A sex killer cleared of murdering a teenage girl nearly half-a-century ago has been convicted after DNA evidence in a second trial proved his guilt.
Dennis McGrory was 28 when he raped and murdered 15-year-old Jacqueline Montgomery in her home in 1975.
McGrory who was a violent drinker, was reportedly looking for his estranged partner Josie who was Jaqueline’s aunt. He couldn’t find her wife and let out his anger on Jacqueline.
It was believed he attacked the teenager to force her to reveal her aunt’s new address.
It was Jacqueline’s father that found his daughter’s body when he got home. She had been raped, stabbed and strangled as she was seen lying on the floor of the front room, which showed signs of a struggle.
McGrory denied the murder and back then, a judge at the Old Bailey threw out the case in 1976 after McGrory denied the murder. Also, the prosecution evidence, which was purely circumstantial, was reportedly too weak.
But vaginal swabs from Jacqueline’s body had been kept and were retested using new scientific techniques to showed it is a billion-to-one match with McGrory’s DNA, and his unique genetic fingerprint.
He was re-arrested and charged with rape and murder for a second time.
After three hours of deliberations, the jurors found him guilty of Jacqueline’s rape and murder.
McGrory, now 74, watched proceedings on a video link from his solicitor’s office. The judge ordered him to court to hear the verdicts and he walked slowly into the dock on crutches.
When his barrister William Boyce KC told him the jury had reached a decision he asked if the lawyer knew what it was. “No,” said Mr Boyce. “Oh, fingers crossed, then,” replied McGrory.
In a rare retrial – and the oldest – after the scrapping of the ancient double jeopardy legal principle which prevented a defendant being charged twice with the same crime.
2003 modified the law to allow retrials of acquitted defendants if new and compelling evidence emerged and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) was convinced that each case was fair and in the public interest.
The new jury at Huntingdon Law Court revisited the case and saw photographs of McGrory taken on his arrest a few hours after Jacqueline’s murder.
They showed bruises on his lip and behind an ear, a long scratch on his neck, small scratches on his left wrist and right arm and bruising on his knuckles.
He claimed he had been attacked and beaten up by four strangers on the same night and had not been to Jacqueline’s home. But the prosecution concluded they were injuries caused when his victim tried to fight him off.
In an exclusive interview the DPP Max Hill KC said: ‘A circumstantial case suggesting that McGrory had been at the scene of this murder became a compelling scientific case when DNA linked him to the body of Jacqueline Montgomery.
‘That’s what made the big difference here.
‘What is on my mind, and the minds of the police and the CPS in bringing justice in this case, is Jacqueline Montgomery, those who mourn her, those who loved and knew her.
‘For whom, though 50 years may seem a long period, it seems like only yesterday. Today, that’s what motivates us.’
