Calderdale woman Julie Kenyon fights for freedom over granny killing

Feb 10 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A WEST Yorkshire woman who confessed to the murder of her grandmother in a conversation secretly tape-recorded by her sister has launched a challenge against her “unsafe” conviction.

Julie Kenyon, who was jailed for life in 2003 at the age of 46, was present in the dock at the Court of Appeal in London for the proceedings before three senior judges.

And that appearance was a triumph for her sister, Susan Green, of Huddersfield.

Mrs Green, of Outlane, had battled for years to try and clear her sister’s name and finally convinced the Criminal Case Review Commission there was a case to answer.

Yesterday Kenyon’s QC Paul Dunkels told them her appeal was founded on fresh expert psychological and psychiatric evidence relating to three confessions she made over the death of 89-year-old widow Irene Waters at the home they shared in Halifax in 1996.

Mrs Waters suffocated in a pillow and an inquest later ruled she had died of natural causes.

But the murder case went ahead based on Kenyon’s alleged confession.

Mr Dunkels submitted that the evidence established that at the time she made those confessions she was suffering from a “personality disorder” and that the confessions should now be regarded as “unreliable”.

That disorder, he argued, was “relevant and significant to any question about the reliability of any of those confessions”.