Why Justice Denied?

Never in my life have I been as angry as I feel now, the last 9 months have left me tired and devastated at the needless and violent death that my mum suffered. But now I have had to endure the added indignity of a process of law which has let my family and I down in a way which massively compounds the original crime. I do not want sympathy, I will one day come to terms with the label of victim, one that I share with the families of over 800 other murdered people this year. It is my hope that people who read this, feel some of the anger and desperation at a system that has denied my mum even in her death; justice.

The trial of Marc Riley and David Carr Burstow started on September the 21st 2009 at Bristol Crown Court. Before the jury could be sworn in Marc Riley pleaded guilty to both charges of Murder and Obstructing the Coroner. I was in another area of the building when this happened and Riley was led away before I had the chance to hear his plea.

The prosecution continued the case against his boyfriend David Carr Burstow, he also pleaded guilty to the charge of Obstructing the Coroner but not guilty to Murder. On that basis the jury was sworn in and the trial began. Despite David Carr Burstow not guilty plea for murder and his subsequent acquittal by the jury which I will write about another time, I want to tell you about his guilty plea for Obstructing a Coroner. What does that mean and what did he admit to. It probably helps at this point to explain what Obstructing a Coroner means and at the risk of getting this technically wrong as I am not some fancy barrister in layman's terms it means stopping a coroner being able to do their duty in law by disposing of a body such as the coroner can not record the death. In short "Hiding or disposing of a murder victim" This will probably strike you as rather old fashioned and when I go on to tell you what in practice David Carr Burstow and for that matter Marc Riley went on to do with my mothers body and their actions between the night of the killing and their arrest some 18 days later you too may start to share my anger.

Before I tell you about these two low life's actions there are 2 points that I was going to write about at the end of this piece. I think that you ought to know now;

1. Why the Crown Prosecution Service choose to indict both Riley and Carr Burstow on Obstructing a Coroner. 

2. The sentence that they both subsequently received. 

This information is I believe is vital to know while reading about their crimes, not knowing this puts you the reader in the same position that the jury was in Bristol at the trial, unknown to the jury the possible penalty for the second indictment could have had a strong baring on the final decision to acquit, at the very least I would hope that it might have concentrated their minds while deliberating the verdict. And that they might have taken more than 5 hours to discuss the evidence and possible ramification of the decision.

Why did the CPS choose the indictment of Obstructing a Coroner? This crime has no pre determined sentencing guidelines. That means that the judge could have sentenced whatever he felt appropriate and proportionate. Some of you will know that many crimes including murder have sentencing guidelines which judges have to follow. For example murder has an automatic sentence of Life (The meaning of which is for another day) judges can not deviate from guidelines. So in short the crime of Obstructing a Coroner can carry any sentence.

What did Carr Burstow receive having admitted to this indictment? 4 years imprisonment.

What did Riley receive having admitted to this indictment? 6 years, additional to his Life sentence as an aggravating factor.

What did they do?

Soon after her brutal murder, mum's body was wrapped with her shower curtain and tied at both ends with flexible electrical cable the sort that you have on a garden mower or strimmer. Under cover of darkness her body was stuffed in to the back of her own car. I say stuffed because mums car was a Toyota Yaris and this is a small hatchback and she was by way of blood staining evidence in the rear footwell, I think stuffed is an appropriate verb.

Both Carr Burstow and Riley traveled some 8 to 10 miles to Bradford on Avon where they drove the car across a field. At the bottom of the field there is a metal gate the type that stops cattle passing, it swings in a arc within is own metal frame. They had to get out and carry mum the rest of the way to the rivers edge. This meant a 150 meter walk down a steep hill. At the rivers edge she was dumped in to the icy water. Her body snagged on reeds and floated, Riley striped and waded in to the water to push her down. Mum was lost in the River Avon for the next 47 days.

Carr Burstow and Riley went back to mum's house to start cleaning up the mess that the killing had created. She had received over 12 blows to her head with a hammer; this frenzied attack had left her kitchen a blood bath. They spent some time there I don't know how long but by 21:12 Riley had called friends in Trowbridge asking if he and Carr Burstow could visit. The reason to stop the clean up, well Riley was cold and dirty from his having been in the river and they both had by now worked up an appetite. Not long after arriving at the flat of their friends Stephen Gurner and Laura Elvin. Carr Burstow left with Stephen Gurner in mum's Toyota their destination McDonalds. Riley asked Laura Elvin if he could use their bath, that is after Carr Burstow had cleaned up an injury on the knuckles of his hand which was dripping with blood.

After Riley's bath he became impatient for his food (he was not to know that Carr Burstow and Gurner had not gone straight to get the food but stopped to discuss what had happened that night) Riley asked Laura to phone through an order to Dominos Pizza, clearly the events of that evening had done nothing to stem their appetites!

Carr Burstow and Gurner's conversation is for another post, this is about the actions that followed the murder. Either before of after the stop at the McDonalds the pair "ragged" the Toyota. The term ragged was explained very well by Laura Elvin during her evidence in court. 'Ragging is driving a car hard on the street, testing its limits' It seams that a little Top Gear test driving in a dead woman's car is a fun way to pass the evening for David Carr Burstow. During Carr Burstow's raggin' he managed to damage the front bumper, so attracting attention was not a concern while driving that night, clearly the relief of not having a body in the back had to be celebrated with some wheel-spinning. At the McDonalds drive-in Carr Burstow removed a plastic bag from the Toyata containing the hammer which only hours earlier was used to bludgeon my mother. He put the murder weapon in a bin, this act alone is so criminal as to be deserving of punishment enough, in disposing of the murder weapon inevitably vital evidence was lost forever. Over 20 days passed by the time police were able to close the land fill site where the bins from that evening were thought to be dumped, it was decided that to find this item would not be practical and almost impossible. They both returned to Gurner and Elvin's flat to eat burgers but as you know Riley has already ordered pizza, tired of waiting for the test drivers return. A takeaway dinner after a hard nights work!

The following morning at approximately 09:15 Carr Burstow called his step brother Reginald Potter in Norfolk again the nature of this (very important) conversation is for later, save to say he was interested in selling the Toyota Yaris to his step brother. Potter was interested but not without the relevant documents. Carr Burstow again called Potter later that day to say he could not find the documents. This is surprising as he and Riley managed to find the PIN codes to all of my mother’s bank cards and it took me moments to find the distinctive blue V5 amongst the pile of paper work that they had rifled through. Maybe they were so delighted that they had found the PIN numbers this distraction proved too strong. Carr Burstow asked Potter how he could scrap the Toyota, he advised that this would be hard without documents. This proved to be good advice because the following day when Carr Burstow took the car to a local scrap dealers claiming it had a dodgy engine, he was told that without documents they were not interested.

That same day Carr Burstow stole from mums house a television and using her car gave it to his friends Jack and Jacque. He also recruited help for his friends, Darren Lee Jackson and Jack Isaacs (who were convicted of Handling Stolen Goods in summer 2009) Jackson and Isaac again tried to take the Toyota to the scrap dealers, it was sold it for £75 and left it outside in the street. Riley and Carr Burstow then went on a spending spree, using mums cards they bought CD's and DVD's they ordered supermarket food for home delivery. One feature of their shopping lists was pizza it was a regular favorite, the irony of killing an Italian and enjoying Italian food didn't pass me by. Riley bought his boyfriend an XBox Elite games machine and spent £123.95 on a range of sex toys for a website called forafters.co.uk they including handcuffs gay porn and amyl nitrate liquid, commonly called Poppers. Their spending spree was boosted with regular visits to the Tesco and NatWest cash machines in Trowbridge. NatWest were not exactly quick to pick up on the unusual spending patterns, in reality they never did, it was the police that let them know that over £3000 had been stolen from under their noses. Together they withdrew a maximum allowance of £250 each day for 15 consecutive days. They stripped mums bedroom of jewelry and other small valuables, some of these items were found at 4 different addresses in Trowbridge (all friends of Carr Burstow and Riley) during the investigation. They did all this while continuing to live at my mothers house as if nothing had happened.

But something had happened and Riley fended off inquiries from relatives and friends during those eighteen days, he had paid close attention to mums habits and used these to lie to all who enquired after her, even Carr Burstow got in on the act telling mums neighbors that she was looking after her sick grandson or in Italy. They didn't think to say the same story to everybody, they probably never thought that mums friends and family would cross check and pursue her whereabouts.

During those eighteen days it was noticed by friends and associates of Carr Burstow and Riley that they were spending more that usual, buying takeaway pizza's to share with their friends, they were never short of cigarettes or dope. They invited friends to come to the house to take some of the antiques, well antiques as they saw them. My mum didn't have antiques nor was she a wealthy woman but to these men she must have looked well off, not a surprising view from an ex-drug user and his homeless boyfriend, who lived off £85 per week disability allowance due to his Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. At no time after her murder did they attempt to leave her home, the pickings were too good! One of their final purchases was a red Ford Fiesta which Carr Burstow bought for £350 on January the 25th just two days before their arrest.

This was the basic evidence given at the trial which tells of the abuse of my mums body, property and money, you can make up you own mind if by admitting to these crimes the sentence of 4 years reduced to 2 years in custody is an appropriate and proportionate punishment for Carr Burstow? He has served over 241 days on remand and will therefore only be in a Youth Offender Institution for a further 15 months and by February 2011 Carr Burstow will be free. The prison service will have no time to rehabilitate him, I predict that he will go on to commit further criminal acts. I hope that I won’t be interviewed some time in the future to say that ''They missed their chance at Bristol Crown Court in 2009.'' but somehow I think I will. As for Riley his actions were considered aggravating and therefore added 6 years to his starting tariff of 15 years, big deal!

The day after this trial ended in Bristol at Leicester Crown Court, 21 year old Sheffield United footballer Jordan Robertson was jailed for 32 months after causing a fatal crash because he was trying to change songs on his iPod.................