Disordered Minds-------pan macmillan
In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old was convicted on
disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his
grandmother - the one person who understood and protected him. Less than
three years later he is dead, driven to suicide by isolation and
despair. A fate befitting a murderer, perhaps, but what if he were
innocent?
Thirty years on, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist
specialising in social stereotyping, comes across the case by accident.
He finds alarming disparities in the evidence and has little doubt that
Stamp's conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice. But how far is
Hughes prepared to go in the search for justice? Is the forgotten story
of one friendless young man compelling enough to make him leave his
books and face his own demons?
And with what result? If Stamp didn't murder Grace Jeffries then somebody else did . . . and sleeping dogs are best left alone