Review of evidence into murdered paperboy to be delivered next month

A review of evidence into the unsolved murder of paperboy Carl Bridgewater will deliver its finding next month, Staffordshire Police have revealed.

The 13-year-old was delivering papers in Prestwood in 1978 when he was shot dead, after apparently disturbing a burglary.

Police have been carrying out a review since a documentary aired last year cast doubt over an alibi given by a previous suspect.

The force said it now expected to issue its findings in March, although noexact date has yet been set.

The Channel 4 documentary which aired last June featured an interview with one of the original suspects, convicted killer Bert Spencer.

An ex-hospital secretary who had provided Mr Spencer with what he described as a "cast-iron" alibi for his whereabouts on the day of Carl's killing, told the documentary she could not prove where he was that day.

The alibi was brought into question further after Spencer's former wife cast doubt on his innocence, with Spencer denying her claims.

He has always denied having anything to do with the boy's murder.

Months after the jailing of the Bridgewater Four - Patrick Molloy, James Robinson and cousins Michael Hickey and Vincent Hickey in 1979, Spencer was jailed for shooting a friend, farmer Hubert Wilkes during Christmas party in 1979.

Then in one of the UK's most infamous miscarriages of justice - it emerged that The Bridgewater Four had been wrongly jailed for killing the schoolboy.