Investigating Miscarriages of Justice Thoroughly – Part Two

Hostilities Cease:

There had been no love lost between Yusef Abdullahi and South Wales Police. He didn’t like Lynette White, believing that she had grassed on him previously, but he didn’t hate her. And as for his opinions of South Wales Police, they were unprintable, but like everyone else he was appalled by her murder, particularly the manner of it. He was prepared to forget that antagonism while Lynette’s murderer was on the loose and tried to help as best he could.

Stephen Miller tried even harder. He didn’t like police either, but this was different – vastly so. John and Ronnie Actie were no fans of South Wales Police either. All four had been in their sights for different reasons previously, but this crime was beyond the pale. Everyone was outraged by it and wanted the murderer brought to justice. Mutual hostilities with the police could resume after the crime was solved. Sadly nobody had useful information and police refused to believe it.

Tony Paris just did not fit. His inclusion was absurd. He was a shoplifter who fainted at the sight of blood. The Cardiff Five knew each other, but didn’t socialise. They were later united by a bond each would prefer had never happened – victims of one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British history.

A Horrendous Crime:

In 1988 the then head of the inquiry Detective Chief Superintendent John Williams claimed that residents of the Butetown district of Cardiff had erected a wall of silence that protected the murderer. Police developed case theories – utterly wrong ones. The correct solution of this crime did not lie in Butetown or in the prostitute community either.

Thousands of statements were taken, but ten months produced no breakthrough. Tellingly the development of the old port was halted briefly. Such crimes were bad for business. Awful mistakes were made. Both the police and public were guilty of creating the conditions where justice miscarried terribly. The case theories were hopelessly wrong and the public demanded results. Even with the best detectives in the world, working twenty-four/seven it was not possible to solve correctly in 1988.

The murder of Lynette White was a vicious and horrible crime. Jeffrey Gafoor alone was responsible for it, but the list of his victims is extensive. The lives of Lynette’s family were ruined. Terry White died never knowing how close he had come to murdering the wrong man. He confronted John Actie with a gun, but Actie was totally innocent.

Walls Come Tumbling Down:

John Williams was wrong. There was no wall of silence in Butetown. People talked to each other and to police. There were few topics discussed more extensively than Lynette’s murder in Butetown in 1988. The obsession with both Butetown and prostitutes cost everyone dear as neither could solve this crime, because they knew nothing of interest.

Gafoor used prostitutes, but he was unknown among them and he was not a Butetown boy. He was a loner who lived in Cardiff. David Elfer QC characterised Butetown as a community where people carried knives as part of their clothing. It wasn’t like that. Doors were left open as neighbours looked after each other. It was a close-knit community that was appalled by the brutality that a stranger had brought into their lives.

Gafoor fled the scene of his crime and blotted it and the consequences from his mind. Lynette's family went through hell. Innocent men lost a total of sixteen years of their lives. Their families lost those years too as they put their own lives on hold, but their community paid a very high price too.

Butetown was sentenced to a slow lingering death. A once vibrant community was dismantled in the name of progress – punished for a crime committed by a callous stranger. One of the oldest multi-cultural communities in Britain was destroyed – yet another victim of Jeffrey Gafoor and perceptions of members of that community both by police and public too. It is a poignant lesson of the danger of how fixed ideas can cause miscarriages of justice.