Teresa de Simone

Teresa Elena De Simone (24 June 1957 – 5 December 1979) was murdered in Southampton, England, in 1979.

Her murder led to one of the longest proven cases of a miscarriage of justice in English legal history.

The murder occurred outside the Tom Tackle pub and was the subject of a three-year police investigation which resulted in the arrest of Sean Hodgson.

On the evening of 4 December 1979, 22-year-old Teresa De Simone had been working as a part-time barmaid in the Tom Tackle public house (now called The Mayflower Village public house) in Commercial Road, Southampton.

By day she was employed as a full-time clerk for the Southern Gas Board.

She had been employed at the pub for less than a month, working two evenings each week, partly to widen her social circle and partly to supplement her income to pay for the Ford Escort car that she had bought three months previously.

The pub was located centrally in the city, only 50 yards (46 metres) from the police station and law courts, and near the city's central train station and the Gaumont Theatre (now The Mayflower).

When her shift at the Tom Tackle ended at 23:00 (11:00 p.m.) she went on to a night club in nearby London Road, in the company of her friend Jenni Savage.

Although the discothèque was a relatively short distance from the public house, they travelled in Savage's car, leaving De Simone's Ford Escort in the pub car park.

While at the discothèque, De Simone and Savage were together throughout the evening, and De Simone did not consume any alcoholic drinks.

They left the night club together, and Savage drove De Simone back to the Tom Tackle car park, arriving sometime between 00:30 and 01:00 (12:30 and 1:00 a.m.) on 5 December.

Savage testified that she drove into the covered parking area and that they sat chatting for a while before De Simone made the short walk to her car, at which point Savage reversed out and drove away from the scene.

Savage was the last witness to see De Simone before she was killed.

When De Simone's mother, Mary Sedotti, discovered she had not returned home by the morning, she expressed concern, and her husband Michael, Teresa's stepfather, drove to the pub where he observed De Simone's car still parked, but did not make any closer investigation.

Shortly after 10:00, Anthony Pocock, the landlord of the Tom Tackle, was expecting a commercial delivery to the premises, and believing De Simone had deliberately left the car overnight he decided to try to move it to allow the delivery through.

Inside he discovered De Simone's partially clothed body on the back seat.

He immediately called the police.

The pathologist arrived at the scene at 11:45.

His report of the crime scene described "the deceased lying on her back, with her leg bent at the thigh and knee, with the knee resting against the back of the seat, and the left thigh running along the edge of the seat with the leg hanging over the edge. The body was naked from the waist down and her left breast was exposed. Part of a pair of tights was pulled down to the left ankle. The remainder of her underwear and the other part of her tights was found in the passenger well."

The time of death was placed at between 01:00 and 02:00 (1:00 and 2:00 a.m.) 5 December.

In a statement issued at the time, Detective Superintendent John Porter said: "It is 99% certain that the girl was murdered, attacked, chatted to or met by her killer in a matter of seconds after Jenni Savage left her. He could have been waiting, and seen Jenni leave. It is possible that he was actually sitting in Teresa's car, as we found the nearside [passenger] door unlocked."

The pathologist determined, based on the presence of "white frothy mucous" in the victim's mouth, that the cause of death was a "long, slow strangulation".

Visible on De Simone's neck were "a series of multiple, roughly horizontal, linear, bruised abrasions on the front of the neck [which] matched the description of a [gold chain and crucifix] which the deceased had been said to be wearing that evening", indicating the possibility that this was used as the ligature and leading to the tabloid press dubbing the murderer the "Crucifix Killer".

The chain was not present when the body was discovered and has never been recovered.

Semen was present in the vaginal canal, "in sufficient concentration to indicate that it had been present no more than three to four hours before death."

As De Simone's movements for the entire evening previous to her death were known and documented, the semen could only have come from her assailant.

Evidence of bruising and tearing of the genitalia demonstrated that the intercourse was non-consensual.

A number of vaginal, anal, oral and control swabs were taken by the pathologist, and subsequent forensic examination demonstrated that the semen was produced by a male with the blood type "A" or "AB".

Further swabs were taken from De Simone's clothing and the car.

The victim's leather handbag and personal belongings, including a diary, were found in multiple locations within the vicinity of the crime scene, although her car keys, Rotary wristwatch, two necklaces, three rings and a bracelet have never been recovered.

Hodgson was convicted of the murder by a unanimous jury verdict in 1982 and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Lace, who was 17 at the time of the murder, had confessed to police in 1983 that he had raped and killed De Simone, but officers refused to believe him.

Lace committed suicide in December 1988.

As a result of Hodgson's appeal, Operation Iceberg was created by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) with the aim of using DNA evidence in pre-1990 rape or murder cases.

This led to the review of 240 other convictions.

The CCRC also requested that the Crown Prosecution Service identify and review similar murder cases from the time before DNA testing was available.

After serving 27 years in prison he was exonerated and released in March 2009.

DNA analysis of semen samples that had been preserved from the original crime scene showed that they could not have come from him.

In September 2009, on the basis of DNA evidence from his exhumed body, police named David Lace as the likely killer.

On 27 October 2012, three years after his release, Sean Hodgson died from emphysema.