The Liverpool Daily Post & Echo Ltd
Daily Post (Liverpool)

November 28, 2005, Monday
NW Merseyside Edition

Husband's plea in 25-year-old murder case

HOMA KHALEELI

A MAN found guilty of murdering his wife almost 25 years after she died will launch an Appeal Court bid to overturn his conviction today.

Thomas Bowman, 62, of Prenton Village Road, Birkenhead, has always denied strangling his 44-year-old wife, Mary, in 1978 at their home in Wallesey.

But he was convicted of her murder at Preston Crown Court in July 2002 and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

His appeal against the conviction will be heard at London's Criminal Appeal Court.

David Martin-Sperry, for Bowman, told the court at a preliminary hearing last year that, at trial, the Crown's pathologist said she was sure Mary Bowman was strangled.

Her certainty could have swayed the jury, added the barrister, because the defence pathologist was unable to rule out that cause of death. But fresh evidence from a number of other experts meant that the Crown pathologist's confidence could not now be justified.

The barrister said damage to Mrs Bowman's liver meant that she may not have been able to cope with large doses of alcohol and valium found in her system in an original post mortem.

It is Bowman's case it was that, and not strangulation, that killed his wife, and Mr Martin-Sperry said there was a "serious and legitimate element of doubt" over the conviction.

Much of the case against Bowman, 29 at the time his wife died, centred on the evidence of his daughter, Diane, who was five at the time.

Mrs Bowman's death was only investigated after her daughter, a mother-of-two who had moved to Ireland, started counselling. During the sessions, Ms Bowman said suppressed memories of her mother's fate had come flooding back and she went to police.

What she told them led to her mother's body being exhumed.

At the original trial, the court heard that Bowman had attacked his wife at their home in Sudworth Road, Wallasey, and that he pushed her violently, knocking her unconscious when she hit her head. The jury was told he then force-fed her with alcohol and drugs before finally strangling her.

Ms Bowman told the court that her father had been violent towards her mother, her brother Damien and her half-brother, Philip Dutton.

Her brother, Damien, who also gave evidence, said he had woken up and found his mother dying on the living room floor. He said he had desperately wanted to phone the police but did not dare because he feared a beating from his father.

But Mr Bowman, a former publican and welder, said he awoke at 3am to find his wife not breathing.

He claimed she had drunk beer and whisky and taken valium, and that was what killed her

: Mary Bowman, who died in 1978

November 28, 2005, Monday

DNA 'EVIDENCE' MAY QUASH HUSBAND'S MURDER CONVICTION

Cathy Gordon, PA

New DNA evidence could lead to the quashing of the conviction of a man jailed for the 1978 murder of his wife, it emerged today.

Thomas Bowman, now 62, was found guilty of strangling his wife Mary and jailed for life after a jury heard their adult daughter describe how she witnessed the killing as a five-year-old girl.

He argues that his conviction at Preston Crown Court in July 2002 is "unsafe ".

A five-day appeal was due to go ahead in London this week, but Court of Appeal judges today adjourned the proceedings after being told of the fresh DNA evidence.

The court heard that the evidence raised the question of whether or not throat tissue analysed by a pathologist before Bowman's trial came from his wife 's body.

His barrister, David Martin-Sperry, told Lord Justice Gage, sitting with two other judges, that tissue samples had recently been re-analysed and the results had shown DNA material "inconsistent" with Mary Bowman.

Bowman was present in the dock to hear Mr Martin-Sperry submit that "if the throat is not Mary Bowman's" that was the "end of the Crown's case" and the conviction should be overturned.

Andrew Edis QC, for the Crown, told the judges: "The chance of some contamination by some other person resulting in a finding of their DNA ..... is quite high we would have thought".

Adjourning the appeal, Lord Justice Gage said: "We take the view that this issue, which has arisen at the very last moment - namely the question as to whether or not the DNA shows that the crucial neck structures are the deceased 's, or may not be the deceased's - must be investigated."

He said the court would have to evaluate all the issues raised in the appeal, "in order to decide whether or not, on all the evidence before it, the conviction is unsafe".

The court was "exceedingly anxious" for Bowman's appeal to be heard as quickly as possible, but the prosecution needed a fair opportunity to deal with the new evidence and to carry out further testing if necessary.

When the full appeal is heard, probably early next year, Bowman's lawyers will challenge prosecution evidence given by a pathologist that two small bones in Mrs Bowman's neck were broken, suggesting strangulation.

They will also apply to challenge the "flashback" evidence given at the trial by the Bowmans's 29-year-old daughter Diane.

The mother-of-two said she had suppressed the memories of what she had seen when her mother Mary died at the hands of her father, but that she remembered the incident while receiving counselling more than 20 years later.

Bowman, a former welder and publican, of Birkenhead, Merseyside, denied murdering his 44-year-old wife at their home in Wallasey.

An open verdict had been returned at an inquest on Mrs Bowman shortly after her death.

Tissue samples at the centre of the fresh evidence were taken at the time Mrs Bowman's body was exhumed - the court heard that one possibility for the inconsistency in the DNA results is that someone else's throat was mistakenly replaced in her body for burial after the post-mortem in 1978.