John Thomas Straffen spent 55 years in custody, longer than any other prisoner in Britain at the time of his death in 2007. He was born in 1930 at Bordon in Hampshire. As a young man in Bath he confessed to killing two girls, Brenda Goddard and Cicely Bathstone, but in 1951 he was found unfit to plead, a finding that meant he could not be tried, and he was sent to Broadmoor. The next year he escaped. While he was free a five-year-old girl was killed, and this time he stood trial. He was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death, then reprieved because of his mental state. He never left prison again.
His case left two lasting marks. In law, the Court of Criminal Appeal's ruling on his appeal, R v Straffen, became a leading English authority on when evidence of a defendant's earlier crimes may be put before a jury. Around Broadmoor, his escape led to the installation of the warning sirens that were still sounding in weekly tests around the hospital in 2014.
Straffen was born in Bordon, Hampshire, in 1930, according to the Farnham Herald, the local paper for the town, which reported his death in November 2007 under the headline that Britain's longest-serving prisoner had come from Bordon. One point shaped everything after: he was treated by the courts and by doctors as mentally deficient. The Farnham Herald said he was first judged unfit to plead because of his mental age. The Home Secretary who spared his life in 1952 cited his mental state, according to Reuters, and the 2007 local report recorded that he was regarded as "feeble minded." When his solicitors asked for his case to be reopened in 2001, they argued that he had a mental age of about nine and a half. A 1962 review in the British Medical Journal called him a certified mental defective.
Brenda Goddard was six years old when she was killed in Bath. Straffen was 21. The Farnham Herald reported in 2007 that police questioned him about her death at the time but did not have enough evidence to charge him. Her death remained unsolved until he confessed to it after the death of a second child.
Cicely Bathstone was nine. Straffen met her at a cinema in Bath, took her away from it and strangled her, according to the Farnham Herald. He was arrested the next day, and he confessed to her death and to Brenda Goddard's.
The two deaths were the subject of murder charges. The Court of Criminal Appeal, reviewing the case in 1952, recorded that he had been arrested for the murders of young girls, found unfit to plead and committed to Broadmoor. In its later account of the case, the Australian Law Reform Commission described the earlier killings as not in dispute and wrote that it had been established that Straffen killed the two girls. No jury ever tried him for either girl's death.
In 1951 Straffen was found unfit to stand trial for the murders of the two girls, Reuters reported in 2007. A finding of unfitness to plead is not a verdict on whether a person committed the act charged. It is a decision that he cannot understand the proceedings well enough to take part in a trial. Straffen was not convicted of killing Brenda Goddard or Cicely Bathstone. He was committed to Broadmoor, a high-security hospital.
Writing ten years later in the British Medical Journal, an unnamed reviewer of the lawyer G. W. Keeton's book Guilty But Insane: Four Trials for Murder (1961) noted that Straffen had been found unfit to plead in 1951 and asked why the same question was not raised again when he stood trial the following year.
In 1952 Straffen escaped from Broadmoor. The Farnham Herald reported that he got away while he was on cleaning duties. A history slide presented to councillors in Wokingham in 2014 summed up the escape in a single line: he climbed a shed and jumped over the wall. Minutes of a Bracknell Forest Borough Council meeting from the same year, attached to the Wokingham report, described the wall the escaping patient climbed as an eleven-foot brick wall.
He was not free for long, but during that time a five-year-old girl was killed. Reuters, reporting his death in 2007, stated that he killed her after escaping from the hospital.
Straffen was charged with the girl's murder. This time, according to the Farnham Herald, doctors found him fit for trial. He denied killing her, but in doing so he spoke about the earlier deaths. The Court of Criminal Appeal later summarized the position this way: while denying the later murder, he admitted the earlier ones, and that made them relevant to the case against him.
The prosecution sought to put two kinds of evidence before the jury. The first was what he had said at Broadmoor. The second was evidence about the deaths in Bath. On identification, the Australian Law Reform Commission listed the three strands that were admitted: evidence that Straffen had been near the scene, that he had escaped from a nearby institution, and that he had been detained for killing two young girls "in precisely the same circumstances" as the killing being tried.
He was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. The anonymous 1962 BMJ reviewer described the atmosphere of the trial as hostile to him and wrote that the public had demanded the death penalty after a third little girl was killed within hours of his escape.
Straffen appealed. The Court of Criminal Appeal, sitting as Slade, Devlin and Gorman JJ, dismissed the appeal in a judgment reported as R v Straffen [1952] 2 QB 911. The decision is dated August 20, 1952.
The court dealt with two complaints. The first concerned the statements he had made at Broadmoor. The Judges' Rules, the court held, were designed to govern statements made to the police, not statements made elsewhere, so what he said at the hospital could be used.
The second concerned the Bath deaths. The general rule in English law kept out evidence that showed only that a defendant had a tendency to commit crimes of the kind charged. But the court allowed the evidence here. Straffen had admitted the earlier killings while denying the later one, and that made the evidence about them relevant.
Later commentators explained why. The Australian Law Reform Commission, in its report on uniform evidence law, used the case as its opening example. It wrote that the evidence was admitted because it showed that Straffen had a tendency to kill in a particular manner, and that his presence near the scene combined with the similarities identified him. Seen another way, it said, since he had killed two other young girls and had been nearby when the third was killed, it was highly probable that he had killed her too. The lawyer Stefano Filletti, writing on similar fact evidence in English law, described the earlier killings in Straffen as bearing "the accused's signature", so distinctive that little other evidence of identity was needed, and noted that time and place were essential to the reasoning.
R v Straffen became one of the standard cases on similar fact evidence. It was cited by the Court of Appeal in 2003 and the House of Lords in 2005 in O'Brien v Chief Constable of South Wales Police, a civil claim for malicious prosecution in which similar fact evidence was at issue.
Straffen was not executed. The Home Secretary commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, citing his mental state, according to Reuters. The Farnham Herald said he escaped the gallows because he was considered feeble minded.
The BMJ reviewer, writing in 1962, judged that to hang Straffen would have been a grave miscarriage of justice and that only the Home Secretary's courageous recommendation of a reprieve had prevented it. The reviewer criticized the defense for giving up, without a fight, the argument that mental deficiency counted as a disease of the mind, a point the reviewer said informed medical opinion would have accepted. The result, in the reviewer's view, was that the law was left more tightly bound to the McNaughton rules on insanity than before, when the case could have been a chance to reform it. The review ended by arguing that it was the security arrangements at Broadmoor, not Straffen, that should have been on trial.
The escape changed life around Broadmoor. Reuters reported in 2007 that a siren system was installed afterward to alert people living nearby whenever a patient escaped. A report to Wokingham Borough Council's Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee in July 2014 gave the history: the sirens went in in 1952, after the escape, and more were added in the 1960s. By 2014 there were 13 siren sites within a seven-mile radius of the hospital, linked by copper lines that BT no longer supported. The sirens were tested every week, but those tests had exposed a number of failures, and an independent review had found the system no longer fit for purpose. Their role, the council minutes noted, was purely to give warning; they were not a security measure.
Straffen spent the rest of his life in custody. Where he was held drew attention in Parliament. On June 21, 1960, the MP Marcus Lipton asked the Home Secretary why Straffen had been moved from Cardiff Prison to Horfield. R. A. Butler replied in a written answer that he had been moved back to Bristol prison, a fully secure establishment, because the move was judged to be in the public interest.
In 2001 his solicitors asked for the case to be reopened. Reuters reported that they argued he should never have been tried at all, because he had a mental age of about nine and a half. He was not released.
Straffen died on Monday, November 19, 2007, in the health care center at HM Prison Frankland in County Durham, according to the Farnham Herald, which said he had been ill. The Ministry of Justice confirmed the death, Reuters reported. He was 77 and had spent 55 years in custody. The death was believed to be from natural causes, and a post-mortem examination was planned. The prison service said it was not sure whether he had any next of kin.
The legal status of the three deaths differs and is easily blurred. Straffen admitted killing Brenda Goddard and Cicely Bathstone, and the appeal court in 1952 and later commentators treated those deaths as his. But he was never tried for them, because he was found unfit to plead; he was not convicted of either. The 2007 Farnham Herald report said he had been convicted of murdering three girls. That is not correct: his only conviction was for the 1952 killing.
He denied the 1952 killing. The jury convicted him, and the Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal. The 2001 application to reopen the case argued that he should never have been put on trial because of his mental age. He remained in prison until he died.
There are also unsettled questions about his fitness for trial. The 1962 BMJ reviewer asked why the question of fitness to plead, decided against trial in 1951, was not raised again in 1952, and argued that his mental deficiency should have been treated as a disease of the mind.
1930: Born at Bordon, Hampshire.
Year not reported (when he was 21): Brenda Goddard, 6, killed in Bath; police question Straffen but lack evidence to charge him.
Year not reported: Cicely Bathstone, 9, killed in Bath after he takes her from a cinema; he is arrested the next day and confesses to both deaths.
1951: Found unfit to plead to the murder charges; committed to Broadmoor.
1952: Escapes from Broadmoor while on cleaning duties; a five-year-old girl is killed while he is at large.
1952: Warning sirens installed around Broadmoor.
1952: Convicted of the girl's murder and sentenced to death.
1952: Court of Criminal Appeal dismisses his appeal (R v Straffen [1952] 2 QB 911; dated August 20, 1952).
1952: Death sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
1960: Moved from Cardiff Prison back to Bristol (Horfield); written answer in Parliament, June 21, 1960.
1962: British Medical Journal review of G. W. Keeton's Guilty But Insane discusses his case.
2001: Solicitors ask for the case to be reopened.
November 19, 2007: Dies at HM Prison Frankland, County Durham, aged 77.
2014: Wokingham and Bracknell Forest councils review the Broadmoor sirens, installed after his escape.