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Crewe Murders – Released Document Exonerates Grandmother

Investigative documentary maker Bryan Bruce (TV ONE The Investigator) is calling for an end to conspiracy theories and for a Judicial Review of the Crewe homicide investigation, after a document he has discovered exonerates the woman accused of feeding baby Rochelle Crewe in the days after her parents were murdered.

At the first trial of Arthur Allen Thomas the farm worker Bruce Roddick (now deceased) testified he saw a woman outside the Crewe home on the 19th of June 1970, two days after Jeanette and Harvey Crewe were murdered. The Crown claimed that woman was Thomas’s wife Vivienne, even though Roddick knew Mrs Thomas and had told them she was not the woman he saw that day.

In the lead up to Thomas’s second trial in 1973 there was speculation amongst Thomas’s supporters that the woman might have been Norma Demler, the second wife of Len Demler, the father of Jeanette Crewe who had been a suspect in the early days of the inquiry. That speculation has persisted to the present day.

But now, a signed and dated statement made by Roddick released to Bruce under the Official Information Act reveals he told the police that Mrs Demler “was not the person“ he saw.

The statement was made after Roddick had been driven to the Demler farm to see Mrs Norma Demler on the 1st of June 1972 by Detective Inspector Bruce Hutton the Head of the Inquiry.

“The statement must be a true one” said Bruce,” because it was listed as Exhibit R14 at Thomas’s second trial. It is not like the bullet evidence. Bruce Roddick took the stand at that trial and had his statement been a forgery he could have been asked about it under oath. But it was never mentioned at the second trial because the Thomas Defence team knew they could not point the finger at Mrs Demler because the Crown had Roddick’s statement that she was not the woman he saw that day.”

“And so the truth, as it so often does, fell into the gap between the arguments of the Prosecution and the Defence, allowing conspiracy theorists to speculate that Norma Demler was the woman who fed baby Rochelle. “Well she wasn’t”, said Bruce “and she deserves an apology from all those who have made her life miserable over the years with their cruel and unfounded speculations.”

Bruce is also critical of the Police for sitting on this information.

“There have been books, magazine articles and television programmes in the last few years that have claimed that Norma Demler fed baby Rochelle. The Police knew from Roddick’s statement that it could not have been her and yet they allowed this misinformation to be spread. That cannot have been helpful to solving this terrible unsolved homicide”, said Bruce.

“The police had a duty to put a stop to the spread of that misinformation, but they also had a moral obligation to Mrs Demler to release what they knew in order to prevent her being publicly vilified for something she did not do.”

“This latest revelation convinces me that the Police continue to lack good judgement as far as the Crewe homicide case is concerned and are completely incapable of coming to an objective review of it. The time has come for a Judicial Review, preferably by an overseas Judge.” Said Bruce.

ENDS

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