Allan Chappelow’s killer Wang Yam must serve 20 years
Published: 7 October, 2010
by DAN CARRIER
THE Chinese physics professor serving a life sentence for the murder of 86-year-old Hampstead writer and photographer Allan Chappelow has lost an appeal against his conviction.
Wang Yam learned this week that the Court of Appeal had rejected his challenge to the guilty verdict handed out by an Old Bailey jury in January 2009.
Judges Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice Saunders and Mrs Justice Thirlwell dismissed his attempts to have the conviction quashed after sifting through the court papers of the original trial.
Yam, an academic from Beijing, sought political asylum in London after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He was convicted of beating Mr Chappelow over the head at his crumbling Downshire Hill home in the summer of 2006. The court was told Yam had stolen Mr Chappelow’s identity and attempted to milk his bank accounts and cash cheques in the pensioner’s name.
In a judgment that took nearly six months to consider, Lord Justice Hughes stated: “The Crown case was that he was the thief and fraudster and that the murder had been committed because at some point he encountered the deceased. The evidence was detailed and thorough. We entertain no doubts about the safety of this conviction.”
Yam admitted using one of Mr Chappelow’s credit cards at a cashpoint and to pay for a meal at South End Green restaurant Curry Paradise. He claimed he was given the cheques and credit card by mysterious Chinese gangsters who had threatened him into helping them with scams.
Part of the murder trial was heard in secret, for the first time in British legal history. Yam’s QC, Geoffrey Robertson, said that if this evidence had been in public it would have garnered “significantly greater media coverage” and could have led to witnesses coming forward and supporting Yam’s case. This in turn could have not only helped prove Yam’s previous good character but helped track down the gangsters he claimed were responsible for the death of Mr Chappelow.
Lord Justice Hughes dismissed this argument, saying most of the trial had been in public, the police had made strenuous efforts to find the gangsters and there had been “a great deal of evidence” towards Yam’s character heard in court.
The judges upheld Yam’s minimum 20-year sentence but quashed his conviction for handling stolen letters, cheques and a mobile phone owned by Mr Chappelow.