Blind prisoner Yvonne Sleightholme, right, has spoken publicly for the first time since a jury found her guilty of a notorious murder in 1988. Chief Reporter MIKE LAYCOCK visited her in prison for this exclusive interview

IT is 1.45pm on a sunny afternoon in Styal, a prosperous Cheshire village close to Manchester Airport, and I join a queue of men, women and children outside a gateway in a high mesh fence. My visiting order is checked by courteous and polite officers. I sign myself in, I am searched and then join a line-up in a yard while a frisky dog sniffs me in case I am trying to smuggle in drugs.

This is Her Majesty's Prison Styal, and I am here to visit Yvonne Sleightholme, who was jailed in 1991 for shooting dead Jayne Smith - the wife of Sleightholme's former fianc William Smith - in a Ryedale farmyard on December 13, 1988.

Sleightholme, who went blind while on remand awaiting trial, has protested her innocence ever since and continues to fight for another appeal, most recently via an application to the European Court of Human Rights.

Her case has been backed all the way by two Londoners, Margaret Leonard and David Hamilton, who are convinced she is a victim of a serious miscarriage of injustice, and Margaret accompanies me to Styal today.

Sleightholme has turned down numerous media requests for an interview... until now.

I pass the doggy drugs test, and walk to a long hall where visitors meet prisoners.

White stick in hand, Sleightholme is led in by a prison officer. During the years, there are some people who have suggested her disability is faked. And with a journalist's curiosity and scepticism, I immediately find myself carefully studying her for evidence of blindness... or otherwise.

She stumbles slightly as she tries to sit down on a chair attached to a table, and she explains that the new furniture has only just been installed in the visiting room, and she is unfamiliar with the design.

Sleightholme is 49, has long, blond, straight hair, and dark brown eyes. They flit time and again in the rough direction of my face, but not at my eyes.

I ask how she has coped with being blind in jail. "It's been hard," she says. "I've been beaten up. People try to catch me out by throwing shoes at me to see if I duck, that sort of thing.

"I was the first registered blind prisoner they had ever had at Durham until her transfer to Styal about three years ago, she was held at Durham Jail where fellow inmates included Rose West and Myra Hindley.

"Prisons are not equipped to cope with anyone with physical disabilities."

She says she went blind during the weeks after her arrest. First she lost the sight in one eye, then the other. The right eye sees nothing, she says. The left can detect if it is light or dark. There is nothing wrong with her eyes; the condition, known as conversion, is deep within her mind and is said to arise as a consequence of massive emotional trauma.

"I would desperately love to be able to see again," she says. "I have never seen my nieces grow up."

But she has adapted to life without sight. "You learn to survive. You get to develop your other senses. For example, you can tell when people go past you because of the movement of air on your face."

She recalls the day when, after lengthy mobility training, she was able to walk independently to a building within Styal prison grounds where she could receive a phone call.

She works in the prison chapel, keeping it clean and tidy. She says she gets on well with the chaplains and her faith - she comes from a family of churchgoers and was a Christian before the murder - has deepened during her time inside.

She says she has communicated while inside with other people claiming to have been wrongly jailed - including Stephen Downing, released recently after serving 27 years for a murder he did not commit.

She says that before the fateful night at Broats Farm at Salton, near Malton, when Jayne Smith was murdered, she led a quiet, uneventful and happy life.

I ask her about the events of December 13, and her protestations of innocence ever since. Until now, she has been witty, chatty, upbeat. But now the distress begins to show.

The prosecution case, believed by a ten-to-two majority of the jury at Leeds Crown Court, was that Sleightholme was driven by hatred and resentment to shoot her ex-boyfriend's wife at point blank range in the back of the head with a 0.22 Winchester rifle taken from her own home. She was said to have stage-managed the killing so it looked like a sex attack.

Sleightholme's story, not believed by the jury, was that she was held captive at the farm by three men who shot Jayne, and then framed her for the killing. Her counsel claimed police had blindly followed one theory, ignoring evidence showing that other people had been at the farm.

She repeats her account as presented to the court, albeit with some additional information, and says it is the truth and will never admit to anything else.

She knows this denial could result in her staying for many more years in prison. She has already served more than the ten-year tariff set by the judge. This is because her refusal to confess means she has not been allowed to take part in various courses, and without taking part in the courses, she cannot get parole.

She tells me: "I didn't do it, and nothing - not even the chance of freedom - will make me lie and say I did it. I value the truth more than anything.

"I can understand if people don't believe me. After all, I was convicted by a jury. All I can say is I know what happened that night, and I was not responsible for that terrible murder.

"No one deserves to die like Jayne did."

She says the support she has received from Margaret Leonard and David Hamilton has been an inspiration to her.

She is concerned about one implication for society of her continuing denial. "The perpetrators are still out there, and that does worry me."

It is 3.45pm, and an officer bellows that visiting time is over.

As I leave, I still cannot be certain if she is telling the truth, but I am more convinced than I was before I met her.

But another thought burns more fiercely.

If she is telling the truth, if she did not kill Jayne Smith, then what is happening to Yvonne Sleightholme would be a miscarriage of justice on a par with the most notorious cases of recent years, including Stephen Downing.

Updated: 12:47 Friday, February 01, 2002