'I have spent years caring for the grave of a man I've never met - the tragic story why'
10.06.2023 - 08:09
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
‘Every week, I go to the graveyard and all the staff at the cemetery know me. In my heart, I feel the terrible, unbelievable ordeal of Stefan being called abusive names, being cut up and beaten… that’s why I have to keep going to his grave as I do.'
Peter Ross is a familiar face at Rochdale Cemetery. He has been showing up weekly for years, the staff know him by name.
His dedication is to one plot, bearing the names of a man, and his mother and father. But the grave he is visiting is dedicated to a man - and family - he has never even met.
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Peter, 78, was working as an electrical contractor around Rochdale in 1975 when he first heard the story of Stefan Kisko. At the time, Stefan was 23, a vulnerable man with learning difficulties.
That fateful year had been marked by the tragic killing of little Lesley Molseed. She was just 11 when, on October 5, she was sent to the shop close to her home in Turf Hill to buy a loaf of bread for her mum.
Lesley never came home, instead being found dead three days later – facedown on moorland between Oldham and Ripponden, around 40 yards from the A672. The little girl had been stabbed 12 times and sexually assaulted.
Her death sent shockwaves through the community and sparked a huge manhunt, led by West Yorkshire Police. Stefan lived near Lesley, it was not long before he began being pinpointed by the police as a man who might fit the profile of the killer.
A timid and teetotal tax clerk and church-goer, Mr Kiszko was arrested after three girls told police he had indecently exposed himself to them just days before Lesley was found dead. It was the start of ‘one of the worst miscarriages of justice of all