Murder Of Lynette White

Lynette Deborah White (5 July 1967 – 14 February 1988) was murdered on 14 February 1988 in Cardiff, Wales. South Wales Police issued a photofit image of a bloodstained, white male seen in the vicinity at the time of the murder but were unable to trace the man. In November 1988, the police charged five black and mixed-race men with White's murder, although none of the scientific evidence discovered at the crime scene could be linked to them. In November 1990, following what was then the longest murder trial in British history, three of the men were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In December 1992, the convictions were ruled unsafe and quashed by the Court of Appeal after it was decided that the police investigating the murder had acted improperly. The wrongful conviction of the three men has been called one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in recent times. The police insisted that the men had been released purely on a legal technicality, that they would be seeking no other suspects, and resisted calls for the case to be reopened. In January 2002, new DNA technology enabled forensic scientists led by Angela Gallop to obtain a reliable crime scene DNA profile. The extracted profile led police to the real killer, Jeffrey Gafoor, who confessed to White's murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Gafoor received a shorter minimum tariff (the length of time before a prisoner may be considered for parole) than had been given to the wrongfully convicted men, due to the reduction for a guilty plea, highlighting a controversial feature of the sentencing guidelines.

In 2004, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) began a review of the conduct of the police during the original inquiry. Over the next 12 months around 30 people were arrested in connection with the investigation, 19 of whom were serving or retired police officers. In 2007, three of the prosecution witnesses who gave evidence at the original murder trial were convicted of perjury and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. In 2011, eight former police officers were charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Their subsequent trial was the largest police corruption trial in British criminal history. A further four police officers were due to be tried on the same charges in 2012. In November 2011, the trial collapsed when the defence claimed that copies of files which they said they should have seen had instead been destroyed. As a result, the judge ruled that the defendants could not receive a fair trial and they were acquitted. In January 2012, the missing documents were found, still in the original box in which they had been sent to South Wales Police by the IPCC.

Lynette White

White had left school without any qualifications and had been working as a prostitute since she was 14 years old. Tim Rogers, a BBC Wales journalist, interviewed White a few weeks before her murder as part of an investigation into child prostitution. Rogers said that White was "probably the most visible prostitute working in Cardiff at the time." Acquaintances said that "she would be the first girl out at lunchtime, and the last one left at night", even working on Christmas Day. Described by friends as "pretty and popular", White earned around £100 each night. She told Rogers that she had been drugged and taken to Bristol by a gang of men who forced her into prostitution and that even after eventually making her way back to Cardiff she had found herself trapped in "a continual spiral of prostitution." By 1988 she was working every day to pay for her boyfriend Stephen "Pineapple" Miller's cocaine addiction. Miller, who was also her pimp, took at least £60-£90 each day from White, who was his only source of income. Each day he would drive her to where she worked as a prostitute, Riverside, Cardiff, before meeting with her at the "North Star" club in the evenings to collect her earnings. The two lived together at a flat in Dorset Street, Cardiff.

White went missing five days before her murder and made no contact with Miller or any of her friends or known associates. Her whereabouts during this period or the reason for her disappearance have never been ascertained. She was due to be called as a witness for the prosecution in two forthcoming trials, and it was later conjectured that she was deliberately "lying low" to avoid giving evidence. The first trial (''R. v Francine Cordle'') involved an allegation of attempted murder and the second (''R. v Robert Gent & Eric Marasco'') involved an allegation of attempting to procure the services of a 13-year-old girl for prostitution. When White disappeared, the police began actively searching for her, and a judge issued a warrant for her arrest to ensure that she attended the first trial, which was listed to commence at Cardiff Crown Court on 15 February 1988.

Earlier in February 1988, another prostitute, Leanne Vilday, had loaned White the keys to the flat in James Street, where she was later murdered, for the purpose of taking clients there for sex. After White disappeared, Vilday was unable to get into the flat herself without the keys and on the evening of 14 February she asked taxi driver Eddie Dimond, who knew both women, to take her to the address. There Vilday was able to get another occupant to drop a spare set of keys from a window to open the main door of the building but was still unable to enter her own flat. Dimond and Vilday then drove to Butetown Police Station to report the situation and their concerns about White's disappearance. They returned to James Street with PS William Bisgood, PC Simon Johnson and PC Anthony Prosser, who were expecting to serve the arrest warrant on White and then take her into police custody. On arrival, Vilday and Dimond remained outside while the police forced entry and at 9.17 pm found White's body inside. PC Johnson later testified that he was aware that White was a "missing witness" in a court case and that officers had been looking for her. PC Prosser said, "We had been looking for her all weekend." He said he discovered White lying on her back on the floor of a bedroom in the flat, having suffered "massive injuries."

Murder

White's throat had been cut from the right ear across the front and around to the left side of the neck, exposing the bones of the spine. There were multiple stab wounds to her chest and breasts, and other wounds to her face, stomach, arms, wrists and inner thighs, as well as defensive wounds on her hands.Regina v. Jeffrey Charles Gafoor 005EWHC 2163 (QB) Her Majesty's Courts Service 19 October 2005. Bernard Knight, the pathologist who conducted White's autopsy, described it as "a mutilating attack with sexual overtones" and identified a total of 69 wounds. Although she had been stabbed seven times in the heart he concluded that it was the throat injury which had killed her. He said: "It would require considerable force because the skin, muscles, larynx and voice box had been cut right down to the neckbone." Speculating on how the wound could have been inflicted, he said it was a normal reflex for a person to keep their head down in such a situation, and her head may have been forcibly held back for the knife wound to be inflicted. One of the two T-shirts Lynette was wearing was "absolutely lacerated. It looked like a colander." Knight believed the murder weapon was at least five inches long. He determined that she had died between midnight and 4am. Her wristwatch had stopped at 1:45am, leading the police to conclude that this was the most likely time of death.

White's body was discovered between the foot of the bed – the room's only furniture – and the window, still clothed but with one shoe off. There was heavy bloodstaining to the base of the bed, the carpet and the walls of the room. There was very little blood on the mattress, where an opened but unused condom was found. Forensic examination found 150 different sets of finger and palm prints in the flat. Azoospermic semen was present both in White's vagina and underwear, which pathologists determined had been deposited there within six hours of her death. Some of the blood found on White's clothing, including her exposed sock, was found to be from a male with the blood type AB.

Investigation

The subsequent murder inquiry was led by Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) John Williams, the head of South Wales Police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Appeals for information led to several potential witnesses independently describing a white male, approximately 5'8"–5'10", aged in his mid-30s, with dark hair and a "dishevelled" appearance. He was seen in a distressed state in the vicinity of the James Street flat in the early hours of 14 February, appeared to have cut himself on the hand, and had blood on his clothing. An E-FIT of the suspect was compiled and on 17 March 1988 DCS Williams appeared on the BBC
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