“A Long Time Coming!”

Two Innocent Businessmen Exonerated After Decades of Imprisonment For Murdering a Man Scotland Yard Knew Was Alive

Harry MacKenney (left) and Terry Pinfold outside the Court of Appeal in October 2003

By Hans Sherrer (Dec. 20, 2003)

In 1980 business partners Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney were convicted of murdering a man six years earlier. Decades of proclaiming their innocence while serving life terms in prison fell on deaf ears until they learned in 2003, that Scotland Yard had known for over a quarter of a century the “victim” was alive three years after his alleged murder. On December 15, 2003 the convictions of the two men were quashed by the U.K.’s Court of Appeal.

    In the early 1970s, Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney became partners in the manufacture of underwater diving equipment. They started their company in Dagenham, Essex (near London, England) after their release from prison, where they met. ¹ While in prison the men became acquainted with John “Bruce” Childs, and they gave him a job when he was released. ² Terence Eve, also a former prisoner, owned a teddy bear manufacturing company located in the same building as the diving equipment venture.

    In the fall of 1974 Mr. Eve became a suspect in the hijacking of £75,000 (over $150,000) in stereo equipment. ³ He apparently found out before he could be arrested that a warrant had been issued for his role in the theft. Facing five years in prison, Terence Eve left work on a Friday afternoon in November 1974, and he didn’t return the following Monday. ⁴ He seemingly vanished without a trace. ⁵ His family didn’t hear from him again and his body was never found. ⁶

    Police considered Eve’s disappearance an unsolved mystery until December 1979, when Childs, who no longer worked for Pinfold and MacKenney, went to police and confessed to murdering Mr. Eve in November 1974. ⁷ He also confessed to murdering five other people who vanished without a trace from November 1974 to October 1978. ⁸ Childs implicated Pinfold and MacKenney in his confession by telling police the missing people were victims of discount contract killings: Pinfold solicited the jobs and MacKenney and he carried them out. ⁹ Childs also told the police that Eve was killed by the three men in his teddy bear factory on the Saturday morning of the week-end he disappeared. ¹⁰ However when questioned by police after Eve’s disappearance, Terry Pinfold said he was in Clacton all week-end with his in-laws, which they corroborated. ¹¹ Terrence Eve’s wife, mother and one of his factory workers all told police they were in the factory the Saturday morning of the week-end he went missing, and that they did not see anything out of the ordinary, nor did they see him, Terry Pinfold, nor Harry MacKenney that day. ¹²

    Bruce Childs pled guilty to the six murders, and he was not only the star witness against his former employers, but since there were no bodies, murder weapons, corroborating witnesses, or forensic evidence, his testimony was the prosecution’s sole evidence that any of the six people had been murdered. ¹³ The two men’s defense focused on the inconsistencies in Childs’ account, and that the men had solid alibis. ¹⁴ The jurors ignored the weakness of the prosecution’s case and convicted Mr. Pinfold and Mr. MacKenney of various charges. They were both sentenced by the judge to life in prison. ¹⁵

    The men’s appeal of their convictions were denied in 1981. A break came in July 1986 when Childs recanted his trial testimony in a sworn affidavit. ¹⁶ He also swore in the affidavit that he testified falsely at the trial because prosecutors had offered him “the inducement that my ‘cooperation’ at the trial would ensure my early release from prison.” ¹⁷ However an appeal filed in 1988 citing Childs’ affidavit as new evidence of the men’s innocence was denied on the ground that the previous appeal (based on different arguments) had been dismissed. ¹⁸

    Although they would have qualified for parole in the early to mid 1990s if they admitted their guilt, both men refused to do so and continued trying to find exonerating evidence. With the help of people on the outside, evidence of Bruce Childs’ condition of being a pathological liar was assembled, and in September 2001 Terry Pinfold was granted bail after the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case for review by the Court of Appeals. ¹⁹ Harry MacKenney was not granted bail until October 2003, when the Appeals Court heard the evidence not heard by their trial jury. ²⁰ Among that new evidence was explosive documentation obtained by the men in 2003, after being concealed by the prosecution for nearly a quarter of a century: Neither prior to or during the men’s trials, nor after their convictions, was it disclosed to them that Terence Eve was known by Scotland Yard to be alive and living in west London under an assumed name three years after his alleged murder in November 1974. ²¹ In 1977 the late Scotland Yard Commander Bert Wickstead reported during an investigation for another case that Mr. Eve was living in west London under an assumed name, and he stopped any further inquiry into the matter. ²² Mr. Eve’s disappearance and starting of a new life occurred at precisely the time necessary for him to avoid prosecution and a possible five year prison term for the stereo hijacking caper.

    After hearing the new evidence in late October 2003, including that Bruce Childs was “an immensely plausible liar” whose testimony was evidentially “worthless,” the Court of Appeal granted Mr. MacKenney bail pending a decision. ²³ On December 15, 2003 the Court formally quashed the men’s convictions. ²⁴ Terry Pinfold, now 71, had spent 22 years wrongly imprisoned, and Harry MacKenney, now 72, was imprisoned for 24 years. Those decades of imprisonment were not kind to the men: Mr. Pinfold suffered six strokes in prison and has heart and bowel problems; while Mr. MacKenney has emphysema and pneumonia. ²⁵

    After the Court of Appeals issued its decision, lawyer’s for the men announced they would make a compensation claim for £1 million. ²⁶ However, there has been no indication of action being taken against anyone involved in the prosecution for wrongdoing. ²⁷

    In spite of their age and infirmaries, both men have spunk when it comes to describing the wrong they needlessly suffered. Harry MacKenney said, “It has been a long time coming. The case should never have got to court. It was a fiasco. This has come 23 years too late.” ²⁸ Traveling to the hearing from a hospital to which he returned after it was over, Terry Pinfold expressed similar sentiments, “I am not going to let this go. Everything that happened to us will come out eventually. The trial 20 years ago was a joke. Witnesses were coerced, threatened, bullied, and misled. It has taken over two decades to right this wrong, and things are still not right.” ²⁹ They certainly aren’t. When Terry Pinfold walked out of prison in September 2001 he had £47 to his name, after losing his wife, his business, his home and his health while imprisoned. ³⁰

    Unfortunately for the two men, the only “right” thing about their case is looking forward to obtaining substantial compensation for their ordeal, so they can have some measure of comfort in their remaining years.

    It has not been publicly reported why after his disappearance, Scotland Yard protected Terence Eve’s new identity to the point of allowing Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney to be tried, convicted and imprisoned for over two decades for a heinous crime that it was not only impossible for them to have committed – but which never happened. Since the November 1974 murder of Terence Eve was a figment of Bruce Childs’ imagination, and there is an absence of any evidence sans Childs’ unsubstantiated confessions that the other five missing people were murdered by the trio of men, so far as anyone knows, they are all fictitious crimes. ³¹ Fabricating a confession to neatly solve the disappearance of six people for the police, indicates that Bruce Childs’ personal problems go much deeper than simply being a pathological liar.

    However if Scotland Yard shares the FBI’s policy that was secret until three years ago of sacrificing innocent people to protect informants, it is plausible Terence Eve made a deal to provide information in exchange for concealment of his new identity. The FBI’s practice of doing that was publicly exposed in January 2001, when it was reported that information provided to lawyers for Joseph Salvati and Peter Limone proved the FBI and prosecutors knew at the time of their 1967 trial for the 1965 murder of Edward Deegan in Boston, that they and their two co-defendants – Louis Greco and Harry Tameleo – were innocent. ³² Yet people within the FBI and others involved in the men’s prosecution who knew the truth, stood in unison and allowed four innocent men to be convicted of murder and languish in prison for decades. ³³ Two of those men – Greco and Tameleo – died while wrongly imprisoned, and the other two were not exonerated until 2001, after more than 30 years of imprisonment. ³⁴ Scotland Yard and others involved in Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney’s prosecution likewise remained silent and allowed the horrific misjustice of their conviction to occur. Furthermore, during the intervening two decades while they fought for their freedom, not a single one of those people bothered to exert the effort to pick-up a telephone and dial a few numbers to tip-off the men’s lawyers of the concealed evidence undermining the soundness of their convictions.

    At a minimum the tragedy that befell Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney highlights the inability to consider any conviction safe that hinges on the testimony of a sole prosecution witness, who like Bruce Childs may not be telling the truth, but simply saying what is necessary to receive an expected reward from the prosecution. ³⁵

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