Totalcrime
A true crime podcast, written and produced by Chris Summers, veteran crime reporter with more than 30 years of experience. He has been writing producing content for Totalcrime on Substack since March 2024 and is now launching into podcasting. The podcast will be a mixture of Chris narrating true crime stories from the UK and around the world, and occasional interviews with people who are knowledgeable about crime.
Totalcrime
'I'm not bitter, I'm angry'
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Michael O'Brien spent 11 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. His case, the Cardiff Newsagent Three, was one of several with a "common thread" - a vulnerable person being cajoled into a confession upon which South Wales Police built a flawed case. In this special episode I interview him at length about the case and about how he coped in prison and upon his release. He has triumphed over adversity and become a prominent campaigner against miscarriages of justice.
Welcome back to the Total Crime Podcast. I'm Chris Summers, and this is episode 10. Today's episode is focused around an interview I did recently with Michael O'Brien, who spent eleven years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Before I start the interview, I better give you an explanation of some of the things Michael was talking about in the interview. So in the 1980s, there were a number of murder cases in South Wales which would become notorious miscarriages of justice. There was the Cardiff III case, sometimes as Michael refers to it, referred to as the Cardiff Five case, which centers on the murder of sex worker Lynette White in the Tiger Bay area of the Wales Capitol in 1988. Five men were charged with her murder, and three of them, Yusuf Abdullahi, Tony Paris, and Stephen Miller, were convicted and jailed for life in 1990. But two years later their conviction was quashed, and in 2003 the real killer, Jeffrey Gaffour, was caught by DNA evidence and jailed for life. Then there was the Cardiff Newsagent 3, Michael O'Brien, Alice Sherwood, and Darren Hall, who were convicted of the 1987 murder of news agent Phillips Saunders. They spent eleven years in prison before being released on bail and finally having their convictions quashed in December 1999. The real killer of Philip Saunders has never been caught, and the case hasn't even been reopened, as Michael mentions in the interview. Another notorious case involving South Wales police was the murder of Sandra Phillips in 1985 in a sex shop in Swansea where she worked. Wayne Darvell and his brother Paul were convicted of a murder and spent seven years in jail before being freed by the Court of Appeal in 1992. Wayne had confessed, but what he said didn't match the crime scene, and a psychiatrist later assisted him as suggestible and gullible. Last year, South Wales police announced it was carrying out a full forensic review of the Sandra Phillips murder in the hope of finally solving it. So here is the full interview.
SPEAKER_00So in law, I'm just as guilty as what they are. And that's what we were doing on the night in question. You know, unfortunately, a murder happened in the area. I was three miles away from where the murder happened, but nevertheless, I was up to no good. So the police were pulling in everybody, uh, like a dragnet system, sort of thing. Anyone who had a criminal record. The other two, unfortunately for me, did have a criminal record, and because I was with them, that's how I got dragged into got dragged into this, and um that's how I got arrested for the murder of Philip Saunders in 1987. Okay, so it was Darren Hall and Ellis Sherwood who were in the car with or I wasn't in the car with uh Darren Hall, I was in the car with Ellis Sherwood. We were trying to steal cars um leading up to Fairwater Grove, which is uh where we went that night, which is three miles away from the murder scene. And Darren Hall left us on that night. We thought he could drive. Uh he was one of these persons. As soon as you got to know him, within five or ten minutes, you knew there was something not right with him. You know, he was uh a bragger, um, somebody who was a bit of a Walter Mittie character, I suppose. I think that's the best way I could describe him. Um and we were glad that he went to his friend's house that night and we went to ours. And when we were called for Richard Yates in uh Fairwater Grove, which is uh where we went, um it was afterwards we stole a car, which is about one o'clock in the morning. So it wasn't the time of the murder occurred. So we we were we were three miles, you know, near two and a half, three miles away from the murder scene uh when Philip Saunders was attacked. And I'll tell you a bit more about that. We had a social worker who is uh an alibi witness, who was never called the trial, which I'll go in a bit detail later, which is Richard Yeats's mother. She was a government worker, she was a social worker, and she remembers we called her out at 11:30 that night because there was a program called the GLAS program. Now, the GLASS program started um, I think it was 9 or 10 minutes after Philip Saunders was attacked. There is no possible way we could have got from the murder scene to her house without anyone seeing us with no blood on us, no money, no nothing. It was just impossible to do. But that was overlooked. You know, the fact is uh the police walked the route, and it takes 26 minutes to walk the route. So that proves we could not have been there at the time allowed. She could prove that we had no blood on our clothes, no money, Darren Hall wasn't with us, and we were we were just normal lads, you know what I mean? Um okay, up to no good. What were you doing there? Well, we called for Richard because we knew we could drive, and um Richard came out with us that night, and we did see a cortina.
SPEAKER_01That was her son.
SPEAKER_00That was her son, yeah. We stole a cortina on the night in question. He was a good friend of Ellis's. I didn't really know Richard Yates. That's the gentleman uh who was uh you know, we went out with that night, and I can remember it was absolutely tipping down with rain, and I only had a track suit on, and I can remember I was subbed, and I gotta be honest with you, I just wanted to get home. It was no fun. Do you know what I mean? It was no fun, the fun had been taken out of it, really. You know, uh I we were drenched. I just you know, so we we did steal a car, or Richard did, and we went home, and that was it. I never seen Darren Hall then until we got arrested on the 1st of November, where he implicated many of the innocent people, done 14 different confessions through his time in the police station, and then settled on the one that me and Ellis killed Philip Saunders, and that's how the police built the case around Darren Hall's false confession. Yeah, because I remember um I can't remember, was it around the same time or it the the Wayne Darvell case, the um Swansea sex shop murder, where it's got parallels to that, yes, and it's also got parallels with the Lynette White case because if you have a look at the three cases, they also have a common thread of a vulnerable suspect confessing to something they haven't done, and they've built the case around that vulnerable suspect. Yeah, yeah, that's not a coincidence, that was the way it was back in those days, you know, in the 1980s and 1990s. And to give you an example, there are other cases like that, which are not so high profile, which I wrote in my book called The Dossier. There's been 11 proven miscarriages of justice cases in Wales, four still outstanding, waiting to be overturned. And I found another two recently, uh, in 2016 case, and one in 2020, and then still practices which we used to convict us are still being used today. That is very worrying from my perspective, because no lessons have been learned.
SPEAKER_01So I also wanted to uh clarify because the the the the two cases caught often get mixed up, don't they? The Cardiff 3 and the Cardiff News Agent 3, which is your case.
SPEAKER_00So we were the first ones to get convicted. Um we were on remand. Yeah, we were on remand um waiting for trial when the Cardiff 5 case, uh the net white case came about, and everybody knew they were innocent. The same as most people knew we were innocent, but we were in a very difficult position, you know. We were out on the night in question. The same with the Cardiff 5 boys, because they had been in trouble with the police before, you know, we were all up against it, you know, two separate cases, but all share that common thread of our vulnerable suspect implicating their co-accused after police pressure.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, and just sort of leaping forward years, you know, obviously in the in the Lynette White case, it turned out to be this uh Jeffrey Gaffour who was he was he a punter, was he uh one of her clients?
SPEAKER_00Allegedly was a punter, and he said he killed uh over 30 pounds because he wouldn't give him the 30 pounds back. And um obviously, you know, I gotta be fair to the police. Uh, when they reopened that case, uh, I was very skeptical, first of all, but the forensic evidence, I mean, they'd done a damn good job on that case. We've got to we've got to give credit where credit is due. They did catch the real killer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, didn't they peel away wallpaper or something or found found DNA under the it was um they peeled they peeled the paint together uh uh back in in the flat in St.
SPEAKER_00James's Street, and they peeled back wallpaper and stuff, and it was DNA on the wall there, and they matched it to Gaffa. How they matched it to Gaffor was very um clever because what they did, they they searched the national database, and there was a 14 or 15-year-old boy who had a partial match, but he wasn't alive when that happened, so they knew he was a relative of his who can who committed this crime. I mean, fantastic forensic work, and a woman called Angela Gallup, who's probably the leading expert, uh, did a fantastic job, and so did the police, to be fair to them. I think we've got to give credit where credit's due, and they apologize. My beef with South Wales Police, more than anything, is there is five very high-profile cases in Wales. Yeah, there's a not so high profile. They've reopened four of them, but they refuse to open mine, and I find that very um not just annoying, I think it's an insult to the victim's family because that they at the very least should open it up for them. If they don't want to open it for us, because they might open up a can of worms, and more evidence is going to come out about the the the heavy-handed tactics. That's what they're worried about, I think. Um they should put that to a side and think of the victim's family. Now, I've been lucky I've met the victim's family uh in a in a TV documentary a couple of years ago with Rafael Rowe, and they accepted that they believed that I didn't do this crime, that all of us didn't do it. And it was a very emotional meeting, and I promised that I would do something to try and catch the real killer. And at the moment, I'm I'm in the process of I've launched a petition online to reopen the case on change.org. Okay, I uh you know, called reopen the Philip Saunders Murder, murder case, and I I've sent out the reasons why we need it to be reopened. I'm doing a demonstration on the 20th of July, which is the day we were wrongly convicted 39 years 38 years ago, um, outside um one of the police stations, just to highlight and show that we gotta think of the victim's family here because a lot of people recognise the miscarriage of justice, but they don't recognise the fact that is the primary victims are Philip Saunders' family. I've never lost sight of that. Every time I've gone on TV, every time I've done an interview, I always talk about the victim's family. Because if that was my father, my son, or brother, I would want the real person behind bars. And yes, it does bug me that the fact is there's a killer still out there, still free, to probably kill again. And who knows who else is in danger because I've been a big voice over the years.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, he he's also kind of to blame for you spending 11 years in prison, I guess, you know.
SPEAKER_00Although yes, but I'm the secondary victim. I I want to stress that I'm the secondary victim. The first victim, you know, the the primary victim as is Philip Saunders' family. But yes, you are correct. There's two sets of victims here, which is what I check out in the petition. But I I feel I feel saddened that after all this time, South Wales police are still putting obstacles in my way when all I want to do is catch the real killer and behind bars. It's not a witch end against South Wales police. I want accountability. I mean, there were police officers who've done serious wrongs in our case who were allowed off the hook. I've wrote about it in numerous books. They've never challenged me. And the reason why they haven't challenged me, because they know I'm telling the truth. There's a lot of evidence which didn't come out at the civil trial because they settled out of court. They tried to make out that I settled out of court, but I didn't.
SPEAKER_01Can I just um, you know, for anyone listening, just uh go briefly over the the Phillip Saunders case itself. So he was a he was a guy who owned several news agents kios or news newspaper kiosks in the central Cardiff. And on that night, uh he uh sort of collected the takings. He's supposed to have about 500 pounds in cash on him, and he was walking back to his he lived in Canton, which I don't I don't know the geography of Cardiff too much, but he was he was in he lived in Canton, stopped in the pub on the way home, and was apparently attacked sort of right outside his house or in the garden.
SPEAKER_00Yes, he was. There was a neighbour uh who actually saw one person and give a description to the police of a six-foot-tall guy uh with a limp. Well, obviously that didn't fit the narrative of me, Ellis, or Darren Hall, and that witness went out the window, and I her name was Kim Rumble. I'll never forget her statement because it was so damning. And they'd done a post-up even after they arrested us, they put the poster out what she gave of the description, so they knew it wasn't us, but um that went by the wayside. But in the second statement, that she they tried to get her to retract what she had said and said, Well, I had glasses on, I I I might I'm I only did see one person. I stick to the one person, but I can't give it any more description than that because I didn't wear my glasses. Now that that's this is the pressure of the police going round because we didn't fit the the narrative of what she was saying. She knew what she thought, and she's she was uh contacted by the BBC a couple of years ago, and she said, I don't want to get involved in the case, but I stand by my original statement that there was one person who had dark curly hair, was six foot tall. Well, I'm only five foot five, Alex is five foot four. I think Darren might be about five foot eight, five foot nine, but they were looking for one person, not three.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right. Okay, and um what age, what sort of age were the three of you back then?
SPEAKER_00Darren always was eighteen. I think, no, seventeen, I think. Seventeen or eighteen. Uh I was I was the oldest, I was nineteen, and Ellis was eighteen as well. Um I I can recall go when when I was arrested, I was nine, yeah, was nineteen, yeah. That is correct. I just wanted to check it.
SPEAKER_01Give people a bit of an idea, clarity. Um and also this this might be a bit of a sensitive thing, but I I I read that your your daughter died while you were in custody.
SPEAKER_00Your your yes, I was on remand waiting for trial when they when we were charged. As you can imagine, I'm 19 years of age, mortified that I'm in prison for something I haven't done. And then I had a special visit from the chaplain who told me that my daughter had died, and my sister came and told me, and I just could not believe it. I mean, it was a few weeks later that my wife decided to walk out on me, and bearing in mind she was only 18 at the time. Um, I was very angry, she didn't stand by me. But you know, looking at it from with a mature head on and years later, what would I have done? You know, so she was only young. She had a brother inside, Ellie Sherwood, she had a husband inside, and we'd lost our daughter.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that was your daughter was only a few months old, or she was three months old, she died of a cob death, yes. It was highly unbearable. I mean, to be in prison, you know, it's a it's an awful thing at any age or time, but it'd be in prison at that time, even worse. Um just on that did you did your you know, your first wife, did you you know, did you ever sort of speak to her later on or when you came out or or did you sort of continue?
SPEAKER_00I've spoken to her since I've come out, but it's a very cordial relationship and it was very difficult, you know what I mean? Um I I had an older I had an older son when I when I came out as well, he was 13, and my mother ended up bringing him up for various reasons. Uh, I don't want to proportion any blame or anything, but he went to live up with my mother when he was six years of age. I felt she could have done a bit better. You know, there was things she could have done differently. Um, same as I could have done diff things differently on the 19 question. I should have been home with her and the children, you know, there's no doubt about that. And uh I hold my hands up to that, you know. But I I just think you know there was a few mistakes made on her part as well. And uh it's it's very difficult. I haven't seen her for many years, but uh you know, I do understand her plight because she was only young as well. I think we've got to take that on board.
SPEAKER_01So do you just um so obviously in your case, Darren Hall made, like you say, several different confessions, but in one of them he he fingered you and Ellis, um and then you just got roped into it, and the police sort of uh decided you three would fit the bill, and they and they sort of well you you would say they fitted up evidence to to get you know to get you three of you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, let me take you through the evidence they had, because it's very significant, you know, for the for the people who were gonna watch this, you know what I mean, and and sort of take them through it. There was no forensic evidence linking us to the crime, which is extraordinary when you consider Philip Saunders was battered about the head five times with an alleged shovel or a blunt instrument, so the police said, and yet not one of us had any blood on us. That now that's an indication for starters that we were innocent. You know, this is what I would argue. Now, you have Tim Rumble who's saying she only saw one person. So, how did one person turn into three? Then, when we were in the police station, a police officer alleges he overheard a conversation between me and Ellis Sherwood, and it was quite an incriminating conversation, and it went something like this being on Roman means nothing, Ellis supposed to say to me. And I was supposed to write, well, why don't you tell him what happened? And Ellis was supposed to write, well, if all wasn't grassing us, we wouldn't be in this predicament. But that conversation never took place. The only conversation which took place was my wife was arrested, she was heavily pregnant, I was scared about her, and I was asking Ellis what is going to happen to us. I've never been in the police station before, I didn't know what to expect. So that was the only so that that was the other bit of evidence to corroborate Darren Hall. Then we when we were um within the police station, we got we got released on we got arrested November the 1st, released on November the 3rd, and re-arrested on the 10th. With the and the police said they got um further evidence from a number of witnesses. Well, these number of witnesses, there was four or five of them, Christopher Chick, Helen Morris, there was um I'm just trying to think now, uh um John Chapman was our witness, uh, but there was a few other witnesses, uh uh Rick Robert Connie Bear, I remember, and they all said that they seen us in town spending money from the robbery, and we boasted to them that and all this. There's only one problem with that explanation. Ellis Sherwood was arrested on the Wednesday, they alleged have seen us in town, and he was in the magistrates' court and didn't get released till the afternoon. So, how could he be seeing Christopher Chick, Helen Morris, and these witnesses when he was in the police, when he was in the courthouse underneath the cells? So, you know, that proved again, you know, that this was another nonsense. But nevertheless, the CPS decided to charge us. Um, while we were on remand, there was uh an inmate who was in serious trouble with the police, uh impersonating a police officer. Um I think he got done for sexual offences as well, and he gave false evidence saying that would confess to him when he was on remand. Now, anyone who knows the prison system knows. Anyone who's on Route 43, as they call them, the sex offenders or anything like that, you're not allowed anywhere near them. There's about four or five officers around them at any one time, and you're not in the same place. So it was impossible, but nevertheless, that was the kind of evidence they used. So to sum up all the evidence, they had Darrenal's 14 confessions, they had Stuart Lewis, the police officer, alleging the confession outside the cells. You had four or five witnesses who said two of them said they seen us in town spending money when Elishou was already locked up in the police cells, and three of them alleges that they think they confessed while he was on remand, uh, which is untrue. There was also a prison officer, uh a dishonest prison officer, uh, who alleges that um Dad and Hall confessed to him. Um, well, how could Dan Hall confess to him when he had already confessed in the first place? And then there was a very strange incident which occurred. When we got all the depositions from the prosecution, there was a false confession made by this prison officer that we feel again, and it came from uh the gatehouse. And the only thing it wasn't, it wasn't signed by him, but it looked like they were trying to set us up with another confession as well. And when that prison officer was spoken about that by the Thames Valley Police, which I'll explain a bit more about, you know, got involved later on. He said, You don't recall that conversation. Well, somebody wrote it down, you know. So that was the evidence against us. There was no witnesses who'd seen us at the crime scene, we had no blood on our clothes, we didn't fit into the description, they were looking for one person. Um, this was just disaster.
SPEAKER_01I I read that uh you know, because of what happened to your daughter, you were kind of in no fit state to defend yourself during the trial. And it did it, was it a bit of a blur? Did you suddenly sort of find yourself found guilty and you still, you know?
SPEAKER_00I I remember the trial very well, and I I was still in shock, you know. My daughter died in the march as we went on to trial in the June, and I was still trying to come to terms with losing my daughter uh and being wrongfully imprisoned. I bearing in mind I was only 19. I was you know, I know I know I was out doing little things, but this is this is a big step up. We're talking murder, we're not talking allowing yourself to be carried in a stolen vehicle, you know, we're talking serious stuff here. And I clung on to the hope that innocent people do not get convicted. I don't know why I had held that view, but I still held it. And when I went in the witness box, I can remember the judge saying to me, uh, you called Darren Hall a bungalow. Can you explain what you mean when you say he's a bungalow? Well, that was my way of explaining there was something wrong with him. I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a you know, I didn't know, I just knew there was something wrong with him. So I I piped up, he had fuck all upstairs, and that's what I said. That was the exact words I used, and the jury burst out laughing, and so did the judge. I said, as a matter of fact, he got nothing downstairs either, but there's another that's another matter. But that was my way of trying to describe. Now, I can describe at 19 years of age that Darren Hall there was something wrong with him. How didn't the police? He was very and the other key piece of evidence, which we didn't know at the time, two pieces of key evidence. The police officer had made up confessions outside the cells before, but that wasn't gonna come up until 11 years later. Darren Hall had confessed the crimes he hadn't done before. The Crown Prosecution knew that, and so did the police. They kept all that away from the jury, that was never disclosed. Had that been disclosed to the jury, this case would have never got off the ground.
SPEAKER_01But that's not I saw an interesting line. So fast forwarding if you write to 2015, you know, the South Wales police brought out their own report into their own investigation, which is a bit of an internal uh report, which um one of the things they said was that um the management, treatment, and care of prisoners and witnesses is now a world away from where it was in 1987 because of pace. But the Police and Criminal Evidence Act came into force in January 1986. So PACE should have been, you know, your case was under pace. And why they are saying, Oh, well, everything's different now, because you know, unless they didn't, well, they weren't they were completely ignoring pace at the time.
SPEAKER_00Well, let me give you an example. When the Thames Valley Police came in many years later, when the Criminal Cases Review Commission reviewed my case, there were 115 breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. So, what are they talking about? Right, yeah. 115. Now that is not a mistake. Now, you can accept one or two because it was just coming in. I accept that, not 115. That is a fragrant abuse of power. That is misfeatance in a public office where they totally disregarded the rights of others. I was hankered for long periods of time in the police station to desks, to hot radiators. I was being abused, they were telling me I was gonna get 20 years and I and they should bring back hanging for people like me. I was I was so damaged when I first got released um before the second arrest, I ended up in the mental hospital because I was so damaged by it. Yeah, I thought I was really in a terrible state.
SPEAKER_01And what about Darren Hall's confessions? Were were they taped or videotaped?
SPEAKER_00Um nothing was taped, nothing at all.
SPEAKER_01Okay, because obviously that would have been nowadays, it would have been videotaped, and you would see uh presumably he was sort of just cajoled and intimidated until he finally confessed and started sort of making up these confessions.
SPEAKER_00Um well, this is this is what happened. This happened in the Cardiff 5 case, you know, with um Stephen Miller. Then you look at the Darvell brothers, the same thing happened with them. I mean, three cases in South Wales within the short circumference of Wales, and they all feel that common thread that they built a case around a vulnerable suspect. I mean, surely your should have been ringing from there, you know.
SPEAKER_01Can I just you how you how you uh how your 11 years in prison, how did you sort of mentally go through? You know, presumably there was the shock of being convicted, and then were you in sort of depression for a long time and then eventually decided, right, I'm gonna fight this, I'm gonna campaign.
SPEAKER_00Well, for the first for the first um well, I got to I I got shipped out from Cardiff prison to one of the top security prisons in the country, which is Long Latin, and it's one of the most dangerous prisons in the country, you know, or you know, it's what they call a dispersal prison. There were seven murders when I was in that prison, inmates on inmates. That's how dangerous it was. You know, I saw people die. I mean, I was depressed, I went on the drinking, the drugs, the illicit alcohol. I couldn't cope, I just could not cope with it. I just didn't know where I was gonna go with this. But one day, there were two incidents which occurred this one week. I met another innocent people called the Carl Bridgewater, Vincent Teckie. Right, yeah, and some of the Birmingham six in there as well. And they pulled me to the side and they said, Why are you smashing up yourself? Why are you getting angry? Why don't you write letters and do something constructive? And as me go, Well, I can't read or write. What am I supposed to do? And I had some more drugs that day, and I went back into my cell, it was about 12 o'clock. I woke up at 10 past eight thinking it was only uh two o'clock, and I went back to go to the workshop and I asked the prison officers, could they take me back to the workshop so I could do my job? And they started laughing at me, so I was getting a bit irrated then, like you know. So they told me to look at the time. I realized because I took so many drugs, I'd been out of it for seven hours. I went upstairs, I went on my bunk, and I cried my eyes out. I knew I was in trouble, and I thought, what am I gonna do? I had I had the Birmingham Six ringing in my ear, I had the Calbridge Water Boys ring in my ear, what they were saying as well. And I thought, well, I've got to come off these drugs, what am I gonna do? So I bravely went down to um the psychiatrist and psychologists, and I said, Listen, probably gonna I'm gonna get into trouble for this, but I'm on this drugs, that drugs, this and that, and I told them everything. And fair clay, there was a woman called Fiona, she never judged me. Um they helped me, and I got off the drugs, I got off everything, but then anger came, and oh by Christ, it came in waves, and I thought to myself, you were not doing this to me, you were not, I am not doing a life sentence for somebody else's crying. So I enlisted on English and maths, and I thought, right then, I'm gonna learn to read and write. Then I was on a mission, then then I started learning to read and write, and within six months.
SPEAKER_01Not properly, no.
SPEAKER_00I could read or write, but not very good, you know, not enough to formulate a letter to an end. Yeah, I was it was really bad, you know. My writing was terrible, you know. But I passed three exams within six months. They taught me how to read and write. There was a good woman teacher called Pat, I can't remember the last name, but she was brilliant in Gartery prison. She showed me how to do things. I passed my English level one, two, and three. I got 90%. Then I started on the maths English. I had no qualifications when I went into prison, my nothing. And I'd done a city and girls power level one, and then I started studying law. I picked up my first archibalds, and oh, that's when the turning point for me. I turned into the prison lawyer studying prison law, human rights law, uh, criminal law, uh experts on confessions. I was looking at Judith Ward's case 1993, why people confess the crimes they haven't done. Then I started out of bigger understanding. Then I started campaigning, and my family started campaigning, and then there was a stumbling block. I got stopped from journalists from visiting me. I had journalists visiting me who were going to make a documentary, and the Home Secretary Jack Straw came came up and said, and the governor of the prison said I'm not allowed to speak to journalists. So I took him to court. This is my first legal case now under Article 10, the right to free speech. And I went out in the high court.
SPEAKER_01Was that robustness or one of those programs?
SPEAKER_00It was um the BBC Week in Week Out program they tried to stop um come you know, making, and that was the one which helped to get me free. They found all the new evidence. Oh, I see, and they were trying to stop it. So by everything by accident design, they were trying to stop me proving my innocence. So I went on hunger strike, I went on protests with other other other inmates who were protesting their innocence.
SPEAKER_01Was it two of the three who were really campaigning? The other two sort of taking it, or they they well you I was the one, really.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Darren wasn't in a very good position, you know. He was um he was the most vulnerable, and I said I said to myself, all three of us are gonna get our names cleared because I knew Darren was innocent. There's no possible way he could have done it, you know, because of the time allowed and where we were on the night in question. And I and I made a vow that I was gonna get all three of us out, and this is what I did or tried to do. Uh, Ellis was a hell of an addict, he couldn't do much, so a lot of the burden fell on me and my family, you know. And yes, I did fight hard. I did have it difficult in prison. The prison officers, some of them were really horrible towards me. Mind you, I was horrible towards some of them because I resented being in their prison for something I hadn't done. And I was quite arrogant with the law, yes. I mean, I used to say to them, don't be doing that, that's unlawful. You know, and I would tell him, you know, if you do that, I'll take you to court. And I did take them to court. So I won uh my first case, uh, Morris case, said that journalists can visit prisoners, and uh then there was a change of government, which is the Labour government, come in, and Jack Shaw appealed it to the appeal courts and they won it back. I, in dramatic circumstances, a couple of months later, got out on bail pending a new appeal. I appealed it to the House of Lords, and although I was already out, the journalists could visit prisoners because of my legal my my House of Lords challenge. And five law lords said the two home secretaries were in the wrong for stopping me from having journalists because it it it it was something to do with the safety valve of investigative journalism, you know, because it was journalists who got the Birmingham 6 out and and the Carl Bridgewater, so they played a significant part, and under Article 10, they made a big issue of it. So I made legal history. I don't know how the hell I'd done that, but I managed to do it. Yeah. But what happened was in 1996, to my horror, I don't know whether that's the right word to say horror, I was shocked that they went in to interview Darren Hall and he told the truth. And he actually admitted that he put me put us in for something we never done, and he explained the best he could in his way why he did what he did, and he said about the police putting pressure on him and all this. Well, I never I never for once thought I would hear him tell the truth, and that was on national television that went out on. So you can imagine my it was a nice shock, but it you know, I couldn't believe it. And then all the witnesses admitted he was held in prison then. Yes, in 96, yes.
SPEAKER_01But so the the the documentary makers were allowed to interview him in prison, yeah, but they weren't allowed to interview me.
SPEAKER_00It was hypocritical at the time.
SPEAKER_01Even that alone wasn't enough to get you a new trial.
SPEAKER_00Well, it the CCRC was set up in 1997, the evidence was sent to the Home Office in '96. They sat on it for a year and did nothing with the evidence until the CCRC was set up, and then the CCRC called in an outside police force, which I was dead against at the time, as you can imagine. I didn't trust the police, so why would I want to trust another police force? But to my surprise, um, it was a guy called Alan Partridge. I don't know whether somebody was taking the Mickey or something, but when they said Alan Partridge was going to investigate my case, I thought, oh God, here we go, you know. Uh, somebody's taking the Mickey because of the comedian and whatever. But this was no joke. He put that report which landed in my cell was one of the most damning reports of the South Wales police which has ever been produced. He was from the Thames Valley Police, and he said he said that Darren Hall was uh abused in the police station, the witnesses were coerced. I mean, the report was damning. I knew then that we were gonna we were gonna get our names cleared, it was just so strong. And we had three experts who looked at Darren Hall and they explained why Darren Hall confessed to something he hadn't done, and we had the leading experts, Kingsley for Johnson, who's the leading expert on confessions, you know what I mean. He still is the leading expert, and when you look at it from that point of view, I just knew we were gonna get our names cleared, you know. We went for bail, everybody laughed and thought we weren't gonna get bail, and we did get bail, and we were released in traumatic circumstances in 1998.
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah. So that that day you walked out of Gartery, um, what was that like? Were you are you prepared yourself, or is it always a do you think it was a bit of a shock to the system again?
SPEAKER_00I think it was a bit of a shock because I can remember the day before I was lying on my on my bed and I found out I was going on the next day by Radio 5 Live. Um I heard Phil Parry, who was the presenter of the programme, the 96 program, which all the witnesses retracted and Darren all done uh you know his retraction, and I couldn't believe it. I just could not believe it. I mean, uh the doors were banging, the prison doors were banging, everybody shouting, Michael Bryan's going home tomorrow. At last, you know what I mean? Uh some of the prison officers weren't really happy, but uh that was another story. But like when I when I came up the cell that night, I knew I had a big grin from ear to ear, and I phoned my lawyer. Uh Gareth Pierce was my lawyer. I know Gareth Pierce done a lot for us. Um I wasn't the easiest of clients, put it that way. I wanted out yesterday, and uh yes, uh I gave them all a hard time, even my campaigners. But it's because of so much pain I was in, you know, mentally and physically. Prison does a lot of damage to you, which I found out the hard way. You know, I thought I was okay when I first came out.
SPEAKER_01Uh and just uh going back to on the on the subject of apologies. Did did Darren Hall ever apologize to you?
SPEAKER_00Or do you know um yeah, Darren did apologize? He he he couldn't have been more apologetic, you know what I mean. Um, the problem with Darren Hall, the only issue I have with him now is when I look back at the interview we did on the BBC Week in, week out program, he said he did say that the police put pressure on him, but he also did say he wanted something for himself because he was the big I am, so he knew what he was doing, right? That's what I find really difficult to get around. I understand people press for whatever reasons, but that that's the sticking point for me. I don't hold no grudges because I used to, and all I felt was bitterness. I don't want to be bitter anymore, and the bitterness is all gone. I'm not I I'm angry still, but I'm not bitter. I think I think that's very important because if you're gonna move on with your life and you want to help other people, you have to get rid of that bitterness.