DAVID MITCHELL AND HOWARD RIDGEWAY – CLOTHING

A local photographer who was in the vicinity took photographs of David Mitchell and Howard Ridgeway some minutes after the murders.  The news media throughout the country used these photographs.

After Thomas’s trial in December 1994, Thomas’s sister visited the photographer to purchase the photographs and she asked him if he had seen any blood on Mitchell or his clothes as he was taking the photographs.  She managed to obtain one photograph as there was a problem with the other negatives.  He told her that he did not see any blood on either man.

After Trial and Error became involved in the case,  Bob Duffield went to the Forensic Science Laboratory to speak to the scientists about the case.  One of them gave him a copy of the list of clothes handed in by Mitchell and Ridgeway.

We checked this list against the picture and it was clear that both men had handed in the wrong clothes, i.e. clothes that they were not wearing at the time of the murders.  

It was stated in court that Mitchell’s were taken wet from the washing machine when the police went to his house the day after the murders.  They were then lost in the police station for several days before being sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory.  Ridgeway’s were never tested.