A Matter for the Jury (43 page)

Postscript

The Times
, February 1991

Tests Confirm Old Murder Conviction, say Scientists

By Our Legal Correspondent

A team of scientists
working at University College, London, announced yesterday that tests involving the use of DNA profiling have confirmed the guilt of a man hanged for murder following one of the last capital murder trials to be held in England before the death penalty was abolished in 1965. William Cottage, a lock keeper from Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire, was convicted in June 1964 of the murder of Frank Gilliam. The prosecution alleged that on the night of 25 January 1964 Cottage repeatedly beat Gilliam over the head with a heavy winch handle in a frenzied attack on board a houseboat, the
Rosemary D
, on the Great Ouse river, near St Ives. Gilliam's girlfriend, Jennifer Doyce, was also savagely attacked and raped. Her injuries were very serious and she lay unconscious on the boat for more than thirty hours before being discovered, but she was able to give evidence at the trial and subsequently made a complete recovery.

The case against Cottage at trial was circumstantial.
His fingerprint was found on a window ledge in the sleeping quarters of the
Rosemary D
, where the crime was committed, but the prosecution was unable to prove that the print had been left on the same occasion. A few days after the murder, Cottage was found to be in possession of a gold cross and chain which Jennifer Doyce had worn on the night of the attack. Miss Doyce gave evidence that her attacker sang verses of a folk-song, the
Lincolnshire Poacher
, to himself while raping her, and there was evidence that Cottage had sung the same song earlier the same evening, and on an earlier occasion when he was arrested for indecent exposure in 1961, an offence to which he pleaded guilty. But there was no direct evidence against him, and he declined to give evidence or call witnesses in his defence. Cottage was convicted, and after an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal and a plea for a reprieve to the then Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, he was hanged at Bedford Gaol on 6 August 1964.

The case has been a controversial one ever since. Cottage had no relatives to take up the cause.
His only known close relative, his sister Eve, died in 1965, in her gas-filled kitchen, in an apparent suicide, though no note was found and an open verdict was recorded by the Coroner. But a number of legal scholars have questioned the conviction and several calls were made to successive Home Secretaries, without success, for a public inquiry into the case. One matter for concern is that, under the law at the time, the Homicide Act 1957, Cottage could not have been convicted of capital murder unless he killed Gilliam in the course and furtherance of theft. Not only did Cottage steal from Jennifer Doyce, and not from Frank Gilliam, the scholars say, but the evidence suggested that Gilliam was already dead before the theft was committed. But the Court of Criminal Appeal held that this did not affect the correctness of Cottage's conviction for capital murder. Another recurring complaint has been the absence of direct evidence to prove that Cottage was the murderer.

But the scientist who oversaw the testing, Dr Paul Burgess, says that this second point can now be laid to rest. The scientific evidence available to the prosecution in 1964 was inconclusive. But, Dr Burgess says, new
DNA profiling identifies Cottage as the murderer. Profiling by means of DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid – was first announced as a technique in 1984 by a team at Leicester University led by Professor Alec Jeffreys. DNA is a molecule which contains the genetic instructions for all known organisms, and its use for profiling involves the use of encrypted sets of numbers to identify the unique genetic profile of the subject. This can then be compared to other profiles. For some years the profile was regarded as too expensive and complex for commercial purposes, but since 1987 it has become increasingly available. Dr Burgess and his team, who have employed DNA profiling to look into a number of instances of alleged miscarriages of justice, compared a DNA sample taken from a specimen of Cottage's blood to the DNA found in two vaginal swabs taken from Jennifer Doyce. The result was a match.
Dr Burgess told
The Times
that the probability of anyone other than William Cottage being the source of the DNA found on the vaginal swabs was many millions to one against.

Five years after Cottage's execution, Jennifer Doyce married Edgar McHugh, an Edinburgh banker. They have two children. They live quietly in Scotland. Jennifer McHugh has never commented on the case publicly. But yesterday, the family released a statement through their family solicitor, thanking Dr Burgess and his team for their work, and expressing satisfaction that the question of Cottage's guilt had finally been resolved.

‘It is as close to scientific proof as you could wish,' Dr Burgess said of the test results.
He added that DNA profiling has heralded a new era of certainty in criminal trials, and that it can be expected to become routine within the next few years, considerably reducing the risk of miscarriages of justice. It seems that William Cottage was indeed guilty of the murder of Frank Gilliam. Whether he should have been hanged for it is a controversy which may never be resolved.

Acknowledgments

While this book is not based on the case of James Hanratty, I have made use of some of the details, and of the evidential problems which arose in that case. I acknowledge my debt to Bob Woffinden's
Hanratty: the Final Verdict
(Macmillan, London, 1997) and to Louis Blom-Cooper's
The A6 murder: Regina v. James Hanratty, the Semblance of Truth
(Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1963). I have drawn liberally on Albert Pierrepoint's autobiography,
Executioner: Pierrepoint
(Harrap & Co Ltd, London, 1974), for detail of the preparation for and conduct of executions, and the training of executioners in this country. Last but not least,
Archbold
:
Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice
, 1962 edition (Eds. Butler and Garsia, Sweet & Maxwell, London 1962) was an invaluable source for the law and practice in capital murder cases.

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