Keith Rose, a computer company director, was jailed for life in 1991 for murdering Juliet Rowe, the wife of a supermarket owner, at her home at Budleigh Salterton, Devon, in 1981. He shot her dead in a bungled kidnapping attempt but remained at large for eight years, until he was caught in 1989 for kidnapping and holding the son of a food tycoon, Victor Cracknell, for a £1m ransom.Mr Cracknell was kidnapped at gunpoint at his home near Guildford and tied up. But he managed to free himself after five days and Surrey police arrested Rose. Detectives in Devon reopened the investigation into 42-year-old Mrs Rowe's murder. He was jail e d for the murder in 1991 while already serving 15 years for kidnapping.Rose was described by police as 6ft with a long, grey, extremely unkempt beard. He is of medium build and has brown eyes and brown receding hair.Matthew Williams, who studied microbiology and genetics at Leeds University, was detained for life after admitting 11 charges including arson, theft and conspiracy to cause explosions.A jury was told that he placed a nail bomb in a crowded street in Liverpool He also tried to poison his family. He was described as a "gifted student who so hated the human race that he set out to destroy it", at the time of his trial in 1989.Williams is 6ft 1in, with short black hair and a slight build. His blue eyes are sunk into his head and he has a soft voice with a Merseyside accent.Andrew Rodger was jailed for life in 1987 after he told the Old Bailey he "went beserk" when he attacked a John Garrett, 54, a nightwatchman, with a crowbar after being caught trying to steal from vending machines in Ilford, east London.
He was describedis 5ft 7in, very stocky, with blue eyes and speaks with a quiet Scottish accent.. When asked recently about where ministerial buck-passing stops, Sir Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary, said that ministers were accountable but not responsible. Few would argue that the behaviour of some ministers is responsible - step forward philanderers David Mellor, Tim Yeo and Stephen Norris - but there is a growing feeling that members of the Cabinet are less and less likely to be accountable for their departments failings. Michael Howard's leech-like grip on his job has come to symbolise the unwillingness of ministers to go when serious mistakes are made in contrast with the regularity with which members of the Government fall after being caught, literally, with their trousers down.When Norman Lamont, the former Chancellor, refused to withdraw the pound from the ERM, costing the taxpayer billions at the hands of foreign speculators, he did not resign. Yet when Tim Yeo, a former Minister of State at the Department of Environment, w a s found to have adulterously fathered a child, he was out.When Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade, Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor, and Malcolm Rifkind, Defence Secretary, were found to have signed gagging orders that would have seen innocent men jailed over the Matrix Churchill scandal, they did no t resign, arguing they were only following orders (from the Attorney-General, Sir Nicholas Lyell).Contrast such standards with 1982 when Lord Carrington, the then Foreign Secretary, resigned over the Argentine invasion of the Falklands even though he had not been responsible for missing the signs of an Argentine military build up.Or compare the same standards with the decision of Tam Galbraith, the former Admiralty minister, to resign during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis because his name had been linked with Vassall spy case.
He went because he feared the rumours would damage theGovernment."I would only envisage a minister resigning these days if he was involved in some serious mistake in international high politics - if, for example, he rejected advice to pull British troops out of Bosnia and they were killed," said Professor Patrick Dunleavy, professor of government at the London School of Economics. "Britain is so unimportant on the world stage these days that ministers are reduced to interfering in petty domestic matters and tinkering with matters about which they know nothing.''The excuse trotted out by Michael Howard for his refusal to resign over repeated prison gaffes is that he is responsible for matters of policy, not for day to day operations.And he is not alone in adopting the policy-versus-operation argument; it was used by the then Labour Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, when the Soviet spy George Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966. And it was used again by Kenneth Baker when the IRA suspects Nessan Quinlivan and Pearse McAuley broke out of Brixton jail in 1991.But Dr Geoffrey Marshall, Provost of Queens College, Oxford, baulks at the idea that ministers were more honourable in the past. "The idea that ministers should take responsibility for all the actions of their civil servants is one that has never really been adopted,'' he said. "Whenever anything went wrong, ministers would always try to get away with it.". Schoolfriends of the five-year-old meningitis victim Emma Harris, who died on Boxing Day, gathered to say goodbye to her yesterday as she was buried in a churchyard near her home in West Sussex.
The parents of Alexandra Yates, Emma's close friend and the second victim of the outbreak at the village school, attended the service at St Margaret's Church in Rottingdean, near Brighton. Alexandra, also five, died on Tuesday evening of a form of blood-poisoning, a rare complication of bacterial meningitis. Earlier, her mother, Elizabeth Yates, had broken down in tears as she described her daughter's fight against the disease. "Alexandra fought so hard to stay alive but she could not make it."Mrs Yates said that Alexandra's last words were spoken at the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital in Brighton where she was first admitted in the early hours of Boxing Day. "She said, `Mummy, I want a cuddle'."Her father, Alan, who had shared the bedside vigil at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said he hoped that his daughter's death would heighten awareness of meningitis and the speed with which it can strike."This has been a long 10 days.
We have just been hoping one day to the next that Alexandra would pull through We always thought there was a chance She just tried so hard to stay alive. We will remember her with so much pleasure and we want her friends to remember her with so much pleasure We do not want people to shy away from talking about her. She was a loving, caring girl, unusually so for someone so little."Health officials in the area believe that the outbreak has been contained. However, they will take swabs from all 220 pupils at the Rottingdean Church of England Primary School, when the new term starts next week.Mrs Yates said that the first sign her daughter was ill had been when she had not wanted her Christmas lunch. "She developed a high temperature and said her neck hurt a bit. I realised she had a virus and called the doctor."He diagnosed her as having a virus and told me to sponge her to bring her temperature down I took her into bed with me I just sat and watched her.