Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

The ‘Guildford Four’ and the ‘Birmingham Six’ 451
were questioning her about her whereabouts on 5 October (the time of the
Guildford bombing) and during the day she appears to have become increasingly
distressed. A police surgeon, Dr Makos, was called in to examine Richardson at
about 8.15 p.m. In his company, and in the presence of a woman police constable,
Richardson is alleged to have admitted to having planted the bomb in Guildford
with Armstrong. Richardson has no recollection of having made the admission
to Dr Makos, and indeed disputes having done so.
Richardson was to make a total of four statements to the police. Three were in
her handwriting. The four statements were dated 4, 5, 6 and 9 December 1974.
Richardson alleged that after her arrest she was preoccupied about getting out
of the police station, because for days she was not allowed to notify anybody of
her arrest and found the police pressure very difficult to cope with. She said
she confessed falsely mainly out of fear. Various matters were suggested to her
by the police, and some of the statements were dictated by the police, whereas
others she knowingly invented to satisfy the police. Part of the problem was
that the intense questioning by the police made her confused and she began to
doubt her own recollections (e.g. where she had been on the day of the Guildford
bombing). She was not allowed to see a solicitor until 11 December and she then
told him that she was innocent of the crimes she was accused of. On 12 December
Richardson was interviewed at Guildford Police Station by two detectives from
the Bomb Squad at New Scotland Yard. She again admitted her involvement
in the Guildford bombings, although the interview appears not to have been in
any way coercive. However, from Richardson’s point of view, she did not want
the police to re-interrogate her and went along with what she had told the police
in her last statement.
Possibly the most interesting part of Richardson’s reaction to the intense
police interrogation relates to the extent to which she eventually began to believe
that perhaps she had planted the bomb in Guildford without having any
recollection of having done so. According to her own account to us, she initially
confessed as a way of escaping from an intolerable situation. The police pressure
was unbearable and she went along with the police interrogators, knowing
that she had nothing to do with the explosions, or indeed with the IRA. After
realizing that she was not going to be released, all she wanted was to be left
alone, and this Richardson believed was the main reason for her false confession
in conjunction with the fear she had of the police. It was not so much the
interrogators’ questions that bothered her but their attitude and apparent confidence
about her involvement. After being allegedly hit by a police woman she
realized that the police were in full control of the situation and that there was
no point in resisting. At this point her confession was of the pressured–compliant
type. That is, she knew she had nothing to do with the bombings but went along
with the interrogators as a way of easing the pressure.
After several days in police custody Richardson began to believe that perhaps
she had been involved in the Guildford bombing and was blocking it out from her
memory. In other words, her alleged involvement in the Guildford bombings had
become internalized. A decisive factor appears to have been the police officers’
confidence in her involvement and the fact that she could not recall precisely
where she had been on 5 October 1974. By this time she had become very