The Smoking Gun of Innocence Part Eight

By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (October 24^th 2022)

The Flaws in the Case Hypothesis

In the early hours of October 11^th 1995 a fire spread through 62 Marigold Close on the Gurnos Estate in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. It claimed the lives of Diane Jones, 21 and her infant daughters, Shauna Hibberd, 2, and Sarah-Jane Hibberd, 13-months. Jones’ partner, Shaun Hibberd, was in prison at the time.

Jones’ normal practice was to stay at her mother’s home on Tuesdays nights – that fuelled speculation that the arson was intended as a warning rather than an intention to kill. The drugs motive was more credible than the one offered in the prosecution’s case scenario – the jealousy of a rejected lover. Donna Clarke had had an affair with Shaun – Diane knew about the affair and, understandably, was angry about it, but even if this provided the reason for the arson, it applied to Clarke alone.

It was not until February 1996 that Clarke’s friend, Denise Sullivan and their friend teenage single-mother, Carly John, indicated that they had pertinent evidence. It was at this time that Annette Hewins. Clarke’s aunt, who used to do favours for her niece like driving her to garages to obtain electricity tokens was dragged into it too. Police had discovered that Hewins had wrongly insisted that she had not been to Snow’s Garage on the night of the arson – she had told police previously that she had been to another garage that night.

CCTV footage in particular proved that she had indeed been to Snow’s Garage. Police believed that they had caught the women out in a significant lie. But had they? It had the hallmarks of a genuine mistake and there was no proof that it was a deliberate lie. The crux of the case against Hewins was this and that she was alleged to have given some of the petrol that she bought to Clarke. But a crucial question was not only not answered, it is unclear if it was even asked.

Clarke had no legitimate reason for wanting petrol. Why would Hewins give it to her, especially in such a manner (siphoned from her car off CCTV coverage into a Lucozade bottle)? It would have been obvious that it would have been needed for a sinister purpose and if she had been told that it was for an attack on Jones, then why would Hewins agree to that? After all, she had no grudge against Jones and why would Hewins, John and Sullivan have stayed silent about it for four months when infants had died as well – being labelled a child killer was the thing that distressed Hewins most of all.

If the prosecution case was true, then these three women must have known of Clarke’s guilt for months. Why did they and others stay silent for so long – after all, Donna Clarke was not a criminal with a feared reputation – others in Merthyr fitted that description far better than her. It took more than a year for the three women to come to trial and the Crown’s case was flawed – deeply flawed at best.

Very Deep Flaws

At its height, the  Crown’s case was that Donna Clarke left the company of Carly John, then below the age of consent and Clarke’s friend, Denise Sullivan between 1.35-1.40 a.m. for a maximum of 15 minutes, and that during that time she got from Mark Morris’ home in Clover Road, Merthyr Tydfil to Diane Jones house, 62 Marigold Close, prised the wooden panel open with tools that were conveniently accessible sufficiently to throw petrol into the house and light it. She then returned to her home in Clover Road, changed her clothes and after that, she went back to the celebration at her friend’s home, where they continued celebrating Sullivan’s release – all without a change in her demeanour indicating that something had happened. This was all supposed to have happened within ten to fifteen minutes.

But there were other problems with the case hypothesis against Clarke. She had to find the tool or tools required to prise open a gap in the wooden panel on the front door conveniently located outside or near to Jones’ home. That meant that the tool or tools just happened to be available and accessible when required. No evidence was presented to support that claim.

This was allegedly necessary because there was no letterbox at the scene of the fire after the front door had been damaged a couple of weeks earlier to such an extent that a wooden panel had to be nailed on. This meant that such activity would have been likely to have produced noise, but apparently it woke nobody up. Jones, however did wake up and scream at the bedroom window. Sadly, she opened a window and that sucked the flames up the stairs, causing the fire to spread through the house quicker.

No proof was provided that prising the panel open and throwing the petrol in along with a lighted match was the only way that the fire could have been started. No reconstructions were conducted to establish that this was consistent with the scorch patterns and the course of the fire through the house. The reconstruction that was conducted related only to the door. It was at best a very flawed case scenario, but one that would result in convictions, however flawed the case scenario was and should have been exposed as.