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Don Hale OBE (born July 1952) is a British author and journalist known for his investigative work and campaigning against miscarriage of justice in specific legal cases.
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Don Hale OBE (born July 1952) is a British author and journalist known for his investigative work and campaigning against miscarriage of justice in specific legal cases.
Hale played football at youth and reserve level for Bury, Blackburn Rovers, York City and Shrewsbury Town. [1]
While editor of the Bury Messenger in the early 1980s, he says Barbara Castle, then the local Member of the European Parliament gave him confidential information on political figures who appeared sympathetic to the Paedophile Information Exchange and indicated that several high ranking senior politicians were also allegedly involved in promoting a Westminster paedophile circle. After refusing pressure to hand over the dossier put on him by Cyril Smith MP and Special Branch not to publish it, his office was then raided by SB officers and the papers were confiscated with the threat of prison. [2] [3]
He was later editor of the Matlock Mercury , where he became involved in the campaign to overturn the murder conviction of Stephen Downing. [1] [4] In 1973, Downing, at the time a 17-year-old with the reading age of an 11-year-old, was imprisoned for the murder of Wendy Sewell and served 27 years in jail. Following his six-year campaign, the conviction was eventually quashed and declared unsafe by the Court of Appeal in 2001 and Downing was released.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(February 2021) |
Hale's work on the case eventually helped to force a change in both European and British law, allowing any prisoner, particularly in denial of murder (IDOM) and/or convicted of any serious offence, to be allowed to appeal for parole consideration directly to the Parole Board. Downing's case was one of three test cases originally presented to the European Court of Human Rights by barrister Edward Fitzgerald. After several years of debate and despite a late appeal from the British Government, the case went in Downing's favour and he received £500 in compensation. When the murder conviction was later quashed, Downing also received over £900,000 in compensation. Hale's first book about the Stephen Downing appeal case, Town Without Pity, became a best-seller. It was adapted into a BBC TV drama starring Stephen Tompkinson and Caroline Catz called In Denial of Murder. In 2016 Judge Robert Rinder featured Hale's updated, revised, and informative book 'Murder in the Graveyard' published by HarperCollins, and featured Hale's long quest for justice within a one-hour special on ITV 1 for Judge Rinder's Crime series. The show was repeated in July 2018. Taking part were Hale, Stephen Downing and a cold case detective Chris Clark, who believes Wendy Sewell, the victim in the Bakewell murder, for which Downing was eventually cleared, may have been another victim of the notorious Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
It was 2019, when Hale was asked by publishers HarperCollins to write his exclisive and heavily updated version of his original story about his successful campaign work on the Stephen Downing appeal case. The book entitled Murder in the Graveyard contained new and updated information about his long discovery to find the evidence that helped to quash Downing's conviction, and revealed a number of compelling clues and fresh evidence that indicated who may have been responsible for the brutal murder of Wendy Sewell in September 1973.
Hale was voted 2001 Man of the Year by The Observer newspaper, Journalist of the Year by What the Papers Say and was made an OBE for his efforts and campaigning journalism. He also won numerous other journalistic awards including regional and national awards.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(February 2021) |
Hale has also been heavily involved in the controversial case of Barry George, jailed for life for the murder of BBC TV star Jill Dando. Hale also played a key role in investigating and helping to free former police officer Graham Huckerby who was wrongly jailed for allegedly being part of a major bullion robbery gang. Both prisoners eventually had their convictions quashed.
During 2013, Hale began investigating an alleged miscarriage of justice for ex-Sheffield United footballer Ched Evans, who was convicted of the rape of a teenage girl in Rhyl and sentenced to five years in jail. Hale helped present fresh evidence to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) on behalf and in support of the family's claim that the police inquiry was flawed, and that much of the evidence that could have helped his defence, was not presented at trial. Evans was routinely released from prison on licence in October 2014 and evidence sent to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. On 6 October 2015, they announced that they were referring the case back to the Court of Appeal, where he was later acquitted. Evans faced a retrial in October 2016 and the jury took three hours to return a 12–0 verdict of not guilty.
After a short spell working for the North Wales Pioneer newspaper, Hale became editor of the newly formed North Wales Living magazine in 2005. He won a succession of prestigious awards but later left to pursue other interests. During the autumn of 2007, his book about the famous frogman "Buster" Crabb spy mystery, called The Final Dive, was published by Suttons/The History Press. Hale has also had published Secrets of the Royal Detective about his great-grandfather, James Wood, a notable Manchester detective from 1890 to 1914, who was also the first Royal Protection Officer acting as a personal bodyguard to the Prince of Wales, following the death of Queen Victoria.
Hale's book, Mallard - How the Blue Streak broke the World Speed Record, also became a popular best seller and was first released in paperback by Aurum Press in May 2008 to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the speed record for steam locomotives held by LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard. The book was reprinted and published in July 2013 as a specially updated version for the 75th anniversary of Mallard breaking the world speed record on 3 July 1938, by publishers Aurum Press. An updated book was officially re-launched at the NRM in York on 3 July 2013 as part of the Great Gathering commemorations. Hale also produced and published a new railway history book - Mallard, the Railway Marvel that Beat the World in July 2018 to help commemorate the 80th anniversary of Mallard winning the world speed record.
Hale has written several other books, including a crime novel titled The Wrong Body and non-fiction works such as The Child Killers,Sounds of the Sixties - Club 60 & the Esquire, Birth of the British Bobby, The World of Dreams, Joe Cocker and the Clubs, Sherlock Holmes and the Ghost Ship Mystery.
Hale returned to mainstream newspapers working freelance from January 2014.
Stephen Lawrence was a black British teenager from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall Road, Eltham on the evening of 22 April 1993, when he was 18 years old. The case became a cause célèbre: its fallout included changes of attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice. It also led to the partial revocation of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder on 3 January 2012.
In 1974, 17-year-old Stephen Downing was convicted of murdering Wendy Sewell, a 32-year-old legal secretary, in the town of Bakewell in the Peak District in Derbyshire. Following a campaign by a local newspaper led by Don Hale, in which Sewell was purported to be promiscuous, Downing's conviction was overturned in 2002. The case is thought to be the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and attracted worldwide media attention.
The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was a police unit in the English West Midlands which operated from 1974 to 1989. It was disbanded after an investigation into allegations of incompetence and abuse of power on the part of some of the squad's members. Some of this misconduct resulted in wrongful convictions, including the high-profile case of the Birmingham Six. The sister Regional Crime Squad based at Bilston was responsible for the investigation of the Bridgewater Four.
Thomas Victor O'Carroll is a British writer and pro-paedophile advocate. O'Carroll is a former chairman of the now disbanded Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and was at one time a prominent member of the International Paedophile and Child Emancipation.
David Harold Eastman is a former public servant from Canberra, Australia. In 1995, he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Colin Winchester and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. A 2014 judicial inquiry recommended the sentence be quashed and he should be pardoned. On 22 August of the same year, the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory quashed the conviction, released Eastman from prison, and ordered a retrial.
Andrew Mark Mallard was a British-born Australian who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Almost 12 years later, after an appeal to the High Court of Australia, his conviction was quashed and a retrial ordered. However, the charges against him were dropped and Mallard was released. At the time, the Director of Public Prosecutions stated that Mallard remained the prime suspect and that if further evidence became available he could still be prosecuted. He was released from prison in 2006 after his conviction was quashed by the High Court, and was paid $3.25 million compensation by the state government. The Western Australian Commission on Crime and Corruption investigated whether there was misconduct by any public officer associated with this case and made findings against two policemen and a senior prosecutor.
The Matlock Mercury is a weekly newspaper published on a Thursday in the United Kingdom which serves Matlock, Darley Dale, Wirksworth, Bakewell and smaller villages in the Derbyshire Dales area of Derbyshire.
Robert Woffinden was a British investigative journalist. Formerly a reporter with the New Musical Express, he later specialised in investigating miscarriages of justice. He wrote about a number of high-profile cases in the UK, including James Hanratty, Sion Jenkins, Jeremy Bamber, Charles Ingram, Jonathan King, and Barry George.
The murder of Linda Cook was committed in Portsmouth on 9 December 1986. The subsequent trial led to a miscarriage of justice when Michael Shirley, an 18-year-old Royal Navy sailor, was wrongly convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992 his case was highlighted as one of 110 possible miscarriages of justice in a report presented to the Home Office by the National Association of Probation Officers and justice groups Liberty and Conviction. His conviction was eventually quashed in 2003 by the Court of Appeal after the DNA profile extracted from semen samples recovered from the victim's body was proven not to be his. Cook's murder took place shortly after six sexual assaults had been committed in the Buckland area of the city, and the killer was initially dubbed the Beast of Buckland by the news media. When police revealed that footprint evidence had been recovered and launched a search for matching shoes, the case became known as the "Cinderella murder". Because of the brutal nature of the murder and the preceding sex attacks, Hampshire police were under public pressure to quickly make an arrest.
Rough Justice is a British television programme that was broadcast on BBC, and which investigated alleged miscarriages of justice. It was broadcast between 1982 and 2007 and played a role in overturning the convictions of 18 people involved in 13 separate cases where miscarriages of justice had occurred. The programme was similar in aim and approach to The Court of Last Resort, the NBC programme that aired in the United States from 1957–58. It is credited with contributing to the establishment of the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1997.
In Denial of Murder is a two-part British television crime drama series, written by Neil McKay and directed by David Richards, that first broadcast on BBC One on 29 February 2004. The series follows investigative journalist Don Hale as he attempts to prove that convicted murderer Stephen Downing was wrongly convicted for the murder of Wendy Sewell in 1973.
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which need the individual to admit guilt — as, for example, a prerequisite step leading to parole — punish an innocent person for their integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity. There have been cases where innocent prisoners were given the choice between freedom, in exchange for claiming guilt, and remaining imprisoned and telling the truth. Individuals have died in prison rather than admit to crimes that they did not commit.
Andrew Evans is an English soldier from Longton, Staffordshire who was wrongfully convicted and served 25 years in jail after confessing to the 1972 murder of Judith Roberts, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from a village close to the northern outskirts of nearby Tamworth. Evans was stationed at Whittington Barracks near Lichfield – an army base in close proximity to Tamworth – when Judith was dragged from her bicycle and battered to death in June 1972. He later confessed to the crime after seeing the girl's face in a dream.
Sam Hallam, from Hoxton, London, is one of the youngest victims of a UK miscarriage of justice after an appeal court quashed his murder conviction in 2012.
Robert Brown is a Scottish man who spent 25 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, the murder of worker Annie Welsh.
Jacqueline Susan Ansell-Lamb and Barbara Janet Mayo were two young women who were murdered in separate incidents in 1970. Both women were last seen hitch-hiking along motorways in England, and both were sexually assaulted before being strangled to death.
Chris Clark is a British amateur crime writer who writes chiefly about serial killers and their supposed links to unsolved crimes. He is a retired police intelligence officer who worked in the King's Lynn area for Norfolk Police, although his career was somewhat unsuccessful and he had three applications to join the new National Criminal Intelligence Service rejected in 1993, with the commanding officers unimpressed by his record and applications. In 2022, his book Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders, which was jointly written with journalist Tim Tate and alleged links between Peter Sutcliffe and unsolved murders, was made into an ITV prime-time documentary series of the same name.
Michael Weir is a British double murderer and serial burglar who was the first person in English legal 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".