was denied.
‘In over twenty years on this bench I have never encountered a more cold-blooded crime,’ said Mr Justice Lamfrey. ‘Robert Mosse is a calculating killer who poses a continuing threat to society.’
Mosse, through his solicitor, said after the verdict, ‘It is clear the police have fabricated the evidence upon which my conviction is based — as they did at my original trial. I am innocent of this crime.’
Mosse, who was due to be called to the Bar later this year, is a founding partner in Mosse, Turnbull amp; Smith. His wife and three children live in a million-pound house on the exclusive Clearwater Estate.
The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement after the trial that the files on two subsequent murders, which the police claim Mosse committed to cover up his original crime, would now be closed.
Mosse denied killing nine-year-old Jonathan Tessier on the night of 25 July 1997 at a lock-up garage on the Westmead Estate in Lynn’s North End. The prosecution’s case was that Mosse had strangled the child to prevent his implication in another crime.
Mosse was charged with the killing at the time, but the original trial was unable to proceed owing to a legal technicality. Recently, however, the police obtained new forensic evidence linking him to Tessier’s murder.
A fur-lined leather glove, the partner to one recovered at the murder scene, was found to contain skin shed by Mosse and was heavily impregnated with dried saliva, later matched by DNA analysis to the Tessier family, and exhibiting bite marks that matched the victim’s dental records.
Mosse’s first trial in 1997 was stopped because the investigating officers had taken the glove discovered at the underground car park where Tessier’s body was found to Mosse’s home — a flat in the tower block above — potentially contaminating it.
The original trial judge implied that this might have been done deliberately in an attempt to secure a conviction.
‘I would like to say at this point,’ said Mr Justice Lamfrey after passing sentence, ‘that today’s conviction in large part clears those original officers of any improper or criminal behaviour.
‘Furthermore, I would like to commend publicly the work of DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine of the West Norfolk Constabulary, for their tireless determination to bring Robert Mosse to justice.’
DI Shaw, the lead investigating officer in the case, is the son of DCI Jack Shaw, who led the original murder inquiry. DCI Shaw took early retirement on the grounds of ill-health shortly after Mosse’s acquittal. He died in 1998.
The prosecution alleged that Mosse and three other associates, all now dead, were involved in a road accident three days before Tessier’s murder, in which two elderly women were killed.
Mosse was driving when the four, in a Mini, struck another vehicle at a T-junction near Castle Rising. They fled the scene. When the emergency services arrived 45 minutes later the two passengers were found to be dead. The driver survived.
One of the fatalities was Jonathan Tessier’s grandmother. She had been travelling with her pet dog — a puppy — which was taken by one of the joyriders from the rear of the car, according to CCTV footage of the crash.
Three days later the four teenagers were in the lock-up garage on the Westmead respraying the damaged car. Jonathan recognized the puppy when one of the gang took it for a walk on the estate, and followed it back to the garage.
Mosse’s defence argued that the killing of the child had been an accident. One of the other members of the gang, Chris Robins, had hit the child to stop him crying, Mosse claimed.
But the court heard a statement left by Robins as part of his last will and testament. It outlined a different version of events in which Mosse — at the time a law student — decided to kill the child to save his career.
The defence argued that Robins’s version of events was designed to divert the guilt on to an innocent man. But the forensic evidence corroborated Robins’s version of events.
The jury retired for sixteen hours before returning a majority guilty verdict.
Police believe that Mosse also killed two members of the gang — Alex Cosyns and Jimmy Voyce — because they had threatened to go to the authorities with the truth.
DCS Max Warren of the West Norfolk Constabulary released the following statement after sentencing.
‘The verdict in this case restores the high reputation of the officers of the West Norfolk Constabulary. It illustrates that we were always determined to give Jonathan Tessier and his family the justice they were denied in the months after his brutal and callous murder.’
A spokesman for the Law Society confirmed that Mosse’s conviction would result in his name being permanently removed from the Society’s register. His partners at Mosse, Turnbull and Smith declined to comment.
