A man in his 40s given a life sentence for murdering schoolboy Rikki Neave nearly 30 years ago has begun an appeal bid at the Court of Appeal in London.
The six-year-old was found strangled, naked and arranged in a ‘star pose’ in woods near his home in Peterborough, the day after he was reported missing by his abusive mother Ruth Neave on November 28, 1994.
Neave went on trial for his murder in 1996, but she was found not guilty. However she was sentenced to seven years in prison after admitting child cruelty.
Last year, James Watson, who was 13 when Rikki died and is now 41, was jailed for the crime by a judge at the Old Bailey after damning new evidence came to light.
However lawyers representing Watson have now won a right to appeal against his conviction arguing that the case was ‘circumstantial’.
James Watson was jailed for life last year for murdering Rikki Neave, six, in 1994. His lawyers have now won the right to appeal his conviction
Six-year-old Rikki Neave was found strangled, naked and arranged in a ‘star pose’ in woods near his home in Peterborough on November 28, 1994
At the Court of Appeal hearing in London today, Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, Mr Justice Goose and Mr Justice Bennathan considered Watson’s application.
Watson was not at the hearing. Lord Burnett told Watson’s lawyers: ‘We will be granting leave to appeal.’
He said lawyers representing Watson had ‘arguable’ grounds for mounting a full appeal. Appeal judges did not fix a date for the full appeal.
Court of Appeal judges have made an order, under the Contempt of Court Act, limiting what can be reported from Wednesday’s hearing.
They said no detail of the grounds on which leave to appeal had been given could be revealed in media reports – in case reporting prejudiced any retrial.
They indicated that arguments about what detail could be reported would be considered by judges overseeing the full appeal.
Barrister Jenni Dempster KC, who led James Watson’s legal team, had said the case against her client was ‘circumstantial’.
The murder case around Rikki Neave was unsolved for nearly two decades, until Cambridgeshire Police agreed to re-open the investigation in 2015 following repeated campaigning by Ruth Neave.
Ruth Neave went on trial for his murder in 1996, but she was found not guilty. After seven years in prison for child cruelty, she repeatedly campaigned to have the case reopened
A BBC podcast The Boy in the Woods claimed last year that the police ignored expert forensic evidence that challenged the case against Neave, whilst the jury at her trial were not alerted to the findings.
Scientist Professor Tony Brown, who was tasked by police with examining Rikki’s clothes early in the original investigation, said that mud on his shoes proved the child walked into the woods, but never walked out again.
He told the BBC that he also offered to test Neave’s push chair for mud from the woods, but the object was never sent to him.
At the time, the law allowed police not to disclose evidence to a jury that undermined the prosecution’s case.
The senior officer who led the 2015 re-investigation said in response to the BBC’s findings that he and his team could not explain ‘why this evidence was not used originally,’ but added it ‘would not happen now’
Watson was finally brought to justice in part because of forgotten pieces of Sellotape that contained clothing fibres carrying his DNA.
After Rikki was found dead, it emerged that his body was clean – as if it had been freshly bathed – and the position of his arms, hands and legs symmetrically set out. Even his thumbs were in same position. Above: The spot where his body was found
A policeman leaving flowers at Welland County Primary School in Peterborough, the school attended by six-year-old Rikki Neave
He was 13 when he carried out the crime. Whilst nearly all of the evidence that had been collected in the original investigation had been destroyed or returned to Rikki’s family, police found envelopes containing the pieces of sticky tape.
They bore fibres collected from Rikki’s clothing that were found to be a ‘billion to one’ match to Watson’s DNA.
Suspicion originally fell on Rikki’s mother because of the documented instances of abuse that she had inflicted on her son.
She was described in Watson’s trial as a ‘wholly unfit mother’ who used Rikki as a drug runner and ‘punch bag’.
On one occasion, Rikki was allegedly left screaming after being locked out of the house in his pyjamas; in another it was claimed Neave had held her son upside down on a bridge as he screamed.
She had also grabbed the child around his throat, pushed him against a wall and lifted him up ‘to the point his feet were about a foot above the ground’.
In the original case, Watson’s name was discounted very quickly.
