There were renewed calls last week for a reinvestigation into the alleged wrongful conviction of Eddie Gilfoyle. It was revealed that a former head of Merseyside CID, who led the investigation which ended up with the wrongful conviction of Peter Sullivan, was also accused of suppressing evidence of mistakes into the investigation into the notorious case of a man who was convicted of murdering his eight-and-a-half month pregnant wife in 1992.
The case of Eddie Gilfoyle has featured extensively on the Justice Gap over the years – he spoke at the launch of my book Guilty Until Proven Innocent in 2017. He has always insisted that he was innocent and his wife Paula, who was found hanging in the garage of the family home in 1992, had taken her own life. Gilfoyle, who worked as a hospital porter, was accused of faking her suicide. Concerns were almost immediately raised about the safety of the conviction – notably, an independent investigation handled by detective superintendent Graham Gooch from Lancashire police in in 1994 – see Eric Allison and Simon Hattenstone (here). The Gilfoyle case was seen as a critical test case for the Criminal Cases Review Commission which rejected a second application in 2017 after opening seven years looking at the case (here).
The report by David Brown and Fiona Hamilton in The Times, reveals that the then detective superintendent Thomas Baxter, who led the investigation into the Sullivan case, was also involved in the Gilfoyle case as well as the review that cleared the detectives who fitted up the Bridgewater Four (James Robinson, Michael and Vincent Hickey and Patrick Molloy). The Times has previously championed the Eddie Gilfoyle case even running editorials in support of him.
According to the Times , Merseyside police deliberately withheld an internal report from Gilfoyle‘s defense team.
His lawyer, Matt Foot, co-director of APPEAL, told the paper: ‘We now know that the police officer who led the investigation in the worst miscarriage case in British history was also the most senior officer in the case of Eddie Gilfoyle, and he led the review that absolved the police in the scandalous Bridgewater Four case. Eddie Gilfoyle has always maintained that a flawed police investigation locked him up for a crime he did not commit. It’s time for a high-level independent investigation into the Gilfoyle case.’
