Luke Walker was arrested in Crete — and is currently being held in remand at the prison of its capital Heraklion — after “causing fatal bodily injury” to his on-off girlfriend Chelsea Hyndman, who was aged 20 at the time of her death.



Since his arrest in May, Walker’s family, with the help of a convicted would-be child kidnapper called Penny Mellor, have launched a very public campaign to subvert the Greek judicial system, and to have Walker unconditionally freed.



We — and thousands of people across Great Britain — feel that Luke Walker must be exposed to all the appropriate mechanisms of western law, as any other murder suspect could expect in similar circumstances. At this particular stage we are of the very strong opinion that Luke Walker should be denied bail on the grounds that his family’s condemnation of the legal system is indicative of their intentions for him never to return to the island. There has been talk amongst his supporters of him acquiring a counterfeit passport and disappearing. Luke Walker’s behaviour so far — and that of his family and friends — is not at all suggestive of his being innocent of the murder of Chelsea Hyndman.



Justice is being undermined here in four quite obvious ways:



• The credibility of the Greek legal system — and indeed, the Greek national character — is being ridiculed or constantly questioned.



• The character of Chelsea Hyndman is being assassinated by Luke Walker’s family and their supporters. The Walkers are telling lies about the victim in order to make her look responsible for her own death.



• The British media — including the BBC — is ignoring the evidence against Luke Walker, and is focussing instead on the murder suspect’s ‘plight’, while misled members of the public continue to send in donation money that line only his own family’s pockets.



• The British government is being put under pressure to make Luke Walker’s case a diplomatic incident out of which his negotiated pardon will result.





The truth is being re-written for the public, and for those who know what the truth is, the prospect of a trial is being chipped at every day — because Luke Walker and his supporters are not appealing for clemency or even a fair hearing, but for a complete bypass of the legal system. Our consciences have tasked us with making the world aware of what is happening here.



To help in their campaign to have Luke Walker released, his parents approached convicted felon Penny Mellor, an unemployed mother of eight whose life’s mission appears to be confronting — and sometimes, through sheer manic zeal, defeating — targeted authority figures whom she despises.



One of the first things that Mellor did, together with Luke Walker’s brother Ryan and his cousin Daniella, was create a Luke Walker is Innocent page on Facebook. It was touted as the “Luke and Chelsea” page to the media and public.



In due course, though, we learnt that Chelsea's own mother was barred from joining the 'Luke and Chelsea' support site. This is due to the fact that the site is not at all about Chelsea's memory, but instead about emotionally blackmailing the public into giving financial and moral support to her alleged killer. "If you love Chelsea, you'll want Luke freed" is the guilt-inducing, money-spinning byline. In Penny Mellor’s crusade to pervert the course of justice, Chelsea’s name is dropped in conveniently: “That is what Chelsea would have wanted”; “This is what Chelsea would have wanted.” We think that the only thing that Chelsea would have wanted is her life.



It’s a particularly sinister form of emotional blackmail to proclaim, if you care about Chelsea losing her life, you will petition for her alleged killer to be released without charge or trial.



Patrick Walker, the father of the accused, took advantage of Heather Hyndman's bereaved, dignified silence to declare that she was writing a letter to the Greek courts, a letter in which she would stress her belief in Luke Walker's absolute innocence. This was a lie. Heather Hyndman had told him before he made that comment that she would do no such thing because so few facts were available to her.



But the accused’s father wasn’t the only one who took advantage of the silence from the victim’s family. Heather Hyndman was stunned to learn of libellous statements made by Penny Mellor concerning Chelsea Hyndman’s relationship with alcohol. Of course, it was part of a series of manipulative stories to fool authority, but its opportunistic viciousness stung.



Finally, Heather Hyndman is breaking her silence. She's angry at the way in which she's been marginalised, and at the fashion in which her daughter's name has been besmirched. "Chelsea was an alcoholic?" she angrily asked us. "Last time she was home, she didn't even go out for three months, never mind drank!



"I've been naive, and I've been respectful, but they've just gone too far. Penny Mellor is a liar, and Patrick Walker is a liar. If the local papers won't listen to me, I'm going to the nationals. Enough is enough. They're treating the man accused of killing my daughter as if he were a hero."



Even more worrying than the Walkers’ Facebook smokescreen are some sectors of the media - the reportage from papers such as the Stourbridge News and Express and Star has been constipated and one-sided (in Walker's favour). The victim's family are “off their patch” (yes, that's a quote); they have to be careful what they print for “legal reasons” (though this doesn't apply to them joining the “Luke is Innocent” bandwagon - they can't print “speculation”, yet Walker’s innocence is constantly trumpeted); reader correspondence and internet commentary that questions Luke Walker’s so-called innocence is ignored or deleted.



Greece gave the western world the legal system as we still know it (with the exception of the jury system, which was instituted by Henry II), but their procedures are being undermined by what looks like good old fashioned English racism.



It chilled us to the core when Luke Walker's mother came out of that Greek court and told reporters "Haven't you got anything better to do - what's the matter with you?" Yes, how DARE the press arrive at the arraignment of a man accused of kicking his girlfriend in the upper abdomen and causing her to bleed internally for four days! Anyone who challenges these people is of course a witch/bastard/made-up person/dead meat. (See the Luke Walker support page on the internet for their responses to dissension or awkward questions.)



Far from being the clean-cut hero his supporters would like us to believe, Luke Walker is a junkie. We have a series of photographs of him, looking wasted in every sense of the word, taken in Birmingham's clubland in 2007.



Other pictures show the contempt the dead girl had for him in their supposed idyllic relationship.



The Facebook group Chelsea Hyndman Deserves Justice was founded upon our extreme disappointment and frustration with the one-sided media reportage of Luke Walker's arrest and incarceration following the suspicious death of his girlfriend after what appears to be a fight at their apartment in Malia.



Our position amounts to this: it is unacceptable that Luke Walker's supporters (both on Facebook and off it) are tacitly and overtly suggesting that he is somehow above the law and should be released without trial, despite damning circumstantial and forensic evidence against him. The competence and honesty of the Greek police and legal system have, predictably, been ferociously maligned by Luke Walker's family and friends in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, and eventually attacks were made on the victim herself.



We are not as moved by Luke Walker's “plight” as his lobbyists would prefer, because we want to see things a little more objectively, a little more independently.



To begin with, Heather Hyndman, Chelsea's understandably heartbroken and confused mother, has been mercilessly exploited by the Walker family. She has never been given access to Luke Walker's support page, and when a friend made some anodyne comments on her behalf there, those were swiftly deleted. She won't have found much joy on the Chelsea Hyndman appreciation page, either, because we have Luke Walker's comrades making sporadic appearances on there as well and insensitively posting videos insisting that Luke Walker be freed. Because this is all about Luke Walker being freed, no matter what. His supporters' credo is "innocent until proven innocent", and so immersed are they in their ideal, they would be more than satisfied to see the normal processes of justice completely dispensed with in this case, and Luke simply flown home while his alleged victim is forgotten about.



Luke Walker's Facebook support group was supposedly established so that “Luke and Chelsea's voices can be heard”, a mission statement that collapses before your eyes once you are on the site. It is a collection of generally bigoted, small-time and vitriolic comments aimed at slandering the victim, or any newspaper or radio programme or television news show that does not report Luke Walker in the way that they deem appropriate. This is blind loyalty at its most repugnant: if you love Chelsea, you'll want to see the prime suspect in her death freed immediately.



Heather Hyndman is a woman of relatively few and careful words, but her actions are more revealing. She joined our own Facebook group, Chelsea Hyndman Deserves Justice, seemingly as a protest, “bringing” with her “Chelsea” herself, as she now has control of her daughter's Facebook account.



Mrs Hyndman, like us, cannot understand why Luke Walker's family and other supporters insist that the couple had an idyllic relationship. There is clear and tangible evidence that it was, in contrasting fact, stormy and antagonistic, and prone to break-ups. There is public pictorial evidence of Chelsea quite bluntly chastising Luke Walker (calling him a “fucking jealous prat”) for his well-known and violent possessiveness (which has also been endorsed by the findings of Greek police).



We wonder if our own West Midlands police have done background checks to establish a psychological profile of Luke Walker. We have had information forwarded to us from people who knew him when he was circulating on the Birmingham club scene as a teenager. More than one source has told us that he assaulted previous girlfriends. One woman has told us he might even have an existing conviction for one of those assaults.



Christopher Kibby Harris of Dudley, West Midlands ought to be interviewed by the police as a witness, in our opinion. He is pictured on Facebook with Chelsea several times, and she appears to find him attractive. He was once a part of Luke and Chelsea's circle, but we believe (based upon sound sources) that for Luke he got a little too close to Chelsea for comfort.



People are continuing to join the Luke Walker support group in good faith, believing that it was founded for both the dead girl and her boyfriend, but they are being duped. People have generously donated money — well in excess of £30,000 thus far — for this supposed joint cause, but it's a fraudulent operation because the proceeds are being used exclusively to drum up positive publicity for Luke Walker. His parents appear to be economically orientated. And anyone who dares question what's going on is dismissed as a 'troll' and their account deleted by the administrators.



“Trolls” have flocked to our own site because (in their words) they joined Luke Walker's carnival after being hoodwinked into believing that if you love Chelsea, then you must support Luke's unimpeded freedom as well. They all know better now.



And what do the rest of us know? We know that Chelsea Hyndman did indeed fall over shortly before her death. We have no problem understanding that. We know that Luke Walker was blameless in respect of that incident, having left the party by the time she'd fallen (despite his gatecrashing in order to see what she was up to — the pact had been that it was a strictly no-boys hen night [Source: Sunday Mercury]). What we do have a problem with, and it's what the police have arrested Luke Walker for, is that an incident of pronounced violence occurred at the apartment afterwards, most likely in the very early hours of the following morning.



Chelsea Hyndman would have been seriously ill — either from the blows that Luke Walker denies he administered, or from the spontaneous incidence of pancreatitis which he claims really killed her — for about four days, so why was she not taken to a clinic until she was very, very close to death? Was Walker hoping that in time his “angel” would simply recover on her own?



According to the police report (which is substantiated by press photographs), cuts to Luke Walker's hands, nose and lip indicate that someone had attempted to fight him off and scratch him. He claims that he inflicted these injuries upon himself while he waited in the hospital for her. Of course, this is highly unlikely.



But here’s the crunch — and there is always a crunch, for the Walker camp reveals its devious intentions in many wretched ways. Penny Mellor — who is now a close family friend and supposedly knows the case inside out — claims that the scratches were the result of on-the-job horseplay. This is the pitiful excuse proffered by Mellor in mitigation, but note how far wide it is of Walker’s own explanation for his injuries. How many barmen or holiday reps do you know who are routinely covered in scratches and bruises, just as part of their job? Not only is Luke Walker’s defence nonsense, it is nonsense on two conflicting, unbelievably irrational counts.



We know now that Luke Walker was a wasted-looking, regular user of drugs on the Birmingham club scene before he went to Greece. Did he abruptly curb his habit, or did he replace it with alcohol? Just how in control of himself was he at any given time?



In contrast, the binge-drinking alcoholic reference made about Chelsea by an ever-opportunistic Penny Mellor isn't backed up by the facts. But Penny Mellor said it anyway, because when the subject can't answer back — cannot ever answer back — it becomes a pretty comprehensive factor in her death; the implication is that one way or another, Chelsea was responsible for her own demise, either through an all-too-predictable fall, or through the habitual destruction of her beleaguered pancreas. Shameful.



Yes, Penny Mellor is responsible for the 'Free Luke Walker' campaign — a woman with a criminal record (a two-year sentence for attempted child abduction) and a healthy hatred of anything Establishment, particularly when it comes to the Establishment's protection of the weak. Should anyone believe her when she says that Luke Walker’s fights with Chelsea centred upon his concern for her drinking? We think not, especially in light of Luke Walker’s own notorious drug and alcohol abuse.



In her typically paranoid fashion, Mellor has declared administrators and members of the Chelsea Hyndman Deserves Justice campaign to be imaginary figures concocted by a female Asian doctor with whom she has a running feud... even though the woman in question has a publicly-accessible blog in which she openly attacks Mellor. Yes... it's all become about Penny, a woman so unstable that her only recourse when faced with an opposing idea is to neutralize it by descending into ploys, victimhood and paranoia.



While we are in no way comparing Luke Walker with Raoul Moat (the latter had a string of documented crimes and convictions), the unreasoned, fervent allegiance that the two inspire is quite similar. All of the things that are known about Luke Walker and Chelsea Hyndman — facts for and against them — must be brought to the fore and then examined and considered by a judge or jury. You simply can't have someone let off because he has a lot of mates back in Brierley Hill.



"Innocent until proven innocent" goes the carnival chant. And even a local MP has not escaped its sinister influence. Margot James has joined the bandwagon, and accompanied the Luke Walker contingent when they went to present a petition to 10 Downing Street on 9th August. Untouchable, insensitive people who have to win at all costs are prepared to make a diplomatic incident out of a murder case being tried in a fellow European state.



We think that the British government should not interfere with the jurisdiction of a court in a friendly sovereign state. Similarly, the press can’t take as their sole source the word of a murder suspect’s family. Luke Walker’s father Patrick, for instance, is a case study in deception.



He has on several occasions issued what appear, on examination, to be overwrought sob stories that have kept the donations coming, despite contradictory and less dire reports of Luke’s mental and physical condition from a family friend.



But Mr Walker senior has persisted. Bev Holder, of the Stourbridge News, wrote in a 27th July article that, “Mr Walker, who runs Brierley Hill based Walker Electrics... said his son was struggling to cope in prison and the decision on whether to grant bail couldn’t come soon enough. He added: ‘Last time I spoke to him he said he didn’t know if he could cope with it much longer, but I said hang in there for all of us — but he’s not very good.’”



But from a family friend came a conflicting story that Luke “is confident that he’s getting out soon, and he’s doing push-ups and sit-ups and is fighting fit.”



Despite this and other contradictory reports from people actually in Crete (where Luke Walker is allowed to see his mother at least three times a week), Mr Walker senior reiterated his assertion on Monday 9th August during a photo call at Downing Street — where he and local MP Margot James had gone to present a petition insisting that the Greek judicial system be bypassed — that Luke was in a bad way. He then added that they needed more money from the public. This gives us the impression that for the Walkers, at least, a day trip to London is always an opportunity to bring out the begging bowl.



Also on 9th August, the Walkers paused just long enough from fundraising to complain that their petition was accepted at the door of 10 Downing Street, but that no one of any significance had come out to greet them. So far as we know, no one had granted them the promise of an audience; indeed, the country would grind to a political standstill if the Prime Minister made breaks in his schedule to talk to the families of men on remand for murder.



During two interviews with BBC RadioWM, Mr Walker senior and his other son Ryan told presenter Phil Upton that they had not had any contact with Chelsea’s family because the Hyndmans are “private” people, but Heather Hyndman's attempts to speak on their boy's support page were silenced. She had privacy inflicted on her. Furthermore, early reports in the Express and Star that Heather Hyndman would be supporting Luke with a letter have, as we have already stated, proved to be beyond optimistic — in fact, they were desperate and false.



The Express and Star stated that, "Mr Walker senior said they had been given the blessing of Miss Hyndman's mother Heather, who has told him she is certain his son played no part in her death." And yet Heather Hyndman is now a member of Chelsea Hyndman Deserves Justice, and is declaring at least a brittle neutrality. She has told us: "They asked us to write a letter, but we told them we could not as we did not have all the facts.”



But the eventual outcome of this case hinges on more than the individual opinions of Mrs Hyndman or Patrick Walker. It is unfortunate that people actually believe that Mrs Hyndman’s supposed approval of Luke (which is simply not there anyway) is an endorsement of his innocence, when in fact she is as much in the dark as the rest of us. At least she would like to see a fair trial. Luke’s supporters, of course, believe he should be spared the legal process altogether, and merely be sent back to England.



The sense that there is something fraudulent about Luke Walker's campaign is summed up perfectly on our group's page by a member called Diane Roberts. She writes: "First of all I would like to give my condolences to Chelsea’s family and friends. I’ve been following what has been happening from the beginning and feel I’ve been fooled by the Luke Walker site as I, like many others, thought Chelsea’s family supported it. After seeing many posts deleted (posts of genuine opinion that they don’t like) I find it biased and not a voice for Chelsea as it states. I really hope the truth comes out for Chelsea and her family."



Others have emailed us privately to say that had they known all the facts, they wouldn't have donated money to Luke Walker's cause. The police have doubts about him. The coroners have doubts about him. Chelsea's friends have severe doubts about him. Chelsea's family have doubts about him.



Seemingly he remains untouchable, and only one newspaper — the Stourbridge News — has broken the media-wide taboo and published anything from the victim’s family. To get an idea of how untouchable the Luke Walker campaign has become, Penny Mellor boasted recently that she had been able to get unfavourable reader comments on the Stourbridge News website deleted. This is not good for free speech, it's not good for personal ethics, and it's not good for journalism. It certainly doesn't allow Chelsea's side to be heard.



The Express and Star followed the Luke Walker carnival to London when they presented their petition, and then published in print and on the internet one of their Luke Walker ‘plight’ stories. And yet, an interview that the Express and Star conducted with Heather Hyndman — the victim’s mother — ended up close to the back of the printed version of the paper, and nowhere at all in the online version.



Most criminal cases (and civil ones, in fact) are based upon circumstantial evidence (inference from a set of linked circumstances or events) rather than direct evidence (eyewitness statements or camera footage).



Photos that we have published on our website strongly indicate that Chelsea's relationship with Luke was less than perfect (which to be fair, doesn't in and of itself make him a killer). It was known in their group that she found Christopher Kibby attractive, and her annotation in one photograph defiantly makes reference to Luke's jealousy. She frequently felt alienated from and threatened by Luke Walker.



Most criminal cases (and civil ones, actually), are based upon circumstantial evidence (inference from a set of linked circumstances or events) rather than direct evidence (eyewitness reports or clear camera footage.) Even forensic evidence is largely circumstantial (it shows us the "what" and even the "how", but not always the "who").



Courts can't deal with what might be possible — they deal with what's provable. Enough of the right sort of circumstantial evidence (either way) can make a case provable.



So far, the evidence against Luke Walker is very strong. It is highly inappropriate, then, that his family should suggest that they have a heavenly link with Chelsea, and that Chelsea wants Luke to go free. Chelsea posted pictures of herself on Facebook with another man because she was sick of Luke's possessiveness. On their own, the screengrabs mean little. Contextually, they don't help Luke's claim that their relationship was textbook stuff. As EVIDENCE, they are far more important than Luke's cloying open letter declaring his innocence, which was printed in full by one newspaper.



In fact, Luke Walker’s defence appears to be only that Chelsea and he were the perfect couple, and that Chelsea died as a result of a fall caused by binge drinking.



Penny Mellor has underscored the latter assertion. Here is a further sample of her ramblings, with her semi-literate English corrected for public consumption:



“I’m not going to stop. I’ve got Fair Trials International involved now. I’m calling in a lot of favours. I’m stopping at nothing. Luke was trying to stop her from drinking — that’s why they argued. Her mother let her go and work in Malia at 16… new relationship, new baby. Luke’s parents are shocked at what we are uncovering.



“I know what they’re like, the Greeks. And I think it’s Raid on Entebbe time.



“Let’s hope our appointment tomorrow at 10 Downing Street makes our government finally see that what the Greeks are doing to us is wrong. They should step in and get Luke out of prison and back home with family and friends. Luke has had weeks of his life taken away.”



Mellor appears to forget that the evidence suggests that Luke Walker took away all of Chelsea Hyndman’s weeks. To us, Mellor represents a sector of British society that perpetually throws responsibility at others; which rarely has the courage to pick it up and shoulder it. We are expected to believe that a heavy drinker and a drug user was trying to spare Chelsea Hyndman from a drinking habit... a drinking habit that would have been eclipsed by his own.



But how does a convicted criminal like Penny Mellor curry so much favour with local newspapers and a national broadcaster that she can get a BBC reconstruction filmed in favour of Luke Walker, and then brag about it to a girlfriend, when Heather Hyndman can’t even get an already-conducted interview to be aired on the radio? Since when does a responsible television news organisation complain about a miscarriage of justice BEFORE a trial? Will the BBC be screening a reconstruction with an alternative and more likely scenario for why Chelsea Hyndman died?



Does any reasonably-minded person — including journalists at the BBC — think it's appropriate that Luke Walker should completely bypass legal process because he's 'been through enough' (as one of his supporters claims)? Would there not be anarchy in this country if the legal system adopted that approach every time a young corpse emerged?



What if Luke Walker had been an Albanian asylum seeker whom Chelsea had met over here? Or a Greek native she'd found over there? Would there have been this same level of twisted support?



We know the answer to that.



But it doesn't matter where Luke Walker hails from. He is not a saint, and the incendiary nature of his relationship with Chelsea was notorious. We have over a dozen email depositions from people who knew them well, and who saw their extreme bickering at its poisonous worst.



As for Mellor’s “Raid on Entebbe” comments, we wonder if she is seriously comparing Greek police detaining a brutal thug on suspicion of killing his girlfriend with Palestinian terrorists hijacking 300 innocent people on an Air France plane.



On top of trying to paint a picture of ineptitude and corruption on the part of the Greek police in order to make her hollow protestations stick, Mellor has generated a separate Facebook campaign, asking people to boycott Greece until Luke Walker is freed. This is another example (albeit a fatuous one) of how she wants to subvert the default processes of European law. Imagine that — encouraging people to boycott Greece. It’s a kind of economic blackmail of an already fiscally-troubled country. What if tourists were to boycott England every time a foreigner was incarcerated here for whatever alleged misdemeanour? Would it make the accused seem less guilty… or more guilty?





We think the Walkers and their supporters have gone too far… and everyone except her family appears to have forgotten about the victim.