The Smoking Gun of Innocence (Part Four)
October 20, 2025The Smoking Gun of Innocence Part Six
October 24, 2025
By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (March 26th 2022)[1]
Muddying the Waters
The prosecution case outlined in the appeal judgement of February 1999 is that Donna Clarke left the company of Denise Sullivan and Carly John at an address of a friend in Clover Road – the same road that she lived on at the time – between 1.35-1.40 on the night the fire occurred (the early hours of October 11th 1995). It claimed that Annette Hewins had bought the petrol and given it to Donna on a visit to Snow’s Garage in Merthyr Tydfil some three hours earlier.
However, the science establishes that the petrol used in the fire was unleaded – leaded petrol has been phased out for health reasons. By 2000 it was accepted that enhanced CCTV footage showed Hewins was at the leaded petrol pump. If that was the petrol that she bought, and there is no reason to believe that it was not, it could not have been the petrol used in the fire.
This alone totally exonerates and vindicates Hewins as the case against her stood or fell on whether that petrol had been given to Donna Clarke and then used by Clarke to set fire to the house where Diane Jones, 21, and her infant daughters, Shauna Hibberd, 2-years-old and Sarah-Jane Hibberd, 13-months-old lived.
It also makes a mockery of the case against Clarke (see below). The fire took place at 62 Marigold Close which has since been destroyed as an eye-sore – a monument now stands there.
It was near Clover Road, although it was uphill journey to get there. Previously, Clarke had to take the petrol she had allegedly obtained from Hewins, prise a gap in the wooden panel open, throw petrol in the gap along with a lighted match and then go home and change her clothes and return to her friend’s house. Where’s the scorch pattern to illustrate this?
The fire would need time to spread to the point that it was visible from Clover Road. This meant that according to the prosecution’s case, Clarke had to do everything that was said within a time-scale that cannot be resiled from. The time the fire-brigade was called was known (01.59 a.m.). That meant the time the fire was set could be determined, although there were problems with that too. There was a narrow window of opportunity and that caused problems too as their own timings were tight before the consequences of the petrol issues were fully realised – afterwards the timings stretched credibility to absurd lengths or even beyond breaking point.
The petrol evidence regarding Hewins was now absolutely crucial and no court had ever heard it fully. No jury, or even judge, had heard that evidence that showed that components of leaded petrol and compounds that would have formed had they been present were conspicuous by their absence. The Crown’s forensic scientist, Dr Andrew Sweeting, tested a sample of his lab-coat. It was consumed in the test and it was then claimed that meant that it was not known what type of petrol was used in the fire but the lab-coat test had no scientific merit whatsoever – there is no similarity between a section of the forensic scientist’s laboratory coat and the samples of carpet, which had plainly retained traces of the petrol used to set the fire for a few months.
Unacceptable in a Civilised Society
The waters had been muddied to such an extent that what should have been a very simple issue was obscured on the basis of a test that had no scientific merit.
On January 14th 2000 I put the petrol argument regarding the boiling points of constituents of leaded petrol – the absence of which is evidence that it was unleaded petrol if those constituents, tetraethyl lead, (TEL), the lead scavengers, Ethylene Dibromide (EDB) and Ethylene Dichloride (EDC) or the compounds that would have been created from the chemical reactions such as Lead Oxide (PbO), Lead Dibromide (PbBr2) and Lead Dichloride (PbCl2) – were detected. This was known by comparing the boiling points of toluene and the xylenes, which were detected, to those of TEL, EDB and PbO, PbBr2 and PbCl2, which were not detected.
The issue was therefore whether those would have been or should have been detected if they had been present in the petrol used to set fire to 62 Marigold Close.
When I put that argument at that meeting, Superintendent Jim Kerr leaned across to the forensic scientist, C. Michael Jenkins and asked, “Does that make sense?” Jenkins responded as follows: “Yes, it does.”
From that moment onwards Hewins had been exonerated and vindicated despite the failure of South Wales Police to formally acknowledge it – shame on them that. Hewins never lived to have her vindication formally acknowledged. She never received a penny in compensation for her ordeal – at the time the Discretionary Scheme still existed – nor did she ever receive any assistance (after-care) to rebuild her life.
Such conduct is unacceptable in a society that claims to be civilised.
[1] The date on this article is when the original research and article that follows this one was conducted and published, albeit not in The Fitted-In Journal or EmpowerS Magazine. There are witnesses who know that this is my original work and when it was conducted.
