Brookes was later tried and convicted, but appealed against the verdict in 1998, saying he could not get a fair trial following publicity about the case, but his appeal was rejected. He said: "Among the information I handed over was evidence the boy told me and a psychiatrist of how he was scared of his stepfather, who would cut out pictures of women from the magazines and stab them with a knife.” Flo's daughter Gail Holford, said: "It was a long hard fight but my mum was always there at the front. The plaque reads: "In loving memory of Lynn Siddons, 16 years old, tragically killed April 3 1978 - deep in our heart you will stay, loved and remembered every day."

I could have said nothing but I chose not to and the support I got from people afterwards was overwhelming and still is.” Read More Related Articles In 1978, 16 year-old Lynn Siddons was murdered on a canal towpath in Derby and her body left hidden in bushes. She had been stabbed 43 times, strangled unsuccessfully, and finally drowned in a puddle. Algae was found in her lungs. A 15 year-old boy was seen by eyewitnesses to leave the crime scene alone, and his age helps to explain why the killer had had so much trouble in killing the girl. The boy, who was recognized by the witnesses, was taken in for questioning, charged with murder, and tried in November. The Derby step-strangler case has the step-son committing the murder and the step-father doing the punishment for it, while the hereditary difference between them is the motive. This case serves as a warning against the bringing up of children by unnatural parents. If Brookes had been present at the murder, this would conflict with the frenzy of the boy in the murder, and since the boy was present and had used the knife himself, this conflicts with the frenzy of such a second party. The evidence is that only one person was involved. And that he was puny.

There is also a palpable tendency nowadays for the police to yield to pressure from the press in the matters of both detection and prosecution, and they are apparently suffering from the media bends. Lynn's mother, Gail Halford, 53, said: "We are really pleased because he would have been a free man if he had won the appeal. Now he must serve his sentence. He deserved what he got." It would be interesting to know what the people of Derby think I should have done. Read More Related Articles Though plainly dangerous, he had been a free man for more than 17 years after he murdered Lynn, and for 15 years during which he was exposed as a child murderer again and again in a mass-circulation national paper. His conviction followed a rare civil suit brought by Lynn's family after police failed to charge him with the murder.

However, his defence collapsed the trial, and he was never convicted. Ever since then, Thatcherist politicians have taken up his example, using "spin" and jaw-flapping measures to scupper public intelligence over matters of national importance while they squander the nation's heritage for their own personal success. After the trial the step-son retracted his claim that his step-father had been involved. The confirmation of Brookes as the killer is the culmination of a lengthy campaign waged by Florence Siddons. At the end of the trial we were just over the moon that we had got justice for Lynn. That was all we ever wanted."The memorial was arranged by British Waterways and is located about two miles from Lynn's home in Sinfin. However, after Roy Brookes was cleared, Mr Chittenden was approached by an MP and asked if he, in any way, could help the distraught family of Miss Siddons. Lynn Siddons did not get justice, and for many years her female relatives turned their need for this on to the step-father, Michael Brookes, who experienced years of persecution with their campaign. He found it increasingly impossible to get employment, and he was willing and open in TV interviews about his situation. Speaking at the time, he said: "Lynn Siddons's family had this incredible resolve and Flo was the driving force behind it all.

I am sure there will be people who will read this and say to themselves ‘the law is the law and he needs to be punished for breaching that confidentiality’.

A Derby woman who spent 18 years campaigning to bring her granddaughter's murderer to justice has died aged 92. The appeal court judges declared that they had "no lurking doubt about the safety of the conviction", which is an astonishing admission, since it means that they had neither instinct nor intelligence for any doubt about it. This would mean that they were not qualified to judge the appeal. He was one of three men to set up Smith Partnership in the 1980s and 18-months ago said goodbye to the courtroom after a long and distinguished career. Miss Siddons's late grandmother, Flo Siddons, campaigned hard to bring Brookes to justice and was handed a string of awards for her tireless work. Lynn's grandmother Florence Siddons, 83, who campaigned to bring her killer to justice, was in court to hear the appeal judges say they had "no lurking doubt" about the safety of 53-year-old Brookes's conviction.

While a motive can be detected in the case of the step-son, it is impossible to find one in the case of Michael Brookes. One would have to imagine one. A detectable motive for the boy using his step-father to carry the blame for the murder is that he was very immature, that he was still dependent on the protection and provision of the parent, and that he was homicidal. He was strongly attached to both his victims, and there is an interesting logic in the matter of this motive, because the physical weakness that is evident in the murder would not only have disappointed the boy's sexual success with the murdered girl, it would also have disappointed his self-esteem as the progeny of the 6 ft. 2 in. giant Michael Brookes, who was not his natural father, and who had not therefore passed his quality of strength to the boy, who must naturally look up to the parent and identify with it. The victims therefore share the same relationship problem for the killer, and they are combined in his motive. In 1991 the three women turned to the civil courts, which are noted for having a cavalier attitude to culpability in criminal cases, and they prosecuted the step-father there. The women saw the frenzy with which they had hounded Brookes for so many years as the explanation for the 43 stab wounds and the messy finish, but this didn't accord with the other part of the story that their case was based on, which was that Brookes had only held the girl and that he had given the knife to his step-son instead. It also highlights the need for the right to appeal against indecent or unreliable decisions made by judges, juries and courts. A defendant must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and there are many jury decisions like this in which this criterion has not been observed. It was only then that Derbyshire Police, who accepted criticism of the way they had handled the case, charged Brookes with the murder. He said: “In the papers the SRA says that by admitting these actions it constituted conduct that is completely unacceptable on the part of a solicitor and they are absolutely right.They are right, what I did was professionally unforgiveable, but I did it because I would not have been able to live with myself knowing that Brookes was out there and could have killed again. His conviction followed a rare civil suit brought by Lynn's family after police decided not to charge him with murder. This episode contains descriptions of crimes and events that some listeners may find disturbing or upsetting, plus there is a reference contained within the episode to a racial slur and the use of a discriminatory term that some may find offensive. It is contained within solely as it forms an integral part of a statement in the overall story canon, is not meant to cause offence, and categorically does not reflect the views of either myself, or the show. The motive for the murder is readily apparent, because teenage girls always look up the age range for sexual and romantic encounters, never down it, and in addition to his age, no doubt the boy's evident puniness and his murderous potential would have added to his unattractiveness for her.