November 2, 2020 • 32 mins
The thing about torture is that it works, at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.
Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin take us to Birmingham, England. In 1972, two pubs were bombed, and six innocent Irish men were tortured into giving false confessions. The Birmingham Six were freed in 1991, but the crime’s never been solved. To this day, the public demands to know who really planted those bombs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
writer and I'm Steve Drissen. Today's story is about a
group of innocent Irish men known as the Birmingham Six.
They were accused of planting bombs inside two pubs in Birmingham, England,
in two and they were tortured into giving false confessions.
All six men were freed in but the crime has
(00:24):
never been solved. The public is still demanding answers today
about who really planted those bombs. Steve. When we went
on our speaking tour last year for Making a Murderer,
one of my favorite places we visited was Belfast in
(00:44):
Northern Ireland. Yeah, it was one of the highlights of
our travels. It was almost like coming home, coming to
a place which understood the work I've been doing for
most of my professional life. Yeah, there was something about
false confessions that really resonated with that audience. It's a
lived experience and it goes back to the way in
(01:07):
which the Birmingham Six were treated by law enforcement. Well, okay,
so here's the thing, right. The Birmingham Six was a
case that arose from the fact that two pubs in Birmingham,
England were bombed. It was one of the biggest mass
murders to happen on British soil after World War Two.
I mean, this is like the Oklahoma City bombing here
in the United States, and the blame for this crime
(01:27):
was placed on these six Irish guys who were living
in England but who had deep roots in Belfast. The
injustice of what happened to these guys is like almost
nothing I've seen before. Yeah, a profound experience of police
abuses and of torture in the interrogation rooms. Their story
resonates for so many people in Northern Ireland because the
(01:49):
whole place has this incredible history of conflict and struggle
against power. I actually think that history is what brought
so many people out last year to our talk. You know,
I'd like to believe they came to see you and me,
but they were probably there to hear about injustice and
how to fight it. And that's a little bit better
of a reason. I think our story today begins in Birmingham, England.
(02:15):
It's the second largest city in the United Kingdom, with
a population in the millions, mostly English, but also hundreds
of thousands of Irish. Like any big city, Birmingham's got
a thriving social scene. In particular, on almost every corner
there's a pub. It's in two of those pubs that
our story really begins. Two ordinary places where people go
(02:36):
after work to get a pint of beer. On November
twenty one, to Birmingham pubs became together the scene of
Britain's deadliest mass murder in modern history. It all started
at eight eleven in the evening, an anonymous man with
an Irish accent placed a phone call to the Birmingham
(02:57):
Post newspaper. There's a bomb planted in the Rotunda, he said,
and there's a bomb in New Street. This, he added,
is double X. Then silence he'd hung up. The Rotunda
was a high rise office building in downtown Birmingham with
a pub on its first floor called the Mulberry Bush.
(03:18):
New Street. Around the corner was where the city Tax
office was. There was a pub on that building's first
floor to called the Tavern in the Town. And then
only six minutes after that anonymous phone call, it happened
two huge explosions. The first was at the Mulberry Bush
at eight pm. A homemade bomb had been left in
(03:39):
a leather bag somewhere near the back door. When the
bomb exploded, the pub was packed with people and the
damage was horrific. The ceiling collapsed, fire and gulfed the place.
People were crushed and burned to death. Others were impaled
by falling beams. First responders arrived and began working desperately
to rescue survivors. At the same time, police were frantically
(04:02):
trying to evacuate the tavern in the town, but they
couldn't clear it fast enough. At p m a second
homemade bomb exploded there again, the packed pub was destroyed.
That explosion was so powerful that people were blown through
the brick walls between the two pubs. Twenty one people
died and a hundred and eighty two were injured. It
(04:25):
was a coordinated attack that left Britain reeling. So why
would anyone bomb pubs in Birmingham. The answer is politics
and history. Here's our friend, Dr Hannah Quirk. She's a
professor at King's College, London who studies wrongful convictions and
like a lot of folks in the United Kingdom in Ireland,
(04:46):
she had a front row seat to that history. When
she's talking to people who are new to this part
of the world. Hannah likes to start here. So there's
obviously the famous You two song about Bloody Sunday. That
song is more than a pop anthem. It tells the
story of the long running and sometimes violent conflict between
Ireland and Britain. And here's that story in a nutshell.
(05:07):
There's a long, complicated history in Ireland, hundreds of years
of history. But in n two there's been a civil
war and the majority of Ireland was given independence from
Great Britain and formed the Irish Free State. But a
deal was done to say that the six counties of
Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom. Not
(05:29):
everyone was happy with this deal, though. People became intensely
divided about whether Northern Ireland should be part of the
United Kingdom or joined the Republic of Ireland, and those
divisions often fell along religious lines. Most Catholics were nationalists
or Republicans. They wanted to be a United Ireland so
the island of Ireland would be one country, and most
(05:51):
Protestants were Unionists or loyalists. They wanted to remain part
of Great Britain and be governed from London. Tensions simmered
for years and of eventually anti Catholic sentiment started boiling,
especially in Northern Ireland. Catholics were very discriminated against. They
had for fewer job opportunities, the housing was worse, so
they were very overcrowded. They couldn't sit on juries for
(06:13):
the most part because they didn't own property. Schools were
divided on religious lines as well, so the Civil rights
movement grew in the United States and the Catholic population
in Northern Ireland gradually began to protest about discrimination that
they were facing. Two British troops had already gone into
Northern Ireland to try and keep the peace, and then
Bloody Sunday in two British paratroopers opened fire on the
(06:33):
protesters and killed thirteen people and injured fifteen of them.
After Bloody Sunday, the violence really escalated on both sides.
People who wanted to end British rule in Northern Ireland
armed themselves and became active in a group called the
Irish Republican Army or the i r A. That song
people always said it was the best recruitment thing there
(06:55):
could ever have had. Bloody Sunday I think was a
real tipping point. It got so much attention, not only
in Northern Ireland but in England as well, these images
of the army shooting unarmed protesters. The ira A thought
of themselves as freedom fighters and they used violence to
make their points, even planting homemade bombs all across Britain.
(07:16):
The ira A targeted everything from government tax officers to
restaurants and pubs. By nine four, two years after Bloody Sunday,
Britain was experiencing an average of one attack every three days,
and British authorities were regularly retaliating. The conflict was pretty
close to a war, and it became known as the Troubles.
(07:37):
I mean we called it the Troubles. When I was
growing up, that was all I heard on the news
was the Troubles. And then the first time I went
to Belfast, I realized, no, actually this was this was
like a war. They were appalling levels of casualties in
those days as well, before the internet, you get news
flashes on the television, so the screen would go black
and let's say we interrupt this program and it would
(07:57):
be a bomb had gone off. For you know, some
kind of serious situation had taken place for years there's
been no trush comes on public transport in London, just
to stop people being able to hide bombs there. I
was probably about eight on nine, and my mom had
taken me and all my cousins and my little brother
to by school uniforms and there was this announcement over
(08:18):
the tanno, I please evacuate the store, and the alarms
going off. We just thought it was a brilliant adventure
because we were a bit too little to realize it
could be quite dangerous, and my poor mom was just
trying to grab about eight children and get us out
of the store, but it was all glass up front,
so she didn't know which way to take us which
was more dangerous. So we just always laughed about how
we all had nail marks in our arms from where
(08:39):
she was digging her fingers in and dragging us out
by the hair. And it seemed like a bit of
an adventure at the time, but that kind of stuff
was quite normal. Here's just how normal these bombings had become.
The IRA had rules, and under its rules, IRA members
who bombed as a villion target had to call British
police and warned them thirty minutes before the bomb went off.
(09:01):
The idea was to give enough time for police to
evacuate as many people as possible without sacrificing the bomb's
political point. But the British police needed a way to
make sure these anonymous phone calls were authentic not hoaxes.
So the IRA and the police agreed on a code
word known only to them. If the caller used the
(09:21):
code word, you could be sure the bomb threat was real,
and that code word was double X. On the day
the bombs went off, tensions between the IRA and the
British were sky high. A week before, an IRA member
named James McDade was killed in Britain when a bomb
he was placing went off prematurely. IRA sympathizers in Britain
(09:42):
were planning a hero's funeral with military processions and honor guards,
but the British authorities quickly passed laws making those plans
illegal instead. On November twenty one, mcdade's body was flown
from Birmingham to Belfast for burial. Only hours after the
plane care his body took off, the bombs went off too.
(10:04):
Between the timing of the bombings and the use of
the double X code word, it didn't take long for
the police and the public to conclude that the i
r A was responsible. Now, it's true the anonymous collar
hadn't given the usual thirty minutes advanced warning, but that
fact got ignored as a wave of anti Irish anger
swept over Britain. The ira A issued a denial, but
(10:26):
no one listened. The British public was terrified and the
British authorities were enraged. There was a thirst for justice
and revenge. Within hours of the bombings, police got a
tip five Irish men had been seen boarding a train
that left Birmingham right before the explosion at the Mulberry Bush.
(10:47):
Four of them had tickets continuing on to Belfast in
Northern Ireland. Their names were Jerry Hunter, Dick mcilkenny, John Walker,
Billy Power and Patty Hill. They were what the Irish
call work class lads who didn't have a lot of
extra money. All five men were Catholic, all were married
and most of them had kids. None of them was
(11:08):
affiliated with the I r A. They were headed to
Belfast to attend James mcdaide's funeral, but more out of
community obligation than for political reasons. For his part, Patty
Hill borrowed his train fare from a nun. He promised
to pay her back by doing some painting work when
he returned, but that debt would soon become the least
of his problems. This episode is sponsored by a i G,
(11:38):
a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Morton
and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A i
G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
(12:00):
Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing
impactful pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members
of our society and in support of the public interest,
including extensive work in the criminal justice area. For the
(12:20):
first few hours, the train ride was uneventful, but when
the train pulled up to Morekham's station on the evening
of November one, the police were waiting a group of
irishmen leaving Birmingham just as the bombs went off seemed suspicious.
All five were arrested and brought to a nearby police department.
That's where a forensic scientists tested their hands for traces
(12:42):
of nitroglycerin, a bomb ingredient. The hands of two men
tested positive, the scientists said, Billy Power and Patty Hill.
That was enough for the police. Not just justice, but
revenge was suddenly possible. Within a day, police arrested a
sixth Irishman, Hugh Callahan, who had been with the other
five before they boarded the train, and the interrogations endured
(13:05):
by these six men, the Birmingham Six, were horrific. It
started at the more Coham Police department with John Walker.
A group of police took John into a back room
where he was beaten, kicked, and burned with a cigarette
while other officers held his arms back. The other men
heard John screaming, and then their turns came to For hours,
(13:28):
they were all bloodied and beaten from head to toe.
One of them, Billy Power, was kicked over and over
on his head, legs, and stomach. He was dragged by
his hair and in one of the most sadistic moments
of this interrogation, police stretched his scrotum. During these interrogations,
at least some of these guys were shown a letter,
(13:48):
a letter that said that the torture they were experiencing
was state sanctioned. It was a letter on government letterhead
that basically told the police officers you can do whatever
you need to do in order to get a confession
from these men. To these guys, the message was this pain,
(14:09):
this torture is going to continue unless you confess PM.
The next day, November twenty two, Billie had had enough.
He signed a written confession prepared by police, admitting guilt
in the Birmingham pub bombings. A few hours later, the
men were transferred to the custody of another police unit,
(14:29):
the West Midland's Serious Crime Squad, where the torture continued, beatings, burnings,
stress positions, even mock executions. Patty Hill remembers having a
pistol shoved into his mouth so brutally that it broke
several of his teeth. With a cold metal barrel in
Patty's mouth, his interrogators slowly counted to three and pulled
(14:52):
the trigger three times. They did this each time Patty
expected to die, only to discover that the chamber didn't
contain a it. The thing about torture is that it works,
at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.
On novembery Hugh Callahan, Dick mcilkenny, and John Walkers signed
false confessions. Like Billy, they claimed that they were I
(15:14):
ra A members and that they planted both pub bombs. Somehow,
Patty Hill and Jerry Hunter were holdouts. They refused to
sign confessions despite the torture. Police would later claim that
Patty and Jerry verbally confessed, which Patty denies. The four
written confessions were short and virtually detail free. In fact,
one of the only details included was wrong. The confessions
(15:37):
claimed that the bombs were left at the pubs in
white plastic bags, but forensic analysis showed the bags had
been leather. It didn't matter. Four of the Birmingham six
had confessed, and all of them had been beaten within
an inch of their lives. Revenge, it seemed, had been achieved.
The last thing that you want interrogators to do when
(15:58):
they go into an interrogation room is to be guided
by a sense of vengeance, because what's going to happen
is the interrogator is going to do everything in his
power to quench that thirst for revenge, and the interrogation
no longer becomes about the truth. After the confessions, the
(16:19):
six were charged with murder and transferred to Winson Green Prison,
where guards continued the beatings. When the Birmingham Six were
finally brought to court a week after the bombings, they
had been brutalized from head to foot. Patty Hill's wife
was in the courtroom with their two year old son.
When the little boy saw his dad's injuries, he was
so traumatized that he needed medical attention. But authorities told
(16:42):
the judge that they had done nothing wrong. The men
had been attacked, they said, by other inmates. We've seen
excuses like that over and over again, even in the
United States. When somebody is battered, the police changed the
narrative from the beginning. They either blame it on somebody
falling down the stairs, or they blame it on other inmates.
(17:03):
But when these men appeared in court for the first time,
everybody knew what had happened to them. It was clear
that they had been through an ordeal. That ordeal was
far from over. Based on the confessions and the nitroglycerin evidence,
the Birmingham Six stood trial on June nine. A defense
(17:24):
expert testified that the explosives testing had been faulty. And
defense witnesses pointed out that no explosives had been found
at any of the men's homes, But in short order
that Birmingham Six were convicted. Each man was sentenced to
twenty one life sentences, one for every person who died,
and the people of Britain, all of whom thought it
(17:46):
could have been them inside those pubs. They believed that
justice had been done from behind bars. The Birmingham Six
fought their convictions like furies and insisted the authorities acknowledged
they've been tortured, but for a while it looked like
the entire system was lined up against them. Eventually, fourteen
(18:08):
prison officers were charged with assaulting the six, but despite
plenty of evidence, those officers were all acquitted at trial.
The six also tried to soothe their torturers, but a
judge dismissed their lawsuit in and he did it for
reasons that you have to hear to believe. Just think
what it would mean for Britain's legal system. The judge explained,
(18:29):
if these men were allowed to prove they'd been tortured,
it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury,
that they were guilty of violence and threats and that
the convictions were erroneous. That was such an appalling vista.
He declared that every sensible person would say, it cannot
be right that this lawsuit should go any further. You know,
(18:51):
the appalling vista here is this paternalistic attitude of this
judge that the public can't handle the truth, he said,
saying that if this torture were allowed to be seen
by them, if this injustice were allowed to be acknowledged,
the entire system would crumble. The irony is that by
suppressing the truth, by putting these allegations and evidence of
(19:16):
torture in the closet, he is breaking the very system
he claims to want to protect. Where these men supposed
to get justice, if not in a court of law.
But while the court system closed its eyes to this injustice,
the world didn't. Journalist Chris Mullen, who would go on
(19:37):
to become a member of Parliament, investigated the bombings with
fresh eyes. He retained two scientists who debunked the test
that supposedly had found nitroglycerin on Patty and Billy's hands.
A police officer also publicly confirmed that the Birmingham Six
had been beaten by their interrogators. The next year, Chris
(19:58):
Mullen published a book about the case called Error of Judgment.
In the book, Mullen described meeting i RA members who
admitted they were involved in the bombings, although he didn't
disclose their names, and Mullen explained something that had been
a mystery for years, why the double X coller hadn't
given the full thirty minutes warning before the first explosion.
(20:21):
Turns out the bombers meant to give police thirty minutes,
but the telephone booth they'd planned to use had been
damaged by vandals. By the time they found another phone,
only six minutes were left. The warning system wasn't as
fool proof as they thought. That was how these bombings
became one of the deadliest mass murders in modern British history.
(20:52):
In seven, advocates, including renowned civil rights lawyer Gareth Pierce,
convinced a court to re examine the convictions of the
Birmingham Six. At the hearing, police officers testified about watching
their colleagues torture the six men. Evidence was also introduced
about a handwritten chart that had been found in the
police station. The interrogators apparently used this chart to line
(21:16):
up the facts in the different men's statements and make
sure they matched. Of course, those facts were actually lies.
The discovery of this chart basically proved what the men
had been saying all along, that we didn't confess to
these crimes. These were stories that were scripted by the police,
(21:36):
and we were tortured into saying what they wanted us
to say. But despite this new evidence, relief was denied
and the case stalled for four years until a second
hearing was granted. Their new evidence was introduced that further
undermined the nitroglycer in testing on Patty and Billy's hands.
But what finally tipped the balance, as Gareth Pierce later wrote,
(21:59):
it was the simplest of stupidities. Previously, police had testified
that the men confessed freely, and that after they confessed,
their stories never changed. But Pierce had found the notebooks
on which the men's concessions had been written. Sure enough,
as the police wrote, edited, and rewrote the false confessions
on notebook pages, their pens left indentations on the pages.
(22:23):
Underneath those indentations revealed how the stories had evolved and
been altered, and how the police's testimony had been false.
These indentations were like track changes, you know, they were
imprints on paper that were left because the police officers
were writing and rewriting so furiously that they left a
(22:46):
mark on the paper. Evidence that the confessions were scripted
is evidence of police contamination. That the story didn't come
from the defendants, that came from police officers. All six
convictions were declared unsafe that's a British term, and thrown out.
And on November one, the Birmingham Six walked out of
(23:10):
prison after sixteen years behind bars. It still makes the
hairs on the back of your neck stand on end,
doesn't it. I remember it really vividly, that image of
them walking out of the court onto the street, and
builders hanging off scaffolding from the buildings across the road,
people packed outside, these hundreds and hundreds of people, TV
(23:32):
crews from around the world, and then that amazing image
of the mall coming out, linked hands holding them above
their heads, with Chris Mullen, the journalists who had campaigned
for them, and then Patty grabbing the microphone and shouting
how he'd spent sixteen years in prison for a crime
he didn't commit. It was that really raw emotion that
was just so shocking. The police traw us from the start,
(23:56):
but they knew we hadn't done it. They probably they
didn't care we've done it. They told us that we
were selected and we're gonna frail us just to keep
with people in the appy. Let's want it's all about justice.
Why don't think them people enough got the intelligence nor
(24:18):
the honest Finnish Fell Award, never mind dispenses. The six
won their freedom years ago, but even today real justice
still seems illusory. There's never been a formal declaration of
innocence or exoneration. Even the court decision throwing out their
convictions still made veiled references to their possible guilt. The
(24:40):
closest the Birmingham Six has come to justice was when
they won a defamation lawsuit after a member of Parliaments
called them guilty. The British government has compensated them financially,
but the amount doesn't come close to repaying them for
days of torture and sixteen lost years. A psychiatrist desist
the Musis when they putting their claim for compensation, and
(25:02):
he said they had post traumatic stress disorder that was
on the level of somebody who had been in a
war zone. I think what they've been through was exceptional
given the violence that they had suffered, as well as
the miscarriage of justice. I mean, they had been tortured,
they'd had to fight and fight all the time in
prison for their own safety and fight to prove their innocence.
(25:23):
If you've had that level of adrenaline running through your
system for sixteen years, that doesn't just disappear when you
walk out of court. And as for the bombing, it's
never been definitively solved. In fact, over the past few years,
there's been an ongoing inquest in Birmingham to reinvestigate what
happened that day. For years, Chris Mullen refused to name
(25:43):
the men he said had accepted responsibility, citing his journalistic
obligation to protect sources. Right before the inquest, Mullen finally
published an article identifying two former IRA members who are
now dead. For its part, the IRA has never a
fish the admitted responsibility for the bombings. At the inquest,
one former IRA member, identified only as a witness OH
(26:07):
named the same perpetrators that Mullen had named, plus two others.
Another witness testified that the high body count was accidental,
and described the bombings as an IRA operation that went
badly wrong in some ways, though the system has tried
to learn from its mistakes. If you were writing a
history of the criminal justice system in this country, the
(26:28):
Birming six is a real tipping point. It wasn't about
the politics of Northern Ireland. It was about the criminal
justice system has done something terribly wrong. So there was
a real sense at the time that the system was
in crisis. People couldn't have confidence in the system because
there were so many wrongful convictions happening. And on the
day the Birmingham Six were released from prison, the Home
(26:49):
Secretary stood up in Parliament and said, I'm ordering a
commission to look into the criminal justice system. Based on
that commission's recommendation, the UK created the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is independent, but it's funded
by the government to investigate cases likeness and to see
where mischaraches of justice have happened. The CCRC isn't perfect,
(27:14):
but it's a remarkable organization. It's one of the few
places in the world where, to be honest, the government
has been big enough to say things do go wrong
and we need to create a way of putting this right,
and every country should have one. In addition, the UK
has adapted reforms around the way suspects are interrogated, outlying
not only physical torture but also other tools of coercion
(27:37):
like lying to suspects. These are reforms that we should
be enacting in the United States. I always say that
the UK is thirty five years ahead of where we
are in the United States as far as interrogation reforms.
They don't allow any confessions to be admitted into evidence
that are obtained by oppression, and oppression does mean just
(28:01):
physical torture. It also means psychological torture and the use
of tactics which are likely to render a confession unreliable.
All of these reforms are aimed at getting the truth
and not just getting a confession. The British legal system
(28:22):
wasn't the only one to initiate meaningful change. Patty Hill
used the compensation he got for his wrongful conviction to
start a nonprofit, the Miscarriages of Justice Organization. Its mission
is to help people recently released from prison to get
back on their feet and to help them handle the
pain and anger they'll probably carry for a long time.
There's this incredible caring side to Patty. He talks about
(28:47):
when people get out of prison, many of them seek
him out, and at least pre COVID, he would welcome
them in his home. And those are the people that
give him the greatest comfort in life because they shared
at least some of the experience that he had when
he was in prison. You know, when I went back
to Scotland last year, I went to visit Patty Hill.
(29:11):
I'm so sad that I missed that opportunity. He's an
incredible man, but also he is angry still and committed
through that anger to improving the system. All he wants
to do is remember what happened to him and then
use that memory as fuel to change the system. For Patty,
(29:33):
all of those physical wounds have long since healed, but
the emotional wounds and the drive that he has to
make sure this doesn't happen again, those are there forever.
We see that time and again with people who are exonerated.
They wanted to tell their story. They want the world
to know what happened to them so it doesn't happen again. Hello, Hello, Patty,
(30:00):
Old Laura, how are you doing? Patty? I'm doing well.
Oh good. So it was a year ago when I
saw you in Glasgow at the Mojo offices. Yeah. When
you work with families of other people who are in prison,
is there anything to say to them to give them hope?
I tell the families they're going to have good moods
(30:21):
to going to have bad moods, you know. I tell
them love, you're not on your own, that we can
mess in the loads in any way. That's the main thing.
You know. You often hear that all cliche time is
a great healer? Is it true? Leave me time does
not hear nothing. The only thing you can hope for
is that every day, please God, you run down with
(30:44):
a little bit better. Do you have a support system
people to help you on those bad days? When I
meet up with some of the guys from the zeal
And one of the pubs and movie be there for
five six hours, that's when the you can be yourself,
all yourself. Maybe yes, yes, you have a good time.
(31:14):
And that's the story of the Birmingham Six. Join us
next week when we'll tell you the story of a
Virginia fisherman who got caught in a net of injustice.
He didn't give a false confession during his interrogation, but
the words he did say we're still enough to put
him in prison for thirty one years. Wrongful Conviction False
(31:36):
Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to our
executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wardis. Our production team
is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with producers
Josh Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by
Jeannie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music
(31:59):
was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Writer and you can
follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more information
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wrong Conviction
Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
writer and I'm Steve Drissen. Today's story is about a
group of innocent Irish men known as the Birmingham Six.
They were accused of planting bombs inside two pubs in Birmingham, England,
in two and they were tortured into giving false confessions.
All six men were freed in but the crime has
(00:24):
never been solved. The public is still demanding answers today
about who really planted those bombs. Steve. When we went
on our speaking tour last year for Making a Murderer,
one of my favorite places we visited was Belfast in
(00:44):
Northern Ireland. Yeah, it was one of the highlights of
our travels. It was almost like coming home, coming to
a place which understood the work I've been doing for
most of my professional life. Yeah, there was something about
false confessions that really resonated with that audience. It's a
lived experience and it goes back to the way in
(01:07):
which the Birmingham Six were treated by law enforcement. Well, okay,
so here's the thing, right. The Birmingham Six was a
case that arose from the fact that two pubs in Birmingham,
England were bombed. It was one of the biggest mass
murders to happen on British soil after World War Two.
I mean, this is like the Oklahoma City bombing here
in the United States, and the blame for this crime
(01:27):
was placed on these six Irish guys who were living
in England but who had deep roots in Belfast. The
injustice of what happened to these guys is like almost
nothing I've seen before. Yeah, a profound experience of police
abuses and of torture in the interrogation rooms. Their story
resonates for so many people in Northern Ireland because the
(01:49):
whole place has this incredible history of conflict and struggle
against power. I actually think that history is what brought
so many people out last year to our talk. You know,
I'd like to believe they came to see you and me,
but they were probably there to hear about injustice and
how to fight it. And that's a little bit better
of a reason. I think our story today begins in Birmingham, England.
(02:15):
It's the second largest city in the United Kingdom, with
a population in the millions, mostly English, but also hundreds
of thousands of Irish. Like any big city, Birmingham's got
a thriving social scene. In particular, on almost every corner
there's a pub. It's in two of those pubs that
our story really begins. Two ordinary places where people go
(02:36):
after work to get a pint of beer. On November
twenty one, to Birmingham pubs became together the scene of
Britain's deadliest mass murder in modern history. It all started
at eight eleven in the evening, an anonymous man with
an Irish accent placed a phone call to the Birmingham
(02:57):
Post newspaper. There's a bomb planted in the Rotunda, he said,
and there's a bomb in New Street. This, he added,
is double X. Then silence he'd hung up. The Rotunda
was a high rise office building in downtown Birmingham with
a pub on its first floor called the Mulberry Bush.
(03:18):
New Street. Around the corner was where the city Tax
office was. There was a pub on that building's first
floor to called the Tavern in the Town. And then
only six minutes after that anonymous phone call, it happened
two huge explosions. The first was at the Mulberry Bush
at eight pm. A homemade bomb had been left in
(03:39):
a leather bag somewhere near the back door. When the
bomb exploded, the pub was packed with people and the
damage was horrific. The ceiling collapsed, fire and gulfed the place.
People were crushed and burned to death. Others were impaled
by falling beams. First responders arrived and began working desperately
to rescue survivors. At the same time, police were frantically
(04:02):
trying to evacuate the tavern in the town, but they
couldn't clear it fast enough. At p m a second
homemade bomb exploded there again, the packed pub was destroyed.
That explosion was so powerful that people were blown through
the brick walls between the two pubs. Twenty one people
died and a hundred and eighty two were injured. It
(04:25):
was a coordinated attack that left Britain reeling. So why
would anyone bomb pubs in Birmingham. The answer is politics
and history. Here's our friend, Dr Hannah Quirk. She's a
professor at King's College, London who studies wrongful convictions and
like a lot of folks in the United Kingdom in Ireland,
(04:46):
she had a front row seat to that history. When
she's talking to people who are new to this part
of the world. Hannah likes to start here. So there's
obviously the famous You two song about Bloody Sunday. That
song is more than a pop anthem. It tells the
story of the long running and sometimes violent conflict between
Ireland and Britain. And here's that story in a nutshell.
(05:07):
There's a long, complicated history in Ireland, hundreds of years
of history. But in n two there's been a civil
war and the majority of Ireland was given independence from
Great Britain and formed the Irish Free State. But a
deal was done to say that the six counties of
Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom. Not
(05:29):
everyone was happy with this deal, though. People became intensely
divided about whether Northern Ireland should be part of the
United Kingdom or joined the Republic of Ireland, and those
divisions often fell along religious lines. Most Catholics were nationalists
or Republicans. They wanted to be a United Ireland so
the island of Ireland would be one country, and most
(05:51):
Protestants were Unionists or loyalists. They wanted to remain part
of Great Britain and be governed from London. Tensions simmered
for years and of eventually anti Catholic sentiment started boiling,
especially in Northern Ireland. Catholics were very discriminated against. They
had for fewer job opportunities, the housing was worse, so
they were very overcrowded. They couldn't sit on juries for
(06:13):
the most part because they didn't own property. Schools were
divided on religious lines as well, so the Civil rights
movement grew in the United States and the Catholic population
in Northern Ireland gradually began to protest about discrimination that
they were facing. Two British troops had already gone into
Northern Ireland to try and keep the peace, and then
Bloody Sunday in two British paratroopers opened fire on the
(06:33):
protesters and killed thirteen people and injured fifteen of them.
After Bloody Sunday, the violence really escalated on both sides.
People who wanted to end British rule in Northern Ireland
armed themselves and became active in a group called the
Irish Republican Army or the i r A. That song
people always said it was the best recruitment thing there
(06:55):
could ever have had. Bloody Sunday I think was a
real tipping point. It got so much attention, not only
in Northern Ireland but in England as well, these images
of the army shooting unarmed protesters. The ira A thought
of themselves as freedom fighters and they used violence to
make their points, even planting homemade bombs all across Britain.
(07:16):
The ira A targeted everything from government tax officers to
restaurants and pubs. By nine four, two years after Bloody Sunday,
Britain was experiencing an average of one attack every three days,
and British authorities were regularly retaliating. The conflict was pretty
close to a war, and it became known as the Troubles.
(07:37):
I mean we called it the Troubles. When I was
growing up, that was all I heard on the news
was the Troubles. And then the first time I went
to Belfast, I realized, no, actually this was this was
like a war. They were appalling levels of casualties in
those days as well, before the internet, you get news
flashes on the television, so the screen would go black
and let's say we interrupt this program and it would
(07:57):
be a bomb had gone off. For you know, some
kind of serious situation had taken place for years there's
been no trush comes on public transport in London, just
to stop people being able to hide bombs there. I
was probably about eight on nine, and my mom had
taken me and all my cousins and my little brother
to by school uniforms and there was this announcement over
(08:18):
the tanno, I please evacuate the store, and the alarms
going off. We just thought it was a brilliant adventure
because we were a bit too little to realize it
could be quite dangerous, and my poor mom was just
trying to grab about eight children and get us out
of the store, but it was all glass up front,
so she didn't know which way to take us which
was more dangerous. So we just always laughed about how
we all had nail marks in our arms from where
(08:39):
she was digging her fingers in and dragging us out
by the hair. And it seemed like a bit of
an adventure at the time, but that kind of stuff
was quite normal. Here's just how normal these bombings had become.
The IRA had rules, and under its rules, IRA members
who bombed as a villion target had to call British
police and warned them thirty minutes before the bomb went off.
(09:01):
The idea was to give enough time for police to
evacuate as many people as possible without sacrificing the bomb's
political point. But the British police needed a way to
make sure these anonymous phone calls were authentic not hoaxes.
So the IRA and the police agreed on a code
word known only to them. If the caller used the
(09:21):
code word, you could be sure the bomb threat was real,
and that code word was double X. On the day
the bombs went off, tensions between the IRA and the
British were sky high. A week before, an IRA member
named James McDade was killed in Britain when a bomb
he was placing went off prematurely. IRA sympathizers in Britain
(09:42):
were planning a hero's funeral with military processions and honor guards,
but the British authorities quickly passed laws making those plans
illegal instead. On November twenty one, mcdade's body was flown
from Birmingham to Belfast for burial. Only hours after the
plane care his body took off, the bombs went off too.
(10:04):
Between the timing of the bombings and the use of
the double X code word, it didn't take long for
the police and the public to conclude that the i
r A was responsible. Now, it's true the anonymous collar
hadn't given the usual thirty minutes advanced warning, but that
fact got ignored as a wave of anti Irish anger
swept over Britain. The ira A issued a denial, but
(10:26):
no one listened. The British public was terrified and the
British authorities were enraged. There was a thirst for justice
and revenge. Within hours of the bombings, police got a
tip five Irish men had been seen boarding a train
that left Birmingham right before the explosion at the Mulberry Bush.
(10:47):
Four of them had tickets continuing on to Belfast in
Northern Ireland. Their names were Jerry Hunter, Dick mcilkenny, John Walker,
Billy Power and Patty Hill. They were what the Irish
call work class lads who didn't have a lot of
extra money. All five men were Catholic, all were married
and most of them had kids. None of them was
(11:08):
affiliated with the I r A. They were headed to
Belfast to attend James mcdaide's funeral, but more out of
community obligation than for political reasons. For his part, Patty
Hill borrowed his train fare from a nun. He promised
to pay her back by doing some painting work when
he returned, but that debt would soon become the least
of his problems. This episode is sponsored by a i G,
(11:38):
a leading global insurance company, and Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Morton
and Garrison, a leading international law firm. The A i
G pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other
support to many nonprofit organizations and individuals most in need,
and recently they announced that working to reform the criminal
justice system will become a key pillar of the program's mission.
(12:00):
Paul Weiss has long had an unwavering commitment to providing
impactful pro bono legal assistance to the most vulnerable members
of our society and in support of the public interest,
including extensive work in the criminal justice area. For the
(12:20):
first few hours, the train ride was uneventful, but when
the train pulled up to Morekham's station on the evening
of November one, the police were waiting a group of
irishmen leaving Birmingham just as the bombs went off seemed suspicious.
All five were arrested and brought to a nearby police department.
That's where a forensic scientists tested their hands for traces
(12:42):
of nitroglycerin, a bomb ingredient. The hands of two men
tested positive, the scientists said, Billy Power and Patty Hill.
That was enough for the police. Not just justice, but
revenge was suddenly possible. Within a day, police arrested a
sixth Irishman, Hugh Callahan, who had been with the other
five before they boarded the train, and the interrogations endured
(13:05):
by these six men, the Birmingham Six, were horrific. It
started at the more Coham Police department with John Walker.
A group of police took John into a back room
where he was beaten, kicked, and burned with a cigarette
while other officers held his arms back. The other men
heard John screaming, and then their turns came to For hours,
(13:28):
they were all bloodied and beaten from head to toe.
One of them, Billy Power, was kicked over and over
on his head, legs, and stomach. He was dragged by
his hair and in one of the most sadistic moments
of this interrogation, police stretched his scrotum. During these interrogations,
at least some of these guys were shown a letter,
(13:48):
a letter that said that the torture they were experiencing
was state sanctioned. It was a letter on government letterhead
that basically told the police officers you can do whatever
you need to do in order to get a confession
from these men. To these guys, the message was this pain,
(14:09):
this torture is going to continue unless you confess PM.
The next day, November twenty two, Billie had had enough.
He signed a written confession prepared by police, admitting guilt
in the Birmingham pub bombings. A few hours later, the
men were transferred to the custody of another police unit,
(14:29):
the West Midland's Serious Crime Squad, where the torture continued, beatings, burnings,
stress positions, even mock executions. Patty Hill remembers having a
pistol shoved into his mouth so brutally that it broke
several of his teeth. With a cold metal barrel in
Patty's mouth, his interrogators slowly counted to three and pulled
(14:52):
the trigger three times. They did this each time Patty
expected to die, only to discover that the chamber didn't
contain a it. The thing about torture is that it works,
at least if your only goal is to find a scapegoat.
On novembery Hugh Callahan, Dick mcilkenny, and John Walkers signed
false confessions. Like Billy, they claimed that they were I
(15:14):
ra A members and that they planted both pub bombs. Somehow,
Patty Hill and Jerry Hunter were holdouts. They refused to
sign confessions despite the torture. Police would later claim that
Patty and Jerry verbally confessed, which Patty denies. The four
written confessions were short and virtually detail free. In fact,
one of the only details included was wrong. The confessions
(15:37):
claimed that the bombs were left at the pubs in
white plastic bags, but forensic analysis showed the bags had
been leather. It didn't matter. Four of the Birmingham six
had confessed, and all of them had been beaten within
an inch of their lives. Revenge, it seemed, had been achieved.
The last thing that you want interrogators to do when
(15:58):
they go into an interrogation room is to be guided
by a sense of vengeance, because what's going to happen
is the interrogator is going to do everything in his
power to quench that thirst for revenge, and the interrogation
no longer becomes about the truth. After the confessions, the
(16:19):
six were charged with murder and transferred to Winson Green Prison,
where guards continued the beatings. When the Birmingham Six were
finally brought to court a week after the bombings, they
had been brutalized from head to foot. Patty Hill's wife
was in the courtroom with their two year old son.
When the little boy saw his dad's injuries, he was
so traumatized that he needed medical attention. But authorities told
(16:42):
the judge that they had done nothing wrong. The men
had been attacked, they said, by other inmates. We've seen
excuses like that over and over again, even in the
United States. When somebody is battered, the police changed the
narrative from the beginning. They either blame it on somebody
falling down the stairs, or they blame it on other inmates.
(17:03):
But when these men appeared in court for the first time,
everybody knew what had happened to them. It was clear
that they had been through an ordeal. That ordeal was
far from over. Based on the confessions and the nitroglycerin evidence,
the Birmingham Six stood trial on June nine. A defense
(17:24):
expert testified that the explosives testing had been faulty. And
defense witnesses pointed out that no explosives had been found
at any of the men's homes, But in short order
that Birmingham Six were convicted. Each man was sentenced to
twenty one life sentences, one for every person who died,
and the people of Britain, all of whom thought it
(17:46):
could have been them inside those pubs. They believed that
justice had been done from behind bars. The Birmingham Six
fought their convictions like furies and insisted the authorities acknowledged
they've been tortured, but for a while it looked like
the entire system was lined up against them. Eventually, fourteen
(18:08):
prison officers were charged with assaulting the six, but despite
plenty of evidence, those officers were all acquitted at trial.
The six also tried to soothe their torturers, but a
judge dismissed their lawsuit in and he did it for
reasons that you have to hear to believe. Just think
what it would mean for Britain's legal system. The judge explained,
(18:29):
if these men were allowed to prove they'd been tortured,
it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury,
that they were guilty of violence and threats and that
the convictions were erroneous. That was such an appalling vista.
He declared that every sensible person would say, it cannot
be right that this lawsuit should go any further. You know,
(18:51):
the appalling vista here is this paternalistic attitude of this
judge that the public can't handle the truth, he said,
saying that if this torture were allowed to be seen
by them, if this injustice were allowed to be acknowledged,
the entire system would crumble. The irony is that by
suppressing the truth, by putting these allegations and evidence of
(19:16):
torture in the closet, he is breaking the very system
he claims to want to protect. Where these men supposed
to get justice, if not in a court of law.
But while the court system closed its eyes to this injustice,
the world didn't. Journalist Chris Mullen, who would go on
(19:37):
to become a member of Parliament, investigated the bombings with
fresh eyes. He retained two scientists who debunked the test
that supposedly had found nitroglycerin on Patty and Billy's hands.
A police officer also publicly confirmed that the Birmingham Six
had been beaten by their interrogators. The next year, Chris
(19:58):
Mullen published a book about the case called Error of Judgment.
In the book, Mullen described meeting i RA members who
admitted they were involved in the bombings, although he didn't
disclose their names, and Mullen explained something that had been
a mystery for years, why the double X coller hadn't
given the full thirty minutes warning before the first explosion.
(20:21):
Turns out the bombers meant to give police thirty minutes,
but the telephone booth they'd planned to use had been
damaged by vandals. By the time they found another phone,
only six minutes were left. The warning system wasn't as
fool proof as they thought. That was how these bombings
became one of the deadliest mass murders in modern British history.
(20:52):
In seven, advocates, including renowned civil rights lawyer Gareth Pierce,
convinced a court to re examine the convictions of the
Birmingham Six. At the hearing, police officers testified about watching
their colleagues torture the six men. Evidence was also introduced
about a handwritten chart that had been found in the
police station. The interrogators apparently used this chart to line
(21:16):
up the facts in the different men's statements and make
sure they matched. Of course, those facts were actually lies.
The discovery of this chart basically proved what the men
had been saying all along, that we didn't confess to
these crimes. These were stories that were scripted by the police,
(21:36):
and we were tortured into saying what they wanted us
to say. But despite this new evidence, relief was denied
and the case stalled for four years until a second
hearing was granted. Their new evidence was introduced that further
undermined the nitroglycer in testing on Patty and Billy's hands.
But what finally tipped the balance, as Gareth Pierce later wrote,
(21:59):
it was the simplest of stupidities. Previously, police had testified
that the men confessed freely, and that after they confessed,
their stories never changed. But Pierce had found the notebooks
on which the men's concessions had been written. Sure enough,
as the police wrote, edited, and rewrote the false confessions
on notebook pages, their pens left indentations on the pages.
(22:23):
Underneath those indentations revealed how the stories had evolved and
been altered, and how the police's testimony had been false.
These indentations were like track changes, you know, they were
imprints on paper that were left because the police officers
were writing and rewriting so furiously that they left a
(22:46):
mark on the paper. Evidence that the confessions were scripted
is evidence of police contamination. That the story didn't come
from the defendants, that came from police officers. All six
convictions were declared unsafe that's a British term, and thrown out.
And on November one, the Birmingham Six walked out of
(23:10):
prison after sixteen years behind bars. It still makes the
hairs on the back of your neck stand on end,
doesn't it. I remember it really vividly, that image of
them walking out of the court onto the street, and
builders hanging off scaffolding from the buildings across the road,
people packed outside, these hundreds and hundreds of people, TV
(23:32):
crews from around the world, and then that amazing image
of the mall coming out, linked hands holding them above
their heads, with Chris Mullen, the journalists who had campaigned
for them, and then Patty grabbing the microphone and shouting
how he'd spent sixteen years in prison for a crime
he didn't commit. It was that really raw emotion that
was just so shocking. The police traw us from the start,
(23:56):
but they knew we hadn't done it. They probably they
didn't care we've done it. They told us that we
were selected and we're gonna frail us just to keep
with people in the appy. Let's want it's all about justice.
Why don't think them people enough got the intelligence nor
(24:18):
the honest Finnish Fell Award, never mind dispenses. The six
won their freedom years ago, but even today real justice
still seems illusory. There's never been a formal declaration of
innocence or exoneration. Even the court decision throwing out their
convictions still made veiled references to their possible guilt. The
(24:40):
closest the Birmingham Six has come to justice was when
they won a defamation lawsuit after a member of Parliaments
called them guilty. The British government has compensated them financially,
but the amount doesn't come close to repaying them for
days of torture and sixteen lost years. A psychiatrist desist
the Musis when they putting their claim for compensation, and
(25:02):
he said they had post traumatic stress disorder that was
on the level of somebody who had been in a
war zone. I think what they've been through was exceptional
given the violence that they had suffered, as well as
the miscarriage of justice. I mean, they had been tortured,
they'd had to fight and fight all the time in
prison for their own safety and fight to prove their innocence.
(25:23):
If you've had that level of adrenaline running through your
system for sixteen years, that doesn't just disappear when you
walk out of court. And as for the bombing, it's
never been definitively solved. In fact, over the past few years,
there's been an ongoing inquest in Birmingham to reinvestigate what
happened that day. For years, Chris Mullen refused to name
(25:43):
the men he said had accepted responsibility, citing his journalistic
obligation to protect sources. Right before the inquest, Mullen finally
published an article identifying two former IRA members who are
now dead. For its part, the IRA has never a
fish the admitted responsibility for the bombings. At the inquest,
one former IRA member, identified only as a witness OH
(26:07):
named the same perpetrators that Mullen had named, plus two others.
Another witness testified that the high body count was accidental,
and described the bombings as an IRA operation that went
badly wrong in some ways, though the system has tried
to learn from its mistakes. If you were writing a
history of the criminal justice system in this country, the
(26:28):
Birming six is a real tipping point. It wasn't about
the politics of Northern Ireland. It was about the criminal
justice system has done something terribly wrong. So there was
a real sense at the time that the system was
in crisis. People couldn't have confidence in the system because
there were so many wrongful convictions happening. And on the
day the Birmingham Six were released from prison, the Home
(26:49):
Secretary stood up in Parliament and said, I'm ordering a
commission to look into the criminal justice system. Based on
that commission's recommendation, the UK created the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission is independent, but it's funded
by the government to investigate cases likeness and to see
where mischaraches of justice have happened. The CCRC isn't perfect,
(27:14):
but it's a remarkable organization. It's one of the few
places in the world where, to be honest, the government
has been big enough to say things do go wrong
and we need to create a way of putting this right,
and every country should have one. In addition, the UK
has adapted reforms around the way suspects are interrogated, outlying
not only physical torture but also other tools of coercion
(27:37):
like lying to suspects. These are reforms that we should
be enacting in the United States. I always say that
the UK is thirty five years ahead of where we
are in the United States as far as interrogation reforms.
They don't allow any confessions to be admitted into evidence
that are obtained by oppression, and oppression does mean just
(28:01):
physical torture. It also means psychological torture and the use
of tactics which are likely to render a confession unreliable.
All of these reforms are aimed at getting the truth
and not just getting a confession. The British legal system
(28:22):
wasn't the only one to initiate meaningful change. Patty Hill
used the compensation he got for his wrongful conviction to
start a nonprofit, the Miscarriages of Justice Organization. Its mission
is to help people recently released from prison to get
back on their feet and to help them handle the
pain and anger they'll probably carry for a long time.
There's this incredible caring side to Patty. He talks about
(28:47):
when people get out of prison, many of them seek
him out, and at least pre COVID, he would welcome
them in his home. And those are the people that
give him the greatest comfort in life because they shared
at least some of the experience that he had when
he was in prison. You know, when I went back
to Scotland last year, I went to visit Patty Hill.
(29:11):
I'm so sad that I missed that opportunity. He's an
incredible man, but also he is angry still and committed
through that anger to improving the system. All he wants
to do is remember what happened to him and then
use that memory as fuel to change the system. For Patty,
(29:33):
all of those physical wounds have long since healed, but
the emotional wounds and the drive that he has to
make sure this doesn't happen again, those are there forever.
We see that time and again with people who are exonerated.
They wanted to tell their story. They want the world
to know what happened to them so it doesn't happen again. Hello, Hello, Patty,
(30:00):
Old Laura, how are you doing? Patty? I'm doing well.
Oh good. So it was a year ago when I
saw you in Glasgow at the Mojo offices. Yeah. When
you work with families of other people who are in prison,
is there anything to say to them to give them hope?
I tell the families they're going to have good moods
(30:21):
to going to have bad moods, you know. I tell
them love, you're not on your own, that we can
mess in the loads in any way. That's the main thing.
You know. You often hear that all cliche time is
a great healer? Is it true? Leave me time does
not hear nothing. The only thing you can hope for
is that every day, please God, you run down with
(30:44):
a little bit better. Do you have a support system
people to help you on those bad days? When I
meet up with some of the guys from the zeal
And one of the pubs and movie be there for
five six hours, that's when the you can be yourself,
all yourself. Maybe yes, yes, you have a good time.
(31:14):
And that's the story of the Birmingham Six. Join us
next week when we'll tell you the story of a
Virginia fisherman who got caught in a net of injustice.
He didn't give a false confession during his interrogation, but
the words he did say we're still enough to put
him in prison for thirty one years. Wrongful Conviction False
(31:36):
Confessions is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
association with Signal Company Number one Special thanks to our
executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wardis. Our production team
is headed by Senior producer and Pope, along with producers
Josh Hammer and Jess Shane. Our show is mixed by
Jeannie Montalvo. John Colbert is our intrepid intern. Our music
(31:59):
was composed by Jay Ralph. You can follow me on
Instagram or Twitter at Laura ni Writer and you can
follow me on Twitter at s driven. For more information
on the show, visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com. Be
sure to follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at
(32:21):
wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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