In February 1985, forty three
year old Graham Backhouse appeared at Bristol Crown Court, charged with the
attempted murder of his wife Margaret in order to collect the sum of £100,000 on
her life insurance, and the murder of neighbour Mr Colyn Bedale-Taylor in order
to divert police suspicion from himself.
Mr James Black QC, prosecuting, told the court that Blackhouse had invented a
scenario whereby he and his family were the victims of a supposed village
vendetta; he had gone as far as to impale a sheep's head on a stake close to the
house, bearing a note reading, 'You Next!'. The police had constant complaints
from Mr Backhouse of threatening letters and telephone calls.
On 9 April 1984, Margaret Backhouse climbed into the driver's seat of the
family's Volvo Estate car and turned on the ignition; the resulting explosion
left her with severe injuries to her legs and buttocks. Although they were
'extensive and extremely serious', the wounds were mercifully not fatal.
Believed at the time to be the intended victim, Graham Backhouse was given
twenty four hour police protection.
On 18 April, at Backhouse's request, the police watch was removed and a 'panic
button' linked to the local police station fitted at the farmhouse. On 30 April
the alarm went off.
When PC Richard Yeadon arrived at the farm he found 63 year old Colyn Bedale-Taylor
dead from shotgun wounds to the chest; in his hand was a Stanley knife. Graham
Backhouse was lying in the entrance to the lounge sobbing and stained with blood
from wounds to the face and chest.
In a statement read to the court by Mr Lionel Read QC, acting for Backhouse, he
claimed that Bedale-Taylor had called at the farmhouse on the evening of the
30th and told him that he had come to repair furniture: 'I told him there was no
furniture to repair, and he said that God had sent him.' Bedale-Taylor then
accused Backhouse of being responsible for the death of his son Digby - who had
in fact died as the result of a car crash some eighteen months previously. The
visitor later went on to confess to planting the car bomb, and then lunged at
Backhouse with the Stanley knife and a violent struggle ensued in the kitchen
during which Backhouse received his injuries.
Backhouse then claimed he fled from the kitchen, down the hall to the place
where he kept a shotgun: "I ran into the hallway and grabbed a gun; Bedale-Taylor
was still after me. I shouted I had got a gun but he still kept coming and I
shot him. He fell back and I shot him again and that was it.'
However, this version of the events leading to Bedale-Taylor's death was at
variance with the findings of the forensic investigation, and Geoffrey Robinson
from the Home Office Forensic Laboratory at Chepstow, Gwent, took the jury
through his own re-creation of the murder according to the evidence of
blood staining. Most damaging to Backhouse's claim that there was a struggle
in the kitchen was the relative shortage of blood. Such a 'frenzied' attack
would, according to Robinson, have left bloodstains of the 'splash'
type on walls and furniture. In fact, quite contrary evidence presented itself
in the number of drops of blood on the plastic floor covering, indicated that
Backhouse had been standing dripping blood. It was true that chairs in the
kitchen had been knocked over, but some had landed on top of
blood drops suggesting that the moving of the chairs was an afterthought.
One of the chairs had
blood smears along the top (identified as Backhouses which differed in group
from the victim's), an effect that could have been created if he had grabbed
hold of the chair back with a bloody hand and pushed it over. If this were the
case, how could a man already with bloody hands have picked up and fired a
shotgun afterwards without leaving a single trace of blood? Furthermore, despite
Backhouse's insistence that he had fled bleeding from the kitchen to the end of
the hall, there was no
trail of blood in the hallway itself - an impossibility given his injuries.
All this led Geoffrey Robinson to advance the proposition that Graham
Backhouse's wounds were self inflicted, and that he placed the knife in the
victims hand after death. Backhouse, he suggested, must have dropped blood
around the kitchen after the shooting to simulate an attack on himself. But when
Backhouse had placed the knife in the dead man's hand he could not have noticed
that the palms were completely covered with blood through clutching at his
gunshot wounds. If his story was true and Bedale-Taylor had been holding the
knife all the time, then at least part of the palm should have been clear of
blood. These doubts were confirmed by examining pathologist Dr William Kennard,
who expressed misgivings at finding the knife clasped so firmly in the victim's
hand; for this to have occurred
rigor mortis would need to have set in instantaneously at the moment of
death - an extremely rare phenomenon. Besides, a preliminary examination of the
body on the night of the murder revealed no onset of rigor.
Dr Kennard's view of Backhouse's wounds concurred with the self inflicted of the
forensic experts; he confirmed that if the cut which was made diagonally
downwards from Backhouse's left shoulder to the right side of his waist had been
inflicted by another person then Backhouse would have had to stand still and
neither offer resistance nor try to protect himself.
Evidence was then offered indicating that even after his arrest Backhouse
continued his efforts to incriminate Bedale-Taylor. The jury was told that
Backhouse persuaded a fellow prisoner to smuggle out an unsigned letter
addressed to the Bristol Evening Post implicating the deceased in the car
bombing. Forensic document examiners proved that the handwriting matching the
threatening letters supposed to have been received by Graham Backhouse, and that
both matched the handwriting of Backhouse himself.
On 19th February 1985, after a retirement of five and a half hours, the jury
returned a majority verdict of guilty on both charges, for which Backhouse
received two terms of life imprisonment.
