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In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe, now 61 years old, was sentenced to 20 life terms as the Yorkshire Ripper, responsible for the murder of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven others. When he was sentenced, the judge in the case told Sutcliffe that he would serve a minimum of 30 years. However, there was apparently no formal declaration of that minimum term, called a “tariff” under British law.

Now one of Britain’s top lawyers, Saimo Chahal, is arguing that the omission is grounds for Sutcliffe’s release, claiming his human rights have been violated. Chahal was named Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year in 2006 for her work in behalf of those with mental illness. Her association with the Yorkshire Ripper stems from the fact that three years after beginning to serve his sentence in prison, Sutcliffe was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was transferred to the Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital where he has remained ever since.

According to Karl Taylor, a 27 year-old football coach from Covent Garden, London, Kate Beagley committed suicide by stabbing herself … in the face and neck … more than 30 times. She did this, Taylor insists, while he watched, stunned, as they sat on a park bench overlooking the River Thames. Once he realized she was dead he lay on the grass, crying profusely. Then he carried her body to her car, drove to Oxhey Wood, Hertfordshire, stripped her naked, and dumped her in a patch of nettles.

He admits he planned on stealing Beagley’s car, but he insists he didn’t kill her.

Inconceivably the jury in the Old Bailey found Taylor’s story difficult to believe. After just two hours of deliberations they found him guilty of murder. He’ll spend the next 30 years behind bars.

In an experiment you’d expect to see on a CSI episode, the defense team for Robert Baltovich used two pig corpses as stand-ins for Elizabeth Bain’s missing body.

According to the prosecutors, Baltovich killed Bain on June 19th, hid her body under bushes in a park, and returned two days later to move her body, using her car, to a remote area about an hour’s drive north of the city.

In the experiment, the defense team brought two pigs to a guarded enclosure at the park, dressed them in shorts and t-shirts as they believe Elizabeth Bain had been dressed, slit their throats, and left them to decompose for the next two days. They were then placed in barrels for an hour to represent the time it would have taken to drive them to Lake Scugog and dispose of them.

The point of the experiment was to show that, under those circumstances, there would have been substantial evidence of decomposition in the car, specifically maggots and decomposition fluids. The entomologist who conducted the experiment reported that, “it is highly probable that hundreds of maggots from the body would have fallen off into the car.”

However, when Bain’s abandoned car was discovered three days after the murder, there were extensive blood stains on the back seat, but no maggots or other signs of decomposition.

Yesterday, after a re-trial, the prosecution dropped its case and Robert Baltovich was declared not guilty.

Elizabeth Bain’s body was never found.

Who killed Elizabeth Bain eighteen years ago?

Was it Elizabeth’s boyfriend, Robert Baltovich, whose friends describe as good-natured and intelligent, with no suggestion that he was ever inclined to violence?

Or was it the infamous Scarborough Rapist, the serial killer Paul Bernardo, who was stalking his victims in Elizabeth’s neighborhood at the same time she went missing?

Elizabeth, in her diary, complained that Baltovich “sucks up to me too much” and “I get away with murder from him.” She wrote that she needed, “some animal, some tough guy, some masculinity, some young traits.” Is it possible she found just what she was looking for with Bernardo?

Interviewed by police last year, Bernardo denied killing Elizabeth Bain, but his answers to questions suggest he was concerned that admitting to the killing would show he acted alone, without the aid of Karla Homolka, his wife who took part in the murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

Baltovich was today declared not guilty when the prosecution finally dropped its weak and largely circumstantial case against him. But since there were no eyewitnesses, no DNA evidence, and since Elizabeth’s body was never found, the answer to the leading question remains elusive.

In my novel Trial By Fear, Simon Jacks, a defense attorney, is asked what would happen if a client accused of murder confessed to him. He admits that he couldn’t tell anyone because of client confidentiality, but he insists, “It doesn’t happen. Don’t go by what you see on television. It just doesn’t happen that way.”

Yeah, right.

Andrew Wilson confessed that he fatally shot a security guard at a McDonald’s restaurant in January 1982. The problem is, he only confessed to his attorneys. And, because of attorney-client privilege, they had to keep the knowledge secret until Wilson died in 2007. In the meantime, Alton Logan was accused, tried, and convicted for the crime. He’s spent the last 26 years in prison for it, finally released on bail this past week. While technically not yet exonerated, it’s unlikely the courts will retry him.

Dale Coventry, one of Wilson’s attorneys, said, “I wish [the release] had happened a lot sooner, but unfortunately, there was no way to do anything.”