Richard Karling

---

Richard Karling was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend Dorothy Niven. They had met up, however she became ill, vomiting and becoming “floppy.” Karling took her back to her house in a taxi. At 4.30pm the next day he made a 999 call. The ambulance paramedics found her lying down in her bed, face down and partially clothed. She was pronounced dead. It was the prosecution’s case, based on the post-mortem, that Karling had drugged Niven before smothering her with a pillow. A drug test found temazepam in her blood. On appeal, evidence was introduced from an expert who was highly critical of the original post mortem. He said there was no reason to believe she had been smothered, the level of Temazepam in her blood was within “thereputic levels” and not enough to lower her resistence, and that the cause of death should have remained “unascertained.” The appeal was allowed and Karling’s conviction was quashed.

View Press (news.bbc.co.uk)

View Press (innocent.org.uk)

< Back to Case Search < Back to Overview Graph