00:00I was sent to prison for 12 months and the girl was also sent to prison for 6 months.
00:05A simple mix up turned into a criminal conviction. Simon Edgecombe says he was wrongly imprisoned
00:11after selling a van to a post office owner in 1983. He says he sold a van, handed over
00:17an invoice and was paid £750 in cash, which a staff member took from the till, with the
00:23understanding that the boss would later replace the money.
00:26I provided the van. That was pretty much, as far as I was concerned, the end of it.
00:30But it wasn't the end. The day after, two post office investigators did an unexpected spot
00:37check and discovered that money was missing from the till.
00:40And they asked me, they said they wanted to come in and ask me a question. They came in,
00:44they asked me one question only, which is, have you ever had money from the girl in the
00:49sub post office? To which my honest answer was yes, I have. And I showed them the duplicate
00:53invoice book and the copy of it was there. They took the book, looked at it and that was
00:59the last that was ever seen of it. They seized it.
01:01After that, he was questioned further at the police station and eventually the case went
01:06to court.
01:07The post office prosecutions people, barristers, suggested that it was coercion. That what I
01:14had done is coerced the girl in there to give me the money. But the ridiculous part of that
01:20was, even if that was true and it wasn't, she was a victim. But they imprisoned her as
01:29well.
01:30Now, after decades of searching for answers, he says the documents which could help him
01:35in his appeal have disappeared. In response, the post office have said they have no papers
01:41regarding this matter as it's over 40 years old. It's not even been established that Post
01:45Office Limited was the prosecutor. MP Helen Whateley has been supporting Simon in his campaign
01:51for justice.
01:52At first he was told, I mean, told that there are no records. This goes back to the 1980s.
01:57But now it looks like there actually could be some records. He received some information
02:01through this heavily redacted. So what I want is to keep the pressure up so that people
02:08keep digging to find out, you know, find some evidence of who decided what and why and what
02:13actually happened.
02:14Since Simon left prison in 1984, this is an example of just some of the emails and letters
02:20that he sent to authorities across the country to try and prove his innocence. But with no avail,
02:26he's now hoping that KMTV viewers can help him.
02:28So I hope that there will be somebody, perhaps, who worked at the court at the time. They can
02:34find a stenographer's report, perhaps even a member of the jury. But I need some form of
02:41evidence that what I am saying and what I said to the Court of Peel is actually true.
02:47During his time in prison, he lost his home, his girlfriend and his job with the London Fire
02:52Brigade. And more than 40 years later, Simon is still asking for the same thing. A chance
02:58to clear his name.
03:00Kristen Hawthorne, KMTV, Tenham.
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