Hope to Die

‘Has to be within the last five weeks, though, doesn’t it?’ says Hansen. ‘If we’re assuming that foreign letter the Swanns got was from him?’

Baxter gives him a heavy look. ‘That’s still a hell of a lot of people. Like the Sarge said, I’m not holding my breath.’

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

10.20

I hit four on the Harrison bullshit bingo card, which is pretty good going. The BBC interview was apparently a ‘landmark moment’ and a ‘game changer’ which proved this force is ‘leading the way on best practice’; and giving it ‘110 per cent’. To be fair, the whole thing was his idea, so he’s allowed to crow a bit. And at least I left him in a good mood; he practically had the Chief Constable on speed dial. Let’s just hope it lasts.

* * *

The Guardian

Opinion

‘Milly Liar’?

What does the Camilla Rowan case tell us about the criminal justice system – and ourselves?

Tim Halston

Bungling and bias still play far too large a part in convictions

Sat 27 October 2018 10.30 GMT

I can’t be the only one who was left profoundly uneasy by the baying mob outside the Old Bailey in November 2003, after Camilla Rowan’s conviction for murdering her baby. The torrent of abuse, the cries of ‘baby-murderer’ and ‘kill the whore’, were more reminiscent of a Salem witchcraft trial than the workings of a modern, progressive legal system. Admittedly, this was fifteen years ago, but have things really changed so much?

Because it now appears that a conviction that was always based on circumstantial evidence may have been founded almost entirely on a lethal combination of incompetence and prejudice. Incompetence on the part of the investigating police force, who apparently failed to follow up a number of important leads, and prejudice because Camilla Rowan simply didn’t ‘play the game’. She didn’t fit our template of Caring Motherhood. She put her babies at risk while they were still unborn, she gave them away to complete strangers without appearing to be traumatised, and she walked away thereafter and she didn’t look back. It was all too easy a jump from this apparent callousness to the assumption that she was capable of a far more brutal cruelty. She may not have been ‘too posh to push’ but she was certainly ‘too posh to gush’: she had too much money, too much privilege, and – worst of all – she kept her emotions to herself; she didn’t cry. How many times did the media describe her as ‘stony-faced’, ‘hard’ or ‘cold’? And they hated her for it, oh, how they hated her.

The rejoinder here – inevitably, I’ve heard it at dinner parties already – is that she ‘didn’t tell the truth’. That ‘if someone else harmed the baby why didn’t she say so?’ I understand that response, and I imagine more than one member of her jury also stumbled at that, and ended up finding it an insuperable barrier to a vote for ‘Not Guilty’.

But as now seems distinctly possible, there could have been valid and deep-seated reasons why she didn’t feel able to ‘tell the truth’. As case after terrible case has surely taught us by now, some truths are just too dark to tell; they are literally ‘unsayable’. Though as things stand, in Rowan’s case, this remains mere speculation. Another police investigation is underway, which we must all hope will do a better job. And at the risk of stating the obvious, whatever else Camilla Rowan is, she is not a murderer. She has served fifteen years for a crime that no one committed, and she should be set free.

• Tim Halston is a Guardian columnist

* * *

Adam Fawley

27 October

12.15

‘We’ve found him, boss. Camilla’s kid – we’ve found him.’

It’s Gis, at my door, half out of breath, a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘Where?’

‘Stansted. He flew in from Italy on October the 19th. But Carter was right – he’s a Yank.’

He reads from the sheet: ‘Noah Randolph Seidler, resident in New York, but born in the UK.’ He glances up, then stabs a finger at the paper. ‘But this is the real clincher, the place of birth is listed as Birmingham and Solihull General Hospital on 14th September 1997. Here,’ he finishes, holding it out. ‘Take a look.’

I take the sheet from him. ‘But that’s more than three months before Camilla’s baby was born – it doesn’t make any sense.’

He makes a face. ‘I know. Just like the bloody rest of it. But it would at least explain why South Mercia didn’t find him.’

‘Are we contacting the hospital?’

‘Yup – Baxter’s doing it as we speak. Do you want to come and listen in?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I do.’

I follow him back down the corridor to the main office, and word has clearly got about because people are gathered round Baxter’s desk. Hansen, Ev, Carter, Quinn. Right now, there’s only one call going on in the entire room.

‘So you definitely have a record of him?’ Baxter is saying, scribbling on the pad in front of him.

‘Right, and the parents’ names?’

More scribbling.

‘And when was he discharged?’