typed, five-year-old letter from a woman who had returned to Bakewell after 20 years. She said she saw Mrs Sewell arguing with a man (whom she identified) before Mr Downing arrived in the cemetery and bent over her prostrate body. A few months later, the same woman wrote to Mr Hale again, claiming she had been threatened and had moved house.

Mr Hale gathered more than 70 witness statements in his campaign to free Mr Downing. Six witnesses told him they were prepared to say they saw Mr Downing leave the cemetery while Mrs Sewell was alive. One saw her kissing a man in the cemetery while another approached, shouting and swearing at Mrs Sewell.

The case became known as the "Bakewell Tart" murder, because of the widely-held belief that Mrs Sewell's colourful love life led to her death.

Mr Downing's father, Ray, said: "It's a bit of a surprise, not that it has reopened but that it's come through so quickly. We knew the police were looking into the possibility of reopening but it's not really sunk in yet that the time has come."