Trial of Andrew George
Local labourer Andrew George, who was 16 when Murrell was murdered, was arrested in June 2003 after a cold case review of the murder uncovered DNA and fingerprint evidence linking him with the crime.
In May 2005 George was found guilty of kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and murdering Murrell and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 15 years that is likely to keep him in prison until at least 2018 and the age of 51. The Daily Telegraph quoted the investigating officer as saying "I told you so", but Tam Dalyell as saying it stretched the imagination to breaking point to suppose that the body, dumped on a Wednesday, could have lain undiscovered until the following Saturday despite a search of the copse on the Thursday by a farmer and his dog: "The two would have had no problem finding a dead rabbit, let alone the body of Hilda Murrell". And Robert Green was quoted as saying "There are many unanswered questions. I believe that the conviction may be unsafe." In June 2006 the Court of Appeal upheld the murder conviction, saying there was nothing unsafe about the verdict returned against George.
Green disagrees. "There is evidence that Andrew George was in Hilda's house; however, he could not drive and did not match the description of the driver of her car. Since the trial, which I sat through, I have found evidence that would have acquitted him, and that others were involved. Meanwhile, break-ins to my home in New Zealand and continuing interference with my phone and mail suggest that the British state security authorities fear what I might reveal about the case."
Her murder was the subject of a song, "The Rose Grower" by the English group Attacco Decente. It can be found on their album The Baby Within Us Marches On.
Grace, the 1988 novel by Maggie Gee, implicates the British secret state in its fictional parallel to the murder of Hilda Murrell.
"Resist the Atomic Menace", from Oi Polloi's debut EP is also about her death.
Green released a book A Thorn in Their Side: The Hilda Murrell Murder in October 2011 which he claims "provides enough new evidence, known to both prosecution and defence but not put to the jury or Appeal Court judges in 2006, to re-open the coroner's inquest into her death."
Read more about this topic: Hilda Murrell
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“For he is not a mortal, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand on us both.”
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