Murder, Mystery and My Family

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Top criminal barristers Sasha Wass and Jeremy Dein reinvestigate historical cases.

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Sasha Wass

Jeremy Dein

James Pearson

Clare Wales

Mike Benson

Simon Cooper

Johanna Scammell

Michael Klokkos

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Murder, Mystery and My Family: Series 5: Lefley

Lefley

BBC One - Murder, Mystery and My Family, Series 5, Lefley

Sasha and Jeremy examine a case of arsenic poisoning in rural Lincolnshire in 1882.

Sasha and Jeremy examine a case from 1882, where a wife was accused of murdering her husband with an arsenic-laced rice pudding that contained enough poison to kill fifty people.

Criminal barristers Sasha Wass QC and Jeremy Dein QC investigate a murder case from rural Lincolnshire in which a wife was accused of murdering her husband with arsenic.  

Wrangle, Lincolnshire, 1884. On a winter’s afternoon, cottager William Lefley arrived at his local doctor's surgery in agonising pain. He had just eaten a rice pudding prepared by his wife Mary, and made the dramatic accusation that she had poisoned him. He was taken back to their cottage, and local villagers came to his aid, but by 9pm, William was dead.  

Blame quickly fell on William’s wife Mary, who had made the ‘poisoned pudding’, and within 48 hours, she was arrested and charged with murder. The poisoned rice pudding was sent for analysis and was found to have contained enough arsenic to poison 50 people.

Mary’s trial began on 7 May 1884. Although she protesting her innocence, it took the jury just 35 minutes to find her guilty, and the judge sentenced her to death. On 26 May 1884, at Lincoln county jail, Mary Lefley was hanged. 

Today, nearly 140 years later, Martin, who is related to Mary through his grandfather, is exploring her case along with another of Mary’s relatives, Brenda. They have enlisted the help of the two barristers to re-examine the case to find out if it could potentially have been a miscarriage of justice. The prosecution case against Mary was a controversial one that consisted of accusatory village gossip and the damning testimony of her husband. But with William known to have previously threatened to take his own life, was the case really as straightforward as it seemed?  

Sasha and Jeremy will seek advice from modern experts on both the era and the toxicology evidence. Will they be able to convince judge David Radford that this conviction, which has stood for nearly a century and a half, is actually unsafe?

Murder, Mystery and My Family: Series 5

BBC One

Barristers Jeremy Dein and Sasha Wass re-examine historic murder cases.

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