Manchester Evening News
Neal Snowdon
The aunt of Stefan Kiszko - jailed for a child-killing he did not commit - has welcomed fresh attempts to bring the chief suspect to justice. The M.E.N. exclusively reported on Friday how relatives of 11-year-old victim Lesley Molseed have asked Manchester lawyers to bring a private prosecution against convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett over the 1975 murder.
Mild-mannered tax clerk Stefan Kiszko, wrongly jailed for Lesley's murder, spent 16 years behind bars. After a long campaign by his mother Charlotte, aunt Alfreda Tosic and solicitor Campbell Malone, he was freed in 1992 but died the following year. Charlotte Kiszko died six months after him.
Today 81-year-old Mrs Tosic said the private prosecution was upsetting. But she added: "If this goes ahead it will be a good thing. I will be happy if he is the right man and he ends up going to jail.
"Stefan is dead, Charlotte is dead and I am a cripple living alone. But I hope that this time everything is done right. "I wonder why we couldn't have had this done before."
Mrs Tosic, who has photos of Stefan round her tidy home in Kingsway, Rochdale, was a regular source of support for her sister Charlotte during the years of campaigning for his release. Lesley's family have instructed solicitor Robert Lizar to start a private prosecution.
The book Innocents, published in 1997 and co-written by M.E.N. reporter Steve Panter, named Hewlett and detailed how he fled to Ireland after lying to police about his movements on the day 4 ft-tall Lesley was abducted.
She had left her home on Rochdale's Turf Hill estate to buy bread for her mother. Her body was found at Rishworth Moor, between Oldham and Ripponden. She had been stabbed many times and sexually assaulted. After Stefan's release, police questioned Hewlett over Lesley's murder. But the Crown Prosecution Service said it did not have enough evidence to prosecute him.
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