Kevin Nunn has spent 20 years in prison for a horrifying murder. Was he wrongly convicted? | Criminal Cases Review Commission

After the homicide of his ex-girlfriend Daybreak Walker, in 2005, Kevin Nunn insists he instructed Suffolk police every part. After all he did, he says – he was determined to assist them monitor down her killer. He defined how that they had break up up two days earlier than she was discovered, how he had gone to her house after she had left a distraught voicemail on his telephone and never turned as much as work, how he had let himself in with a key she didn’t know he had, and the way he went searching for her alongside their favorite strolling routes by the River Lark, north of Bury St Edmunds. He then handed over the pair of shoes he had worn when trying to find her.The physique of Walker, 37, was found near the place Nunn stated he had regarded for her. Not surprisingly, his footprints have been additionally discovered. Six weeks after she went lacking, he was charged along with her homicide. Nunn, 64, who has spent 20 years in jail, says telling the reality was the worst factor he may have completed. He believes he unwittingly supplied the police with every part they wanted to construct a case in opposition to him – the motive, the map and the circumstantial proof that led to him being convicted of homicide.Kevin Nunn earlier than his conviction. Composite: Guardian Design; Mimi Mollica; Courtesy of Brigitte Butcher; Getty Photos“It’s laborious to look again at how naive I used to be,” he instructed me just lately in a letter despatched from his jail in East Anglia. “However if you’ve acquired nothing to cover and also you’re harmless and also you belief the police, you’re going to be open and trustworthy. I had nothing to cover as a result of I wasn’t concerned in Daybreak’s homicide instantly or not directly. I didn’t see myself as a suspect, I noticed myself as somebody serving to the police, and I believe that’s probably the most silly factor I ever did, in hindsight.” If he may have his time over once more, he says, he would have hidden the boots or stated he had worn different footwear – not as a result of he would wish to deceive the police, however as a result of he thinks it may need protected him from being wrongfully convicted.Nunn grew up on a council property in Bury St Edmunds. He was born prematurely, weighing lower than 3lbs (1.35kg). “He was my little brother in each sense. He was a lot smaller than the opposite boys at college,” says his sister, Brigitte Butcher, a former nurse with a straightforward heat. She has all the time regarded out for him in a technique or one other, and has campaigned for him ever since his conviction.Their father was a lorry driver, their mom a store assistant who had come over from Cork, Eire, on the age of 15. She had grown up in poverty and had excessive hopes of a greater future for her youngsters. “Mum all the time thought we have been higher than everyone, and ultimately I believe we believed it,” Butcher instructed me in 2013, once I first wrote about Nunn with the Guardian’s prisons correspondent, Eric Allison, who died in 2022. In 2013, Nunn had been in jail for eight years, and he appeared an unlikely killer. He had by no means been in hassle with the police, and had no historical past of violence.Nunn left faculty at 16, acquired a job as a fuel welding gear salesman, caught at it and did fairly nicely for himself. He labored laborious, performed golf and loved good holidays when he may afford them. “He was simply my run-of-the-mill, barely boring brother Kevin,” Butcher stated on the time.In 2005, Nunn, who was divorced with two youngsters, had been going out with Walker for about two years. It was an on-off relationship, and simply earlier than she was murdered it gave the impression to be off for the ultimate time. They realised it wasn’t understanding, and she or he admitted to him that she was fascinated about returning to a former boyfriend. They’d break up amicably earlier than, and, he says, they now did so once more.On 3 February 2005, the morning after they break up up, Walker’s employer known as Nunn, her emergency contact, to say she had not turned up for work. Nunn has all the time claimed he had already deliberate to go spherical to her home due to the distressed voicemail, however this now made it an emergency. He knocked on the door, and when there was no reply he used the important thing he nonetheless needed to enter her house. There was no signal of her. Later that day, Nunn says he went searching for her across the spots the place they usually went for walks. If she was nonetheless upset, he recommended, maybe she was strolling it off. He reported her as a lacking individual to the police the subsequent day.Just a few hours later, at about 5pm on 4 February 2005, Walker was found by the River Lark, barely a mile from the place Butcher and Nunn grew up. Her hair had been shaved off, her physique had been set alight with petrol and she or he had been dumped bare from the waist down. The reason for demise was by no means recognized.Daybreak Walker. {Photograph}: Chris Ison/PAA week earlier than the trial started, in October 2006, it was disclosed to the defence that semen, containing a small quantity of sperm, had been discovered on Walker’s thighs and pubic bone. When Nunn was instructed this, he didn’t realise its significance, however his sister did. Nunn had undergone a vasectomy, which meant he may produce semen however not sperm. He was examined and, certain sufficient, no sperm was produced. Butcher had all the time been satisfied that her brother can be cleared, and now she believed he needed to be. However he wasn’t.In a narrative full of peculiar situations, maybe probably the most stunning was proposed by the prosecution. Though there was no proof of Walker having had intercourse simply earlier than being killed, they insisted the sperm was unconnected to her homicide, and had been picked up by a “secondary switch”. She had been on the gymnasium of the Suffolk golf membership with Nunn on the night the couple break up up, and the ladies’s altering rooms have been being embellished. It was recommended by the prosecution that Walker had used the lads’s altering rooms and that the sperm was both the results of Walker sitting on a bench or a gymnasium towel freshly stained with sperm. The forensics skilled for the prosecution, Helen Hawarth, agreed this was a risk, however conceded it was unlikely. The defence recommended a extra seemingly place to begin was that Walker’s killer had masturbated over her physique, declaring that the crime had the looks of a sexual assault, as she had been left along with her vagina uncovered and a reed present in her anal passage.Butcher has all the time discovered the prosecution’s argument laborious to countenance. “This can be a respectable golf membership and it’s an open altering room. I’m certain males don’t are available in masturbating after their bathe with everybody coming and going. It’s simply not occurring, is it? That is the place she supposedly sat on the bench with this large gush of sperm that washed up on her leg. Absurd. Are they saying she sat on it and all of it splashed up? Is that how a lot there was there? However in accordance with Helen Hawarth, there was solely a small pattern. They’ll’t have it each methods, can they? It’s farcical.”So far as Nunn is anxious, the investigation and trial have been profoundly flawed. Ten days after the principle witness for the prosecution, a neighbour who lived in the identical shut as Walker, had instructed the police she had seen nothing, she went to the police and adjusted her story. She stated that she had heard folks arguing on the street between 10 and 10.30pm on Wednesday 2 February and that they gave the impression of youngsters, though she wasn’t sufficiently apprehensive to examine. The prosecution argued that it was, actually, Nunn and Walker arguing. (One other neighbour stated he had seen a person arguing with Walker at her entrance door at about the identical time.)The primary witness stated she had pushed previous Walker’s home two days later at 4.45am, on her technique to an early shift at work, and that she had seen two suspicious-looking males struggling to load a big object that would have been a rolled-up carpet or a big laundry bag into the again of a silver property automobile. The witness recognized one of many males as being Walker’s “boyfriend”, and she or he later picked out Nunn at an id parade. On the trial, nonetheless, she admitted that she had been requested by the police to pick Walker’s boyfriend from the lineup. In court docket, the prosecution argued that the rolled-up carpet or massive laundry bag contained the useless Walker. The police and forensics consultants discovered the home undisturbed, with no signal of wrestle.What makes the case even stranger is {that a} man known as Nigel Hill was charged alongside Nunn. Hill labored with Walker, was a detailed buddy and former boyfriend, and he drove a silver automobile. Nunn and Hill have all the time insisted that they knew of one another however had by no means met earlier than Walker’s disappearance.Nunn knew Hill was a buddy of Walker’s. When he discovered Walker’s home empty, he contacted Hill, and requested if he knew the place Walker was. Hill stated he didn’t, and he additionally turned up at her house. He later instructed Suffolk police that, like Nunn, he was apprehensive and wished to know what was happening. The police determined they have been companions in crime. For Butcher, this was all the time a nonsense. “They’d each had a relationship with Daybreak, that was their solely connection. So what’s the narrative? ‘I’ve killed your finest buddy from work, are you able to come and assist me transfer the physique?’ Was that the storyline? It’s simply absurd, isn’t it?”‘The very last thing my mum stated on her deathbed was: you gained’t surrender preventing for Kev, will you?’ … Brigitte Butcher. {Photograph}: Joshua Vibrant/The GuardianThe narrative initially put to the prosecution was so elaborate that Nunn says he nonetheless struggles to get his head round it: Nunn and Walker had break up up on 2 February, he had killed her in an unknown place, introduced the physique again to the home after visiting her house with Hill on 3 February, after which at 4.50am the subsequent day had eliminated the physique with Hill in a rolled-up carpet or laundry bag and deposited her by the river.Finally, the prosecution agreed that it was absurd for Hill to be within the dock just because he owned a silver automobile and had visited Walker’s house after she went lacking. Halfway by the trial, prices have been dropped in opposition to Hill with out him having given proof. Nunn assumed he can be going house, too. In any case, if the case in opposition to his supposed confederate had collapsed, absolutely his would. But it surely didn’t.There have been different improbabilities. Though Nunn was charged with a horrific homicide, in January 2006 he was launched on bail for 11 months till he was convicted. All through the trial, he walked to court docket from his rented property. “The choose at Ipswich stated [to police]: you want greater than this to maintain him in jail until the trial,” Butcher says. “There have been two psychiatrists who assessed Kevin to see if he was protected to be out on bail. These two psychiatric studies [also] stated there have been no tendencies to be overly jealous or harmful. I stated to his probation officer: ‘Have you ever ever identified anyone charged with such a horrible homicide to not be held in custody?’ He stated: ‘No, I’ve to say I haven’t.’”The assorted suspects have been primarily former boyfriends of Walker’s, all of them native. The primary witness was requested about one other suspect, who we are going to name X, a former boyfriend of Walker’s with a conviction for exposing himself to younger ladies. X (who was additionally a witness for the prosecution) had boasted to the principle witness that he knew how one can perform the proper homicide. Underneath cross examination, the principle witness was requested: “And also you agree that you simply discovered this explicit dialog with him earlier than Daybreak Walker’s homicide so disconcerting and horrifying that it caught in your thoughts and also you felt you needed to inform the police of this extraordinary confession he made to you?” “Sure,” she stated. Walker was discovered at Duck Sluice Farm, near the place X recurrently walked his canine. He had instructed the principle witness that to commit the proper homicide he would “put his fingers close to the windpipe across the neck so there can be no proof left behind” and that he must “burn the hair to do away with the DNA”. The witness acknowledged that there was “tons” that was “related” to the small print of Walker’s homicide and the proper homicide that X had described to her.The prosecution portrayed Nunn as obsessive, jealous and devious. First there was the important thing. Just a few months earlier, the couple had briefly break up up. Walker had requested for her home key again and he had made a duplicate of it. What sort of man secretly will get a key made for his associate’s home and retains it after they break up up? Nunn, who volunteered the details about the important thing, stated that he had by no means given the important thing again as a result of they often acquired again collectively inside hours, and this time that they had solely simply separated. “It was very poor judgment on my half to get the copy made,” he instructed me just lately. “Individuals choose you on that, and say that’s his character. And it’s simply not the case.”Then there was the proof of one other former boyfriend whom Walker was considered returning to. He instructed the jury that she had stated Nunn was jealous, giving for instance the time she had left the gymnasium to go for a drink with a health coach and Nunn had adopted them. Nunn admitted this was true, and stated it had occurred shortly after the couple had agreed they have been in an unique relationship and that he had wished to know the place he stood. He adopted her automobile in his automobile for a brief distance, he stated, then they stopped and had a chat. Walker instructed him she was going for a drink with the coach and some others, and requested him if he fancied becoming a member of them. Nunn stated he declined and, though he’d been miffed, it wasn’t a giant deal between them. However the notion of him being possessive was strengthened by Nunn’s ex-wife, who gave proof for the prosecution. After an acrimonious divorce, she stated he had acted as if he had “a form of possession” of her.As with many alleged miscarriages of justice, a lot is determined by the timing of occasions, and whose model is in the end believed. In Nunn’s case, the disputed time begins with the CCTV footage on the gymnasium that he and Walker attended the night they break up up. Nunn insisted that he was in mattress asleep between 10 and 10.30pm, the time that Walker was alleged to be having an argument with a person on her doorstep. But he’s proven leaving the gymnasium at 9.30pm, and this was a key issue within the case. Nevertheless, have a look at the timing on the automobile park CCTV, and one thing doesn’t add up. On an early February night, footage from earlier than he arrives says the time is 5.30pm but it surely’s nonetheless gentle, suggesting that the CCTV clock is forward of the particular time. On the gymnasium log, Walker indicators out at 8.15pm.A photograph on Brigitte Butcher’s telephone of herself, aged six, left, and Kevin, aged 4. {Photograph}: Joshua Vibrant/The GuardianNunn says he and Walker left the gymnasium individually, quickly after 8.15pm, and he drove to her home in his gymnasium garments to debate their relationship, which appeared to be petering out. That’s after they determined to separate up, and he says he left Walker’s house quickly after 9pm. However the prosecution insisted that he had left the gymnasium at 9.30pm.The CCTV had a disastrous influence. First, it put him within the body for the row on the street (though the witness stated the person was neatly wearing a go well with and coat and Nunn was seen leaving in gymnasium garments). Second, it undermined his credibility. The jury believed he was a liar. Not solely was this a person who had made a duplicate of a key to his girlfriend’s home and saved it after they break up up, however he was additionally mendacity concerning the time he left the gymnasium.But he was telling the reality concerning the time. Within the bundle of paperwork disclosed to the defence was a police assertion saying that they didn’t know precisely what time Nunn left, however acknowledging that the CCTV was 70 minutes out of time. Though this level was made by the defence, the jury selected to imagine the prosecution.Regardless of the shortage of forensics, regardless of the unsupported witness proof, regardless of his co-defendant’s case being thrown out, Nunn was discovered responsible and sentenced to a minimal of twenty-two years in jail.Butcher recollects the jury returning their unanimous verdict, on 20 November 2006, as if it have been yesterday. “Daybreak’s household have been all whooping and shouting, and my dad checked out me and I keep in mind going out and falling on my knees and screaming.” The emotion remains to be uncooked. “It’s very dramatic, isn’t it? However I used to be so shocked. I went to get my dad, then I assumed: ‘Oh, the place’s Kevin? However they’d taken him down by then.’”The trial choose, Mrs Justice Cox, described Walker as an “outgoing, conscientious and reliable” girl who loved an unbiased and energetic way of life with many female and male associates. In her sentencing remarks, she stated that Nunn had been ‘‘consumed by jealousy” when Walker had instructed him she wished to rekindle the connection along with her former associate so “you determined in case you couldn’t have her no different man may … Precisely what you probably did to her if you killed her I don’t know however I’ve little question that you simply supposed to kill her.” Cox stated the crime had had a ‘‘devastating impact’’ on Walker’s household, and that an aggravating characteristic of the case was the best way the defence had sought to level the finger of blame for Walker’s demise at one in every of her former boyfriends.But so many questions remained unanswered – the unidentifed semen, the apparently discrepant CCTV footage, the time and place of the homicide. Cox stated it was not identified the place Nunn had saved Walker’s physique after killing her and who had been serving to him when he was supposedly seen struggling to place her hid physique right into a automobile.Nunn is due for his first parole listening to in 2028, however he is aware of he’s unlikely to be launched then. He has refused to do the rehabilitation programs which might be the standard pathway to freedom as a result of he has maintained his innocence. Parole depends on addressing offending behaviour. If he’s ever launched from jail, he believes it is going to be as a result of his conviction is quashed reasonably than as a result of he has served his time.This February, 12 years after I final spoke to Brigitte Butcher, she rang and instructed me Nunn was nonetheless in jail. I used to be shocked, as a result of the case in opposition to him had appeared so filled with holes and his conviction so unsafe. I additionally felt horrible, as a result of I’ve hardly ever considered Nunn in that point. As journalists, we transfer on to the subsequent story. However there is no such thing as a transferring on for Nunn.There are prisoners I’ve met whom I’ll always remember. However Nunn isn’t one in every of them. He isn’t a charismatic man. Butcher instructed me as a lot years in the past. Maybe that’s why his case has not attracted a lot consideration. She fills me in on every part that has occurred within the intervening years. Butcher is now in her mid-60s, has retired from nursing and remains to be preventing for her brother. However Nunn appears no nearer to clearing his title. His case has been with the Felony Circumstances Assessment Fee (CCRC), the physique that offers with alleged miscarriages of justice, for a lot of the previous 10 years. It rejected his first submission for grounds to attraction in 2019, and has now spent virtually two years his second submission with out deciding whether or not to refer the case again to the court docket of attraction. (Convictions can solely be overturned by a panel of judges on the court docket of attraction.)The CCRC, which was arrange in 1997 after a sequence of distinguished miscarriages of justice within the Seventies and Eighties, is underneath fireplace. In its early days, ready and pushed commissioners have been appointed on good-looking salaries (£93,796 in 2013). Since then, the full-time workers job has been eliminated and commissioners at the moment are contracted to work 52 days a yr at £460 a day. Whereas this can be a gorgeous shift price, it quantities to lower than £24,000 a yr. Not surprisingly, the fee has been unable to seek out sufficient commissioners to do the job and has solely 10, one wanting the statutory minimal.Even with a full complement of commissioners, the CCRC is sloth-like and infrequently makes use of its particular investigative powers. Over its lifetime, it has referred a median of solely 3% of circumstances, however that price has now slipped to lower than 2%. Whereas it claims it is because it does its work so nicely and that solely about one in 50 circumstances have a sensible probability of being quashed by the court docket of attraction, critics such because the miscarriage of justice charity Attraction say it’s as a result of the CCRC acts as a gatekeeper, turning down circumstances regardless of their deserves as a result of it thinks the court docket would ultimately reject them.In April, the CCRC’s then chief govt, Karen Kneller, and the casework operations director Amanda Pearce appeared earlier than the cross-party justice committee within the Home of Commons. They revealed that they solely went into work at their Birmingham HQ one or two days each couple of months, had did not recruit commissioners for greater than two years and have been nowhere close to appointing a brand new everlasting chair to interchange Helen Pitcher, who was compelled to resign in January after successive justice secretaries stated that they had misplaced confidence in her. Kneller, who has been nicknamed “Karen Invisible” by workers, admitted that she had been rewarded with “further funds” up to now two years, regardless of the criticism her organisation has confronted, and that she didn’t know what they have been for, and hadn’t inquired. This month, Kneller resigned from the CCRC, and Pearce was appointed interim chief govt.Andy Slaughter, the Labour MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick, and chair of the justice committee, didn’t cover his disgust on the CCRC’s distant working coverage. He instructed Kneller: “Given what’s occurred together with your chair, the [Andrew] Malkinson case and different issues which have come to gentle, if I used to be the chief govt right here I’d be in day-after-day. I’d be asking my workers to be there. I’d be working with these workers attempting to rebuild the organisation … and that doesn’t appear to have occurred in any respect.” He concluded: “There appears to be a gap on the coronary heart of this organisation,” and questioned whether or not Kneller and Pearce have been the suitable folks to rebuild confidence within the CCRC. On 23 Could, the justice committee revealed a damning report on the CCRC, and stated Kneller’s place was not tenable.The Andrew Malkinson case has completed the best harm to the CCRC’s fame. When Malkinson had his conviction for rape overturned after spending 17 years in jail, the finger pointed clearly on the fee. He had twice put in submissions to the CCRC and twice been rejected – the primary time in 2006, 17 years earlier than he was cleared – on forensics. It was the CCRC’s job to do the forensics take a look at on his sufferer, but it surely refused to take action, citing value as a major issue. Ultimately, it was left to Attraction to hold out the DNA checks that linked the crime to a different man. It was a shameful sequence of failings by the CCRC.By legislation, the CCRC can refer a case to the court docket of attraction provided that it considers there’s a “actual risk” that the conviction or sentence wouldn’t be upheld. “That’s an enormous downside,” says Jon Robins, the editor of the Justice Hole, an internet journal that investigates unsafe convictions. “A fast repair to spice up confidence within the fee is to scrap the ‘actual risk’ take a look at. Its predictive nature implies that the CCRC has been compelled to second-guess the court docket of attraction. If in case you have an more and more conservative court docket of attraction – which we do – then you definitely’re left with an more and more conservative CCRC. Our prison appeals security web mechanism turns into locked right into a self-defeating spiral with fewer and fewer circumstances going again to the courts.“In a session paper revealed earlier within the yr, the Regulation Fee proposed changing the ‘actual risk’ take a look at with one based mostly on the fee’s personal view of the case. Everybody who spoke to the Regulation Fee agreed it was an issue – with one exception: the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS].”Final month, Dame Vera Baird KC was appointed short-term chair of the CCRC, bringing the variety of commissioners as much as 10. Baird, a former Labour MP, justice minister, solicitor normal, police and crime commissioner, and victims’ commissioner, is vastly skilled. Her interim appointment, till December 2026, means that the federal government is critical about addressing the disaster on the CCRC. The Ministry of Justice stated: “The lord chancellor has requested that Dame Vera perform an intensive overview of the operation of the CCRC, to extend public confidence within the organisation and the necessary work it undertakes investigating potential miscarriages of justice.”After her appointment, Baird instructed BBC Radio 4’s At the moment programme that the fee operated in an “boastful, dismissive method … virtually searching for causes to not seek advice from the court docket of attraction”.Which brings us again to Nunn. From the beginning, there was no DNA connecting him to the homicide. However there was sperm that linked one other, unidentified man to Walker. Although the prosecution argued that the sperm was irrelevant, Hawarth for the CPS stated that though DNA testing was not presently subtle sufficient to hint it to its proprietor, it may turn out to be so sooner or later and ordered the pattern to be saved. The police named quite a few suspects and “individuals of curiosity” after Walker’s homicide, most of them former boyfriends and two with a historical past of violence. The sperm has by no means been examined in opposition to the DNA of the opposite suspects or the police database.In 2012, the excessive court docket refused Nunn entry to case supplies held by Suffolk police that he believed may clear his title. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who went on to turn out to be lord chief justice of England and Wales, stated he may depend on the CCRC to demand entry to any related supplies. In 2014, Nunn’s lawyer James Saunders took the case to the supreme court docket, arguing that the police and the CPS had a unbroken obligation of care to help Nunn in gathering and analyzing proof that would show his innocence.In 2015, the actor Tom Conti joined Nunn’s marketing campaign for additional disclosure after studying concerning the case from the charity Inside Justice, which conducts casework investigations on behalf of people that declare they’ve been wrongly convicted. Conti believed Nunn would possibly nicely be harmless and, in 2015, he wrote to the then house secretary Theresa Could, saying: “The chief constable of Suffolk refuses handy over the reveals. What may presumably be his purpose? Does he concern humiliation for his drive if Nunn proves to be harmless?” The actor supplied £1,000 to assist pay for brand new laboratory checks.However the supreme court docket dominated that neither the police nor the CPS had a accountability to additional help Nunn, saying that entry to such materials was solely required the place “there seems to be an actual prospect that additional inquiry will uncover one thing which can have an effect on the protection of the conviction”. The court docket dominated this threshold had not been met and that the one channel for Nunn to undergo was the CCRC. It regarded Nunn’s attraction for additional post-conviction disclosure as a fishing expedition. Critics identified it’s solely by happening fishing expeditions that you simply catch fish.After that ruling, one in every of Walker’s sisters stated: “To listen to the judgment immediately may be very uplifting; to listen to they nonetheless suppose he’s responsible. I’m very relieved with the information and really proud of the information and let’s preserve preventing to maintain him behind bars.”The supreme court docket determination not solely had a probably important influence on Nunn’s case, it additionally had an influence on all potential wrongful convictions. It meant that victims of miscarriages of justice have been now wholly reliant on a proactive CCRC utilizing its statutory powers to demand disclosure and testing of proof that would clear them. The CCRC, although, was something however proactive. It was dormant, impoverished and underresourced. When Saunders despatched a submission to the CCRC on behalf of Nunn in January 2015, he was instructed it had a lot work on that it might not be capable of have a look at it till September.The fee lastly acquired again to him 4 years later, in 2019, rejecting his attraction. What shocked Nunn was the grounds on which it was rejected. The fee had despatched off the semen pattern, and despite the fact that, on the trial, it had been unambiguously cited as sperm, the brand new forensics lab now stated it was yeast.When Nunn was jailed, Butcher’s perception in justice was dented. Then she started to expertise first-hand the failings of the CCRC and the little remaining religion she had was shattered. She determined that if her brother was going to be cleared, and couldn’t depend on the fee doing the required investigations, she must do them herself.She began working with a personal investigator, Carol Parish. They visited family members and associates of the suspects, taking statements from whoever was keen to supply one. The previous spouse of 1 suspect instructed Parish that she had been ready to be requested about his potential position within the homicide, describing him as a “Jekyll and Hyde” character and recounting an event when he’d grabbed her by the neck and pinned her in opposition to the wall. Butcher didn’t know if this story was important, but it surely made her extra satisfied than ever that Walker’s killer was nonetheless on the market someplace.Butcher is not working with Parish, who’s ill, however remains to be doing her personal detective work. She has not given up on monitoring down the killer or killers. Based on the prosecution, there have been two folks concerned within the homicide, however there seems to have been no try by Suffolk police to trace down a second killer.Her most up-to-date investigation has been into the Scottish police authority (SPA) lab that stated the “sperm” discovered on Walker could be yeast. She did a little bit of digging, and found to her shock that Hawarth, the lead forensic scientist for the prosecution in 2006, is now head of perform at SPA Forensic Companies and a colleague of Amanda Pirie, the forensics skilled who now believes it’s yeast. “Hawarth was adamant it was spermatozoa when she was appearing for the prosecution. And now she’s working alongside somebody who’s forged doubt on whether or not it’s spermatozoa when it may probably clear Kevin.” When invited by the Guardian to touch upon its findings, the SPA declined to take action.Saunders wrote again to the CCRC in January 2019, expressing his bafflement. First, he acknowledged that Pirie didn’t appear to have examined all of the slides for sperm, and requested why the CCRC was so “incurious” that two such completely different conclusions had been reached. Saunders instructed the CCRC that he had written to the SPA asking whether or not Hawarth “was keen and capable of overview the case supplies, and she or he reported that each she and her employer, the Scottish police authority, are keen for her to take action on their time and premises, with no value to the CCRC, in view of the significance of issues”. All of the CCRC needed to do was ask and it might be completed. Saunders stated that it might be “merely irrational to not enable Mrs Hawarth to overview the supplies concerned within the reveals” and that “to dismiss her proof with out understanding her remark is unreasonable”. The CCRC failed to answer Saunders on these factors, and closed the case. In 2022, Saunders put in a brand new submission to the CCRC on behalf of Nunn.After Malkinson was failed so badly by the CCRC, a overview was commissioned of its work from Chris Henley KC. One in every of its conclusions was that new forensic trawling workouts ought to be carried out for brand new DNA testing alternatives of sure historic circumstances. This February, Inside Justice, which now represents Nunn, acquired a letter from his CCRC case overview supervisor stating: “Mr Nunn’s case has been recognized as fulfilling the factors for that trawl and a separate crew has been contemplating the case in parallel to my overview.”Kevin Nunn as a boy. Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Brigitte Butcher; Mimi Mollica; Getty ImagesIn March, Nunn writes to inform me I’ve been added to his accepted telephone listing. He says in jail he has no associates and infrequently speaks to folks. Fellow prisoners will generally say a phrase or two to him if they’re alone collectively within the yard, but when they’re joined by anyone else they speak over him and faux he’s not there. His crime is considered past the pale, and he’s ostracised – different prisoners don’t wish to be seen associating with him.He has made use of his time in jail. Having left faculty at 16, he studied by the Open College in jail, gaining a level in enterprise research in 2018. He works within the jail gardens throughout the day, reads fiction and non-fiction (he just lately completed the historic novel Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks and 21 Classes for the twenty first Century by the thinker and historian Yuval Noah Harari), and examines and re-examines the proof, searching for any chink that would clear him.5 weeks after Nunn writes to me, on a sunny April day, Butcher meets me at Melton station, close to Ipswich. She likes driving and owns a top-of-the-range Mini. Final time she drove me, once I first wrote about Nunn, in 2013, it was to a slim monitor in boggy, brambled woodland in the midst of nowhere. She needed to cease the automobile stroll from the place Walker’s physique was discovered. The purpose she was making was that Nunn would have wanted superhuman power to hold Walker that distance – not least as a result of he’s 5ft 8in (1.7m) and constructed like a bean sprout and she or he was 5ft 11in (1.8m) and Amazonian. “How was he presupposed to have carried this nice massive strapping girl?”At the moment, she is driving us to a distant jail in East Anglia the place Nunn has spent the previous three years. Now we have solely been again in contact for just a few months, however Butcher is a kind of folks with whom you’ll be able to decide up the place you left off a long time in the past. I inform her that Nunn stated in a latest letter she’s the one individual he trusts on this planet. “It’s simply so unhappy, isn’t it? Unhappy that he can’t belief anyone else, and unhappy that when he does get out, how will he be?” Each Nunn and Butcher have gotten a behavior of ending sentences with questions.She talks about how necessary it’s to nonetheless be preventing for Kevin – for his and their dad and mom’ sake. Their father, who spent his life financial savings attempting to clear Nunn’s title, died in 2016; their mom in 2021. One of many issues her mom discovered most distressing in her remaining years, Butcher says, was a TV movie made concerning the homicide. It’s recurrently proven on Sky TV, she says, and every time the “repercussions are horrible” for Nunn in jail as a result of fellow inmates choose him for it. “I attempted to get it taken down however I couldn’t. It tormented my mum. The very last thing my mum stated on her deathbed was, ‘You gained’t surrender preventing for Kev, will you?’”Nunn and I’ve spoken on the telephone and exchanged letters, however that is the primary time I’ve met him. He’s sitting behind a desk wearing a black and white Adidas prime and black trousers. He’s underweight, a bit hunched, sombre-looking. In outdated images of him, he’s smiling and boyish. I ask how life has modified since we have been in contact 12 years in the past. He appears to be like at Butcher. “Effectively, you’ve aged since I’ve been inside, haven’t you?”She laughs. “Charming!” she says. “He deserves to be inside only for saying his sister appears to be like like an outdated hag. Effectively, I instructed Simon, you’re boring!” He appears to be like at her affectionately. Butcher is humorous and emotional; Nunn introverted and understated. Whereas she expresses herself in italics and exclamation marks, he does so in a dour monotone. However there is no such thing as a escaping the fervour of his phrases. In a letter he despatched me, Nunn stated: “With out my heroic sister I doubt if I may have survived. It’s a nightmare you don’t get up from.”He appears to be like completely different from the opposite males within the visiting room. They’re youthful, stronger, extra strong. Nunn appears diminished. I ask how he feels after 20 years in jail. “Effectively, you don’t get used to it, do you? It’s an incomprehensible expertise.” He says the shock by no means goes away; you merely get reshocked every day. “For the final 20 years, I’ve been trying to discover proof that might exonerate me. Should you’re harmless, why would you surrender? And since I’m harmless the reality remains to be there to be discovered, so why would you surrender? Why would you cease?” Nunn sounds quietly determined. He takes a sip of his Food regimen Coke, and continues.“How d’you clarify one thing that only a few folks have had expertise of? That catastrophic factor is thrown at you.” He’s speaking concerning the precise homicide of Walker. “You attempt to make sense of every part and earlier than you do you get up to the truth that you’re a suspect and also you suppose that may’t be potential, they’ll discover the reality, and all you’ve acquired to do is wait, after which there’s a knock on the door and also you’re arrested for it, after which after that you simply’re in jail and that’s only a utterly terrible alien setting since you don’t have the historical past and background of the overwhelming majority of individuals in right here. So it goes on, and it’s simply steady. It’s nonetheless right here and to be handled. And the one factor that’s left is to maintain searching for the reality.”He believes that the one method he’ll show his innocence is by discovering who did kill his former girlfriend. “That appears to be the edge. I do know that’s not the take a look at and it shouldn’t be the authorized threshold for an unsafe conviction, however that appears to be the place we’re. That’s why the entire focus has been on the forensics.”Nunn talks to me concerning the message he says Walker left on his telephone at round 4.55am on Thursday 3 February 2005, the morning after they break up up. He says she was upset, crying, and that she instructed him that she liked him. He says it left him confused – she’d by no means instructed him she liked him earlier than. “I awoke on Thursday morning and located this message.”As he talks, you sense it is a man who’s used to not being believed. “As I’ve stated a whole bunch of instances earlier than, there was a message, it was Daybreak’s voice, and she or he was sobbing and upset. It goes on for quite a few seconds. There’s loads of sobbing and I finished the message. It confused me as a result of neither of us have been that upset after we left the night time earlier than. And now I couldn’t perceive why she sounded so upset. And I deleted it.”He asks himself the query he’s requested himself hundreds of instances: “However why would you retain it?” Nunn says he destroyed the proof that undermined the prosecution case as a result of there didn’t appear any level in preserving it. “I deleted it. However why would you retain it?” he asks himself once more. “I used to be going to see her later and ask her why she was so upset. There was no must preserve the message. What was I going to do, say: ‘Take heed to your message, you’re upset’? I used to be anticipating seeing her, that’s why the message was deleted.”Walker’s telephone data revealed that she had known as him at 4.42am and that he had not answered. The prosecution speculated that the decision was made by Nunn utilizing Walker’s telephone to offer himself an alibi. Once more, the jury selected to imagine the prosecution’s model {that a} message was by no means left. Walker’s data additionally reveal that Nunn despatched her a textual content message at 10.13pm on 2 February, the time he was presupposed to be arguing along with her on the doorstep.I ask if he liked Walker. He says it’s laborious to know now. He’s misplaced perspective on every part. “I couldn’t truthfully say. I assumed I did on the time. However in case you’ve gone by what I’ve been by, it places an entire completely different complicated on life.”Does he take into consideration her a lot? “Effectively, sure, primarily who murdered her and why? In order that eclipses every part. That’s what’s at stake right here. The one factor we may do proper for her is use out the reality, and we’re not getting there. Forensic science has the potential for a breakthrough. The CCRC has to have a look at each avenue, and there are different avenues left open. Sure checks weren’t completed on the finish of the SPA’s overview. I’m hoping they may proceed and provides authorisation for additional checks to be completed by a unique forensics supplier.”As for the suggestion that the sperm discovered on her physique is now being questioned, Nunn is bewildered. For 20 years, he has believed that that was the trail to acquittal. “What’s that every one about?” he asks. “They have been fairly certain on the trial what it was.” Nunn appears at a complete loss. “I don’t even know who I’m any extra,” he says. The phrases land like stones in a pond, leaving a heavy silence.Butcher and I at the moment are on the opposite facet of the barbed wire ready to be launched into the surface world. From the place we’re standing, we will see the lads being led again to their cells. “Look, he’s starting to stoop,” Butcher says. “I preserve telling him he’s acquired to carry his head up straight.”Just a few days after we meet, Nunn rings. He ’s speaking with much more depth than after we spoke in jail. He’s had some excellent news, he says. He has acquired a letter from the CCRC saying it has commissioned the forensics firm Eurofins to do additional DNA testing after it was ordered to do the forensics trawl. He mentions Peter Sullivan, who has simply had his homicide conviction quashed after 38 years in jail – considered the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British historical past. Once more, it was forensics that resulted in Sullivan’s conviction being overturned. And once more, it was forensics that the CCRC stated it couldn’t do on the time as a result of DNA testing was too crude.I name the CCRC to ask why it refused to let Hawarth retest the sperm, and why it’s now testing DNA six years after telling Nunn it may take his case no additional. The reply addressed neither level instantly. A spokesperson stated: “An software in relation to this particular person was acquired in 2015. This software didn’t result in a referral. A second software was acquired, and it’s presently underneath overview. It could be inappropriate to remark additional whereas this overview is underneath method.”Nunn just isn’t counting his chickens. He stays a convicted assassin serving a life sentence, and he says he won’t ever come to phrases with that. He tells me that one of many issues he finds hardest to stay with is the kind of man he’s stated to be – not merely a killer, however a killer of probably the most wicked type. “You’re meant to be this monster and are you aware how tough that’s to take care of if you’re factually harmless? I wouldn’t want this on anyone.” He involves an exhausted cease. “Should you have been in my place, you wouldn’t surrender, would you?”