by Robin Odell
Keith Simpson had the dubious privilege of being involved in three of the most infamous post-war murder cases. In the early 1950s, one of the tour guides at St Paul’s Cathedral who conducted visitors around the ‘Whispering Gallery’ in the dome, regaled them with stories of London criminals. ‘’Eath, ’Aigh and Christie,’ he would say, ‘I knew ‘em all!’ It was an idle boast but it captivated his audiences. He was, of course, referring to the notorious trio, Neville Heath, John Haigh and John Christie and, although he did not brag about it, Keith Simpson did know them all in his own inimitable way.
When the chambermaid failed to obtain a response from the occupants of Room Number 4 at the Pembridge Court Hotel in Notting Hill Gate on 21 June 1946, she used a pass key to gain entry. The double room was booked in the names of Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs N.G.C. Heath. The maid saw a woman lying in bed on her back, with the sheet drawn up to her neck. She sensed that something was wrong and sent for the manager. When the sheet was pulled back, they found themselves looking at a mutilated body. The dead woman was the sole occupant of the room; there was no sign of ‘Lt-Col Heath’. The police were called and Superintendent Fred Cherrill lost no time in telephoning Dr Simpson. The pathologist examined the body and found extensive bite marks on the woman’s breasts and her ankles were bound together, effectively hiding a savage injury to her vagina. It was clear from bruises on her wrists that she had been tied hand and foot. Turning the body over, he found that she had been savagely whipped across her back, with seventeen separate lash marks evident. Simpson determined that the injuries had been inflicted while the victim was still alive. Cause of death was suffocation, possibly due to being gagged.
The dead woman was identified as thirty-two-year-old Margery Gardner and hotel staff were well acquainted with her companion, ‘Lt-Col Heath’, who had stayed at the hotel before. Conscious of the need to find the sexual sadist who had committed this savage murder, the police quickly identified their target as Neville Heath and a description of him was issued to the press. Simpson had made a close examination of the whip marks on Gardner’s body and noted the diamond-shaped pattern made on the skin. ‘If you find that whip,’ he told Superintendent Cherrill, ‘you’ve found your man’.
Neville Heath, meanwhile, had booked into the Tollard Royal Hotel at Bournemouth, using the name Group Captain Rupert Brooke. On 5 July, Doreen Marshall who had been staying at the Norfolk Hotel in the town was reported missing. When last seen, she left the hotel in a taxi heading for the Tollard Royal for dinner. Enquiries established that she might have dined with Group Captain Rupert Brooke. When asked about his companion, the Group Captain glossed over the matter by saying he had known the lady for years. Then, in an extraordinary move, he contacted the local police asking to see a photograph of the missing woman. He called in at the police station and identified a photograph of Doreen Marshall, confirming that she had dined with him a few nights before. At this point, ‘Group Captain Brooke’ was identified as Neville Heath. When he was searched, a cloakroom ticket issued at Bournemouth West railway station was found in his coat pocket. The ticket was for a suitcase which was quickly redeemed and opened. In it were a bloodstained scarf and a distinctive leather whip which bore out Dr Simpson’s earlier advice to police.
On 8 July, the body of Doreen Marshall was found in bushes at Branscombe Dene Chine about a mile from central Bournemouth. She had been brutally attacked and mutilated, with her sexual organs particularly targeted. She had died from a cut throat and the worst injuries had been inflicted after death. A local pathologist carried out the post-mortem but Simpson gained possession of the contents of Heath’s suitcase. Speaking of the injuries inflicted on Margery Gardner, the pathologist wrote later, ‘If ever I saw a murderer’s signature on his handiwork it was the imprint … of the riding whip with the diamond patterned weave.’ Justice caught up with Neville Heath and a defence plea of insanity did not save him from the scaffold. He was hanged on 16 October 1946.
By this time, Molly Lefebure had left Simpson’s employment in order to get married. He replaced her with Jean Scott-Dunn whom he would eventually marry. Sadness had earlier intruded in his life with the illness which struck down his first wife, Mary Buchanan, who died of multiple sclerosis in 1955. Personal life apart, the bodies kept on coming and, in 1949, came the Haigh murder case which was another of those ‘once in a lifetime’ episodes. Like Neville Heath, John George Haigh, a self-styled engineer, was regarded as a gentleman charmer. He lived in a Kensington hotel where the residents, mostly rich elderly widows, doted on him. On 18 February, he invited wealthy sixty-nine-year-old Olive Durand-Deacon to visit his factory in Crawley, Sussex, where he manufactured artificial fingernails for the cosmetics trade. In reality, his factory was nothing more than a storeroom and yard.
When Mrs Durand-Deacon failed to return from her trip to Sussex, alarm bells started to sound about her safety. The mention of Haigh’s name as a person with whom she had consorted, led detectives to check the criminal records at Scotland Yard. Officers discovered that Haigh had ‘previous’ with convictions for fraud and shady dealing, although there were no suggestions of violent crimes. Sussex Police decided to search Haigh’s factory premises and they made some interesting discoveries. They found a .38 revolver and ammunition, large quantities of sulphuric acid and an assortment of protective clothing. Also found was a dry-cleaner’s receipt dated 19 February, the day Mrs Durand-Deacon disappeared, for a Persian lamb coat. This created suspicion, for it was known that the missing woman was wearing such a coat when last seen. When her jewellery was reported as having been sold, detectives decided it was time to invite Mr Haigh to answer some questions.
In an extraordinary interview, Haigh volunteered the information that Mrs Durand-Deacon ‘no longer exists. She has disappeared completely and no trace of her can ever be found again’. It was a bold statement but he had reckoned without the pertinacity of Keith Simpson. Haigh admitted destroying Mrs Durand-Deacon with acid and challenged the police with the statement, ‘How can you prove murder if there is no body?’ This was the second pronouncement he had made that would come back to haunt him. Haigh completed his admissions in a lengthy statement in which he confessed to the murders of five other people whose bodies he had destroyed with acid. He claimed in each case to have drunk a glass of his victim’s blood, thereby allowing newspaper editors to include the word ‘vampire’ in their headlines.
At this point, Keith Simpson entered the investigation. With the knowledge that the murder victims had been disposed of in vats of sulphuric acid, he turned over in his mind what might be left after such a corrosive assault. On arrival at Haigh’s factory, his attention was drawn to an area in the yard where one of the acid vats had been emptied onto the ground. Among the debris on the surface, his eagle eye spotted a small faceted stone. He nonchalantly remarked to the police Inspector on hand, ‘I think that’s a gallstone.’ Part of his mental preparation for the visit to Crawley was the knowledge that a person of Mrs Durand-Deacon’s age might well have gallstones lodged in her body which, covered with fatty tissue, would survive the destructive potential of sulphuric acid.
Detailed examination of a mass of greasy sludge resulted in the discovery of several small pieces of bone of human origin and, most significantly, he found a set of acrylic dentures. These too had survived the acid test and the teeth were unquestionably identified as Mrs Durand-Deacon’s by her dentist who had fitted them for her in September 1947. Simpson had without doubt discovered what little remained of the murder victim. Haigh was committed for trial at Lewes Assizes where much of the evidence concerned his state of mind. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Dr Henry Yellowlees, a distinguished psychiatrist, had diagnosed Haigh as paranoic, but said he was fully responsible under the law. In essence, he was not insane, which was the conclusion the jury arrived at. After deliberating for just eighteen minutes, they found Haigh sane and guilty. He was executed at Wandsworth on 10 August 1949.
Writing about
the case in his book, The Mind of the Murderer, published in 1957, Dr W.L. Neustatter, a leading forensic psychiatrist, referred to Haigh as a malingerer and ‘simulator of insanity’, suggesting he was either insane, psychopathic or simply plausible, clever and wicked. Whatever his state of mind, he clearly established a place for himself in the annals of crime as the ‘Acid Bath Murderer’. But for the astute observations of Keith Simpson, Haigh’s crimes might have remained unsolved. There were also some interesting parallels with the Luton Sack Murder, notably the important part played by dental evidence, and the tell-tale significance of a dry-cleaning ticket.
By the time that the Haigh case came to trial, Spilsbury had departed the stage. The commanding influence which he had exerted for over thirty years died with him, for above all else, he was a loner. His death opened the way for a new approach to forensic medicine and ‘The Three Musketeers’ began to think about a collective approach to forensic work. To that end, in 1950 they established the Association in Forensic Medicine and Sir Sydney Smith accepted the invitation to become its first President. There was also a new emphasis on teaching, and professorships in forensic medicine were set up by London University. Keith Simpson became the first Professor of Forensic Medicine at Guy’s in 1962 and Francis Camps occupied the chair at the London Hospital Medical College in 1963. This show of unity was to prove short-lived, though, as Camps had a tendency to break ranks by appearing in court giving expert testimony in opposition to his colleagues.
The only occasion ‘The Three Musketeers’ appeared together on the same case was during the investigation of the murders at 10 Rillington Place. The exhumation of Timothy Evan’s wife and daughter in 1953 brought the trio together under the roof of Kensington Mortuary. Donald Teare had conducted the original post-mortem examinations eight years previously but the re-examination of the exhumed bodies was undertaken by Camps, acting on instructions from the Attorney-General, while Simpson represented the interests of John Christie, who was the self-confessed murderer. Christie’s trial was the third post-war headline-grabbing criminal case after Heath and Haigh. An account of the proceedings is given in Chapter Four, suffice it to say here that the meeting of the country’s three most eminent pathologists was marred by an unseemly squabble about taking tissues for laboratory tests from the exhumed corpses. Camps resented Simpson’s insistence on testing Geraldine Evans’s body for traces of carbon monoxide poisoning. Relations between Simpson and Camps had reached a turning point and their dealings became increasingly fractured after this incident. In 1958, Camps broke with the wartime triumvirate and set up his British Academy of Forensic Sciences.
A case which quickly acquired newspaper headlines was ‘The Chalkpit Murder’ and it inspired what Keith Simpson described as ‘one of the mysteries of medico-legal history’. Late in the afternoon of 30 November 1946, a man walking past an old chalk pit near Woldingham in Surrey saw a body lying in a shallow, open trench which was a relic of wartime military manoeuvres. He called the police who were soon at the scene, followed by Dr Eric Gardner, consultant pathologist at Weybridge Hospital, who examined the corpse with the aid of a torch. He noted a noose around the neck and ascertained that the man had been dead for forty-eight hours. The following morning, with the benefit of daylight, Dr Gardner, in the company of Keith Simpson, who was acting as a consultant to the Surrey Police, took a more detailed look at the body. Simpson’s immediate reaction was that it looked like an ‘… open-and-shut case of murder. The dead man’s face was plum-coloured and he had a noose around his neck.’ He observed that, despite recent heavy rain which had turned the ground into mud, the dead man’s shoes were completely clean. The clothes on the upper part of the body were bunched up, suggesting that the body might have been dragged by the feet and placed in the trench. There were indications that an attempt had been made to bury the body with loose soil and a pickaxe was found nearby.
The corpse was taken to Oxted Mortuary where Dr Gardner carried out a post-mortem examination under the observant scrutiny of Keith Simpson. Evidence of asphyxia was apparent in small petechial haemorrhages in the eyes and face. Internal examination showed congestion in all the organs. Particular attention was focussed on the neck which was encircled by a marked groove. Two pieces of rope and a piece of green cloth were fixed loosely around the neck in a half-hitch with several feet of rope to spare. As Simpson recorded later, if the rope mark had been horizontal, it would have suggested strangulation with a ligature. But the mark was most evident low on the right side and high on the left part of the neck where it came up under the ear. His conclusion was that this was a death by hanging. The experienced pathologist knew that hanging rarely meant murder; it was invariably indicative of suicide. There were no indications of a struggle having taken place which led the two doctors to agree, at that stage, the likely scenario was of a man who had hanged himself.
The circumstances in which self-suspension might have occurred raised a different set of questions. Post-mortem lividity and rigor mortis indicated that the body had entered the trench where it was found soon after death. But how did it get there? One possibility was that the man had hanged himself from a nearby tree and fallen, or slid down, into the trench where he died. The police looked in vain for marks on any trees close by which might have served as a suspension point and, of course, there was also the matter of the clean shoes to be taken into account.
The dead man had been identified as thirty-five-year-old John McBain Mudie, a hotel barman from Reigate, who had been missing for two days. A trawl through Mudie’s personal effects produced a letter requesting the return of some cheques to a property company. This opened up a complex trail of investigation, starting with the Chairman of Connaught Properties Limited, Thomas John Ley. He was interviewed by a detective on 8 December at his house in Kensington. Sixty-six-year-old Ley had emigrated to Australia as a boy where he eventually entered politics and became Minister of Justice in 1922. He returned to England in 1929 and he pursued various business interests. Ley explained the background to the letter sent to John Mudie and the detective went away satisfied that his enquiries had been adequately answered.
Following press reports that a body had been found near Woldingham, two men informed the police that, on their way home from work on 30 November, they had seen a man standing by the chalk pit. When he spotted them, he ran off towards a parked car and drove away. They remembered that ‘101’ was part of the car’s registration number. The next episode in this rapidly developing investigation occurred when an ex-boxer, John William Buckingham, came forward with information. He told the police that he operated a car for hire and had been asked to get in contact with a Mr Ley who was prepared to pay a large sum to a driver who could keep his mouth shut. Buckingham did as he was asked and Ley explained that in his role as a solicitor he was protecting two women who were being blackmailed by a man named Jack Mudie. He wanted Mudie brought to his London home so that he could deal with the matter. Also present during this discussion was Lawrence John Smith who acted as Ley’s odd-job man.
The story unfolded that, on 28 November, Mudie was delivered to Ley’s home where a blanket was put over his head and Smith tied him up. Buckingham, his part in this incident completed, departed with an envelope containing £200. He saw Smith a few days later who told him that Mr Ley was very satisfied with the way things had gone and that Mudie had been paid to leave the country. Scotland Yard officers interviewed Smith on 17 December when he made a voluntary statement admitting the part he had played in helping Buckingham to kidnap Mudie. When he was questioned, Ley simply denied everything.
By now, the police had located the car, registration number FGP 101, which Smith had hired and he was identified by the two men who had seen someone standing near the chalk pit. On 28 December, Ley, Buckingham and Smith were arrested and charged with murder. The conundrum of how precisely Mudie had met his death deepened at this point, because Keith Simpson felt there was a drift towards defining the medical evidence in a way that sup
ported a murder charge. In taking this view, he was at odds with his friend and colleague, Eric Gardner, who, in due course, would give expert testimony for the prosecution. Simpson feared that a miscarriage of justice might result if Gardner’s evidence went unchallenged. The scene was thus set for confrontation and a further development ensued when Buckingham agreed to give evidence for the prosecution against the other two defendants.
Dr Gardner’s evidence given at the magistrates’ court was confined to the serious injuries which he believed Mudie had sustained in a struggle, chief of which he believed was a blow to the head. In his later recollections, Keith Simpson mentioned that he was not called upon to present his findings at the committal proceedings, although defence lawyers were fully aware of his views. He added, drily, that after they had read his post-mortem report, ‘they audaciously invited me to change sides’. Ley and Smith, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, were committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Simpson did not normally offer his services to the defence in criminal trials but, in this instance, he was prepared to make an exception. As it turned out, he found himself on the same side as Francis Camps who had already been enrolled by the defence team.
The trial opened on 19 March 1947 before Lord Chief Justice Goddard. In his account of the trial, the editor of the Medico-Legal Journal mentioned the appearance of the two men in the dock; ‘Ley, prosperous and well-dressed, portly, square headed with a bulbous nose, looked almost as if he were presiding at a company meeting.’ By contrast, Smith was, ‘obviously a working man’ and ‘ill at ease’. While Camps did little more than describe the post-mortem effects of asphyxia, Simpson was given a hard time under cross-examination and not least by Lord Goddard. He was insistent that the rope around the victim’s neck which caused the asphyxia was drawn and lifted. In answer to prosecuting counsel, he said, that lifting ‘was the significant thing … ’.