Blind killer Yvonne Sleightholme speaks exclusively to Mike Laycock about the decision not to give her parole and her on-going fight to clear her name.

YVONNE Sleightholme has told why she believes the decision to keep her locked up is a grave injustice.

The blind prisoner - who is still attempting to fight her conviction in 1991 for shooting dead a farmer's wife in a Ryedale farmyard - was recently refused transfer to an open jail despite exemplary behaviour throughout her time inside.

Speaking exclusively to the Evening Press during visiting time at medium-security Styal Prison, Sleightholme said she might have accepted the Parole Board's decision if all prisoners were being treated equally.

But she claimed: "Other prisoners have been granted parole at their first application, without them being model inmates."

She said she knew personally of a lifer who had succeeded in a first application to the board and been transferred to an open prison, even though the inmate had been violent and abusive towards a prison officer during her time inside.

The board accepted that Sleightholme, who was making her second application and had served more than two years longer than was recommended by her trial judge, would benefit from transfer.

But it believed she posed too great a risk of serious violence for release or transfer.

Sleightholme said she had been out on bail for almost two years before she went on trial in 1991, without any problems.

She was also unhappy about the way the board's concerns focused on her "changing her story" about what happened on the night Jayne Smith was killed in 1988 at Broats Farm, Salton, near Malton.

The board said inconsistencies in her version of events had finally led to her claim that she was raped at the time of the murder by two or three men, and this made it difficult to determine a starting point for the assessment of risk.

But Sleightholme said she had not spoken of the rape initially because she was totally traumatised. A forensic psychiatrist had recently concluded that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but she did not believe this had been taken properly into account.

She was upset about the impact of the decision on her elderly and frail parents, who were finding it increasingly difficult to visit her on the far side of Manchester. A transfer to Askham Grange Open Prison, near York, would make it easier for visits. "I am disappointed by the decision, but not surprised. This is typical of the way the system has always worked," said Sleightholme, who is convinced that had she admitted the murder, she would now be free. "But I am getting very tired now."

She remained adamant that she did not commit the murder, and stressed that proving her innocence still remained her biggest priority.

Updated: 10:52 Tuesday, February 18, 2003