Miskiw and Chicago

Here's a little bit of US stuff, to lighten the News International dough. It features Greg Miskiw, ex News of The World now thought to be in Florida, possibly writing for the supermarket tabloid, The Globe.

During his days as a reporter on the Daily Mirror, he was asked to appear in court in Chicago to discredit a police witness, William Coleman, an inmate of Cook County jail who had turned informant - and who had tried to sell Miskiw stories.  The principal case was that of Andrew Wilson, one of two black brothers accused of the murder of two policemen in 1982 - Wilson claimed he had been tortured in the police station by being burned on electric radiators, to extract a confession.   This account of events is from a longer piece by John Conroy, written in 1990, entitled House of Screams.

In the first trial, the police maintained that Wilson had been kept in Interview Room 2, and several detectives had claimed that the radiator in that room didn’t work. In the second trial, it was suggested that Wilson was kept in Interview Room 1, where the radiator did work, and that Wilson had burned himself on it. The man brought forward to support this contention was a British citizen, a jailhouse informant named William Coleman.


Coleman, born in Liverpool in 1948, has also been known as Mark Krammer, Paul Roberts, Richard Hallaran, R.W. Stevenson, Doctor Roberts, W. Van der Vim, Peter Karl William, John Simmons, and William Clarkson. He has served time in prisons in England, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Monaco, Hong Kong, and the United States. He has been convicted of fraud, theft, perjury, manslaughter, and blackmail. On March 13, 1987, he was arrested in suburban Harvey and charged with possession with intent to deliver cocaine. He eventually ended up in Cook County Jail on the same tier as Andrew Wilson, who was then awaiting the retrial of his murder case.


Coleman, who is white, claimed that a few days after he met Wilson, the black convict made two amazing admissions: he said that he had indeed killed the two police officers (a particularly stupid admission given that he was maintaining his innocence in his impending retrial), and he said that he had burned himself on the radiator in the interview room in order to make it appear as though his confession had been coerced. (Coleman offered no explanation for the pattern of scabs on Wilson’s ears and nose.)


Coleman was an unbelievable witness to those who knew his record. The jury, however, did not know most of it, as in most circumstances legal precedent precludes the mention of convictions over ten years old. In order to convey to the jury that Coleman was always willing to make up a story, the People’s Law Office paid for journalist Gregory Miskiw to be flown in from England. Miskiw was prepared to tell the jury this tale: In 1986, he was working in London as a reporter for the Daily Mirror when he received a call from Coleman, who was then living in Washington, D.C., under the name Clarkson. Coleman told Miskiw that he could prove that Lord Lichfield, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, had been arrested for possession of cocaine on a visit to Washington the previous October. Miskiw flew to Washington and waited for Coleman to connect him with the police officer who would provide the documentation. The policeman never materialized. In the meantime, Coleman offered information about the sex life of British tennis star Kevin Curran. Miskiw investigated William Coleman instead and ultimately filed a story under the headline “Amazing Royal Smear of Billy Liar.”


Wilson’s attorneys were gambling, however, when they imported Miskiw. Kunkle and James McCarthy, the city’s lawyer, seemed gleeful at the prospect of questioning a reporter who worked for a tabloid that regularly carried photos of bare-breasted women on page three (the copy that was passed around the defense table had the front-page headline “FURY OVER DOLLY WHOPPERS–SEX SLUR ROCKS BUSTY QUEEN OF COUNTRY MUSIC”). Judge Duff excused the jury, heard Miskiw’s story, and allowed Kunkle some cross-examination. Kunkle asked if Miskiw had any personal knowledge of Lord Lichfield or his habits; Miskiw said no. Kunkle asked if Miskiw had any personal knowledge about the sex life of Kevin Curran; Miskiw said no. It became apparent that although Miskiw’s “Billy Liar” story was probably truthful, its contents were what courts call hearsay, not evidence. Miskiw left the city the following day, never having faced the jury.