(1) According to the Times of September 15, 1994, Rachel Nickell was stabbed no fewer than 49 times.
(2) The Times, September 15, 1994, page 1.
(3) Yard clashes with CPS on Stagg case, by Michael Horsnell, published in the Times, September 16, 1994, page 1.
(4) It wasn’t until I read Sagar’s book in 2001 during the course of my ongoing researches into various unrelated matters that I realised that there was a connection with Ram. For the record, I lived in Leeds for several years in the late seventies/early eighties, for most of that time I worked at the British Rail depot at Holbeck. One morning when I was working some unearthly shift I switched on my radio and heard that Lee had appeared at Leeds Crown Court where he had pleaded guilty. The hearing was to continue after lunch. I made my way to the court complex at the Town Hall and sat in the public gallery where I listened to Lee’s advocate put forward as much mitigation as he could for a man who had admitted causing the deaths of twenty-six people. I didn’t catch his name, or don’t think I did. The two things I remember most about the hearing are that Lee looked a pathetic creature, and that someone else had the same thought. The public gallery was fairly crowded, although nothing like as crowded as might have been expected. At one point, a member of this crowd, an elderly woman, turned to me and remarked that Lee was indeed a pathetic looking creature: “He’s got a withered arm, love,” she said.
(5) At the time of the arson attack, Tommie Hastie was serving a short prison sentence for burglary; he was immediately released on compassionate grounds. On July 18, 1980, a month after Lee’s arrest, the 36 year old habitual criminal was killed in a motor cycle accident.
(6) In his book, * Sagar reproduces an anonymous postcard sent to Edith Hastie in December 1978, a year before the fire. The writer, who threatened to bomb the family, turned out to be an elderly woman.
* Hull, Hell and – Fire: The Extraordinary Story of Bruce Lee, by Ron Sagar, published by Highgate Publications, Beverley, (1999).
(7) Sagar, Hull, Hell And Fire, page 36, (ibid).
(8) Sagar, Hull, Hell and – Fire, page 158, (ibid).
(9) According to the January 21, 1981 report of his conviction, in the Times, Lee’s mother was a prostitute; Lee himself had spent much of his youth in care where, he claimed, he was introduced to homosexual practices.
(10) As Lee was not much older than Charlie Hastie it remains to be seen if this can be construed as wilful corruption of the young or mutual debasement. The acts carried out were not specified although the central focus was a local public toilet.
The price Lee paid for perverted sex was 50p to a pound a go; this seems to have been more in the way of subtle blackmail/demanding money than a contractual arrangement, [Sagar, Hull, Hell And Fire, page 28, (op cit)].
(11) Sagar, Hull, Hell And Fire, page 50, (ibid).
(12) Sutcliffe was arrested in Sheffield by chance on January 2, 1981; he had a prostitute in his car who would undoubtedly have become his next victim if the two police officers concerned hadn’t run a check on his number plates. They were false.
His trial was moved to the Central Criminal Court; it opened May 5; he pleaded not guilty; there was never any suggestion that he was not the Yorkshire Ripper, the only issue was his state of mind. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General himself. Sutcliffe had claimed to have been doing “God’s work” but the jury was unconvinced and he was convicted on all counts. He may though have been telling the truth because he was later transferred to one of the special hospitals.
(13) This remains the case. A Yahoo! search by the current writer made July 12, 2001 led to the following results:
“Peter William Sutcliffe”: 18 pages
“Peter Sutcliffe”: 1 site + 603 matches
“Bruce George Peter Lee”: zero!
(14) In my own recollection there were other articles besides the Sunday Times investigation, probably from the local press. There may also have been a TV programme in which an important witness, a security guard, was allegedly pressurised to alter the date of a siting.
In the Sunday Times, August 8, 1982, an “Insight” article, laden with innuendo and not much else, names Roger Singleton, a former security man, who was a key witness in the Selby Street fire case and suggests that he was pressurised by detectives who were investigating Sagar’s operation.
(15) Ram’s campaigners have complained that their hero was not permitted to give evidence at either of his appeals, but the two cases are not comparable. Lee was convicted of all his crimes primarily on his own admission, whereas the weight of evidence against Ram is overwhelming. It was possible that Lee (who was borderline retarded) might have retracted all or some of his confessions, but nothing Ram could have said under oath at his trial or any time since would in any way throw the slightest reasonable doubt on his guilt.
(16) REGINA v. LEE (BRUCE), published in THE WEEKLY LAW REPORTS 1984, VOLUME 1, page 581.
(17) Regina v. Lee (Bruce), page 579, (ibid).
(18) REGINA v BRUCE GEORGE PETER LEE, original transcript of Court of Appeal judgment, 9th December, 1983, pages 6-7.
(19) Regina v Lee, original transcript, page 64, (ibid).
(20) Regina v Lee, original transcript, page 65, (ibid).
(21) Regina v Lee, original transcript, page 25, (ibid).
(22) Bruce Lee case, published in the Sunday Times, December 11, 1983, page 2.
(23) The Times, October 7, 1987, page 3.
(24) Sunday Times, March 14, 1982, page 17.
(25) “Ognall was on his feet for less than a minute”: Sunday Times, March 14, 1982, page 17; the claim was repeated in the March 20, 1983 edition at page 7.
(26) These are known as TICs and may not even be mentioned when the case comes to court. If for argument’s sake Lee had confessed to shoplifting or a minor burglary it would have been pointless to charge him with such relatively trivial further offences.
(27) The Times, January 21, 1981, page 3.
(28) The case for retrying Bruce Lee by Roger Ratcliffe, published in the Sunday Times, March 20, 1983, page 7.
(29) DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS, Fourth Edition, (numerous authors), published by the American Psychiatric Association, Washington, DC, (1994), pages 40-1.
(30) HOWARD HUGHES – THE MONSTER WHO MURDERED SOPHIE HOOK by Brian Marriner, published in Master DETECTIVE, February 1997, pages 16-23.
(31) Sagar, Hull, Hell And Fire, page 128, (op cit).
(32) According to the Times, September 25, 1980, page 3, Lee’s youngest victim – in June 1973 – was said to have been a six month old baby; the eldest, a 95 year old man. This latter was though a resident of Wensley Lodge; Lee’s conviction for the Wensley Lodge fire was subsequently quashed, (see above).
(33) The case for retrying Bruce Lee, (op cit).
(34) See for example The crime figures scandal: Watching the detectives: how the police cheat in fight against crime, by Nick Davies, published in the Guardian, [CD-ROM], March 18, 1999, page 12.
(35) Like the man who broke into the Queen’s bedroom; the President of the United States receiving oral sex from an intern in the White House, and so on.
(36) I refuse to use the sick euphemism “interviewed” or declensions thereof.
(37) And the probable killer; he was later to commit suicide.
(38) THE CONFAIT CONFESSIONS, by Christopher Price & Jonathan Caplan, published by Marion Boyars, London, (1977). page 30. On page 39 (see below), it is claimed that Lattimore had an IQ of 66, which equates to a mental age of 12. The difference is significant, but for the sake of argument we will agree that Lattimore was of low intelligence and suggestible.
(39) Price & Caplan, The Confait Confessions, page 39, (ibid).
(40) Apology for former police chief over Confait book, published in the Times, April 25, 1980, page 4.
Former Detective Chief Superintendent Alan Jones accepted an apology re allegations in The Confait Confessions which implied that he had given perjured evidence at the trial “or was in some way guilty of corruption”.
(41) Police Questioning and the Judges’ Rules, by Gerald Abrahams, published by Oyez, London, (May 1964), page 15.
(42) Abrahams, Police Questioning and the Judges’ Rules, page 17, (ibid).
(43) Abrahams, Police Questioning and the Judges’ Rules, page 9, (ibid). The author cites R v Bass, 1953.
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