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All I heard was, This was a good day for us. I thought about all the evidence that had come up since the trial started: the crime scene photos, the footmarks that matched his feet, newsreel of the victims’ families crying on the steps of the Old Bailey.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I had a permanent blockage in my throat. And yet here was Matty talking with the same cold detachment as if he were discussing the weather.
Ironically, to other people he didn’t seem cold at all. Every day women lined up to get a seat in the gallery, star-struck by his charm and good looks. Many of them groupies who curled and dyed their hair in line with the Shadow’s preference, turned on by his notoriety. A psychological condition known as hybristophilia apparently. Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome. It could have all the labels in the world, and it still wouldn’t make any sense to me.
‘He just doesn’t seem the type to kill,’ was said a lot. ‘He’s the sort of guy you’d be proud to introduce to your parents.’
It wasn’t just women who were taken in by him though. The longer the trial went on, the more people questioned whether he really was behind these crimes. The cross examination of Grace Keenan was only part of it. The prosecution case was largely circumstantial they said, a term I had to look up and yet still have explained to me.
Beyond reasonable doubt means you have to be completely sure a person is guilty, as one legal expert put it on Radio London.
‘By the time the defence finished with her, even Grace Keenan couldn’t say she was sure Melgren was her sister’s attacker.’
My mother clung to the possibility of Matty’s innocence. Hope, a bauble dangled in front of a baby ready to be snatched away as soon as she reaches for it.
‘They’ve got to acquit,’ she said. ‘It’s going to happen. I feel it in my bones.’
I didn’t know what to feel. I longed as much for a guilty verdict as an exoneration. I’d been so sure of his involvement that day in the café, but now I wasn’t sure of anything, which is what made it all so difficult. I craved certainty. A resolution in whatever form.
‘How can you be so confident he’s innocent?’ I asked my mother.
‘Because I love him,’ she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Between 1981 and 1983, a wave of signature killings spread through North London. Apart from an eight-year-old girl, the victims were all similar in appearance– slim, petite brunettes in their late teens or early twenties with shoulder length curly hair. Many were discovered dumped in garbage disposal sites, undergrowth, ponds or canals. Although police believe there are many others whose bodies have never been found.
As horrifying as the crimes were, they have long been overshadowed by the perpetrator, Matty Melgren’s, charisma and good looks, along with his refusal to admit his guilt and the controversial testimony that led to his conviction.
At the heart of the prosecution’s case was footprint evidence (the impressions on a surface made by unshod feet rather than shoes). These prints can indicate certain skin features, particularly crease marks and ridge detail as well as other characteristics such as gait.
However, whilst research in this field has suggested that the shape of a footprint is very individual (though not unique in the way of fingerprints or DNA*) the weight it should carry is still a matter for debate.
In fact, in 1999, a new study found that although footprint evidence is of value within crime scene investigations, it is not a hard and fast science, and examiners should approach it with caution.
*DNA was not a factor in Melgren’s trial. It wasn’t until 1986 that genetic fingerprinting would be used in a criminal investigation.
