Young’s team wrote to the Crown Prosecution Service and Hampshire Constabulary in July 2008 to ask for the evidence in the case to be reviewed. The police had kept swabs of the semen found on de Simone’s body, though in 1998 the Forensic Science Service (FSS) said they did not have it. Despite previous claims that no forensic evidence from the case had been retained, the Crown Prosecution Service agreed to resubmit all the evidence to the FSS. It was only a question of finding it.
Rag Chand, a barrister who worked pro bono (without charge) on the case, spent four months looking for the evidence. The police said there were no surviving papers in the case. Instead, Chand trawled through local newspaper cuttings to piece together what had happened. When it came to seeking the exhibits that the legal team wanted to submit for DNA testing, he was repeatedly told – like the legal team in 1998 – that they no longer existed.
“The search was the most difficult thing I have encountered in my personal and professional life,” he said. “It was like finding a needle in a haystack. But I persevered because I had a gut feeling that something was wrong.”
Chand’s tenacity paid off when his information led the FSS to an archive of evidence on an industrial estate in the Midlands, which they appeared to have forgotten about. There they discovered exhibits from the original investigation in 1979, which included swabs taken from de Simone’s body, her clothes and the seats of her Ford Escort car.
The DNA testing could then take place and the FSS revealed that the semen from the vaginal and anal swabs, and, indeed, none of the twenty samples from de Simone’s car, clothes and body, carried Hodgson’s DNA. All the samples then had to be retested before Hodgson was told that he was going to go free.
The papers were sent to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, who referred the case to the Court of Appeal and his conviction was quashed. This left Teresa’s family mortified. For years, they had thought that her murderer was safely behind bars. Hodgson was one of the longest-serving victims of a miscarriage of justice in the UK.
“The conviction will be quashed for the simple reason that advances in the science of DNA, long after the end of the trial, have proved a fact which, if it had been known at the time would, notwithstanding the remaining evidence in the case, have resulted in quite a different investigation and a completely different trial,” said Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.
He said that swabs taken from the dead girl had been examined and there were sufficient remnants of sperm on them for proper DNA analysis, resulting in the conclusion that the sample on the swabs did not come from the appellant.
“Whoever raped her – on these findings, it can’t be the appellant,” he continued. “The Crown’s case was that whoever raped her also killed her, so the new DNA evidence has demolished the case for the prosecution.”
Granting the appeal, Lord Judge concluded: “The decision leaves some important, unanswered questions. Perhaps the most important is that we do not know who raped and killed the dead girl. We can but hope for the sake of the appellant and the family of the murdered girl that her killer may yet be identified and brought to justice. But for now all we can do is to quash the conviction. It is accordingly quashed. The appellant will be discharged. There will be no new trial.”
Hodgson’s barrister at the original trial, Robin Grey QC, was there to shake his hand as he was released.
“As a human being I feel glad that we no longer have capital punishment,” he said. “As a defence barrister I didn’t get him off, and I have bitter feelings of guilt about that.”
The DNA from the swabs also failed to match anyone on the national database. But the case was reopened.
“Hampshire Constabulary have started a reinvestigation into the murder of Teresa de Simone in 1979,” said Detective Chief Inspector Phil McTavish, head of Hampshire Constabulary’s performance and review unit. “This is aimed at identifying the owner of the new DNA profile. The fact that we have this DNA also means that we are able to eliminate people from our enquiry. The original investigation and evidence is now being revisited with the benefit of the DNA evidence and will utilize advances in forensic science.”
The first job was to track down the original police files. They then found that, in the twelve months following the barmaid’s murder, the police had interviewed 30,000 people, taken 2,500 statements and traced 500 people who were in the area on the night of the murder. At one point, the list of possible suspects totalled 300 men, whom the police started to track down all over again.
“A number of key witnesses have been located, interviewed and are assisting the investigation,” he said. “All persons screened to date have been eliminated against the DNA profile. We will screen as many people as we consider necessary.”
The police had their work cut out. Back in December 1979, they received two anonymous letters containing “certain information” about the murder and appealed for whoever wrote them to come forward. However, their appeal met a wall of silence and whoever penned the letters never came forward. During the court case it emerged that these letters, posted on 12 December and 27 December in Southampton, had given police false information about where they should look for the killer. Those letters would need to be re-examined, if they still existed.
Then there was the sobbing man seen trying to vomit, just yards from where Teresa’s body was found, at 2 a.m. on the night she was murdered. He was described as aged between twenty-five and thirty, and 5 ft 9 in. (1.75 m) tall. And there was a bloodstained man who went into Threshers in Lodge Road, Portswood, to buy alcohol at around the time of Teresa’s murder. At Hodgson’s trial, shop manager Hilde Hutchings said he was about thirty and spoke with a north-country accent.
“He seemed agitated, aware of where he was,” she said. “He knew what he wanted, and that was a bottle of drink. He had blood on his hair and his hands were shaking. He had grazed knuckles and his nails were not very clean.”
There were eight other mystery men in the area at the time who were never traced or didn’t respond to witness appeals. Any one of them might hold the vital clue to the murderer’s identity, where he hid before the murder, where he went afterwards and what he did with Teresa’s jewellery.
The first man was seen in a light-coloured car at 12.30 a.m. on 5 December 1979, parked at the rear of the Tom Tackle, just yards from Teresa’s Ford Escort. The second was seen “acting suspiciously” for about ten minutes in darkness by the Gaumont Theatre entrance, within 50 yards (45 m) of the crime scene at about 1 a.m. on 5 December. He was in his early twenties, 5 ft 10 in. (1.78 m), thin with a slight stoop, a dark complexion and dark, straight, shoulder-length hair.
A third man was seen in Commercial Road at about midnight and again ten minutes later, this time carrying a small attaché case or woman’s weekend case, heading past the Gaumont Theatre from the direction of the Tom Tackle. He was aged about thirty, 5 ft 10 in., with a medium build, dark hair and wearing a grey, flecked, knee-length coat.
The fourth man was seen at about 4.15 a.m. on 5 December driving “at very fast speed” from Blechynden Terrace, left into Commercial Road. Witnesses said the driver was sitting “low in the driving seat of the car”. Two youths were seen running from the direction of the murder scene after what eyewitnesses described as “a noise and some brief shouting” at about the time of Teresa’s death. Earlier in the evening they had been turned away from Friday’s discotheque because of their clothing. Two other men flagged a taxi down in Blechynden Terrace at about 1.15 a. m. on 5 December and asked to be taken to Millbrook.
An appeal was also made for the taxi driver who took a man from the Civic Centre to the Blenheim Avenue, Oakmount Avenue or Brookvale Road area of Portswood sometime after 1 a.m. on 5 December 1979. Although fifty drivers contacted police, the driver who took this fare never came forward.
One man quickly ruled out of the investigation thanks to DNA evidence was the former landlord of the Tom Tackle, Anthony Pocock, who was accused of having an affair with Teresa, and then murdering her after she had been raped by someone else. The accusation proved groundless.
In August 2009, a body was exhumed at Kingston Cemetery in Portsmouth and DNA was taken. It belonged to David Lace who, although not one of the original suspects, confessed to the killing in 1983, eighteen months after Sean Hodgson had been convicted. He had been just seventeen at the time of the crime. This statement was filed alongside those of five other people who claimed to have been involved in the murder.
According to DCI McTavish: “David Lace was in custody for a series of burglaries in Portsmouth on 16 September 1983. Whilst being interviewed by local officers in relation to these offences he stated that he wished to tell them about a murder he had committed. He stated that he could no longer live with what he had done and he was better off in prison. They interviewed him and, realizing that he was referring to the murder of Teresa de Simone, they duly notified officers involved with that investigation.
“He then submitted to a more detailed interview by officers from the investigation during which he disclosed the following and this detail is taken from a record of that interview conducted with David Lace on 17 September 1983. He stated that he had stolen a rucksack and cash from his lodgings in Portsmouth on 4 December 1979, the day before Teresa’s murder. That matter was reported to police in Portsmouth at the time and he was subsequently arrested and charged with these matters on 10 December. He made no disclosure at that time in relation to the murder in Southampton.
“He then walked to Southampton, arriving at some point in the evening, possibly after the pubs had closed and was present at the rear of the Tom Tackle pub in the early hours of 5 December when Teresa was dropped back at her car by a friend. He approached the car and knocked on the window, asking Teresa the time. He then forced his way into the driver’s seat beside her and locked the doors to prevent her escape.
“He described Teresa, her clothing and how he used violence to subdue her. She struggled, he sexually assaulted her and strangled her using the passenger seatbelt in the car. He admitted subjecting Teresa to a violent attack and sensed that he had killed her. He removed her handbag and items of jewellery, concealing the handbag in bushes nearby. He kept cash from the handbag, and he kept the jewellery.
“He left Teresa lying across the back seat of her car. He hid for approximately ten minutes before going to Southampton railway station and catching a train back to Portsmouth. There is a note at the foot of the interview indicating that David Lace described his background and inability to cope with life and that he wished to be locked up.”
Despite this fulsome confession, the police did not believe him, dismissing him as a fantasist. Details of his account – the clothes the victim was wearing, the colour of the car, the number of doors it had and the injuries he had inflicted – failed to match the crime scene. Besides, they already had Hodgson behind bars. In 1983, the police failed to take a blood sample from Lace, which would have shown that he had the same blood type as the killer, or pass his file to the Director of Public Prosecutions. They simply dismissed him from the investigation.
However, Lace was still of interest to the police. He was already a seasoned criminal. A loner with an aggressive temper, he was convicted of a minor burglary in November 1977. The following year he was given a care order for snatching a woman’s handbag. With Teresa, too, he claimed he only meant to rob her, but ended up raping and strangling her.
There were four convictions recorded against David Lace after the murder of Teresa de Simone in December 1979. In January 1980, he was convicted of stealing cash and property from his lodgings on the night before Teresa’s murder. Then on 19 September, he was convicted for a series of burglaries in Portsmouth and served nine months of an eighteen-month sentence in prison. On 8 June 1984, he was convicted of a robbery at a post office in Swanwick. After threatening the shopkeeper with a knife, he took money from the till and made his escape, but he was chased and caught not far from the scene. This time he was sentenced to five years and nine months imprisonment.
On his release from Dartmoor prison in July 1987, David Lace moved to Brixham in Devon where he later worked on fishing boats. He had little or no contact with his family until the autumn on 1988, when he paid a visit to Portsmouth. Family members whom he visited said they felt that he had come to say goodbye. He made one disclosure at this time to the effect that he had done some bad things in his time, such as the post office robbery. He was also responsible for killing someone in Southampton when things got out of hand some years before when he was young.
In December 1988, just after the ninth anniversary of Teresa de Simone’s murder, Lace quit his job and gave away all his possessions. He told friends he was leaving and said goodbye. At 4 p.m. on Friday, 9 December 1988, his landlord found Lace dead in his bed. There was evidence of superficial attempts to cut his wrist. He had also taken painkillers and there was a plastic bag over his head. He died of suffocation, leaving no note. His body was buried in Portsmouth and his DNA was hidden away in a grave for the next twenty years.
When the case was reopened after Hodgson’s acquittal, a partial match was made between the sperm sample from Teresa’s body and the DNA of Lace’s sister. This led the police to exhume his body. The DNA from the corpse then produced a billion-to-one match. The police had finally found their man.
“The evidence overwhelmingly bears out Lace’s involvement in the rape and murder of Teresa de Simone,” said DCI McTavish, “and we are not seeking anyone else in relation to this matter.”
However, the Senior Crown Prosecutor Alastair Nisbet urged caution: “The CPS has advised Hampshire Constabulary that the evidence would have been sufficient to prosecute David Lace, if he were alive, with the offences of the rape and murder of Teresa de Simone. But this is in no sense a declaration that he was guilty of the offences. Had Mr Lace lived, our decision would merely have authorized the police to begin the legal process by charging him. Only after trial does a jury decide whether a person is guilty or not, on a higher standard of proof – beyond reasonable doubt.”