Derek Morgan a care assistant at a nearby residential home said: There were two bodies that had been thrown clear of the car one
Derek Morgan, a care assistant at a nearby residential home, said: "There were two bodies that had been thrown clear of the car, one on the road and one lying on the pavement."The car was totally mangled. There was blood everywhere, it was just horrific."Andrew Lord, who saw the wreckage while on his way home from a wedding, said the car was on its roof in the road.Police described the crash as "a tragedy" and extended their sympathies to the families of the dead men.. The men jailed in 1979 for the murder of newspaper boy Carl Bridgewater finally get their day in court today when a hearing of extensive new evidence begins at the Court of Appeal. The appeal, expected to last up to four weeks, is the last leg of an 18-year campaign to get the convictions of cousins Vincent and Michael Hickey, James Robinson and the late Patrick Molloy overturned. In a sensational turn of events in February, the Court of Appeal freed the Hickeys and Mr Robinson on unconditional bail after an independent forensic test, completed just a fortnight earlier, revealed that police had concocted a statement used to provoke Mr Molloy into making a false confession.While the final appeal hearing will involve less drama, lawyers for the men plan to expose each and every failure that contributed to the miscarriage of justice.
Evidence relating to around 80 further grounds of appeal will be presented, covering the men's alibis, the unreliability of prosecution witnesses and non-disclosure of forensic evidence.Jim Nichol, their solicitor, said: "If the evidence we have today had been heard at the original trial these men would never have gone to prison The failure to disclose relevant material .. has helped to keep them behind bars. Much of what we now have was available at the time of the trial."Ann Whelan, mother of Michael Hickey and a key figure in the campaign to prove the men's innocence, said: "We have waited for this day for nearly 19 years and it is my fervent hope that when the men are finally shown to be innocent, the establishment will have the courage to say 'sorry' ..."Not only have the men been badly led down by the system, but the Bridgewater family, who suffered a terrible loss, are now faced with the knowledge that the real killer has never been brought to justice.". "Initially the taste is wonderfully sweet, then there's a long aftertaste which someone once compared to hazelnuts with a hint of iodine," says marine biologist Dr Maeve Kelly, writes Nicholas Schoon. "But I can only describe it as sea urchin." Dr Kelly is heading a Scottish research project into the prospects for ranching the dark, spherical and spiny sea urchins in the waters around Britain. The bit that is eaten is the swollen gonads - eggs and sperm - inside the exterior skeleton. The pounds 320,000 project, funded by fish farming firms and the Government's Natural Environment Research Council, reaches an important early milestone in the next fortnight when the first batches of UK-reared urchins are exported to France, where buyers will do taste tests.About 100,000 tons of the sea creatures are eaten each year, mainly in Japan and France It is a trade worth some pounds 500m a year.
The programme began after a Scottish salmon farmer found thousands of sea urchins growing inside a salmon cage when it was brought ashore. The species, Psammechinus miliaris, is smaller than those normally consumed and grows all round the British Isles. Dr Kelly is now concentrating on getting roe of the right colour - bright orange, and with a "creamy but firm" texture.Recipe for success In North Atlantic Seafood (Penguin), Alan Davidson, the great expert on fish cookery, writes: "The Rev James Wallace, writing in 1688 about Orkney, observed that 'the common people reckon the meat of the Sea Urchin or Ivegars, as they call them, a great Rarity, and use it oft instead of butter'. The practice has died out and Orcadians now call the sea-urchin 'scarriman's heid', scarriman meaning a tramp or street child with unruly, spiky hair."Cuisine: Open the urchin (with a coupe-oursin, if you have one, a most satisfactory possession), take out the ovaries and eat them with nothing more than a drop of lemon juice Or add them to an omelette.". Wives of abusive clergymen have broken their silence to speak out about the mental, physical and sexual torture they have suffered at the hands of their husbands. Domestic violence in the church has been unearthed by Dr Lesley Macdonald, research project co-ordinator at Edinburgh University's Department of Divinity, who has completed a two-year study into Christianity and violence. Dr Macdonald, who is herself married to a clergyman, studied cases involving abuse within church marriages, as well as clergy abuse of women who had sought church advice in a professional counselling context.Of the 23 abused women she interviewed, seven were formerly married to clergymen.
Other clergy wives who had contacted her chose not to participate in the project because they were still living in the abusive relationship."The juxtaposition between the person who has a plausible, well-liked, public persona and hearing about what happens in their private life is shocking," said Dr Macdonald. "But it's just an indication that violence against women is everywhere. This is something that happens in all sectors of society - professional people and church people are not exempt."There is "perhaps more opportunity" for clergymen to abuse their power and authority because of the church's patriarchal tradition, believes Dr Macdonald. "There are some people within the church who use scriptural texts and theological traditions to justify or legitimise the violence," she said."There are scriptural texts which say wives should submit to their husbands and there's a strong theological tradition that women are responsible for bringing sin into the world.
Their [women's] role in life is essentially one of service or sacrifice. All of those can provide some of the conditions in which it's possible for violence and abuse to occur."Some of Dr Macdonald's interviewees will describe their ordeal tonight on BBC 1's Here and Now programme. One Scottish woman, now divorced from her minister husband, tells the programme: "I really thought he was going to do a mastectomy one night and I got very, very deep scratches on my breast. He was his usual very professional person preaching in church Sunday after Sunday, it was almost like a Jekyll and Hyde situation." Two actresses also tell the story of a woman who was raped by her minister husband.The programme stresses that there is little independent counselling and help available from the church for the victims of domestic violence.A spokesman for the Catholic Church said yesterday: "People have to remember that the church is made up of human beings. While it strives for perfection, it nevertheless incorporates the faults of humans such as domestic violence. Inevitably this problem does not escape the church."The Rev John Chalmers, of the Church of Scotland's Department of Ministry, said he was shocked by the study's findings..