Rinder: One case haunts me and the family still have not got justice

Defence barrister looks back at mum-of-three’s senseless killing

- KATIE BEGLEY

When Rob Rinder successfully defended a man accused of murder, he sighed with relief as they walked out of court.

Rob says: “When we won the case, we left court and this is somebody who had been correctly acquitted. So my client's family were rightly happy about that. It was a celebratory moment for us.”

But it is also a moment that has haunted him for 20 years - not because he believes he got it wrong, or the legal system failed, but because the victim's family are still without justice to this day.

The victim was Lucy Hargreaves, a 22-year-old mum of three killed in her own home in Walton, Liverpool.

Lucy was sleeping on her sofa on August 3, 2005, when three men burst in.

They shot her at close range, doused the duvet in petrol and set it alight.

Police believed the gang had mistaken Lucy for her boyfriend Gary Campbell, who was asleep upstairs with their two-year-old daughter.

He fled through a window, with the girl, and then tried — sadly in vain — to save Lucy.

Kirk Bradley and Tony Downes were charged with her murder, and Rinder was hired to defend Bradley.

The prosecution case relied on mobile phone data that appeared to put them at the scene, but Rob's team proved that evidence to be unreliable. As a result the trial judge decided there was insufficient evidence for a jury to be able to convict.

So Rob was understandably anxious as he prepared to face Lucy's family for the first time in two decades.

He was making a documentary called Rob Rinder: The Crime I Can't Forget, to be shown early next month.

Recalling the day of his court victory, in the show Rob’s thoughts turn to Lucy's bereaved loved ones.