True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Part VII

Murder of Lesley Molseed

Lesley Molseed (14 August 1964 – 5 October 1975), born Lesley Susan Anderson, was an English schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered on 5 October 1975 in West Yorkshire. Stefan Kiszko (/ˈkiːʃkoʊ/ KEESH-koh), an intellectually disabled man who lived near Molseed's residence in Greater Manchester, was wrongly convicted of her murder and served sixteen years in prison before his conviction was overturned. His mental and physical health had deteriorated in prison, and he died twenty-two months after his release in February 1992 – before he could collect the money owed to him for his wrongful conviction. Kiszko's ordeal was described by one British MP as "the worst miscarriage of justice of all time."

Evidence exonerating Kiszko in the crime was suppressed by three members of the investigation team, who were initially arrested in 1993 before charges were dropped. In 2006, a DNA match led to Ronald Castree being charged with Molseed's murder; he was convicted the following year and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Murder

Lesley Molseed was born on 14 August 1964 and lived with her family – mother April, stepfather Danny, and three siblings – at 11 Delamere Road, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, part of the Turf Hill council estate. Known as 'Lel' to her family, Lesley was born with a congenital condition that included cardiac complications. Despite open-heart surgery at age 3, Lesley was undersized and frail with a reduced mental capacity for her age.

On the early afternoon of Sunday 5 October 1975, Lesley was sent by her mother to a local shop on nearby Ansdell Road to buy bread and air freshener. The Molseed children had a rota for chores and for Lesley, such an errand would have been routine (as it was for most school-aged children from urban/estate households in that era). Wearing a blue raincoat, carrying a blue canvas bag and £1 in cash, Lesley was last seen by witnesses in Stiups Lane, a pedestrian alleyway leading towards the shop. When she failed to return home, her concerned mother sent her siblings out to look for her. Her stepfather also joined the search but by 3:00 p.m., with no sign of her, and no evidence that she had arrived at the shops nor been encountered since, the parents contacted the police. A search around Rochdale and the adjacent M62 motorway was immediately begun.

Three days later, around 08:00 on 8 October, Lesley's body was found next to a remote section of the TransPennine railway near Rishworth Moor in West Yorkshire. Lying face down in tall grass on a natural turf shelf 30 ft (9 m) above the carriageway, she was discovered by a driver who had stopped in a nearby layby. Lesley had been stabbed twelve times in the upper shoulder and back: one wound had penetrated her heart. There were no defensive wounds, and a time of death could not be calculated. None of her clothing or possessions was disturbed, but her money was missing and semen was found on her clothing and underwear. Other evidence collected by forensics included foreign fibers, traces of dry wallpaper paste, and 379 other objects in the vicinity.

Stefan Kiszko

Stefan Kiszko was a 23-year-old local tax clerk of Eastern European descent. His father, Iwan Kiszko, had emigrated from Soviet Ukraine and his mother, Charlotte (née Slavič), from Yugoslavia (modern-day Slovenia) after the Second World War, with both parents working in the cotton mills of Rochdale. In 1970, Kiszko's father died of a heart attack in front of his wife and son.

Kiszko came to the attention of the murder investigation when four girls — Maxine Buckley (aged 12), Catherine Burke (16), Debbie Brown (13), and Pamela Hind (18)  —  together claimed that he had indecently exposed himself to them the day before the murder. One claimed he had exposed himself to her a month after the murder, on Guy Fawkes Night. West Yorkshire Police quickly formed the view that Kiszko matched their idea of the likely killer, even though he had never been in trouble with the law and had no social life beyond his mother and aunt.