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Glyn Razzell is serving life for murdering his wife. But compelling(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) GLYN RAZZELL spends a lot of time thinking about his wife Linda. In the four years since he was convicted of her murder, little else has occupied his thoughts during the interminable days at HMP Gartree in Leicestershire where he is serving a life sentence. But what exactly is he thinking? Does this former bank investment marketing manager replay March 19, 2002 - the day he supposedly abducted his wife as she made her way to work, murdered her and bundled her body into the boot of his car for disposal at a site only he knows? This is the scenario Wiltshire Police would undoubtedly subscribe to. They consider him to be a cool, calculated killer who thought he could escape justice and to this day denies his wife a proper burial as he will not tell them where her body lies. Their painstaking investigation took 18 months, cost almost GBP500,000 and involved a core team of 60 detectives, who interviewed 2,000 people to secure the force's first murder conviction without the victim's body having been found. Or does Razzell, 48, as his family and supporters insist, think about Linda in a very different way? He, too, they say, wonders where her body is because he didn't murder her. They even suspect she may still be alive, having staged her own disappearance and fled abroad. Either that, or someone else killed her. So which is he? A murderer described by the trial judge as 'wicked' or the latest victim of a monstrous miscarriage of justice - a man framed for a crime, possibly by the very woman he is supposed to have killed? The Mail can reveal that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has written to Razzell's sister, Vicky George, 40, to say that the case has been assigned to a manager and is under review. The CCRC has the power to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal. 'We are delighted because this is the major breakthrough we have been waiting for,' says Vicky, who works in newspaper sales and weekly makes the 220-mile round trip from her home in Essex to see her brother in prison. 'But it is just the start of a very long process. Realistically, we know that Glyn is not going to be out by Christmas and probably not the Christmas after that. But the following Christmas? Maybe. 'Glyn is getting through his days in prison by focusing hard on the job in hand: trying to prove beyond doubt that he is innocent. HE IS AN intelligent man and he is using his time to put his case together, calmly and methodically. Sometimes he feels frustrated, but he refuses to get angry. 'It is terrible for me to see him in prison for a murder I know he didn't commit, but if I let it get me down I am no use to him, so I have to stay strong. 'I was stunned when Glyn was charged with Linda's murder because in my heart I knew there was no way he could have done it. 'This whole experience has completely changed my mindset about how things work in the judiciary in this country. I used to think the man standing in the dock was guilty because I believed the police always got the right man, even if they couldn't prove he was guilty. I don't think that any more.' This latest development follows more than three years' work by Razzell, his family and supporters - sifting through all the police evidence. This resulted in a dossier including a list of 47 instances of alleged police failings. A dossier so compelling, apparently, that John Whittingdale, MP for Maldon and East Chelmsford, has written to the CCRC on the family's behalf urging them to examine the case as quickly as possible. Before we look at Razzell's claims, however, we must first return to the police case which was so convincing that a jury at Bristol Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of murder in November 2003. Linda Razzell, a mother of four then aged 41, officially went missing on Tuesday, March 19, 2002 after failing to arrive for work at Swindon College, where she was a learning support assistant. Married to Glyn since 1984, their relationship was not a happy one and she told friends he physically abused her - a claim he has always denied and which surfaced only during their divorce battle. Despite having a degree in French, Linda never embarked on a career. She had a history of mental health problems and had been a patient at Goodmayes Mental Hospital in Essex and Seymour Clinic psychiatric unit in Swindon. The marriage collapsed after Linda's infidelity in 1998 with a builder working on an extension at the marital home. The following year, Glyn started a relationship with 21-year-old Rachel Smith, a PA at a building society he'd met through work, and he moved out in August 2000. Linda, in turn, started a new relationship with Greg Worrall, the husband of a friend, but she became increasingly bitter about her husband's new relationship with an attractive woman more than 20 years his junior. Just before her disappearance, Linda had applied through the courts to have her husband's bank account frozen after discovering he'd failed to declare a redundancy payout, instead using the money to take his girlfriend on a round-the-world cruise. Twice, she'd taken her husband to court for assault, but he was cleared both times - an indication, he says, of her malice in trying to blacken his name. The police, however, believed it had sown in Razzell's mind the possibility that he could get away with murder, just as he had done with the assaults. So Razzell, the police believe, furious with Linda, decided to kill her. They claim he abducted her as she made her way to work and bundled her into the boot of a friend's Renault Laguna - a company car he'd borrowed and in which a spot of Linda's blood was found. SHE did not, the court heard, have any clothes or money with her and her passport and driving licence were left behind. Linda's bank account remained untouched after her disappearance and she did not turn up in any employment, benefits, police or health service files. Most importantly, she left behind the four children, then aged between seven and 14, to whom she was said to be absolutely devoted. The children remain estranged from their father to this day. Since Linda's disappearance, they have been looked after by her cousin, Julie Westmore, who remains convinced of Razzell's guilt. Police arrested Linda's husband when officers arrived at his house to question him and discovered a noose set up in his attic. They regarded this as an indicator of his guilt - that he was planning to hang himself to escape justice. But his closest family and girlfriend have never accepted this version of events. Vicky George believes that in her brother's case police believed from the start that Razzell was guilty and went on to ignore any evidence suggesting otherwise. Among the list of 47 instances of alleged police failings, Vicky claims that a mattress protector that police said was missing from Razzell's home and had been used to wrap Linda's body had, in fact, been seized by them. She claims that the police failed to notify the ports for two weeks after Linda's disappearance, and mislaid several notebooks from a key stage in the investigation when Razzell was first interviewed. She also says they seized Razzell's shoes and cleaned them of mud, casting doubt on his alibi that he'd gone for a walk at the time of his wife's disappearance; and ignored confirmed sightings of Linda after she was supposed to have disappeared. 'At this stage, I don't want to go into the ins and outs of what we've found because I don't think it will help Glyn to antagonise anyone while the CCRC is trying to make a cool and reasoned evaluation,' says Vicky. 'But soon enough it will all come out.' While some might dismiss Vicky's optimism as a symptom of blind loyalty and denial of the facts, she insists her team's dossier challenges many of the key strands of the original case against her brother. Why, they ask, did Vicky leave her work pass at home the day she disappeared? Why had she put a question mark against the date March19 on the calendar? Why had she said 'goodbye' to the children that morning instead of her usual 'See you at five'? Why did she leave at home her second mobile phone, which she specifically carried for the children to contact her in emergencies? And why did she visit three banks with a man in Swindon the day before to withdraw money? A longstanding friend of Linda's claims she saw her the day after she disappeared in a silver Ford Fiesta. Police said she must have been mistaken, but the friend is adamant that Linda caught her eye and looked cross at having seen her. DESPITE leaving her passport at home, could Linda, a fluent French speaker, have applied for a new one in her maiden name, Davies, and fled abroad to start a new life? With such a common name, she would be almost impossible to trace. The day before she vanished, Linda had made out a shopping list which included the words 'collect travel tickets' and her home computer showed recently visited websites for cheap air travel. Two months before she disappeared, Linda was seen kissing a man in a beige car in a pub car park in Swindon. At 8.30am on the day she disappeared, a beige car - possibly the same one - was seen by a witness pulling up near Linda's red Ford Escort in the car park near the college where she worked. The car and driver have never been traced. Could this man have abducted and murdered her or could they be together somewhere? On the day Linda disappeared, Razzell had been due to travel to France with friends in his people carrier to stock up on wine, but pulled out the day before when his solicitors said they needed him to sign a court affidavit. He says this left him no time to plan an elaborate abduction. A friend took the people carrier, and lent Glyn his Renault Laguna. The Crown case was that Glyn used the Laguna to abduct Linda and dispose of her body. However, not a single image of the car was found by police on more than 20 CCTV tapes on all the possible routes from Glyn's address to the alleged abduction area. Indeed, Glyn claims he'd had no contact with Linda for 18 months and had no idea of her movements. He took a call from his girlfriend at 8.24am, which he claims would have left him no time to drive into Swindon to intercept Linda. At the time of Linda's disappearance, Razzell claimed he'd gone for a walk through Lydiard Park, passing a CCTV camera on Westlea Police Station. There were also other cameras along the route, but he was told by police that they either weren't recording or the film had been recorded over. No witnesses saw Linda being abducted in the alley where her other mobile phone was found, although one woman claimed to have seen her walking quickly and looking upset after leaving the alleyway. There was no blood, skin traces or hair found there, despite extensive forensic searches. The most damning piece of evidence, however, was the discovery of a spot of Linda's blood in the boot of the Laguna. A small smear was also found in the passenger footwell mat. Surely this proves he killed her? Razzell and his supporters say this evidence is highly suspect. They claim these traces of blood were discovered only after the third forensic examination by police - the car having been returned to its owner in the meantime and cleaned. The police maintain the blood had been missed before and was detected using a chemical test called Luminol, but Razzell's defence team consider it inconceivable that the previous, very thorough tests using tapings and swabs could have missed it. No hairs, skin, clothing fibres or fingerprints matching Linda were found in the car. As for financially benefiting from his estranged wife's death - considered to be the prime motive - Razzell claims to have documentary evidence proving he knew Linda's will had been changed in 2000, leaving all her assets and money to the children, including the proceeds from a life insurance policy. Whether all this will be enough to convince the CCRC he has been wrongfully convicted remains to be seen, but Vicky George is quietly hopeful. It is Vicky who fronts the campaign to free Glyn Razzell, the position having been occupied since his conviction by his girlfriend of six years, Rachel Smith, 26. Rachel stood by him loyally throughout the police investigation, trial and conviction. She even put up a reward of GBP5,000 from her own money for sightings of Linda since her disappearance. Yet, though she is still involved in the campaign, Rachel's relationship with Glyn ended recently. VICKY says: 'Rachel is still young and needs to be able to enjoy her life. I was becoming increasingly worried that her devotion to my brother was preventing her from having a life of her own and, with the help of my other brother Paul, I began encouraging Rachel to move on. 'I talked to Glyn and told him how I felt. Rachel needed to find someone else and, though it was painful for him, he agreed. 'Rachel felt she was somehow letting him down, but she had to let go. She is now involved in a new relationship, but visits Glyn every two months and is still involved in the campaign.' They know there are many people who are convinced of his guilt, for as Detective Chief Inspector Paul Granger said after the conviction: 'It is almost impossible to vanish in modern society. Linda Razzell was an extremely devoted mother who everyone who knew her said would never leave her children.' But for the Razzell family, if a cool, calculated crime has been committed, it wasn't carried out by Glyn and an innocent man is sitting in Gartree Prison. Only time will tell if the CCRC agrees. ADDITIONAL reporting by Nic North. Copyright 2007 Daily Mail. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire. |