The car was sold three days after the murder.ĭetectives knew Rawlinson and the car were suspicious: in police files, he was described as a "good suspect". Rawlinson, one of the men named, had access to a red Fiesta, owned by his sister. It transpired such a robbery had been committed and the details matched those given in the call. Another anonymous caller, who rang six days before the murder, reported both men robbing an elderly woman in the area two weeks earlier. The Guardian has learned of a further link to the red car: two days after the murder, an anonymous caller gave police the names of two men, alleging they were the killers. Marchbank was found next morning by May, her niece and carer, who was then 48. Photograph: Manchester Evening News SyndicationĪnother neighbour had seen the car drive away soon after and gave a good description of three men in the vehicle. Hilda Marchbank was found murdered at her home in Royton, near Oldham, Greater Manchester. Although the car was unoccupied, its engine was running for 15 minutes. Fresh doubts have emerged in recent years about the testing method, about whether the marks are May's fingerprints – and even whether they contained human blood.įor the detectives investigating the murder of Hilda Marchbank, it ought to have been a significant breakthrough: a near neighbour of the victim had seen a red Ford Fiesta outside the victim's house at midnight on the night she was killed in March 1992. May was convicted on the flimsiest of evidence, the campaigners say, comprising mainly three marks, said to be her fingerprints, that allegedly contained her aunt's blood. The witness, George Cragg, has been tracked down by the Guardian 20 years after the killing.Ĭampaigners for May say police seem to have instinctively believed she committed the crime – despite a lack of motive and a dearth of evidence to prove she beat her aunt around the face and suffocated her with her own pillow. The Guardian has also uncovered claims that police tried to persuade a witness to lie, apparently to eliminate other leads from the inquiry and concentrate on building a case against May. In 2001, six years after Marchbank's death, he was killed in a drug-related dispute. Michael Rawlinson, a heroin addict, had convictions for burgling the homes of elderly people. The Guardian has discovered that Greater Manchester police failed to follow up evidence pointing to a man whom police said was a "good suspect", whose name was given to detectives in an anonymous phone call shortly after the murder.
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