Rikki Neave police 'ignored scientific evidence'

Six-year-old Rikki Neave disappeared after leaving home for school in November 1994 - his body was discovered the following day. A BBC investigation has found that police ignored scientific evidence to build a case against his mother, leaving his killer free for more than 20 years.

When Rikki Neave's naked body was found in woodland, near his home on the Welland Estate in Peterborough, suspicion quickly fell on his mother Ruth. Rikki was on the social services Child Protection Register, having been deemed at risk.

Police built a case against Ruth based on allegations she had mistreated Rikki and she stood trial in 1996. But while she was jailed for seven years for child cruelty, Ruth was cleared of his murder.

For more than 20 years, Rikki's killer remained at large. It was not until April this year, after a cold-case review and a new investigation, that James Watson - who was 13 at the time - was brought to justice. Now in his early 40s, he was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 15 years - following a trial at the Old Bailey.

Now, a BBC investigation into the case has uncovered evidence that the original police investigation ignored key scientific evidence to make the case against Ruth. The findings are presented in The Boy in the Woods on BBC Radio 4.

"It's more than an innocent mistake," Ruth told the BBC. "It's more than bad practice or negligence in my view, they failed to pursue evidence they knew was there."

Early in the inquiry, Prof Tony Brown, a forensic scientist from Southampton University who helps solve crimes by looking at pollen in mud, had been asked by police to examine Rikki's clothes.

He concluded that mud clinging to the raised ridges on the soles of Rikki's shoes, indicated he had died in the woods, rather than at home, as the prosecution would later claim in court.

The prosecution told a jury that Ruth had killed Rikki at home and taken his body to the woods in a pushchair.

Prof Brown said: "I focused on the right shoe because that had mud on the positive tread and that is significant. The ridges underneath your shoes, the positive tread, don't normally have mud on them as soon as you go on to tarmac or a pavement or a hard surface."

He concluded that "the shoes had walked into the wood but hadn't walked out again - and that's critical".

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Rikki Neave left for school but never came home. Decades on his killer has been jailed.

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Police had taken a pushchair from Ruth's house as evidence and called a witness at her trial who had noticed the pram was wet on the day Rikki disappeared, suggesting this was suspicious.

Prof Brown had offered to examine Ruth's pushchair, which would have been covered in mud if it had been pushed through the woods in that wet autumn, but it was never sent.

"I was very glad when there was a cold case review," he said. "It remained the only case I have been involved in, where my evidence had been disregarded."

James Watson, who was convicted of the murder, was seen with Rikki on the morning he went missing and was questioned by police soon afterwards.

But during the original investigation no clothing was taken from him or any other person of interest for potential fibre matching, contrary to standard practice at the time.

Forensic scientist Peter Lamb had isolated fibres on Rikki's clothes that could have come from his killer and was expecting to be sent clothing belonging to potential suspects.

"That would have been the obvious thing to do," he said. "Most of the cases similar to this, I seem to recall quite a lot of suspects' clothing coming into the frame."

But in this case, not a single piece of clothing was sent. "We had identified fibres we couldn't find a legitimate source for, but we never had items to compare them against."

Watson was finally convicted after a cold case investigation, during which adhesive tapings from Rikki's clothes were examined and a DNA match to him were made.

He claimed he may have lifted Rikki to help him see over a fence, but police found archive TV footage showing there was no fence in 1994.

Rikki's mother told the BBC she always felt police were determined to pin her son's murder on her.

"They interviewed me for days and all the time I begged them to try to find my son's real killer," said Ruth.

"What no-one knew until your investigation was how the police had discarded scientific evidence that proved I could not have killed him in the way they later described in court.

"They have destroyed my life. I am just relieved the truth is finally out."

Cambridgeshire Assistant Chief Constable Paul Fullwood, who led the cold case review, said by today's standards police would look back at the original investigation and ask how it could happen.

"But the way things were investigated in 1994 were very different from today, the rules of disclosure were very different.

"That doesn't make it right and it doesn't make it palatable in any way, but in their minds they were focused on trying to prove that Ruth Neave was responsible for the murder of Rikki."

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The Boy in the Woods will be broadcast weekdays from 3 October at 13:45 GMT on BBC Radio 4 and it will be available as a boxset on BBC Sounds.