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”.

Kenyon, of Dodge Holme Court, Mixenden, Halifax, was convicted by a majority verdict at Newcastle Crown Court of murder.

In a tape recording made by her sister Carol in a pub, she confessed to smothering her grandmother with a pillow because her grandmother had asked her to help her die.

The hearing follows a referral of Kenyon’s case to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.

Her defence was that she had made false confessions because she felt under pressure from family members to confess and told them what they wanted to hear.

Mr Dunkels told Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice MacKay and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones that her murder conviction was based solely on three confessions – one to her mother, another to family friend Kevin Donegan in 2001 and then to her sister.

An inquest held soon after the death of Mrs Waters concluded that she had died of natural causes. The QC said: “Without those confessions there would have been no evidence of an unlawful killing at all.”

Kenyon’s appeal is being contested by the Crown. The hearing was adjourned until February 19 for the legal submissions to be completed.

Kenyon did not appeal following her conviction, but applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in October 2003.