Murder of Jacqueline Montgomery

Last updated

Murder of Jacqueline Montgomery
Jacqueline Montgomery.jpeg
Victim Jacqueline Montgomery
Location Islington, North London, United Kingdom
Date1 June 1975;48 years ago (1975-06-01)
Attack type
 Child murder by stabbing, strangling, torture murder, child rape
VictimJacqueline Montgomery, aged 15
PerpetratorDennis McGrory
Motive Rage, sexual gratification
Verdict Not guilty (first trial)
Guilty on both counts (retrial)
Convictions Murder, rape
Sentence Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years and 126 days

The murder of Jacqueline Montgomery, a 15-year-old girl from Islington, North London, United Kingdom, occurred on 1 June 1975. She was murdered by Dennis McGrory, her aunt's 28-year-old estranged partner, who was described at his trial as being "wild with rage" when he sexually assaulted, stabbed, and strangled Montgomery at her family home in Offord Road.

Contents

Her body was discovered by her father in the early hours of 2 June on the floor of the living room of their house. McGrory was tried on circumstantial evidence in 1976, but cleared of murder. He faced trial again in 2022 under the rule of double jeopardy after swabs taken at the time of the murder were tested for his DNA and found to be a one-in-a-billion match. Following the second trial, McGrory was convicted of Montgomery's rape and murder at the Old Bailey in December 2022. His sentencing took place at Huntingdon Crown Court on 13 January 2023, at which presiding judge, Simon Bryan, sentenced McGrory to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years and 126 days. McGrory will be eligible for parole when he is 100 years old.

With 47 years having passed since the 1975 murder, the case represents the longest lapse of time between a murder and a conviction in England and Wales as a result of double jeopardy.

Background

In 1975, Jacqueline Montgomery was a 15-year-old girl living with her father in Islington, North London, her mother having recently left the family to live in a nearby flat. Her aunt, Josie Montgomery, had lived with Dennis McGrory, who has been described as violent and abusive. At the time of the murder, she had left him and was attempting to establish a life for herself away from him. In a diary she kept, Jacqueline Montgomery described a trip she made with her aunt to Manchester in an attempt to escape her partner. [1] [2] At his sentencing hearing, McGrory was described as having had an "unreciprocated sexual interest" in the teenager, and had "tried it on" with her before the day of her murder. [3]

Some time between 1 and 2 June 1975, it is believed that after a period of drinking heavily, McGrory, then aged 28, went to Montgomery's house in Offord Road, Islington, looking for Josie. Jacqueline Montgomery was alone at the house, and it is thought that he attacked her in an attempt to force her to reveal Josie's whereabouts. During the attack, Montgomery was raped, and stabbed through the back, heart and diaphragm. She was also strangled with the electric cord of an iron, which was found around her neck. Her body was discovered on the floor of the lounge of the house when her father, Robert Montgomery, returned home in the early hours of 2 June. [4] [5] [6]

The phone was found off the hook, suggesting Montgomery had attempted to call for help during the struggle, and detectives later established the phoneline had been engaged since the late morning of 1 June, suggesting the murder had taken place on that date. [2] McGrory would later arrive at the home of one of Montgomery's neighbours in a shaken and excitable state. He waved a piece of paper which he claimed contained Josie Montgomery's address, and said that he had been assaulted by four "geezers". [7] McGrory was arrested on suspicion of murder, but claimed not to have seen Montgomery that day. He told police that injuries sustained to his face had come about after he was attacked by four men. The slip of paper bearing the aunt's address, which turned out to be false, placed him at the scene, and on 10 July 1975, he was charged with Montgomery's murder. But a trial at the Old Bailey, held in 1976, collapsed after the presiding judge rejected the circumstantial nature of its evidence linking him to the crime. [2] [5] [7]

Double jeopardy and retrial

Following a 2003 change in the law regarding the rule of double jeopardy, the principle by which a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime, it became possible for a murder suspect to be retried if new and compelling evidence were to emerged, and the Director of Public Prosecutions deemed it to be in the public interest. [8] Since then it has only been used on rare occasions, [4] most notably in the case of Gary Dobson who, in 2012, was one of two people convicted of the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, Dobson having previously faced trial and been cleared of that crime. [5] In 2021, it was also used to successfully convict Gary Allen, who had been cleared two decades earlier of the 1997 murder of Samantha Class, and consequently went on to commit a second murder. [9]

Following a request from Montgomery's family that the case be reviewed, in November 2015 it was re-examined by the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Casework Team, [10] and was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service Appeals and Review Unit. [8] [9] Detectives discovered that scientists involved in the original investigation had taken and preserved vaginal swabs from the body, carefully labelling this evidence. These were tested against McGrory's DNA, and found to be a one-in-a-billion match. [2] [1] The case was sent to the Court of Appeal, where the acquittal was quashed, [1] and on 3 March 2020, McGrory, by then living in Newport Pagnell, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, was rearrested and once again charged with Montgomery's rape and murder. [10] McGrory's trial began at the Old Bailey on 3 March 2022, but had to be halted on 16 March when he fell ill. It was rescheduled for 30 November, with a fresh jury at Huntingdon Crown Court. [5] [9] [11] [12]

The case was prosecuted by Tom Little KC and Sarah Przybylska, [1] [6] and defended by William Boyce KC. [13] The presiding judge was Mr Justice Bryan. [14] McGrory appeared in court via videolink from the office of his solicitor, and pleaded "not guilty" to the charges. [1] [13] The court heard that he was a violent bully, who had previously threatened to rape Montgomery prior to the occasion of her murder, and that he was "wild with rage" when he went looking for Josie Montgomery and attacked her niece. [6] It was said he most likely "took his anger and frustration out" on Montgomery as a result of not finding Josie at the house. [7] The trial was told that a burn mark on Montgomery's leg, along with the presence of the electric cord, suggested she may have been tortured by McGrory in order to reveal her aunt's location. A page from the teenager's diary containing Josie's address was also torn from the book by McGrory, and found in his pocket at the time of his original arrest. The DNA evidence placed him at the scene, and proved there had been sexual contact between McGrory and Montgomery. The court also heard that the injuries to McGrory's face were caused as Montgomery tried to defend herself, and that despite the severity of her injuries she may have lived for around ten minutes after the attack. [5] [9] [11]

Following the two week trial, [9] the jury was sent out on 19 December, and convicted McGrory of both the rape and murder of Jacqueline Montgomery, and a sentencing hearing was set for 13 January 2023. McGrory, who was ordered to court to hear the verdict, was remanded in custody until then. [1] [11] Speaking after the conviction, Montgomery's sister, Kathy, said: "The investigation of the last few years has meant revisiting memories of the murder which has caused pain and stress for me and my family and I am relieved that we finally have justice for Jackie." [7]

Max Hill KC, the Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, commented on the unusual nature of the conviction: "It is extremely rare for an acquittal to be overturned but after careful consideration I was satisfied there was new clear and compelling evidence to allow an application to be made to the Court of Appeal. It is very rarely that I have approved such an application and I am extremely satisfied to see today’s verdict. My thoughts are with everybody who still mourns Jacqueline." [4]

Sentencing

The sentencing hearing, also held at Huntingdon Crown Court, took place on 13 January 2023, and was one of a small number of such hearings in England and Wales to have been televised since 2022. Presiding judge, Mr Justice Bryan, sentenced McGrory to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years and 126 days. In his sentencing summary he said: "I have no doubt whatsoever that you intended to kill her in your brutal attack on her. You put Jacqui through a horrific, violent and sustained ordeal in her own home – a place where she was entitled to feel safe. In the decades that followed, you must have thought you had gotten away with your hideous crimes. How any man could inflict such sexual violence on a 15-year-old child that had done them no harm beggars belief." [8] McGrory will be eligible for parole on 12 May 2048. [14] The length of the sentence, together with McGrory's age at the time of his conviction (he was 75), means he will likely spend the rest of his life in prison. [5]

Speaking after the hearing, forensic scientist Lee Shufflebottom, whose work had helped to secure the conviction, praised the foresight of the original forensics team, who had preserved and retained "those parts of the exhibits for future new technologies to come around, to be able to find that evidence that crucially they couldn't find in 1975". [8]

With 47 years having passed since the 1975 murder, the case represents the longest lapse of time between a murder and a conviction in England and Wales as a result of double jeopardy. [8] [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. Double jeopardy is a common concept in criminal law. In civil law, a similar concept is that of res judicata. Variation in common law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict. These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis in idem.

Guy Paul Morin is a Canadian who was wrongly convicted of the October 1984 rape and murder of his nine-year-old next-door neighbour, Christine Jessop of Queensville, north of Toronto, Ontario. DNA testing led to a subsequent overturning of this verdict. On October 15, 2020, the Toronto Police Service announced a DNA match identifying Calvin Hoover as the one whose semen was recovered from Jessop’s underwear. Hoover killed himself in 2015.

<i>R v Carroll</i> Judgement of the High Court of Australia

R v Carroll (2002) 213 CLR 635; [2002] HCA 55 is a decision of the High Court of Australia which unanimously upheld the decision by a Queensland appellate court to stay an indictment for perjury as the indictment was found to controvert the respondent's earlier acquittal for murder. The court held that charging Raymond John Carroll with perjuring himself in the earlier murder trial by swearing he did not kill the baby Deidre Kennedy was tantamount to claiming he had committed the murder and was thus a contravention of the principles of double jeopardy. The case caused widespread public outcry and prompted calls for double jeopardy law reform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiong murder case</span> Murder case in the Philippines

The Chiong murder case was a trial regarding an incident on July 16, 1997, in Cebu, the Philippines, in which sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong were kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Francisco Juan "Paco" Larrañaga, a man of dual Filipino and Spanish citizenship was, along with six others, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death by lethal injection on February 3, 2004. Larrañaga was later commuted to life imprisonment, following the abolition of capital punishment in the Philippines in June 2006, and was transferred to Spain to serve out his sentence in October 2009. The Chiong sisters remain missing to this day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criminal Justice Act 2003</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide-ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Large portions of the act were repealed and replaced by the Sentencing Act 2020.

False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence, fake evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally in order to sway the verdict in a court case. Falsified evidence could be created by either side in a case, or by someone sympathetic to either side. Misleading by suppressing evidence can also be considered a form of false evidence ; however, in some cases, suppressed evidence is excluded because it cannot be proved the accused was aware of the items found or of their location. The analysis of evidence may also be forged if the person doing the forensic work finds it easier to fabricate evidence and test results than to perform the actual work involved. Parallel construction is a form of false evidence in which the evidence is truthful but its origins are untruthfully described, at times in order to avoid evidence being excluded as inadmissible due to unlawful means of procurement such as an unlawful search.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom</span> 2007 carjacking, rape, and murder of a couple in Knoxville, Tennessee

The Jeanine Nicarico murder case was a complex and influential homicide investigation and prosecution in which two men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, both Latinos, were wrongfully convicted of abduction, rape and murder in 1985 in DuPage County, Illinois. They were both sentenced to death. The case was scrutinized during appeals for being weak in evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World's End Murders</span> Crime in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1977

The World's End Murders is the colloquial name given to the murder of two girls, Christine Eadie, 17, and Helen Scott, 17, in Edinburgh, in October 1977. The case is so named because both victims were last seen alive leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town. The only person to stand trial accused of the murders, Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 in controversial circumstances. Following the amendment of the law of double jeopardy, which would have prevented his retrial, Sinclair was retried in October 2014 and convicted of both murders on 14 November 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years, the longest sentence by a Scottish court, meaning he would have been 106 years old when he was eligible for a potential release on parole. He died at HM Prison Glenochil aged 73 on 11 March 2019. Coincidentally, he died on the same day the BBC's Crimewatch Roadshow programme profiled the murders.

The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:

Walter "Johnny D." McMillian was a pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury. In the 1988 trial, under a controversial Alabama doctrine called "judicial override", the judge imposed the death penalty, although the jury had voted for a sentence of life imprisonment.

Paul Warner Powell was an American man convicted and executed for the murder of his friend Stacie Reed, 16, in 1999. He also raped, strangled, and stabbed the girl's sister Kristie, 14, who survived. Following the vacature of his capital murder conviction upon appeal, he wrote letters boasting about his crimes under the mistaken belief that he was exempt from punishment by the principle of double jeopardy. His letters were used as evidence against him in a second trial that resulted in his execution in 2010.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.

The murder of Surjit Singh Chhokar occurred in November 1998 in Overtown, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. Two prosecutions – in 1999 and in 2000 – were unsuccessful. Two inquiries were held that reported in 2001. Eighteen years after the crime, in October 2016, a conviction was made. This was only the second time in Scottish legal history that a person was tried twice for the same crime. This controversial case raised a number of complicated legal issues, including the double jeopardy rule, as well as institutional racism on the part of investigating police and prosecutors.

Grace Emmie Rose Millane was a British tourist whose disappearance in Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2018 sparked international attention. A 26-year-old man, Jesse Shane Kempson, was charged with her murder on 8 December 2018, and her body was found in the Waitākere Ranges to the west of Auckland the following day. Kempson's name was suppressed by New Zealand courts, meaning it could not be published in New Zealand; however, some international media outlets chose to publish it contrary to the New Zealand court order.

David Smith is an English repeat murderer, rapist and suspected serial killer who came to national prominence in 1999 when he was convicted of murdering a sex worker six years after having being acquitted of an "almost identical" murder. Cleared of the murder of 33-year-old west London sex worker Sarah Crump in 1993, Smith was found guilty in 1999 of the killing of 21-year-old Paddington sex worker Amanda Walker. Smith has since been linked to a number of other murders of sex workers across Britain.

Rikki Neave was a six-year-old boy who was murdered on 28 November 1994 by a 13-year-old boy, James Watson, in Peterborough, England. In 1996, his abusive mother, Ruth Neave, was tried and acquitted of his murder. Watson was convicted of the murder in 2022 after new DNA evidence was found.

Michael Weir is a British double murderer and serial burglar who was the first person in British history to have been convicted of the same crime twice. In 1999, he was jailed for the murder of 78-year-old war veteran Leonard Harris. Weir's conviction was quashed a year later at the Court of Appeal on a technicality, only for him to be re-convicted in 2019 in a 'double jeopardy' case after new evidence was found. Weir was also convicted in 2019 of the murder of 83-year-old Rose Seferian, who was also killed during a burglary five weeks after Harris, which made additional history as the first time a second murder charge was added to a double jeopardy case. Upon Weir's conviction at the Old Bailey in December 2019, judge Justice McGowan told the jury that they had made "legal history".

Gary Arthur Allen is a British convicted murderer serving life imprisonment for the murders of Samantha Class and Alena Grlakova, two sex workers who he killed 21 years apart, in 1997 and 2018. Allen first stood trial for Class's murder in February 2000, but was acquitted by a jury at Sheffield Crown Court. He then went on to assault two sex workers in Plymouth within days of his acquittal, and would later confess to murdering Class during an undercover police operation staged in 2010. It was not until a change in the law regarding the rules of double jeopardy in England and Wales, whereby a defendant could not stand trial twice for the same crime, together with other cases involving the double jeopardy rule, and after he committed the second murder in 2018 that Allen was brought to justice. Following a seven week trial in 2021, also held at Sheffield Crown Court, he was convicted of both murders, and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years. He will become eligible for parole in June 2057.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Brunt, Martin (19 December 2022). "Sex killer cleared of murdering girl nearly 50 years ago convicted in double jeopardy retrial". Sky News. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Man jailed for 1975 murder in Islington". Metropolitan Police Service. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  3. ↑ "Double jeopardy killer Dennis McGrory will serve minimum 25 years for murder and rape of Jacqueline Montgomery in 1975". Sky News. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 "Man convicted of brutal 1975 rape and murder after double jeopardy trial". The Crown Prosecution Service. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Double jeopardy killer Dennis McGrory will serve minimum 25 years for murder and rape of Jacqueline Montgomery in 1975". Sky News. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 "Pensioner convicted of murder in oldest double jeopardy case". Bracknell News. 19 December 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Lamche, Anna (22 December 2022). "Man guilty of murdering teenage niece in 1975". Camden New Journal. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "Man jailed for life for murder in oldest double jeopardy case". BBC. 13 January 2023. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "How new evidence overturned a 1975 murder acquittal and saw the killer of a 15-year-old girl finally face justice". The Crown Prosecution Service. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  10. 1 2 "Man convicted of 1975 rape and murder of schoolgirl after Met cold case review". Metropolitan Police Service. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  11. 1 2 3 "Man guilty of murder and rape in oldest double jeopardy case". BBC. 19 December 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  12. ↑ Bartholomew, Emma (16 March 2022). "Rape and murder trial collapses after accused falls ill". Islington Gazette. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  13. 1 2 "Dennis McGrory gets life sentence, with a minimum of 25 years, for murdering Jacqueline Montgomery in 1975 – follow live". Sky News. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  14. 1 2 "Criminal sentence – Dennis McGrory – Huntingdon Law Courts Crown Court – Mr Justice Bryan". Thelawpages.com. 13 January 2023. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.