Lesley was subject to a brutal frenzied attack. She was 11 years of age when she went on a message for her mother for a loaf of bread on the 5th of October 1975. After leaving her home on an estate in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, she was found three days later on the moors above Ripponden in West Yorkshire. The poor child had been stabbed 12 times and sexually abused.

West Yorkshire police, about to become infamous for letting the Yorkshire ripper slip under their radar were about to commit a terrible injustice in the interest of producing ‘results’. The pressure was on the West Yorkshire police in 1975 – and sloppy police, lazy slobs who did not mind fitting up someone to relieve the pressure, did their evil work with Mr Stefan Kiszko.

Stefan Kiszko
The main accusation levelled at the police is that they hid the evidence pointing to sperm being found at the crime scene. This was convenient as a medical examination at the time, though it would not have been able to determine DNA, would have determined that Stefan had a rare condition which meant he could not produce sperm.

3 girls swore on oath in court that they had seen Stefan expose himself. The police barely questioned the girls as to the severity of this claim which came AFTER the arrest of Stefan was widely publicised. The police knew that this insinuation was about the best ‘evidence’ they had, so they let the girls to court, where the trial judge fell hook line and sinker for this neat bit of evidence mustered up by the police. The three girls involved in the conviction in 1975/6 admitted during the re-investigation in 1991 that their evidence which led to Kiszko’s arrest and conviction was given for “a laugh”.

Let’s hope they apologised to Stefan and his mother.

Stefan Kiszko spent 16 years in prison on the 21 July of 1976 in Leeds Crown Court. A 10-2 majority verdict was given. Stefan was finally released in 1992 after his mother Charlotte eventually employed a private detective to do what the West Yorkshire police force, in its entirety, could not or did not want to do. These efforts came to fruition, not without some difficulties because a lot of people condemn prisoner’s campaigns. Many innocent men would have been hung before people actually looked at the evidence.
Thankfully though, we still have some checks and balances left to tackle injustice. We still have people who stand up for those not able to stand up for themselves.

The hell which Stefan endured inside a UK jail for being labelled as a child murderer and sex offender was a terrible burden – one few of us could endure and one few of us can imagine. The prisoners, perhaps too quick to believe the word of a few crooked cops and a corrupt incompetent Establishment, set about him with a vengeance. He was battered and cut up twice [despite being forced onto rule 43] and abused and berated at every turn. In later years, when his innocence was proven, I’m sure many cons or prisoners would have prayed for that poor man and cheered him as he left.

Any innocent prisoner in the UK in the bad old days (and even today) will testify that a prisoner is pressured to admit to guilt - always. The carrot of early release is hung in front of every prisoner, but not surprisingly, some men who really are innocent, will be encouraged to lie just to get out early. Any insistence at being vocal about innocence could be dismissed as ‘symptoms of his schizophrenic delusions’ as Stefan was accused of.

Stays in prison hospitals, doses of mind wrecking drugs, were the reward of many a prisoner, including political activists. A horrifying account of the excesses of judicial torture was explained by Des Warren (now deceased, R.I.P) in his book ‘The Key to my Cell’. Other tactics were employed – all with the aim of grinding down any man or woman who persists in pointing out that the system is wrong in some particular instance. Sometimes you hit a brick wall, literally!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article422173.ece  Des Warren
Stefan was pressured at every turn to admit to the crime, but would not go on the ‘sex offender’ courses offered to him or admit in any way to his guilt once he was in jail. He admitted guilt in a confession – but many people had confessions forged or battered out of them in the 70s. A police confession in the 70s was about as genuine as Guy Fawkes’s shaky signature in some of the worse cases.

Stefan Kiszco was a mentally impaired man, working a job as a clerk in the tax office. He cracked under the initial pressure when he was dragged from his happy home and accused of molesting and stabbing an 11 yr old child. You can envision the police who ‘knew’ he was ‘their man’, bullying a confession out of him and many others, with relative ease.

The case of Stefan only proves that hanging people, inviting as it sounds, would have led to many an innocent man and woman in the UK being murdered by the state. We would later read about some DNA sample actually pointing to someone else being the culprit and flashback to when we toasted the death of the person who was ‘definitely guilty as hell’. Bad though the UK might be – at least we can release some poor wrongly accused prisoner in the event of new evidence being made available. We cannot raise them from the dead like Lazarus, can we?

When Stefan was finally released, he died of a heart attack the following year at his mother’s home. Just 6 months of freedom was his reward.

I hope every day saw him smile and treated nicely. Some say he died a broken man, but he knew that his name was cleared – and would have been happy he’d been able to survive the time inside to be able to see THAT day come to him and to his poor mother. All in all there were not many days, but God does not cut much slack on the appointed time.

Sometimes it’s a cruel world – or it seems that way perhaps. Mostly it’s the way we treat each other rather than the elements or drought and natural calamities in the UK. This was true for Stefan who was framed by the police for a crime he did not commit. The world, I’m sure, with its sparrows singing and a blue sky sometimes warming us with the God given sunshine, was not a threat to Stefan and other vulnerable though productive members of the community.

For a prisoner doing so long inside, it would take a while to recover. Even if a prisoner has been released because a case has been overturned, he or she will be let out with the basic two weeks dole, and a travel warrant and a few tips on how to put your life back together. Only the support he had was able to cushion him financially till payments were sent by the slow grinding wheels of the home office. He was aged 44 when the pressure of the years inside finally took their toll. He was killed when the words and deeds of crooked cops cast him into a hell, not caring some other filthy child murderer was on the loose. The cops chose to bully a confession out of him instead. They chose to frame him and think that part of the situation ought to be just passed off as the excesses of ‘life on Mars’ cops.

We can forgive the police a lot of things – but the story of Stefan does not bode well now that framing people is simply a matter of placing some DNA, instead of planting fingerprints or forcing a confession. Bear in mind, that most members of the public think DNA evidence is the magic wand to fight crime. Danger is, we’ll hand over DNA samples en masse, and any cop or spook who wants to frame you, only needs to find a hair, or the spit off a pint glass or a piece of skin or even the residue on your glasses.

To their eternal shame the police who framed Kiszko carry that knowledge of their own part forever. This was one of the worse cases of miscarriages of justice we have witnessed in the dark years of recent times. There are many more. Not least the mass deception which took place with the Hillsborough Football Disaster of 1989. The West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, disbanded whilst under investigation themselves, were given the task of collecting evidence off the Hillsborough families. In a twist of fate, it was a younger Lord Justice Taylor who was the QC for the prosecution of Kiszko. A day after Stefan was released the Lord Justice Taylor Hillsborough Report was released backing the Liverpool fans claims of police mishandling the disaster.

Stefan Kiszko’s poor old mum, who had waged a long bitter and sometimes lonely campaign to prove her son’s innocence, died six months after her son passed way. We like to think they are reunited. By Gods Grace, we pray they are now far from a world which cruelly invaded their simple lives and smashed them into a hundred thousand fragments.

They took all that abuse – and came out of it looking dignified.

Courage is the sum of what each person can summon up in the trials they might face in life. For Stefan, to even walk out of the jail alive, to summon up a smile and articulate a thanks to those who supported him – he was a man who has more courage than many of us might suppose. His mental ‘impairments’ are not seen as ugly or negative by many parents who raise children who might also be this way. A man of sound mind and steely resolve might have crumbled under the weight of abuse endured by this poor man.

One matter that could have sealed the release of Stefan a long time ago was the medical evidence that proved Stefan Kiszko would have been physically incapable of the sex crime of which he was convicted. This was never disclosed to his defence and is part of a pattern of sloppy police-work at a time when the police were framing people up and down the UK with regularity.

Framing some known blagger for a clear up job is one thing, still morally repugnant – but framing a member of the public just to take the heat off a child murder, is handing a shovel out to some sick beast to bury bodies on the moors. A child murderer was left loose whilst the community were assured ‘all was well’. The misplaced confidence would soon fade in the Yorkshire area from 75 onwards, as a hammer wielding maniac played cat and mouse with the police and self appointed judge, jury and executioner of local woman.
The cops who arrested Mr Kiszko with ‘secure evidence’ basked in the glory, as you can imagine. After all, with the Yorkshire Ripper about to assault and murder working class woman in a swathe of mayhem and destruction across Yorkshire, they needed results to justify they were up to the job.

It now transpires that the animal who murdered Lesley Molseed has been finally jailed. This finally puts closure on Stefan’s innocence and although he and his mother have passed on, we are sure that people of Liverpool, traditionally first to speak out at the injustices which have beset others – will salute Stefan and his mother, and recognise them as the victims of a system which we need to be vigilant against at all times.
Remember in your prayers tonight Stefan Kiszko a victim of one of Britain’s worst miscarriages of justice. Remember him and his mother also and thank God for the decent kind and dedicated people whose efforts collectively led to the conviction being overturned.

Last, but never least – The child who was murdered.

Lesley Molseed, that poor child so brutally taken away from us will now finally be seen as an angel whose murderer has been bought to account. Lesley’s mother April Garret cheered when the monster who murdered her was finally bought to Justice this Monday gone. Ronald Castree, aged 54, from the Shaw area of Oldham, has been told he must serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. It is likely he will die behind bars.
Below -our small tribute to Lesley Molseed. The photo has been restored slightly from the original.
Lesley Molseed