and wonder why it (often) took so long, read this...

Oh those tricky cops! I have no reason to consider any single person convicted of a crime to be innocent but I do know that police and prosecutor often do anything - including illegal or criminal acts - to gain a conviction.

One of my false accusers in the 2018 “debacle” (the Judge’s word) submitted a text from Instagram or wherever which carefully edited out some lines at the bottom, that indicated clearly the man and his wife were colluding to change the dates, making it an offence against someone I’d met in 1978 to have been 1976, when he would have been 13.

Stupidly they were not aware that statements from several others (their own friends and family) would prove this a lie. But they also failed to see that Surrey Police, checking their phones, would find the original, unedited texts.

But the police, possibly aware that this destroyed their case, dumped both texts in UNUSED MATERIAL (doubtless hoping that, unlike them, the defence team would fail to spot the glaring mistake).

Thanks, however, to my 2001 experience, where I’d learned to leave NOTHING to lawyers, I spotted this piece of damning evidence, showing that not only were the couple mistaken but that they were deliberately trying to conceal vital evidence and improve their case.
Why else reveal the edited text? And why else edit it?

In legal terms this is Attempting To Pervert The Course Of Justice (an offence which earned Carl Beech 18 years in prison).

But, if left to police and lawyers, such clear proof would escape the attention of others, either deliberately or accidentally.

After all, if after glancing at Exhibit One in Unused Material, Exhibit Two looked similar, MOVE ON before reaching the bottom. And before wondering why this text had not been used, as proof of meeting him. Busy days, what’s for dinner, lots of other things to do.

Like my excellent solicitor, reading every page of my press cuttings, who spotted an obscure clipping from a Scottish paper in which one of my false accusers, who claimed only to have met me at the one dreadful 60s event, said to a journalist that I was a dear friend (in the 1990s) and that he’d been the lead singer in my 70s pseudonym band The Weathermen, appearing with me on Top of the Pops!

This demolished his false claims (one juror looked at me and winked). But a defence team needs to find these tiny details, clues which, taken together, can often prove innocence.

just amazing.

If only you could write a book about it.

Not wishing to take all credit - as explained above, I had not read every press cutting in my books (my Mum kept over 80 packed scrapbooks with clips sent by a monitoring service - long before the world went digital). My name was mentioned in numerous articles. I never saw this tiny cutting from an obscure local Scottish paper (fortunately carrying the journalist's byline) from 1991 with a minor local celebrity who had, I think, started a business manufacturing and selling toy soldiers. His business collapsed and he sank back into obscurity before deciding, in 2015, after seeing all the publicity about my wrongful arrest, to claim he'd been abused by me, just the one time, in the 1960's. On being asked, in his recorded police statement, whether he'd had any subsequent contact with me after the 60s, he'd answered "No. Absolutely not. Why would I have?". Thank heavens I found, this time as opposed to 2001, a great solicitor instead of an expensive one. And Thank God for Legal Aid (I couldn't afford the fees charged by top lawyers in 2018) - which only a few, genuine, honest, brilliant lawyers are prepared to work for, if they believe in someone's innocence.

Not only did my superb lawyer find this cutting naming the false accuser and his boast ("it was fantasy" was his answer in court) but my excellent PI, also working on LegalAid, married to an old friend from the music biz, tracked down his mother who - although now being in her 90s - remembered him getting several phone calls from me in the 1970s - speaking to me and boasting of his close friendship, and what a great guy I was. He was part of what I called The King's Army - a huge list of contacts who were sent promo copies of pre-release music to spread the word - a massive JK promo trick - it turned out he was a Keef Hartley fan and had been mailed a promo copy of a new album by that artiste, who I was promoting).

The Judge and Jury found these pieces of evidence interesting.

Liars don't realise how easily they can be exposed. And many genuinely convinced (memories do change as years go by) are shown proof they have invented or exaggerated real incidents. Meeting somebody famous and shaking their hand can become rape in the imagination - especially after media colouring. Look at the Jimmy Savile circumstances AFTER his death and after the media hype.