Man who died in jail 'could not have killed ex-lover'

A man who died in prison while protesting his innocence of murder was wrongly convicted because vital evidence was not given to his trial, the Court of Appeal was told yesterday.

Information that came to light after the conviction of Harold "Ginger" Williams suggested he could not have killed Margaret Davies, 41, who was found bound, strangled and stabbed at her home in Hereford in January 1977.

Williams, a former coach driver who had three children, died in prison in October 2000 aged 67, three months after the case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

He was given a life sentence at Worcester Crown Court in December 1977 after being convicted of murder. The couple had been having an "on-off" relationship, which had recently ended.

Robert Jukes QC, for Williams, told the appeal judges, Lord Justice Tuckey, Mr Justice Mitting and Sir Brian Smedley, that he could have been freed on licence 13 years before his death if he had said he killed Mrs Davies.

The court was told she died between the evening of Friday 21 January and the afternoon of Sunday 23 January, when her body was discovered. The Crown's case at the trial, said Mr Jukes, was that Williams had killed her between midnight on the Friday and 7am on the Saturday morning; he had alibis for the rest of the time.

But a reinvestigation of the case had turned up a statement by a neighbour who claimed to have seen Mrs Davies at about 2pm on the Saturday. Another neighbour claimed to have seen her at a slightly earlier time, said Mr Jukes.

He told the court: "If these witnesses are, or may be, telling the truth about these sightings ... then in view of the timescale that applied here and the opportunity that the defendant had in this case ... then it could not have been the appellant who actually carried out this killing.'' He added that the circumstantial evidence was "weak and significantly flawed''.

But Martin Wilson QC, opposing the appeal on behalf of the Crown, said that everything pointed to Williams being the murderer "and really no other sensible candidate was suggested".

The judges said they would give their decision this morning.