CRIMINAL COLD CASES-FUGITIVES FINALLY BROUGHT TO JUSTICE-30-LYNETTE WHITE

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LYNETTE WHITE:
VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE
THE MURDER OF PROSTITUTE LYNETTE WHITE TOOK PLACE IN CARDIFF, SOUTH WALES, ON ST VALENTINE's DAY IN 1988. IT BECAME NOTORIOUS FOR TWO REASONS: FIRST, SUCH WAS THE BRUTALITY OF THE CRIME THAT THE POLICE MOUNTED THE BIGGEST MURDER SEARCH EVER TO TAKE PLACE IN WALES; AND SECOND, THE THREE MEN WHO WERE FINALLY BROUGHT TO TRIAL AND CONVICTED TURNED OUT TO BE INNOCENT VICTIMS OF A BLATANT MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE.

However, in the end, the dogged persistence of lawyers, political campaigners, and policemen determined to right the injustices of the past, ensured that the guilty man was eventually found – in a twist of fate that few could have predicted.

Stabbed over fifty times
It was in the early hours of St Valentine's Day that Lynette White, a young prostitute working in the docks area of Cardiff, brought her client to a shabby apartment over a betting shop. The electricity in the apartment had been cut off because the bill had not been paid, and the rooms were lit only by the street lights outside. At some point in the encounter, there was an argument over payment, the man demanding back the money that he had given White, and White refusing to hand it over. It was hardly a great sum – only thirty pounds – but in the end, it cost White her life. Enraged, the man took a knife and stabbed White more than fifty times, slitting her throat from ear to ear and mutilating her body hideously. Most of the stab wounds were concentrated around her breasts, in a way that suggested the murderer was a deeply psychotic individual, who had suddenly become deranged to a frightening degree.

Lynette White, a young prostitute, who was murdered in a frenzied attack in the docks area of Cardiff

Naturally, the citizens of the docks area were horrified. The docklands part of Cardiff, once known as Tiger Bay, was a poor, run-down area of the city, but it was well known to have a close-knit, tolerant community – in fact, the oldest multiracial community in Britain, dating from the nineteenth century – in which the crime rate was surprisingly low. However, it was a part of town where petty lawbreaking was common enough, and there were inevitably tensions between the police and some local residents. When Lynette White was killed, the police immediately pointed the finger at three men – initially five – who had been a thorn in their side for many years.

Bloodstained white man
The first of these, Stephen Miller, had been Lynette White's pimp and boyfriend. Unbeknown to him, he actually had an alibi, having been seen playing pool at a local pub very shortly after the murder – without a drop of blood on his clothes. This alibi came from statements to police that were made by other suspects and witnesses. (The time of the murder, at between 1.45 and 1.50 am, was known because White's watch had stopped, something that often happens when a wearer experiences intense shock.) Despite this knowledge, the police continued to press charges. Miller was of very low intelligence – he was later identified as having a mental age of eleven – and did not realize that he had an alibi for the time of the murder. Police managed to extract a confession out of him, which he later retracted. They then went on to charge four other local men who all protested their innocence: John Actie, Ronnie Actie, Tony Paris and Yusuf Abdullahi.

There were many anomalies in their statements, and the evidence against them was shaky to say the least. Some of the men charged had alibis for the time in question; Abdullahi, for example, was working aboard a ship at the time and had thirteen witnesses to prove it. Not only this, but other witnesses reported seeing a bloodstained white man in the vicinity of the apartment where White had been murdered – yet all of the men charged were black, or of mixed-race origin. But most significantly, the scientific evidence against the men was entirely lacking. The blood samples taken from the scene of the crime did not match those of any of the men charged.

Tony Paris was one of the three men – known as the Cardiff Three – charged with murdering Lynette White. A mouth swab and subsequent DNA test proved his absolute innocence

In order to explain this glaring anomaly, the police came up with a highly unlikely scenario: that the five men had been part of a larger group, all of whom had murdered Lynette White in an orgy of violence. According to the police, the blood found at the scene of the crime was that of one of the other men, who had somehow got away and had never been traced. (And who, moreover, could not be identified by any of the supposed co-murderers.) Unbelievably, the legal procedures that should have stopped this case ever coming to court failed to do so, and the police managed to bring the charges against the five men all the way to court. Even more unbelievably, the jury eventually convicted three of the men on the basis of this 'evidence': Miller, Paris, and Abdullahi. The other two men, cousins John and Ronnie Actie, were acquitted, for reasons that seemed equally obscure. To most onlookers, the case did not make sense, and was a travesty of justice.

'Cellophane Man'
Miller, Paris, and Abdullahi all received life sentences, and began to serve their time in jail. But the story was far from over. The media were in uproar, and 'the Cardiff Three', as they became known, found themselves at the centre of a campaign run by a small but tenacious group of supporters, including family members, political campaigners and legal practitioners. After a great deal of hard work, and an appeal through the law courts, the convictions were overturned, and the three were eventually released in December 1992. The Lord Chief Justice ruled that Stephen Miller's confession was unlawful and should never have been admitted as evidence. Yet although the supporters of the Cardiff Three were jubilant, all agreed that this was a sorry day for British justice, which had been shown to have wrongfully imprisoned three men for a crime they did not commit, in the process ruining their family lives, their psychological health, and their ability to earn a living. Moreover, many commentators accused the police of overt racism, since the three men convicted were all black or of mixed-race origin – even though the prime suspect had initially been a white man.

The Cardiff Three were finally free, having had their lives profoundly disrupted for several years, including four years serving time in jail. But police had got no further in finding the killer. However, in the years that followed, important advances were being made in DNA profiling. In 1998, a process became available so that tiny samples of blood, even down to one single cell, could be analysed. This meant that new evidence in the Lynette White case could now be put forward. New blood samples had been collected from the scene of the crime: from the cellophane of a cigarette package, and underneath paint on the wall of the room where the body had been found. The DNA on these samples was quite clear, and police knew that whoever matched up with it was the killer. The hunt for the 'Cellophane Man', as he now became known, was on.

By this time, many of the old guard of the police force had retired and incoming officers wanted to make a fresh start. A new unit was set up to investigate unsolved cases, and top priority was, of course, the infamous Lynette White case, still unsolved after more than a decade. The police now made it their business to bring White's killer to justice once and for all, thus drawing a line under the shameful episodes of the past.

With the help of tireless campaigner Satish Sekar, the police sifted through their DNA files again and again, until they came up with a close match to the blood sample left by 'Cellophane Man'. This was initially disappointing, as it came from a fourteen-year-old boy who could not have committed the murder since he was not even born at the time. The police then decided to take a look at some of the boy's relatives, whether they were known to the police or not.

A quiet loner
This line of inquiry soon led them to Jeffrey Gafoor, a security guard who had never been in trouble with the police before the murder was committed, and who had only once been convicted of a minor assault after it, for which he had done community service. Such an individual was, of course, an incredibly difficult person to find: but through the DNA profiling, the police caught up with him. Described as a 'quiet loner', Gafoor lived on his own and had few friends. When the police interviewed him, he admitted having sex with White a week before the murder, and asked if his semen had been found on her. The police realized that Gafoor was trying to set up a story explaining the presence of his DNA at the scene of the crime. They were convinced that they had found their man, and when they left, after taking a sample from him, they put him under surveillance. Gafoor then took an overdose of paracetamol, but his attempt at suicide was interrupted when the police broke down his door. He was rushed to hospital, where he admitted that he had killed Lynette White.

When Gafoor recovered, he was brought to trial, pleaded guilty and was convicted of murder. In July 2003, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. This was the first time that the British courts had convicted a murderer after letting out the original convicted men on appeal. It was a triumph, not only for the campaigners who had continued to keep up the pressure after the Cardiff Three were released, but for the police, who had done their utmost to make up for the errors of the past, and this time find the real culprit. After fifteen years, justice was finally done and the killer of Lynette White was put behind bars.

Jeffrey Gafoor was tracked down thanks to good detective work and DNA profiling