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Third Time Lucky
An article on Susan's case was published in Private Eye no. 1137, on 22 July 2005. It reported that her MP, Michael Meacher, with the support of over 100 other MPs, had planned an a debate in the House of Commons during which he intended to ask the Home Secretary to intervene on Susan's behalf. The debate was cancelled because of the London bombings [held on 23 November - see above].

The article also raised "the question of the mysterious red car, seen parked outside the house on the night of the murder at around l2.45pm.

Two separate witnesses saw the car, but the defence was told at the time that it was never found. Mr Meacher was planning to tell the Commons that since Mrs May's second appeal, it has emerged that the police did locate a car fitting the description. It belonged to the sister of a violent burglar, Michael Rawlinson, who had been drawn to the attention of the police as having been involved in this murder by two separate people who knew him.

Rawlinson's sister had sold the car within three days of the murder. But forensic evidence taken from it was never processed and Rawlinson was himself killed five years ago."

This evidence was not put before the appeal court, and it is hoped that the Criminal Cases Review Commission will use it as the basis for a referral of the case for a third appeal - hence "third time lucky."

Susan's release date: 26 April 2005. Susan left Askham Grange prison at 9.30 am.
See article in The Guardian.
BBC News reports Susan's release

left:Susan pictured moments after her release, determined to overturn her conviction and reveal how her aunt died.
For more pictures, click on the photo

Articles reprinted here:
Telegraph, 15 Feb 1997 - Appeal refused
Lineone News, 26 Nov 1999 - Case referred back to Court of Appeal
Telegraph, 5 Dec 1999 - Case referred back to Court of Appeal
Guardian, 7 May 2000 - Article on support for Susan in her home town of Royton
Independent, 13 August 2001 - "Jailed woman insists she did not kill elderly aunt"
Observer, 9 June 2002 - "A death in the family"
Response to the appeal judgement, by Dr Andrew Green

See also:
Susan May - Inside and Innocent - Established by the Friends of Susan May campaign, this new site presents the case in full detail.
Virtual campaign pamphlet: Free Susan May!

A woman lost her appeal yesterday against her conviction for murdering her 89-year-old aunt. Susan May, 51, shook her head at the Court of Appeal and there were cries of "shame" as Lord Justice Staughton, sitting with Mr Justice Scott Baker and Mr Justice Harrison, announced his decision. The judges rejected fresh medical evidence that May, of Royton, Greater Manchester, had suffered a memory gap over the circumstances of Hilda Marchbank's death. "The attempt by the expert evidence to explain away what she had said four or five years previously, in our judgment, fails," said Lord Justice Staughton. "We do not regard the conviction as unsafe on any ground."

May, a divorcee, was jailed for life at Manchester Crown Court in 1993 after a jury found that she had suffocated Mrs Marchbank at her home in Tandle Hill Road, Royton, in March 1992. At her trial it was alleged that May had murdered her for her money in order to keep her lover, on whom she had lavished gifts. After the hearing, Michael Schwarz, May's solicitor, said that she wanted to carry on the fight to clear her name.

The case of mother-of-three Susan May, who was jailed for life for the murder of her elderly blind aunt six years ago, is to be referred to the Court of Appeal, it was announced today. May has always denied battering and smothering 89-year-old Hilda Marchbank to death at the old woman's home in Royton, near Oldham, Greater Manchester, in March 1992. The Criminal Cases Review Commission's decision to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal was welcomed by May's supporters, who have fought a long campaign claiming she is a victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. May, who cared for her aunt as well as her elderly mother, was accused of murdering Mrs Marchbank for money in order to lavish gifts on her secret lover and former neighbour, Chris Ross. Forensic evidence was also presented that May, now serving life in Durham prison, had left bloody handprints on the wall of Mrs Marchbank's room. But that evidence has now been questioned by experts who say it is not clear that the blood was Mrs Marchbank's – or even that it was blood at all. Friends and neighbours in May's home town have campaigned hard on behalf of a woman who was popular and highly respected in her local community. A spokeswoman for the Friends of Susan May campaign said: "We are delighted with this news and very grateful to the CCRC for carrying out a thorough and independent inquiry." Labour MP John McDonnell, who has also campaigned for May, said: "We are all convinced that Susan is innocent and that a re-examination of the evidence will ensure that her name will be cleared."

The case will go before the Court of Appeal at a future date.

A woman serving life in jail for the murder of her elderly aunt is to have her case referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The commission has accepted that there is strong new evidence to cast doubt on the original conviction of Susan May, even though it was subsequently upheld by an appeal court. May was jailed for life at Manchester Crown court in May, 1993, after a jury found that she had murdered Hilda Marchbank, 89 and registered blind, at the old woman's home in the village of Royton, on the edge of the Lancashire moors in March 1992. At her original trial, May was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer who had milked her aunt for money in order to fund a secret affair with her "toy boy" neighbour. The prosecution alleged that to cover up this fraud, she had attacked and smothered her aunt and then raised the alarm to cover her tracks. As the trial progressed, many of the allegations proved to be baseless or completely irrelevant, and by the end the only motive the prosecution could rely on was that May had become "tired" of caring for her relative. The main evidence against May was three marks found on a wall at the murder scene - one of which was said to be her "blood-stained" partial handprint. In addition, May was alleged to have made unguarded comments to a woman officer as she was leaving a police station at an early stage in the inquiry, which might have shown that she had inside knowledge of the death that only the killer could know. Eventually she was convicted on these two pieces of evidence - both of which, her supporters claim, are fatally flawed and which the commission now accepts warrant further examination. The referral back to the appeal court will be a relief to the many supporters May's case has attracted in her home town. The campaign, Friends of Susan May, co-ordinated by her children Toby and Katie and former neighbours, has run a vigorous effort to promote her innocence, supported by Kevin Callan, a local man who successfully overturned his own conviction for murder in 1994. Dorothy Cooksey, a friend of May who has led the campaign to free her, said last night that the three-year review commission inquiry had been exhaustive. She said: "I am really pleased at this news. They have been very thorough in examining all aspects of the case and the fact that they have now found it unsafe and referred it to the Court of Appeal has given us great hope. "Susan has always protested her innocence and refused any attempt to get her to admit to the murder in prison. There was no evidence against her at the trial which stood up and we are greatly encouraged now that she will be released." The main facts of the case are not in dispute. Mrs Marchbank was punched and smothered to death at her home on the night of March 11. Her house was ransacked, drawers pulled out and furniture overturned, and suspicion at first focused on a violent burglar who was known to have been operating in the remote moorland areas stretching from Greater Manchester across to Yorkshire. Mrs Marchbank was discovered at 9am the day after by May, who was delivering a sandwich for her aunt's lunch. At first the police were sympathetic to May, who had given up work as a dinner lady at a local school and as a hairdresser so that she could look after her children and her aunt. She appeared devoted to her relative, visiting Mrs Marchbank three times a day and feeding her. However, there is no doubt that May lied to the police about her relationship with Christopher Ross, her former neighbour, whose wife and children still lived next door. May and Mr Ross, then aged 33 and a manager at a computer firm, had been having an affair but had kept it secret to avoid upsetting Mrs Ross. This lie made the the police wonder if she was concealing anything else. Police suspicions appeared to be confirmed when they discovered that large sums of money, up to £140,000, had been paid to May and her sister, Ann Mellor, from the stocks and shares Mrs Marchbank's husband had left her. But at the trial it quickly transpired that the £140,000 had been paid to the women over a period of almost 15 years, with the full knowledge of accountants. But this suggested motive, even though it evaporated, caught the attention of the press. One headline said: "Lover's £140,000 Gifts to Her Secret Toy Boy." The press reports of her case could be important when the case is re-considered because apparently sensationalist and one-sided coverage has influenced a Court of Appeal in the past, and in this instance Mrs May's lawyers believe it should be taken into account. The alleged hand, or fingerprint, of May's was on the wall near to a smear of Mrs Marchbank's blood. New evidence produced by her defence will now show that this handprint was not evidence at all because May found the body and was first at the scene. If the mark, which is not conclusively in Mrs Marchbank's blood despite many forensic efforts to prove it is the dead woman's, is May's handprint it could have got on to the wall in a variety of completely innocent ways. At the trial, the police also said that May had made a remark suggesting that her aunt had had "scratch marks" from the killing, something only the murderer would have known. In fact, May claims that this comment was taken out of context and what she was actually saying was that her aunt would have put up a struggle.

The comment in any case is of dubious standing because it was not made in a formal statement and the notebook recording it has since gone missing. A spokesman for the Criminal Cases Review Commission confirmed last night that the conviction of May was being referred back to the Court of Appeal, a step only taken in a case when new evidence or arguments emerge which cast doubt on the safety of the conviction.

Susan May, according to her friends, is the type of woman who would turn her car around to give you a lift home if she saw you walking in the street. She was also the sort to give up a part-time job she loved to devote her time to caring for her elderly mother and her aunt. But although her life revolved around her small, close family, May had one secret she kept from them all - and which, some believe, put her behind bars. Her friends now use three different buses to reach the jail where the mother-of-three is serving a life sentence for the battering and suffocation of 89-year-old Hilda Marchbank, the aunt she adored. Her conviction shocked the little Lancashire town of Royton where May lived and where, in March 1992, the badly beaten and half-naked body of Marchbank was found in her ransacked and bloodstained home. May's secret - a lover 15 years her junior - presented a motive: she had killed her aunt to get money to lavish on him. But after seven years in jail, May has attracted support from high-profile campaigners against miscarriages of justice. This week Billy Power and Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six, Jimmy Robinson of the Bridgwater Four and Labour MP John McDonnell will speak at the House of Commons on May's behalf. Her friends have been given new hope by the findings of an investigation by the Criminal Case Review Commission, set up last year by the Government to scrutinise the safety of disputed criminal convictions. The CCRC's re-evaluation of a piece of evidence that helped convict May in spring 1993 has resulted in the case being referred back to the Court of Appeal. A hearing is expected later this year. The court at the time heard that a bloodied fingerprint found next to the light switch on the wall of Marchbank's bedroom - the only piece of forensic evidence against her - was May's. It was never proven whose blood it was and now some experts believe the print may not have been blood at all, but dirt. Fibres found in Marchbank's hand have never been identified, nor have a man's footprint in the house or a red car parked outside the house on the day of the murder. Behind Marchbank's house is an estate where heroin addicts are known to burgle homes to feed their habit. An earlier appeal, in 1997, failed - as did 21 of the 22 complaints May filed against Greater Manchester Police. The Police Complaints Authority ruled on her grievances last month, seven years after they were first made. It rejected perjury by officers but accepted that the detective superintendent who interviewed her did not follow correct procedures. He has since retired from the force. What those who believe in her innocence are convinced of is that May's downfall was partly caused by the lies she told police to keep her affair secret. Chris Ross, 33, was the estranged husband of her friend and neighbour. 'At that point Susan thought she was a witness, she had found her aunt's body after all, and when the police asked her if she was having an affair with Chris she said no, she thought it was none of their business,' Dorothy Cooksey, May's childhood friend, told The Observer. 'She didn't want her family to know and family was always the most important thing in the world to Susan.' But in May's lie police saw a motive for murder: she had milked Marchbank of money to pay for her 'toyboy' and then, when she feared the cash was running out, she killed her aunt to benefit from the will. Ross had received £2,000 towards a sports car, and a Florida holiday had been paid for on May's credit card. But campaigners point to a different story. Over 15 years and with the full knowledge of her accountants, Marchbank had paid some £140,000 to May and her sister, women she regarded as daughters and who repaid her with care. The bulk went to May as the main carer: she visited the old lady three times a day to cook and clean. Ross earned £24,000 a year. May herself received regular payments from her mother's property interests. Neither was poor. 'The sports car is jointly owned,' Ross said after the trial, adding that he had paid off May's credit card bill after the holiday. If May had worried about losing Ross when the money ran out, her fear was groundless. For the past seven years he has supported her with visits and letters - one of nearly 200 Royton people involved in the campaign. Families of convicted murderers can often be driven from close-knit communities by the stigma of association but the May children are cushioned by sympathy. Katy May, 28, lives in the house where her mother was born and when May was jailed looked after her grandmother until she died 'heartbroken' several months after the trial.

It seems as though Royton is united in disbelief at May's guilt. They believe a panicked burglar who turned killer is still at large.

Michael Mansfield takes up case of convicted killer so desperate to clear her name that she sacrificed chance of early release

Susan May's belief that she is innocent of the murder of her elderly aunt is matched only by her faith in her barrister, Michael Mansfield QC. Such is her commitment to Britain's most famous defence advocate that she has sacrificed the chance of being released from prison early. Mr Mansfield's involvement in the Old Bailey trial of the convicted killer of the TV presenter Jill Dando, which lasted weeks longer than expected, meant he was unable to appear for her at the Court of Appeal on 18 June. The hearing would have gone ahead if she had been prepared to accept the services of another, perhaps less well known, barrister. But she wasn't, and so she remains inside New Hall prison, near Wakefield, where she has recently been put to work in the kitchens serving food to her fellow inmates six days a week. May's solicitor, Campbell Malone, says the new regime is harsh and means she can no longer try to block out the reality of her life sentence by immersing herself in legal textbooks to research her appeal. Susan May, 56, was convicted in 1993 of murdering her aunt, Hilda Marchbank, at the pensioner's home in the village of Royton on the edge of the Lancashire moors. At her trial, she was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer who had milked Mrs Marchbank for money to fund a secret affair with her neighbour. The prosecution alleged that to cover this up she had smothered her aunt and then raised the alarm to cover her tracks. As the trial progressed, many of the allegations proved to be baseless or irrelevant. By the end the only motive the prosecution could rely on was that May had become "tired" of caring for her relative. But Mr Malone says his client was devoted to her aunt. He said: "Susan was the primary carer and would see her or speak to her two or three times a day. They were a very close family and had lived in the same district together nearly all their lives." He argues that the suggestion that Susan May wanted to get her hands on her aunt's money does not stand up because she already had power of attorney over her affairs. Of concern to her defence team is that alternative explanations of why Mrs Marchbank was murdered were withheld from the jury. When the police found the body, Mrs Marchbank's nightdress had been hoisted above her hips, causing forensic scientists to suspect a sexual motive for the crime. But no other evidence ever emerged to support this theory. The jury was not told. The house was ransacked, drawers pulled out and furniture overturned, and suspicion at first focused on a violent burglar who was known to have been operating in the remote moorland areas stretching from Greater Manchester across to Yorkshire. This was another possible explanation not explored at her trial. But Mr Malone says the most serious questions surround a blood-stained handprint found on Mrs Marchbank's bedroom wall. May's lawyers maintain that this handprint should not have been treated as evidence of her guilt because she found the body and was first at the scene. If the mark ­ which is not conclusively in Mrs Marchbank's blood despite many scientific efforts to prove it was hers ­ is Susan May's handprint, it could have got on to the wall in a variety of completely innocent ways, Mr Malone says. In any case, he adds, some of the answers she gave to the police about the mark were given when she was still in a state of shock and confusion over her aunt's death. At the trial, the police said that May had made a remark suggesting that her aunt had had "scratch marks" from the killing, something only the murderer would have known. This, the defence will argue, was also misleading. The primary facts of the case are not in dispute. Mrs Marchbank was punched and smothered to death at her home on the night of 11 March 1992. Her body was discovered at 9am the following day by Susan May, who was delivering a sandwich for her aunt's lunch. At first the police were sympathetic to May, who had given up work as a dinner lady at a school and as a hairdresser so she could look after her children and her aunt. However, there is no doubt that she lied to the police about her relationship with Christopher Ross, her former neighbour, whose wife and children still lived next door. May and Mr Ross, then aged 33 and a manager at a computer firm, had been having a secret affair. This deception made the police wonder if she was concealing anything else. Police suspicions appeared to be confirmed when they discovered that large sums of money, up to £140,000, had been paid to May and her sister, Ann Mellor, from the stocks and shares Mrs Marchbank's husband had left her. But after extensive media coverage of this discovery it transpired that the money had been legitimately paid to the women over a long period of time. Some of these concerns were raised, but dismissed by judges, at her first appeal, which she lost in 1997. Many of her friends and supporters resigned themselves to the fact that the hearing was her last chance to be freed. But then in 1999 the Criminal Cases Review Commission completed its own investigations into her case, concluding there were many questions that had not been properly addressed. It decided those concerns should be tested at a second Court of Appeal hearing. Since that decision, the Police Complaints Authority has also found that police officers who first questioned her on the murder did not caution her correctly. Her hopes now rest on a hearing due to take place on 30 October. But this is only a provisional date and, as May already knows to her emotional cost, nothing in the criminal justice system is certain.

Mr Malone, the solicitor who also represented Stefan Kiszko, freed in 1992 after serving 16 years for a child murder he did not commit, recalls May's despair at being told that Mr Mansfield would not be available to represent her for the appeal in June. He said: "It was very difficult for her to take. But she wants Michael to represent her, and frankly so do I."

A woman jailed in 1993 for the murder of her elderly aunt, has lost a second appeal against her conviction. Susan May, from Greater Manchester, was sentenced to life imprisonment for battering and smothering 89-year-old Hilda Marchbank at her home in Tandle Hill Road, Royton, near Oldham, in March 1992. May, 55, has always denied the crime, claiming that her aunt was murdered in a burglary that went wrong. There was uproar from May's supporters as Lord Justice Kennedy, Mr Justice Buckley and Mr Justice Grigson made their ruling at the Court of Appeal on Friday. May was convicted of her aunt's murder at Manchester Crown Court in May 1993. Although she cared for her aunt, May was accused of murdering Mrs Marchbank for her money in order to lavish gifts on her secret lover Chris Ross. Evidence was presented that May had left a blood-stained handprint on a wall at the murder scene. During the appeal hearing, Michael Mansfield QC defending, suggested that the mark could have been made by someone other than May, and after investigations began. He also told the court that May should have been treated as a suspect at an earlier stage and afforded the protection of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in relation to various comments she made. 'Damning evidence Lord Justice Kennedy said the court saw no reason to doubt the evidence of a police officer and a forensic scientist who said separately they saw all three marks on the wall at an early stage, well before the body was moved from the bed. He said it was clear from the evidence that all three marks appeared at about the time of the murder and certainly before officers arrived on the scene. Identification of May's right hand in relation to one of the marks constituted "damning evidence" against her, he added. Dismissing the second ground of appeal, the judges accepted that there were no grounds to suspect May of having committed an offence such as to require that she be cautioned in the earlier stages of the inquiry. They said that they were unable to detect any breach of any provision of any code which was then in force. Memory lapse Speaking after the hearing, May's solicitor Campbell Malone said: "Susan is determined to fight on. "We know that she didn't do this and it follows that somebody else did. "We believe the identity of the murderer is known to somebody and they are sheltering them. "I hope they will now have the courage to come forward." May's first appeal in February 1997 failed after judges rejected fresh evidence that she had suffered a memory gap over the circumstances of Mrs Marchbank's death. May, of Dogford Road, Royton, had said that she had not touched her aunt's body on discovering it but a consultant psychiatrist said that she might have suffered a form of medical amnesia stemming from trauma.

The new appeal followed a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

A woman has lost her second appeal against her conviction for the murder of her elderly aunt. There was uproar in court from Susan May's supporters as she listened from the dock. May has always denied battering and smothering the 89-year-old woman at her home in Royton, near Oldham, Greater Manchester, in 1992. She was convicted at Manchester Crown Court in May 1993 and jailed for life. May, 55, claimed her aunt, Hilda Marchbank, was murdered in a burglary that went wrong. Although she cared for her aunt, as well as her elderly mother, May was accused of murdering Mrs Marchbank for money in order to lavish gifts on her secret lover and former neighbour, Chris Ross. Evidence was presented that May had left a blood-stained handprint on a wall at the murder scene. But May's counsel, Michael Mansfield QC, suggested to the court today that the mark could have been made by someone other than May, and after investigations began. He also told the court that May should have been treated as a suspect at an earlier stage and afforded the protection of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in relation to various comments she made.

But the judges dismissed both arguments and ruled that her conviction was not unsafe. The new appeal followed a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

When Susan May was arrested for the murder of her aunt, Hilda Marchbank, shock waves went through the small town of Royton. Nine years on, the case still divides the local community. Rachel Cooke asks if dramatic new evidence could finally prove May's innocence Royton is a small, sooty town between Oldham and Rochdale, right on the edge of the swirling green sea that is Saddleworth Moor. It isn't famous for anything much, and in this, the golden age of retail, it is Manchester that has the local monopoly on civic pride. The town's cotton mills, ghostly and forbidding, are a long way from becoming shimmering warehouse apartments, and its Victorian town hall is now a social security office. If you want to buy a sausage roll or have your hair set in purple curls, Royton's the place. But if you want bright lights and bottled lagers, well, you'll just have to get in your car and drive. In 1993, however, Royton suddenly found itself on the front pages of the Oldham Chronicle and the Rochdale Observer; it even had a starring role in the nationals. In early March, an 89-year-old widow called Hilda Marchbank was murdered. Mrs Marchbank, who was almost blind, had been smothered and battered. Because her house was in a state of some disarray, it was at first assumed that she had been the victim of a bungled burglary, though nothing had actually been taken. But, 18 days later, her 48-year-old niece, Susan May, was arrested. And, that September, May was found guilty of the murder by a jury at Manchester Crown Court. She was given a life sentence. The verdict split Royton in two. Those who knew May insisted that she was devoted to her frail, bird-like aunt, visiting her more than once every day; it was inconceivable that she could be responsible for such an attack. Others, believing what they read in the papers, agreed with the police: May was a nasty, scheming woman who had murdered Hilda Marchbank in cold blood so that she could inherit her estate and continue to lavish her younger lover, a local man called Christopher Ross, with expensive gifts and flash holidays. She had got exactly what she deserved. Nine years on, both camps are still going strong. In Royton, Susan May is very far from being forgotten. But May has always stuck to her claim that she is the victim of a monstrous miscarriage of justice, irrespective of the effect this has on her prospects for parole (prisoners who refuse to address their crimes are regarded as 'In Denial of Murder' by the Home Office and are unlikely to be released). There have been two appeals against her conviction. The second of these, which was heard last October, was referred to the court by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the independent body established in 1997 to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice. The CCRC's report into May's case is considered one of the strongest it has ever written. The Commission had concerns relating to the integrity of the forensic evidence at May's original trial; it found that the police had failed to disclose information relevant to disputed evidence of a remark made by May to one of the investigating officers; and it found that there had been serious breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984. But the appeal court judges, led by Lord Justice Kennedy, were not convinced. To cries of 'shame' from May's supporters, they dismissed the case. Huddled in the front row of the public benches, May's 30-year-old daughter Katy began to cry. It sounded to me as though she might never stop crying. Susan May was born in Dogford Road, Royton, in the same stout, red-brick house in which she was living on the fateful day of her arrest, more than four decades later. She came from a well-to-do family; her father owned several properties in the town and, as a girl, she'd collect the rents with him. Her mother Dorothy had grown up in the pub trade but now looked after her daughters, Susan and Ann, full time. The centre of Dorothy's universe, however, was her older sister, Hilda, who was married (to Tom Marchbank, owner of Royton's first launderette) but had never had children. The two women were so close they could finish one another's sentences. When she left school, Susan's parents set her up in her own hairdressing business and, at first, she lived above the shop with her husband, Terry, and her eldest son, Adam. But when she gave birth to twins Toby and Katy, the flat was too tight a squeeze. Her parents moved into one of the family's smaller properties, and she and Terry moved back to Dogford Road. In 1978, her father died from leukaemia. 'Mum coped quite well at first,' she remembers, when I meet her at New Hall Prison, in Wakefield. 'But then she had to have both her hips replaced. I asked her to move in. She was always at my house, anyway, so it was a natural progression. I was happy for it to happen. I loved it, and the children loved it.' In the mid-80s, Terry and Susan were divorced (with help from her mother, Susan gave him his share of the value of the house). By this time, Hilda was living up the hill, in Tandle Hill Road, one of Royton's nicest streets. Though she had been widowed and was not very strong - she slept downstairs, in the dining room - she was determined to stay in her own home. Her niece, whom she loved like a daughter, agreed to help her do this. After her divorce, Susan had worked as a dinner lady at a local school; now, with two elderly relatives to care for, she gave up work completely. 11 March 1993 was a normal day for all the family. It was Dorothy's birthday and Hilda was coming over for tea. In the event, though, Dorothy felt unwell and asked if her sister could be put off. 'I told her that it was all right, Auntie would understand,' says Susan. 'Then I went up to Tandle Hill Road to tell Auntie. Normally, I would have taken her tea up with me, but this time I just opened some soup, and put it in the pan for her. I kissed her and said: "I'll see you tomorrow." I always went up first thing in the morning, to get her up.' Hilda stood in the porch, waving, as Susan headed home. Later that evening, the telephone rang. It was Hilda, asking Susan where her house keys were. 'I knew her so well,' says Susan. 'Something must have happened to trigger that thought. Someone must have been at the door and she'd gone to the porch and said: "I don't know where my keys are." Her short-term memory was nil. Sometimes I had to go up there three times a day. The police said it must have got me down. But it was a pleasure. She was always so pleased to see me.' Susan told her aunt where the keys were - she'd trained her to take them out of the lock - and Hilda rang off. Not long afterwards, the phone went again. 'Perhaps whoever it was had come back to the door. Anyway, I wasn't happy,' remembers Susan. 'I said: "Open the door, I'm coming up." She said: "Oh no, you're not. I shouldn't have mithered you." But I said, no, I was coming as soon as I'd given Mum her drink.' Before she could leave the house, the phone rang again. This time it was Susan's lover, Christopher Ross. She and Chris, who worked at a computer firm and was 16 years her junior, had met when he and his wife, Julie, were living next door to Susan; they had been having an affair for eight years - a relationship they were careful to keep from Julie, from whom he was now separated. 'Chris asked me if I would run him and a friend to the pub. I said: "I've got to see Auntie first, she's mithering me." So I drove up to Tandle Hill Road. I went in through the back door. There she was, sitting on her bed in her pink dressing gown. I showed her where the keys were, and asked her if someone had been to the door. She wasn't sure. Then she apologised for putting me to so much trouble. I said: "No problem at all." It was about nine o'clock and I was there for 10 minutes at the most.' Again, Hilda waved her off from the porch. This was the last time Susan May saw her aunt alive. The following morning, Katy May asked her mother if she could drive her into Royton. Susan agreed and, while she was there, bought her aunt a sandwich and a cream cake for her lunch. She got to Tandle Hill Road at about 9.45am. The curtains were still drawn and the back door was unlocked. Susan went in. She shouted: 'It's me! Are you up?' The door to the room where Hilda slept was ajar. 'I just came upon this horror. Absolute horror. It looked like her face was covered in blood. The next thing you know, I was standing in the driveway with my hands in the air.' She ran next door, to Hilda Marchbank's neighbour, Delryse Oakley. 'I said: "I've got to cover her up," but Mrs Oakley told me not to touch anything.' Hilda's nightdress had been pulled up, exposing the bottom half of her body. 'She was so private, she would have hated to be found half naked. Mrs Oakley went into Auntie's hall to phone for an ambulance. I said: "I'll have to go outside, I think I'm going to be sick." Then she came and stood at the side of the house with me. Not long afterwards, we heard the sirens.' Once it was certain that Hilda was dead and the police had taped off the scene of crime, Susan May was allowed to go home to tell her mother what had happened. Though her sister Ann thought their mother should be told the truth, Susan was adamant: they would do no such thing - it would kill her. So Dorothy was informed that her beloved Hilda had died in her sleep. She did not find out what had really happened until her daughter was convicted. Convinced of Susan's innocence, Dorothy died, heartbroken, a year later. Initially, the police focused their efforts on known burglars: there had been several attacks on old people in the area. When this line of inquiry came to nothing, they turned to Mrs Marchbank's niece. At first, because she thought it was 'not their business', May denied to the police that she had been having an affair (they discovered the liaison after interviewing Ann). But the fact that she had lied about it made them suspicious, a feeling which grew when it was discovered that May had credit-card debts of £7,000 and had 'bought' Chris Ross an MG (in fact, the car was jointly owned). A bereavement officer, Sergeant Janet Rimmer, was assigned to the family and, in the days after the murder, she spoke to May at length. During one of these conversations, May supposedly said: 'Do you know the scratches on my aunt's face, can they get stuff from down the fingernails at forensic?' According to the police, May would not have known of the existence of such scratches unless she was the murderer. When May's fingerprint was then found in a blood stain on the wall, they decided they had their woman. Though shocked by her arrest, May had faith in the system. She'd done nothing wrong; she would be acquitted. Her original defence team, however, failed to line up any experts to challenge the forensic evidence and called only one witness, Katy. In court, May's motive for the murder - simple greed, driven by the fear of losing her 'toy boy' to a younger model - crumbled to dust. She had power of attorney over her aunt's affairs and, though Hilda's money had dwindled, there were also shares, jewellery and three houses owned by Dorothy that could have been sold to pay off her debts. What the prosecution was left with was this: May was simply fed up with her aunt. The evidence pointing to Susan May's innocence falls into two main categories. First, there is that which the jury never heard at her trial (and because it was available at the time of the trial, it cannot be classed as new evidence and tested in the court of appeal). Then there is the fresh evidence dug up by the CCRC. Taken together, the question one ends up asking is not, 'Who killed Hilda Marchbank?' (though, in the view of May's barrister, Michael Mansfield QC, and her many other supporters, the person responsible is still at large) but: 'Why is her niece still languishing in prison?' On the night of the murder, a neighbour reported seeing a red car outside Mrs Marchbank's house; its engine was running but its occupants had disappeared. It was there for 15 minutes. Inside the house, police found unidentified fingerprints and, in a wardrobe, an unidentified footprint. Clothing fibres were also found in Mrs Marchbank's hand. They did not match any of May's or her aunt's clothing. A notorious local burglar was arrested; his sister had made a statement saying that he had told her about the murder of a woman in Tandle Hill Road at 8.30am on 12 March, an hour before the discovery of the body. The woman later retracted the statement but, thanks to an administrative cock-up by the police - the statement was mislaid and put into the wrong file - it was lost to the defence. At her trial, the judge said that the main planks of the evidence against May were her fingerprint in a bloodstain on the wall - one of three marks reputed to have been made by the murderer as he or she stumbled out of Hilda Marchbank's bedroom - and the remark she made about the scratches on her aunt's face. The CCRC discovered that the policeman who told Susan how her aunt had died had recorded in his notebook 'bruising to face and head'. The CCRC felt it was reasonable to assume that he may also have mentioned the scratches. It is worth adding, though, that the notebook in which Janet Rimmer noted May's incriminating remark has since been lost. The matter of the three bloodstains is more complicated. The first two stains tested positive for blood, though not necessarily human blood, and in the first of these May's fingerprint was found. However, the third bloodstain, which did not contain any prints, was the only stain conclusively proved to have been Hilda Marchbank's blood. The prosecution's case was that, because the third mark was Mrs Marchbank's blood, it was safe to assume that the other two marks were also her blood and that, therefore, the appearance of May's fingerprint in the first stain proved she was responsible for the attack. But the CCRC ascertained that there was no photographic or video evidence of the third stain being present on the wall on the first day of the police investigation. At the appeal, Michael Mansfield suggested that the mark could have been made by someone other than Susan May, after the body was discovered. Take the third stain out of the equation, and the forensic evidence is thin indeed. The CCRC, which had serious concerns over the way forensic evidence was gathered in the investigation, also found evidence to explain how May's fingerprint could have innocently come to appear in the first stain. An exhibit labelled 'Craftsman Baker Paper Bag' found in the kitchen by the police contained scraps of meat that also 'tested positive for blood'. The senior investigating officer was advised to send this bag to the laboratory for further testing, in order to find out whether some stains on the bag were also blood. But no such tests were carried out. Had the stains been found to be animal blood, it would have assisted the defence case that the first two marks on the wall were not human blood. Susan May, remember, often prepared food for her aunt in the house and, in fact, a stain found on one of her dresses after the inquiry began was found to be bovine blood. Finally, the CCRC found that several breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace) had taken place during the course of the investigation. May was not, for instance, asked to confirm having made the 'scratches' remark until 30 March, 12 days after she is supposed to have said it, and six days after her arrest. She was also denied the protection of Pace, which guarantees that suspects should be cautioned and the interview be taped with a solicitor present, during an interview that took place on 23 March - a fact corroborated by the Police Complaints Authority in 1999, when it found that May had indeed been interviewed as a witness by Janet Rimmer when, unknown to her, she was actually a suspect. In Royton, May's family and friends are still trying - and failing - to come to terms with what has happened. Her children, who were in their early twenties and living at home when their mother was taken away, each cope with her absence differently. 'It's worse than if she'd died,' says Katy, who now has a partner and a young son, Alfie. 'That would have been it then. I would have grieved and moved on. Knowing she is alive, but not being able to phone her when I feel like it... it's horrible.' The gossip is hard to bear. 'You'll be at the market and you'll hear old biddies behind you saying: "That's her daughter." I always tackle them. I say: "Yes, I'm Susan May's daughter. What about it?" Some people even drive by the house, have a good stare. I don't know what they're expecting.' She has come to hate the town where her family has lived for more than a century. 'When Mum comes home, I'm leaving. We'll go to France, buy a farm. I need to spend lots of time with her. It feels like we've been apart a lifetime.' Those who thought Christopher Ross would drop Susan May like a ton of bricks after her conviction have been proved wrong; he visits her regularly. Ross was arrested at the time of the murder, though he was later released without charge, and subsequently had a nervous breakdown. 'I'll always be in love with her,' he says. 'Even now, I look out of the window and expect to see her walking across the park. She's the loveliest person: funny, gentle, kind, undemanding. It's absolutely heartbreaking what has happened to her. I still find myself expecting someone to say it's all been a terrible mistake.' Then there are the friends. May's support group is run by Dorothy Cooksey, who has known Susan since they were little girls living in the same street. Cooksey first heard that Susan had been charged with the murder via the TV news - an announcement that left her so shocked that she phoned the local police station in tears. 'I said: "You're wrong, this woman couldn't possibly have done it." I was so upset they thought I must know something about the murder. They wanted to come round and interview me.' She has been fighting her friend's corner ever since. 'You wake up, and there is just a cloud,' says Cooksey. 'You have to be stubborn and keep going, no matter how bleak things seem. You focus on the next day rather than the next year. After the last appeal failed, that was the lowest point. We think the judgment was dishonest; all the judges did was say that they believed the police - irrespective of how many times the police changed their stories. But you carry on. What else can you do when such a terrible injustice has been committed?' May's solicitor, Campbell Malone, now plans to take her case to the European Court. The manner in which her appeal last year was dismissed, he says, again raises concerns over the role of the Court of Appeal which, increasingly, is usurping the role of a jury by second-guessing how it may have interpreted new evidence. The Court of Appeal appears to have a lofty disdain for cases referred to it by the CCRC.

Meanwhile, in HMP Foston Hall, where May has been moved, the parole process has begun. May, who has a job in the prison garden and is doing an Open University course, has been a model prisoner, and her reports are excellent. There is just one problem: she is still doggedly refusing to attend any 'offending behaviour' courses - no matter how much pressure the regime puts on her to do so. 'I'll never do that,' she says. 'I'm not going to get parole, but I'm not interested in it anyway. Some people have said: "You'll never get out, then." Well, so be it. I'm not a prisoner who riots or kicks off. But I will not admit to something I didn't do - not even if that means I can go home and see my children. I would rather die in prison than do that.'