Claude Moseley

Claude Moseley was stabbed in the back with a samurai sword in Bethune Road, Stoke Newington on 2 February 1994.

He had been a former black British high jump champion and was a member of Haringey Athletics Club.

It was reported that Claude Moseley had started to sell drugs for a large drugs gang but that they had suspected him of skimming money and so sent an enforcer to kill him. It was said that the enforcer had stabbed him so hard in the back with the samurai sword that he had nearly cut him in two.

Claude Moseley had been stabbed twice.

A 33-year-old man was tried for his murder but acquitted after a key witness refused to give evidence against him. The man had been present at the house in Bethune Road, Stoke Newington when Claude Moseley was stabbed. The man had been offered a whole new identity under the witness protection scheme, as well as a new birth certificate, passport, a home abroad and cash, but when he found out that his identity would be revealed he changed his mind saying that he had been threatened by a prison officer and an inmate and that he was terrified. He was later convicted for contempt of court. He was initially going to be sentenced to a year but the judge reduced it to three months on account that he was satisfied that the man was terrified.

After the man failed to give his evidence the case collapsed as there was no other admissible evidence against the accused man. The witness was said to have been on the run at the time he claimed to have witnessed the murder. He had been in Winsom Green jail in Birmingham serving a five year sentence for robbery when he said he was approached by another prisoner who said something to him that he said he took as a threat.

The police said that the man had been the only person at the address at the time who had been prepared to give the police a written statement and who agreed to give evidence, providing his identity was kept secret.

However, the man tried for Claude Moseley's murder later went missing and is thought to have himself been murdered, a crime that is similarly unsolved.