from inside prison

� CASE REPORT

From Inside PrisonJulian Cox

Editorial note. Part One of this paper was written in 1994, whenthe author, Julian Cox, having partially recovered from thetrauma of his conviction for murder, sought the help of Justice,an organization concerned with helping those whose convictionsseemed unfair. The complete document is a very long one, andwe have published only selected extracts.

After long delays, Julian’s case came to the Court of Appeal inJanuary 2000. It was unsuccessful. Apparently, it is not possiblein law to reverse a jury’s decision on issues of fact. His pleahad, therefore, to be one of ‘diminished responsibility’, whichwas argued partly on psychiatric grounds and partly on thegrounds of dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD). There was a brief mention of Julian’s dyslexia in theCourt of Appeal’s judgement, but no understanding whatever ofhow it might have contributed to the original tragedy.

Part Two of the paper was written specifically for Dyslexia atthe editor’s invitation. There has been no editing of the spellingor style. In the case of Part One, as Julian explains, the editing wasdone for him. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PART ONE

24 October 1994Dear SirMy name is Julian Cox. I am currently in HM Prison Gartree, serving a lifesentence with a minimum recommendation of serving 20 years. I have beenconvicted of the following charges: (i) damaging property with intent toendanger life, (ii) attempted murder of my nephew, Timothy Cox, (iii)attempted murder of my sister, Jacquie Cox, (iv) attempted murder of myfather, Dennis Cox, (v) murder of my mother, Joy Cox. At my trial, I pleadednot guilty to all of the above charges, and I still maintain my innocence . . . Iwould like your support to take the case on board and, if possible, preparean appeal . . .

. . . As a child, I had a very loving upbringing. My parents worked hard inproviding for us; they never failed to give us the affection and love thatchildren need. Times were not easy, as in most households. Holidays werespent together . . . It was a close and happy family.

DYSLEXIA 7: 97–102 (2001)Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.DOI: 10.1002/dys.189

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In 1973, my brother Grahame was killed on active service, whilst servingwith the Royal Marines in Northern Ireland. He was only 19 years old. Itwas so very, very tragic. He was due home the very next day. His deaththrew a dark shroud over the entire family . . . It was devastating. These, andother events, brought the family even closer together. The loss of my brotherhas never left the family. To this day, I still get nightmares . . .

My mother and I were particularly close, as we spent many, many hourstogether working on business matters. My mother was a great lady, and herdeath has really cut me up, as I’m so very responsible . . . I am still extremelyworried about my father, as I love him so much. He, as my mother was, isa great parent to have. One could not wish for better. My mother’s death hastotally devastated me, and it is so unjust that I should continue to be foundguilty of murder . . . None of my family believe that the fire was deliberate.My aunt and girlfriend have typed this letter for me, owing to my dyslexia.

I had been dealing with business papers. I wanted to dissolve the busi-ness, and the burden of mounting paperwork relating to it was overwhelm-ing. I wanted it all to disappear, and I was after a quick way out. Themounting paper work had been left so long that I didn’t know what to do.Right from my school days, when I was first diagnosed dyslexic, I havealways found reading and writing of any bulk of material to be a mostdistressing task. I felt that I had bitten off more than I could chew. The angerand confusion were becoming a headache. Mixed emotions, very mixed, itmay have been a kind of mental breakdown. One thing I know is that therewas never a minute, nor even a second, when I wanted to harm my familyor set fire to the house.

My sole intention within the 20 minutes prior to the start of the fire hadbeen to destroy business papers by burning them . . . I had gone to thegarage to look for something to burn the papers with. I opened the garagedoor, which was noisy. Had I been planning anything that night requiringtotal silence, I would not have opened the garage door . . . There was nospace in the garden to do it. I just had to do it then, out of sight out of mind.I am an impulsive person and wanted to get it out of the way . . . The reasonI have burnt papers in the past is because I was very conscious of theircontents . . . if they were of a confidential nature . . . Looking back on it now,I acted irrationally, but at the time, as I had previously burnt papers in mybedroom, I didn’t think things would get so out of control as theydid . . . When I was in France, there was a large open fire place, I used petrolto start fires there.

I went up into the loft and I continued searching for papers, but stoppedwhen I could smell petrol and something burning. I started thinking thateverything was awful and wondering what the hell was going on. I startedto investigate, and it was then that my sister came out of her bedroom, andthen a fire started in proximity to us, outside the bathroom door, not outsideJacquie’s door, as the prosecution has said. She ran downstairs and on intothe garden, leaving through the front door, which triggered the house alarm.The first time I remember seeing her on fire was when we got out into thegarden. She made no attempt to put out her flames and was hysterical. So Istruggled with her trying to push her into the damp grass to extinguish thefire. I was feeling angry that she was not co-operating with me to let me put

Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Dyslexia 7: 97–102 (2001)

From Inside Prison 99

out her flames. She told me to go because the police would come and Icouldn’t understand why. I broke a flower pot in frustration and threw it onthe ground, and later picked up a small hand-sized piece of stone which wascloser at hand and threw it across the garden. It happened to hit her on thehead once; I was definitely not trying to hurt or kill her. My intention hadbeen to get her on the ground to extinguish her flames and then to releasemyself from her as she was biting my hand. This was interpreted as anassault on her.

Having made sure her flames were out, I told her I would rescue her son,Timothy, out of the house. I rescued him from his bedroom and gave himthe kiss of life on the conservatory roof, and then I took him down into theback garden. I put a ladder up to my parents’ bedroom window to enablethem to get out as quickly as possible. As far as I was concerned, at thispoint, I had rescued all my family safely from the house, but I don’t feel thiswas stressed nearly enough in court, nor the fact that I went back to seeJacquie and mum in the next door neighbours’, they were okay. Then I sawmy father, who seemed fine, and was walking around at this stage.

I did leave the scene with the intention of seeking assistance from mygirlfriend’s mother, who is a nurse, because it was apparent that both mysister and my mother needed medical attention . . . I had no intention offleeing the scene, which is shown by the fact that I had no shoes or top on.I ran all the way there. By the time I got to Felicity’s, I heard the sirens, andhaving heard them I needed to get back as soon as possible.

Overall, I feel that I was poorly represented by my QC, who failed toutilize all the information that he was given prior to the trial. He shouldhave explained to the jury that dyslexia affects certain patterns of behaviour,including disorganized behaviour and the ability to think ahead in a rationalmanner and anticipate the results of one’s actions, and how this was partlyan explanation of my behaviour that night. Impulsive behaviour is a dyslexictrait, and I don’t feel my dyslexia was given enough understanding.

My father was made to feel that he was being regarded as an unreliablewitness. In his statement to the police, he said, ‘At the time of the accidentI considered Julian to be the hero of the time because he seemed to be gettingeveryone out’, but my father wasn’t given the opportunity to fully answerhis questions. He was given no option but to be a prosecution witness, aswas my sister. My father and my sister did not want to prosecute. The policeprevented him from visiting me for several months.

The prosecution claimed that my intention was to burn down the houseand kill all the occupants, so that I was the sole beneficiary of the insurancepolicy pay-out, and that I needed the money for my business in France. Theprosecution claimed I was personally liable for £14511 . . . Neither did thedefence spend enough time explaining how absurd and how impossible itwould have been for me to have carried out the plan suggested by theprosecution for such an insignificant sum of money. Nobody planning suchan act would have left the house security alarm on that night, or be dressedin the way that I was, only wearing trousers and no footwear, as confirmedby my neighbours’ statements.

The prosecution believed I tried to kill my sister, first by deliberatelysetting fire to her on the landing and then by hitting her in the garden. They


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claimed this was essential to the plan so that she should not live to tell thetale. I never threw petrol at her, and whilst we were in the garden, thereason I hit her was to stop her hysteria and her resistance to my putting outher flames. She had good reason to be hysterical, she was on fire, but herstate of hysteria was not related to the court . . .

. . . The judge made no reference to the fact that she (Mrs Gill Groves) hadgiven additional evidence to say that I had burnt papers upstairs in mybedroom before this occasion . . . A lot of emphasis was placed on the factthat my filofax was found in my girlfriend’s car, because of its contents, i.e.passport, cheque book, 1500 French francs, and four open air tickets(London–Nice) which were bought by my sister, an Air Hostess with BritishAirways, in January 1991. The prosecution made it sound as if I haddeliberately placed the filofax in the car, to enable me to make a quick escapeto France. My defence counsel failed to explain to the jury that, owing to mybusiness, I was always travelling between England and France, and I neededto have these documents available . . . I often left it lying around. Two orthree days before the fire I had left it in Felicity’s car. Family or friends couldhave confirmed that I would leave my filofax lying around in France or athome. Its contents or it having been left in the car was nothing extraordi-nary . . . When the police questioned me, they asked me about events I couldrecall, and then went on to ask me about the fire. As I was in total shock, Iwasn’t able to recall everything straight away, and so they made it appearthat I had something to hide.

PART TWO

It’s now nine and a half year after the tragic night and since than I can sayhand on heart that I’ve give many hundreds if not thousands of hours ofthought as to what happened and what lead up to the very tragic events.This dilemma has been very haunting and it’s only now with hindsight anda very brief understanding of the psychology and some extremely goodcounselling that I’m now able to take a constructive look back.

There are many controversial views about the case and my behaviour andmany so called ‘facts’ that became rather incriminating. I’ve now grownbeyond exhorting the validity of the so called facts my arguments haveproven futile. However my case has always been described as an extremely‘Bizarre Case’. from start to finish which is about the only thing the defenceand prosecution agree on. Bizarre is an appropriate word to us as it alsodescribes nicely the Dyslexia disorder and the behaviour of Dyslexics.

I adamantly believe that my dyslexia had a direct part to play in thetragedy that brought about my incarceration. It’s only a dyslexic or some-body with an in-depth knowledge such as an expert in the field of dyslexiathat will ever come close to understanding the frustrations and difficultiesthat dyslexic suffers. It is very simple for a person to announce that theirdyslexic when really it was a lack of schooling/teaching, parental upbringingor that they have another form of learning difficulty/ disability. Just becausethey have reading and writing difficulties they are quickly (often to quickly)call or labelled dyslexic.


From Inside Prison 101

Over the course of my imprisonment I’ve come a crossed many ‘true’dyslexics though I have never openly admitted to my Inmate peers that I tooam dyslexic, though an enigmatic of a dyslexic. I label myself ‘enigmatic’because many dyslexics are frighten of learning because it involves usingskills that they literally don’t possess, reading is just a mass of undistin-guishable characters, written work is simply distressing, to even contemplatethe writing of a short sentence provokes a sweat. Hence they soon developsa history of truancy and behavioural problems and the children quicklybecome delinquents.

Unlike most dyslexics I really enjoy learning though it takes more time forme to absorb the relevant information I enjoy studying and the class workthat goes with it and at heart I’m a bit of an academic but, when it comes tothe written work there is no compatibility, it’s like putting a square wheelson a bicycle, they go round but it’s very bumpy, slow and most inefficient.So here’s a person that has an IQ well over average, enjoys learning, veryambitious, extremely keen to take on any challenge and is well spoken, buthe’s a true dyslexic. How is that frustrating or what..!!

To prevent being labelled and deeply embarrassed in front of friends,colleagues and peers over the years I’ve adopted many Copping Strategies tomask and to cope with my dyslexia these have both been formed consciouslyand subconscious and were conceived from a young age. My coping strate-gies were so refined that even my long term girl friend had no idea of mydyslexia, it was only my mediate family that knew and only my mother thatwas aware of the severity of my dyslexia.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

I can sum up quite simply and say it was a ‘Mental Overload’, it can easilybe compared to the household PC when that too jams-up. I think this wasthe same with me for the brain literally had to much information to processbecause of the various demanding pressures that the business required but,unlike the PC I didn’t have a reset button to press.

The ‘what went wrong’ factor, is an equation of many factors. The buildup of Time, trying to cope in an environment that I wasn’t suited and thesignificant fact that I’d never had any business training nor any experiencein exporting/importing.

Dyslexics are often associated with having so called bright ideas and beingambitious, I defiantly fall into this category. I under took a major, majorproject which was extremely demanding and way beyond my capabilities.The sheer quantity of paperwork that an English Export/Importing Com-pany generates is horrendous and then add the problems of owning aFrench Retail Company the paperwork mountain trebled and grow vigor-ously by the week. To this major nightmare you add the main catalyst, thedyslexia. After a couple of years of implementing my copping strategies thatwere becoming less effective as time went by and the daily pressures ofrunning a complicated business the stress started to tell and my physicalhealth suffered with a renal failure. The business was also suffering andhaving increasing problems, most of it was due to my incompetence as a


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director because of my inability in dealing with the escalating paper moun-tain. (An ingrained issue I had, but had never realised until recently was thatI had a megga problem with failure this stems from childhood. I oftenobtained the lower marks during exam’s and ‘what a surprise’ it was myundiagnosed dyslexia that was leaving its footprint, all this became etchedupon my self-esteem FAILED, FAILURE. . . !!

Another important consideration that should have been addressed is themanner of the questioning of the defendant during trial and pre-trial. Duringmy Police interviews I was indeed in a state of shock, my depression wasstill evident during trial, this on its own would account for impaired thoughtprocesses which produces weaker communication skills. For a dyslexic thisdefinitely isn’t conducive for dyslexic often has these impedance’s to startwith, so for me the situation was exacerbated.

Hindsight gives us twenty twenty vision, but, I’m certain that if theoriginal jurors had had a full representation of the effects and problems thata dyslexic suffers and a true picture given of this ‘Enigmatic Dyslexic’ i.e.Me, the out come would have been quite different.


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