Belfast appeal of murder conviction made in 1953

Three judges will be asked today to clear a Scotsman convicted of the murder of another judge's daughter in Northern Ireland …

Three judges will be asked today to clear a Scotsman convicted of the murder of another judge's daughter in Northern Ireland nearly 50 years ago.

Murder, intimidation, a powerful family and a young RAF man confessing to a murder he says he did not commit are part of the story of Patricia Curran and Iain Hay Gordon, whose names have been linked for the past 48 years.

Today Gordon and his legal team will arrive at the Appeal Court in Belfast, they hope, for the last time.

Gordon has pleaded his innocence many times before and has campaigned for years to have his conviction overturned. However, this time his hope is based on the decision by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to refer his 1953 conviction for Ms Curran's murder to the Court of Appeal.

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Gordon was serving in the RAF at Edenmore, close to the Curran home in Co Antrim at the time and was friendly with Ms Curran's brother, Desmond, a barrister who later became a Catholic priest in Africa.

In November 1952 the body of Ms Curran was discovered at about 2 a.m. in the grounds of her family home, The Glen, Whiteabbey, north of Belfast. The 19-year-old Queen's University student had been stabbed 37 times.

There are issues in the case which appear incredible today. There is evidence, Gordon's legal representatives insist, that his confession to the murder was made under duress.

There is also the question of why, when denied entry to the family home until a week after Ms Curran's murder, the police accepted this unusual action without question.

It was not until two months after the murder, in January 1953, that Gordon was arrested and questioned for three days, without independent legal representation.

He was sent for trial in March 1953 and found guilty but insane. He spent 7 1/2 years in Holywell Mental Hospital and, as unexpectedly as he had arrived, was released in 1960 and returned to Glasgow. He has been trying to clear his name since.