Bridgwater Three

Three victims of a miscarriage of justice who spent 18 years in prison for the murder of Carl Bridgwater. The convictions were declared unsafe in February 1997.

Following the discovery of the body of the 13-year-old paperboy at an isolated farmhouse near Stourbridge, Worcestershire, and a subsequent investigation by the West Midlands police, four men were charged. In February 1979, three of them, Michael Hickey, Vincent Hickey, and Jim Robinson, were convicted of murder, and the fourth, Patrick Molloy, of manslaughter. All were committed to prison. The case against them rested mainly on confessions by Vincent Hickey and Molloy. The accused have always proclaimed their innocence and 18 years after they were convicted, it was accepted by the UK government that the confessions had been forged by the police and that the convictions were unsafe. The two Hickeys and Robinson were released on bail, pending a full judicial hearing. Molloy had died in prison 1981.