STEPHEN DOWNING, who spent 27 years in jail before he was cleared of the so-called Bakewell Tart murder, has been arrested and questioned over the alleged intimidation of a witness in a court case.

Last night Derbyshire police confirmed that a 47-year-old Bakewell man had been arrested last week on suspicion of intimidating a female witness in a recent case.

Mr Downing was interviewed and released on police bail while further investigations are carried out and the Crown Prosecution Service is consulted. Police refused to comment on the case.

The freed man’s father, Raymond Downing, 69, was sentenced at Derby Crown Court last December to eight months in jail for indecently assaulting a 17-year-old girl with a mental age of 8.

Stephen Downing was jailed in 1973 for the murder of Wendy Sewell, a typist, in a cemetery at Bakewell. She was nicknamed the Bakewell Tart because of her taste for outdoor sex with a series of lovers. She was attacked and battered with a pickaxe handle on September 12, 1973, and died two days later.

Mr Downing, who was 17 at the time of the murder and was working as a groundsman, raised the alarm, saying that he had discovered Mrs Sewell in a pool of blood. He always protested his innocence and was released in 2001 after doubts about the way in which detectives had extracted a confession from him.

Last year a report by Derbyshire police concluded, after a six-month reinvestigation, that Mr Downing was the only suspect whose name could not be eliminated from the fresh inquiry. This year Mr Downing announced that he was penniless after spending a £250,000 interim compensation payment.

It is understood that detectives are investigating an alleged threat to a woman who made a statement against Mr Downing’s father. Raymond Downing, also of Bakewell, claimed in court that he had been asked to give sex lessons to the girl.

The court was told that Downing, who campaigned for his son’s release, had befriended the victim’s mother after her marriage ended and began visiting the family home in May 2002.

• The BBC is halfway through a drama documentary portraying the Stephen Downing case. The first part of In Denial of Murder, featuring Stephen Tomkinson as the campaigning editor Don Hale, was shown last Sunday evening on BBC One. The BBC said last night it had not decided whether to show the second and final part this weekend.

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