Convictions linked to corrupt detective quashed

Two men convicted of stealing mailbags on the evidence of a corrupt police officer have had their convictions quashed, 50 years after they were found guilty.

Christopher Poulter, then 21, and Kevin Biggs, then 18, were convicted in 1976 of taking 13 mailbags from a railway wagon at Clapham goods yard in south London.

British Transport Police (BTP) officer Det Sgt Derek Ridgewell was one of three officers who said they saw the pair take the bags and drive off.

The Court of Appeal allowed their appeals on Tuesday. Biggs died in 2004.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred the case earlier this year after new evidence emerged about Ridgewell, who was jailed for seven years in 1980 for stealing goods worth more than £1m.

The CCRC said he had framed young black men for crimes he had committed himself.

At their trial at Inner London Crown Court, the pair said they had spent the whole evening in a pub in Tooting before officers approached and arrested them. Poulter was jailed for a year and Biggs was sent to borstal.

Their case came to light through a BTP investigation tracing people convicted on Ridgewell's evidence. They are the 14th and 15th people to have convictions overturned because of his misconduct.

A third man convicted alongside them, Stephen Simmons, had his conviction quashed in 2018.

Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mr Justice Lavender and Mr Justice Linden, said the appeals should have been heard with Simmons's, but at the time it had not been possible to find Poulter or any of Biggs's relatives.

"The two appeals are allowed and the convictions quashed," he said.

Jenny Wiltshire, a solicitor who has represented many of Ridgewell's victims, said it was a "disgrace" that BTP had taken so long to find those affected.

"It is now half a century since these two men were found guilty of a crime they did not commit," she said.

"The British Transport Police knew for certain that the police officer whose evidence sent them to jail was corrupt just four years after they were convicted, and probably a lot earlier."

She said the force had failed to act at the time and had only recently begun to take the issue seriously.

"As a result of this inaction, Christopher Poulter has lived the majority of his life as a convicted criminal. Kevin Biggs died as one."

Ridgewell died in prison aged 37 in 1982.

BTP has been approached for comment.

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