My search for the truth begins

The case against Alfred Moore , had two main strands , one being the evidence given by Constable Jagger which was by way of a written deposition which was read to the court after his death. From the defence point of view this evidence ,including that of the identification parade , could not be properly defended because Jagger could not be subjected to a cross examination. It was a damning piece of evidence against Moore.



The second strand was the Police cordon , the Police had always maintained that they were in position by 11-45pm on the night of the 14th July 1951 and anyone coming to and from the farm would have been seen. Alfred Moore always insisted that he arrived back at the farm about midnight and whist walking through the cemetery and along the public footpath which ran through the fields below the farm , he saw no Police officers and was never challenged by any.



In 1971 whist working in the CID at Huddersfield , a number of armed robberies occurred in the Kirkheaton area of the town. After painstaking enquiries lasting several weeks , a number of people were arrested and charged with those offences .



As a result of those enquiries a local family by the name of Mead had come under the spotlight , one member of the family , John Mead , was one of the number who had been arrested and charged. His father Clifford , had been suspected of having been involved in the planning of those offences but such was the lack of evidence against him , he was never arrested.



After the gang had been tried and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment it came to my attention that a meeting had taken place at the home of Clifford Mead . The purpose of that meeting was to discuss options with regards to possible appeals for the gang members. My informant who was present at that meeting , went on to tell me something which has remained very much in my mind for the past thirty eight years , something which was to galvanise my

resolve when I decided to re-examine the case of Alfred Moore . The informant told me that at some point during that meeting , Clifford Mead left the room , albeit for a short time , when he returned he stunned those at the meeting . He raised aloft in his hand a gun ( a handgun) and said simply , ' This is the gun that shot two coppers at Kirkheaton in 1951'. Without further ado , he left the room again and came back empty handed and never elaborated on his statement.



When David Schofield , a nephew of Alfred Moore , wrote to the Huddersfield Examiner in September of 2006 he claimed that his uncle was innocent of the crime for which he had been hung and appealed for anyone with information to contact him. David was living in New Zealand and after some difficulty , I managed to make contact with him and having told him what I knew

we had a brief discussion and it was at that point that I decided to make my own enquiries regarding the Moore case.



From at first reading accounts from newspaper clippings of the day and enquiries at the local library , my quest toook me to the National Archives in Kew. It was within those walls that the file on the Moore case was to be found , but they had been sealed down for a period 75years and were not due to be opened until 2026 . Subsequently I appealed to the Lord Chancillors office and permission was granted to open the file and my re-investigation was under way.