My sister's husband admitted MURDERING HER

Christine Weatherhead’s brother-in-law confessed to an undercover police officer, but he’s still a free man. Woman investigates...

- SHERON BOYLE

Earlier this year, Christine Weatherhead made her annual pilgrimage to a tree set amid the grounds of a Leeds cemetery. In a ritual she has performed every year for more than three decades, she placed flowers by a commemorative plaque, tidied the overgrown foliage and swore again that she would continue to fight for her much-loved elder sister, Patricia Hall. This is the nearest thing to a grave Christine has for mother-of-two Pat. There has been no funeral, no inquest, nor even an official account of her sister’s death.

Pat – who vanished from her home near Leeds at the age of 39 – is still classed as missing, but this is no ordinary missing persons tale. Three decades ago, Pat’s husband of 10 years, Keith, made a murder confession to an undercover policewoman, admitting he’d ‘strangled her but it wasn’t easy’. He said he’d dumped Pat’s body in an industrial incinerator.

He was arrested and, in 1994, put on trial at Leeds Crown Court. But the judge ruled the confession inadmissible, saying it broke police interviewing guidelines. Extracted as a result of an undercover sting – and secretly taped – Hall’s words were never heard by the jury and, after a nine-day trial, he was cleared of Pat’s murder and manslaughter.

For Christine, 62, the case has cast a long shadow over more than half her life. Since the trial, she has repeatedly applied to the West Yorkshire Coroner and Home Office for an inquest so that her sister’s case can be reviewed, but has been told it would be prejudicial against Keith Hall, now 68.

‘But what about Pat?’ she asks. ‘It is like she is worthless, doesn’t count as a person. How can that be right?’