Murder, Mystery and My Family

The British justice system

is the envy of the world.

But in the past, mistakes have been made.

Between the year 1900 and the year 1964,

approximately 800 people were hanged in

the United Kingdom.

Many of those desperately protested their innocence.

Some of these long standing convictions,

could be a miscarriage of justice.

She's received most of the blows, in this position,

once she's already bleeding.

In this series, a living relative

will attempt to clear their family name.

If the barrister's identify the miscarriage of justice.

That would make my day.

Searching for new evidence.

I can make the 32, fire both calibers.

With help from two of the UK's

leading barristers, one for the defense.

This is a very worrying case,

I think the evidence is very suspect.

And one for the prosecution.

I'm still of the view that this was

a cogent case of murder, committed during

the course of a robbery.

They are on a mission to solve the mystery.

Submitting their findings to a Crown Court judge.

There is a real risk that there

has been a miscarriage of justice here.

I will look again at the evidence

in light of the arguments that you both have put before me.

Can this modern investigation

re-write history?

On the 22nd December 1935, Frederick Bryant

became ill after supper,

complaining of severe stomach pains.

Fred was brought to the nearest hospital in Sherborne,

but it was too late, he died within hours.

It looked like a simple case of gastroenteritis,

but it was discovered that Fred's body

contained high levels of arsenic.

It seemed Fred had been poisoned.

Suspicion immediately fell of Fred's wife, Charlotte.

On the 10th February 1936, Charlotte was arrested

and charged with the murder of her husband.

By May, she was facing a judge and a jury of 12 men.

She was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Charlotte Bryant was executed

on Wednesday the 15th of July 1936,

at Exeter jail.

Now 80 years later, Charlotte's son, William,

and her grandson David, are desperate to learn the truth.

Charlotte Bryant was my grandmother,

I didn't know who my grandmother was until I was

in my mid-thirties.

Do you remember when you first told me?

Yeah.

Father's Day, driving along.

That's right.

All of the family in the car and I ended up

doing a skid, I think, when you told me.

It was only when mom prompted me,

she said you've gotta tell them.

With their father murdered

and their mother hanged, the five Bryant children

were put into an orphanage and told nothing of the crime.

The first I knew was when I read it in the paper,

in 1964.

Up until then, I knew nothing whatsoever,

it was completely out the blue.

I couldn't really believe what I was reading.

How do you feel about going through

all of the case with this dad?

Just, a bit nervous about it all.

It'll be a fantastic result if the barrister's actually,

Oh absolutely.

Identify that there's been a miscarriage of justice.

That would make my day, that would, yeah.

Although I never knew mother at all,

I would like to think she was innocent,

that would be a nice,

well fairytale ending.

The case built against Charlotte

was a salacious one, based on stories of lust and jealousy.

But was it a miscarriage of justice?

The two things that really struck me was

the lack of, what I would call, real, hard evidence.

It just seems to be, very circumstantial.

And she was, I guess, an easy target

because she was illiterate, she was an outsider,

it just looks like it was a easy fix

to hang it on my grandmother.

Charlotte went to her death

claiming her innocence.

But can a modern legal team discover the truth?

Jeremy Dein QC has been a defense barrister

for over 30 years, specializing in serious crime.

Examining this case for the prosecution is Sasha Wass,

who has a particular interest in cases based on

medical or scientific evidence.

David has traveled to London to meet the barristers

who will be re-investigating his grandmothers case.

I'm very nervous with meeting the barristers,

I'm worried there could be even more weight

to the fact that she's guilty.

My name's Jeremy.

Hello Jeremy, very pleased to meet you.

Hello David, Sasha.

Hello Sasha, hello there.

My role is to look at your grandmother's case

from the point of view of a defense lawyer.

And hopefully to identify new grounds on which

to re-open the case.

I'm looking at this case from the prosecution prospective,

but that doesn't mean I'm approaching this

in order to uphold these convictions at all costs,

quite the opposite.

If new material comes to light that throws doubt

on to the conviction of your grandmother,

I will put that forward before the judge,

in order that the right conclusion is reached.

Just picking up on that, why is it important

to you now, to establish, if it wasn't her,

that that's the case?

I think it would be closure for the family,

my father, it's turned his life upside down,

as it did his brothers and sisters.

And I think it would be good for the family

to know and understand it, so that we can move on.

Lets say the case got stronger,

you're ready for that turn of events?

Certainly we've talked through that with my father,

and I've talked to him long and hard about

well dad, once they actually start looking at this,

it may be that, you know, it's easy for them to say

no I'm really sorry but this -

That she did it.

That she did it, yeah.

But, I think the chance is worth taking for us.

So we will let you know how we get on.

Excellent, thank you very much.

Okay.

They seem very professional barristers.

I do genuinely feel that they will look at

any new evidence that they can,

they will look at the existing evidence

and see if there's a way that it could of been viewed

in a different way and they'll come to the right conclusion.

David's grandmother, Charlotte,

was born in 1903.

She met Frederick Bryant while he was a tour of duty

in her homeland of Northern Ireland.

And she accompanied him when he returned to England.

The couple married in Somerset, in 1922.

As an outsider in the tight knit farming community

in Sherborne, Dorset where they settled,

Charlotte was viewed with suspicion.

Rumors began to circulate that the young Irish woman

was entertaining local men for money.

Fred Bryant has suffered from stomach complaints

on several occasions in the months leading up

to his death.

The laborer often handled arsenic in his work on the farm

but it was alleged, that his death was the result

of deliberate poisoning.

This is not a strong case.

She was hanged for the murder of her husband,

on what can only be described,

as highly circumstantial evidence.

The starting point for me is that her character

played a major part in the trial.

She was portrayed as a low-life,

someone without any morals, by way of starting point,

that is a really dangerous platform for the case

to proceed on.

This case was very thin indeed.

I'm concerned about the cause of death,

was Fred poisoned or did he die of gastric problems

which had besieged him for some time?

What was the motive in this case?

Effectively the prosecution relied, largely,

on a vilification of her character

and wouldn't be allowed nowadays.

Whether Charlotte was responsible

for his death, or he accidentally consumed arsenic,

Fred Bryant died in tragic circumstances,

leaving his family desuetude.

It's just along that lane there.

Fred was buried in an unmarked grave

in Sherborne Cemetery.

And his son and grandson, have come to pay their respects.

I found out where my

grandfather was buried,

and also understood that

he died a pauper,

so therefore, he's not in a particular grave,

it's just in a area of land.

And I'm sure, that's the urn I can remember.

I'm sure that's it.

Absolutely.