Bridgewater Four
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The Bridgewater Four was the collective name given to the quartet of men who were tried and found guilty of killing a teenage paper boy in Staffordshire, England, only for them to be freed as innocent men after 18 years when their convictions were quashed.
The four were Patrick Molloy, Jim Robinson and cousins Michael Hickey and Vincent Hickey. All denied murdering 13 year old Carl Bridgewater in September 1978 but three of them were convicted. The fourth, Molloy, was found guilty of manslaughter.
Robinson and the Hickey cousins were sentenced to life imprisonment after their trial in 1979 but were protesting their innocence from start to finish of their incarcerations. Molloy died in prison in 1981.
In 1997 the latest in a number of appeals finally saw the men's convictions overturned, after the Court of Appeal ruled that the trial had been unfair, due to evidence fabricated by police in order to persuade Molloy, by far the eldest of the defendants, to make a confession.
The campaign to free and absolve the four men was led by Michael Hickey's mother Ann Whelan and campaigning journalist Paul Foot.
Preparations were made for a case against four police officers in the Staffordshire force on charges of fabricating evidence, but the case was dropped in December 1998.
Carl Bridgewater was shot dead at Yew Tree Farm, near Stourbridge, Staffordshire, when he disturbed burglars while delivering a newspaper to the house. The elderly couple who lived there were not at home.
The case has never been solved.