UK's longest-serving prisoner dies

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The Ministry of Justice said 77-year-old John Straffen died in the healthcare unit at Frankland Prison in County Durham on Monday morning following an illness.

Straffen, then aged 22, was convicted of murdering a schoolgirl by a jury at Winchester on July 25 1952 and sentenced to death.

The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the then home secretary Sir David Maxwell Fyfe on the grounds that Straffen was a "feeble-minded person".

Straffen, from Bath, appeared at Somerset Assizes in October 1951 charged with murdering two other schoolgirls - nine-year-old Cicely Batstone and six-year-old Brenda Goddard - but was found unfit to stand trial and sent to Broadmoor high-security hospital.

He escaped from the unit for four hours on April 29 1952 and police found the body of five-year-old Linda Bowyer the following morning.

Six years ago, solicitors acting for Straffen called for his case to be reopened, saying that he should not have stood trial, as he had a mental age of just nine and a half.