Who was Stefan Kiszko and what happened to him?
STEFAN KISZKO was wrongly incarcerated for 16 years after being found guilty of a crime he didn’t commit in 1976,
His ordeal has been called the worst miscarriage of justice in UK legal history and inspired a storyline on BBC drama Line of Duty.
Who is Stefan Kiszko?
Stefan was a vulnerable man with learning difficulties who was 23 at the time of his arrest.
He had a mental age of just 12 when he was imprisoned.
After his arrest in 1975, tax clerk Stefan was held for seven weeks and did not initially have a solicitor.
He became police’s prime suspect in the Lesley Molseed case after a group of teenage girls came forward and claimed he had exposed himself to them in the past.
They later admitted making up these claims.
What crime was Stefan Kiszko accused of?
Stefan was accused of the murder of Lesley Molseed, a British schoolgirl who disappeared near Rochdale on October 5, 1975.
Lesley lived with her mother April, stepfather Danny and three siblings at the time.
She suffered from a birth condition, which included cardiac complications.
Three days after she disappeared, Lesley’s body was found dumped on Rishworth Moor.
She had been stabbed 12 times and had been sexually assaulted.
On December 21, 1975, police arrested Stefan and he was falsely convicted for Lesley’s murder after he confessed the crime during an investigation.
Stefan’s written was made with no solicitor present and when he was eventually allowed a lawyer, he immediately retracted his “confession”.
Kiszko was still charged and put on trial and, in July 1976, he was sentenced to life in prison at Leeds Crown Court.
Years later Stefan’s mother, Charlotte, contacted the human rights organisation Justice to get help to prove that her son was innocent, leading lawyer Campbell Malone to take over the case.
In 1992 the case was taken back to court and Kiszko was released in April 1994 after it was proved he did not murdered Lesley.
Police had taken samples from Lesley’s clothing which showed her killer had a sperm count and could father a child – something Kiszko could not to due to his hypogonadal diagnosis, which made him sexually incapable.
A police doctor who had examined Stefan after his arrest saw that he was sexually immature and sent a sample showing he had a zero sperm count for examination but, crucially, the evidence was never put before the court.
Fourteen years after Kiszko’s release, police arrested comic book dealer Ronald Castree.
He had been arrested before, in October 2005, for a sex crime but was not charged.
Castree’s DNA matched the sample found on Lesley’s body in 1975 and on November 12, 2007, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Castree is still in prison and is expected to be locked up until at least November 2036.
Where is Stefan Kiszko now?
Stefan was released from prison by the Court of Appeal in February 1992.
Tragically, within 12 months of his release he died of a heart attack, aged 41.
Stefan’s mother died six months later.