Comic shop owner held in hunt for killer of schoolgirl 30 years ago

Comic shop owner Ronald Castree, top, is being questioned over the murder of schoolgirl Lesley Molseed in 1975

A comic shop owner has been arrested for the 1975 murder of schoolgirl Lesley Molseed after his DNA was taken by police over an separate matter.

Father-of-three Ronald Castree is being questioned by detectives probing the killing of the 11-year-old more than three decades ago.

Officers from the same team which tracked down the Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer Wearside Jack have been working on a DNA profile obtained three years ago using a new technique.

A source said: "The man being questioned was arrested on a separate matter nine months ago when an allegation was made against him, and his DNA was found to be a match."

Mr Castree was arrested by a team of officers from West Yorkshire at his modest terraced home in Shaw, near Oldham, early on Sunday morning.

He was taken to Halifax for questioning in relation to the case which is famous for one of Britain's worst miscarriages of justice.

Tax clerk Stefan Kiszko served 16 years for her murder before forensic evidence proved he was innocent. He died a broken man in 1993, a year after his release.

Since then detectives have ruled out a number of other suspects, but they believe they finally made a breakthrough with the arrest at the weekend of Mr Castree, a comics dealer.

Lesley disappeared on October 5, 1975 when she went out to buy a loaf of bread for her mother near their home on an estate in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Her body was found three days later on moorland near Ripponden, West Yorkshire. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 12 times.

Castree was born in Littleborough, where Lesley's family still lives, and went to school in neighbouring Rochdale. In 1973 he married his first wife, Beverley, and their first son, Jason, was born a fortnight before Lesley was killed.

At the time, Mr Castree was working as a taxi driver, according to sources in the investigation, and living in Oldham, although he later worked as an administration manager before opening a market stall selling secondhand books in the 1980s.

Subsequently he specialised in selling collectible comics, opening shops trading as Arcadia Comics in Ashton-under-Lyne and Rochdale in the 1990s and making around £50,000-a-year.

Interviewed by the Daily Mail in 1994, he posed in a Batman baseball cap surrounded by hundreds of his comics and said he had been a fan of the genre since childhood.

He added: "The timeless appeal of the comic is escapism. As people increasingly need a break from real life it can only mean greater popularity for comics of all kinds."

He had two more sons by his first wife, Nicholas, now 27, and Daniel, 22, but the couple split up in the mid-1990s and Mr Castree remarried, to divorcee Karen Curtin.

She has five children by two previous relationships and the youngest, aged seven, nine and 11, are believed to have lived with her and Mr Castree.

Mr Castree's shops have now closed and the couple now trade over the internet using sites such as eBay.

Neighbours said they were shocked to hear he had been linked to the crime, although some said he could be aggressive and claimed he had been involved in a fight with another resident of the street.

Mr Castree's first wife and sons, who are being supported by family liaison officers, refused to comment on his arrest yesterday.

A police source said: "This has come as a terrible shock to them - Beverley has moved on following her divorce, and she's trying to come to terms with what's happened."

His second wife returned briefly to their home before leaving in tears carrying a bag of belongings.

Mr Kiszko, a loner with no social life, was arrested following the discovery of Lesley's body, and after two days of intensive questioning in the absence of a solicitor confessed to killing her.

He later claimed the confession had been bullied out of him, but in 1976 he was convicted of her murder and jailed for life.

Years later, three teenage girls who claimed he had exposed himself to them admitted making up their story.

Mr Kiszko served 16 years, doggedly refusing to admit his guilt, before it emerged that he could not have been responsible for traces of sperm found on Lesley's clothes because he was infertile.

The revelation - which had been known about at the time of his first trial - led to his being cleared and freed in 1992, but he died the following year aged just 41.

His mother Charlotte, who had championed his cause throughout, died broken-hearted six months later.

Yesterday retired Detective Superintendent Trevor Wilkinson, who uncovered the evidence that was to clear him, said: "You never give up hope that there will be a breakthrough.

"It is just a shame that someone had to spend 16 years in jail."

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