NORMAN MOULD - THE MAN WHO FITTED
STEEL UP.
Norman Mould was chosen to head the
investigation against Steel, though he was not really a murder detective – he specialised in drugs and fraud. But in 1978 the
Within ten years of joining
the police, Mould had risen to the rank of Inspector - serving as the Head of
the Bradford City Police Drug squad. His big chance came when the
He was still in charge of
this team when the Carol Wilkinson murder occurred in
the Pudsey police district. Such was the pressure on police at the time that
Mould was assigned to it.
One of his duties on the
first investigation in 1977 was to write up the official police report on the
murder. This was placed in the files when the investigation stalled. Such
reports are written for the Coroner – but are also used by any later team that
might be assigned should
a case be re-opened.
When the case was re-opened
in 1979, the original detective in charge, Superintendent Denis Hoban, had died. Mould headed the new team. He knew more about the original investigation
than anyone else available. The official police summary of the 1977 evidence
was given to the new team. This was where the case began to go wrong.
Norman Mould's major
mistake on the Steel case was in simply looking for evidence to incriminate
Steel because he had been named as a suspect by Vera Smith. Little seems to
have been taken of the evidence of the investigation in 1977 to see if the
entire scenario, as put together then, fitted and incriminated Steel.
Worse, key evidence from
the original detectives – concerning the route via the railway – was edited
from the earlier report. Most of the detectives on the case cannot have known
about this scenario because of this editing of Mould’s 1977 report. Amongst the
“lost” pages of the report was the evidence of the victim’s mother. She had
thought it highly unlikely that her daughter would have taken the route that
the police now claimed was the truth.
Norman Mould had written
that original report. Two years later, the railway route evidence contradicted
his view of how Steel had followed the victim.
The evidence Mould and his
team used against Steel as reason to arrest and interrogate him was the key
ring - yet there had been no mention of a key ring in the 1977 investigation.
Because Mould had written the report on the 1977 investigation, he must have
known this.
Steel’s lawyers did not
know anything about Mould’s 1977 report of course. If they had, they could have
questioned whether or not the police had any "just cause" to arrest
Steel. A lengthy list of the possessions of the victim on the day she died had
been drawn up in 1977 – no one mentioned that a key ring was missing. The
victim’s keys, left in the door of her house, had been seen as an important
piece of evidence. Two years later the police suddenly claimed that she had
owned a key ring.
Mould was promoted in late
1980 - not long after the conviction of Tony Steel. He retired in the mid-nineties and took a
plum job as Head of Security for the National Lottery.
It has never been
discovered how the evidence of the route via the railway came to be edited out
of the 1977 official police report. Norman Mould had written it, but the copy
in his files on the Steel investigation, which he conducted, had several pages
removed – and substituted with similar pages. Whoever did it not only broke
police regulations, but also duped the trial lawyers, and the Court of
Appeal.