Appeal by man jailed for killing ex-partner thrown out

A man who was jailed for murdering his ex-partner has failed in his bid to challenge his conviction.

Darren Osment was given a minimum of 20 years in prison in 2023 for killing 32-year-old Claire Holland, whose body was never recovered. The mother-of-four was last seen leaving a pub in Bristol on the evening of 6 June 2012.

The former chef admitted to killing Holland on multiple occasions, including to an undercover police officer, but later retracted his confessions.

Three judges at the Court of Appeal in London dismissed the attempt to challenge Osment's conviction earlier and rejected a bid to include fresh evidence.

The undercover investigation by Avon and Somerset Police, between December 2020 and July 2022, saw an officer pose as someone involved in the criminal underworld with links to organised crime.

His conversations with Osment were covertly recorded, amounting to more than 1,200 hours of footage – including repeated confessions relating to Holland.

In one piece of audio, he said: "She ain't going to be seeing the light of day again, don't worry about that."

Ray Tully KC, for Osment, said at a hearing in July that another man who was at the same pub as Holland on the night she went missing and who had bought her a drink had raped someone else a few months later.

He said the victim of that rape had been threatened and thought she would be killed, and that this should have been revealed to the jury in Osment's trial.

But Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mr Justice Bennathan and Judge Andrew Lees, said in a judgment earlier that this evidence "would simply reinforce" the "obvious truth" that women alone at night after drinking are vulnerable.

He ruled that this evidence was inadmissible because it was not relevant to the main issue of the case.

Edis said that during Osment's trial at Bristol Crown Court in 2023 the jury had decided that his confessions and other evidence made them sure of his guilt and required them to rule out other possibilities.

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