The man who killed Naseem Salimi did not bother to hide his face. He walked up to Salimi , a taxi driver who had just arrived outside busy Dales supermarket in Rochdale, at 4 p.m. on Friday, 23 April 1993, and stabbed him to death. Then he ran off.

There were numerous eyewitnesses. Some could see the expression on the killer’s face; one even saw the sweat on his skin. The descriptions they gave to police shortly afterwards varied a little, but all agreed he had not shaved recently, and some said he had a fair moustache. He wore a woollen hat pulled down over his hair, but some hair stuck out, and it was fair. He was about 5’10" tall. No words were exchanged between killer and victim.

That same afternoon Steven Taylor picked up from school the children of his fiancée, Marie Diamond. He took them home, and they had tea with Marie, then visited Marie’s family. When they returned home, just after 6 p.m., armed police surrounded their car, and arrested Steven for the murder of Naseem Salimi.

Rochdale police selected Steven as their prime suspect because the victim’s car number reminded one officer, DC Paul McGee, that Steven had alleged the driver of this car had raped his fiancée on 10 April. McGee leapt to the conclusion that Steven had killed the driver in revenge, and Taylor became the only suspect, the only lead the police ever pursued - despite the evidence.

On 10 April, late in the evening, Steven and Marie had ordered a takeaway in the International Café in Rochdale. While waiting for their meal, Marie went to the toilet upstairs. Two men followed her. One raped her, while the other acted as a lookout. Steven saw them coming downstairs, and then Marie followed, and told him what they’d done. Steven called the police, but when the police arrived, they beat up Steven, and told Marie to go home and take a bath.

They’d apparently mistaken Steven and Marie for another couple, also named Taylor and Diamond, whom they regarded as a pimp and a prostitute - which explains their behaviour, although it does not excuse it. Steven’s doctor advised him to take a civil action against the police, which he did. Marie, although very distressed, insisted on a medical examination, and samples were taken for DNA testing.

On 11 April, Steven thought he recognised one of the men he’d seen coming downstairs after the rape, driving a red Toyota taxi. He told the police. Later he saw the car again, and took the number, but when the police checked it, it was clearly wrong. The police told him they could do nothing unless he brought them the right number, so he went out again, spotted the taxi, and passed on the correct number. Then nothing happened. Marie was afraid to go out on her own - the man who raped her was free and the police seemed unwilling to act on the information Steven gave them. Marie’s family were angry that the rapist was not arrested and punished, and Steven told DC McGee he was angry that the police were failing to make an arrest.

So McGee alleged Steven had decided to take the law into his own hands, and attacked the taxi driver. He put Steven on an identification parade on the day after the murder. Eleven witnesses attended, but only one picked out Steven. She had been in her car at the time, and had not had a good view of the attacker, and at the trial, ten months later, the judge told the jury to ignore her evidence.

• The men on the parade were all told to sit down, so that witnesses could not assess their height - a curious instruction, since one thing the witnesses were agreed on was that the killer was about 5’10" tall. Steven is just 5’6".

• Steven has a noticeable tattoo on his right hand - a butterfly. None of the witnesses, who saw the killer use his right hand to stab the victim, remarked on a tattoo (the killer did not wear gloves). The men on the parade, including Steven, were required to cover their right hands.

Despite these precautions, ten witnesses picked out someone other than Steven - not surprisingly, since Steven had short, dark hair and a prominent, bushy black moustache. In effect, ten witnesses who saw the murder at close quarters were saying it was not Steven who killed Naseem Salimi. This was obvious even to the Rochdale police, who released him. So why, you may ask, is he now serving a life sentence? 

The police could not accept they’d been mistaken. They kept Steven under surveillance. They traced the getaway car, which had been seen near Dales supermarket at the time of the killing, to James Houlihan, Marie’s half-brother, who had arranged to have it destroyed. Houlihan at first denied involvement in the crime, but the police suggested to him in the course of extended interviews that if he blamed Steven, then he, Houlihan, would not be convicted of murder. Eventually Houlihan named Steven Taylor as the killer. The police re-arrested Steven, then took statements from members of Houlihan’s family. Five of them now said Steven had admitted to them that he’d murdered the taxi driver. The police even produced a statement signed by Marie, saying Steven had admitted the murder to her; but immediately after signing this statement, she went to Steven’s solicitors and told them she didn’t know what was in the document she’d signed. She couldn’t read the handwriting of the officer who wrote it. Since the rape she had been very fearful, and been prescribed heavy doses of tranquillisers, as well as drugs for her epilepsy, also worse following the rape. Put in a large room and surrounded by officers, she signed the statement in order to get out. Steven, then aged 28, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court on 8 March 1994.

The prosecution said he had become obsessed with desire for revenge and had roamed the streets of Rochdale, following the red Toyota taxi - although the police had told him to get its number. They said he killed Salimi to avenge the rape (in fact, other evidence suggests that Salimi was not the rapist). But essentially he was convicted on the evidence of the alleged confessions to members of the Houlihan family. These are the last people Steven would confide in. He was on bad terms with Marie’s family, and scarcely spoke to them. One of the confessions is said to have been made in the crowded waiting room of Rochdale council housing department. The Houlihan family discussed their evidence with each other, even during the trial.

Nothing else links him to the murder: no forensic evidence links him to the car used by Houlihan, or to the victim; no knife was ever found; and Houlihan did not give evidence (although the jury heard what he said in his interviews - but the judge explained to the jury that this was only evidence against Houlihan, not Taylor).

James Houlihan, who admitted driving the getaway car, whose statements in his interviews about Taylor were demonstrably false, and who was also charged with murder, was acquitted - he claimed he didn’t know his passenger had a knife.

Who did kill Naseem Salimi, and why? We don’t know, but Houlihan himself and a close friend of his both fit the eyewitnesses’ descriptions much better than Steven. They were never put on identification parades. Or perhaps it was someone who knew he wouldn’t be recognised by local people, and could kill quickly and efficiently with a knife - a professional killer, brought in from somewhere else. Who might hire a professional killer? Possibly a family seeking revenge - but more probably other criminals, involved with drugs or large sums of money. Certainly not Steven, who has no involvement in crime, and only ever wanted the police to provide the protection they are supposed to provide. Who is being protected by the construction of a case against Steven? Why pick Steven to take the blame?

In the course of his trial, Steven’s lawyers abandoned his civil action against the police for assault and wrongful arrest on the night of the rape. The eyewitnesses who said it was not Steven who killed Naseem Salimi, also contradicted the confession evidence from the Houlihan family. The Houlihans said Steven told them the victim said ‘I know you’ - whereas most of the eyewitnesses reported the victim said nothing at all, and none reported anything like these words. Judge Morland told the jury to disregard all the eyewitnesses. To us, this sounds like a direction to ignore the evidence that clears Steven - to ignore the only genuine, independent evidence in this case.

Steven Taylor, photographed by the police on the day of his arrest. How eyewitnesses described the killer to the police:
Catherine Saunders: 'clean shaven';
Elizabeth Graham: 'clean shaven';
Jack Wigglesworth: 'had a look of intent on his face… a little unwashed with a days' growth on his face…';
Andrew Sutcliffe: 'appeared to have a moustache';
Jane Collinson: 'unshaven, though not a heavy growth or beard / moustache. He appeared to have a flat nose';
Andrew Taylor: 'facial stubble';
Margaret Smith: 'small short cut moustache fair haired in colour. Stubble hair on cheeks and chin';
Joan Howarth: 'a drawn look about his face and a thin moustache, possibly as if it was not properly grown';
Marylin Hardiker: 'clean shaven';
William Wright: 'a little bit of growth above his top lip';
Nathan Pitt: 'thin moustache';
David and Gladys Lynch: 'fair hair sticking out of the back of the hat'.

Steven's appeal was unsuccessful. He applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, with the support of INNOCENT. We found evidence that roadworks and resulting traffice hold ups would have prevented Steven from getting to the site of the murder at the time when it happened. Steven could not have committed this crime.

Our evidence came from an independent witness employed by Rochdale Council, supported by entries in his diary. But one of the Commissioners, Laurence Elks, took on the review of this case himself. Instead of approaching the witness we had found, he went to his boss, who knew nothing about the road works and wanted nothing to do with the case. Without interviewing the witness to whom we had directed him, Elks refused to refer the case for a second appeal. We complained about Elks's handling of the case, and although our complaint was upheld in part by the CCRC's own internal investigation, the CCRC continued to refuse to refer this case.

We are no longer in touch with Steven, but we would very much like to hear from him or from anyone who can confirm to us that he is alive and well. We would be pleased if Steven were to get in touch with INNOCENT.

Research and article by Andrew Green for INNOCENT