by Alan Hirsch
Inspector John Weisner was no stranger to the voluntary false confession. He informed the man who claimed to have stolen Goya’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington that “numerous people come here and confess to crimes they have not committed. If you can satisfy me that you have committed the offense, then you may be charged.”
It wasn’t just his personal experience in sleuthing that contributed to Weisner’s skepticism: The man in front of him seemed too old and too large to have stolen the Goya.
“Why have you waited all this time before coming forward?” Weisner asked him.
The man answered the question with a question, one he had already asked Weisner’s underling. “Is there still a reward for the person giving information about this?”
When Weisner, like Andrews, responded that he did not know, the man let down his guard a bit. “I have let something drop and I believe someone may turn me in to get the reward. If the reward still stands, I want to give myself up to stop them getting the reward. If there is no reward, then we can forget it, as the job is dead as a dodo. You make up your mind. Are you going to charge me or not?”
Weisner ignored the question and responded shrewdly. “Tell me about the parcel. How was it made up and what was used?”
The man described his use of India rubber, hardboard, and rope, and Weisner probed. The man had all the answers. When Weisner said, “Tell me more about the parcel,” the man did not hesitate: “I wrapped it in brown paper and then cello-taped it. . . . It was all put in a wooden case, home made, made of plywood.”
His knowledge was impressive, but something about the man’s manner inspired skepticism.
“You have not convinced me you stole the painting,” Weisner said. “If what you have told me about the parcel is correct, then you may have been present when the parcel was packed but that does not prove you stole the painting. Can you tell me how you took it?”
“I am not saying anything more. You have got enough there. If you tell me I am going to be charged, I’ll tell you then.”
The man did not realize that his eagerness to be charged was having the opposite of its intended effect.
Responding that he had to “make more inquiries,” Weisner temporarily excused himself, phoned West End Central Police Station, and summoned Sergeant William Johnson. In Weisner’s absence, and prior to Johnson’s arrival, Detective Andrews resumed the questioning.
“Where did you prepare the parcel?”
“In London and then I took it to Birmingham and handed it to teddy boy who took it to the left luggage office.”
Andrews remarked that the painting was obviously delicate, so “how have you kept it all these years?”
“You would never have found it in a hundred years. I put it in the back of my wardrobe and boarded it up.”
“Whereabouts do you live?”
“Newcastle.”
“Tell me your address.”
“Not likely. Are you going to charge me?”
Andrews ignored the question and asked how the man had entered the gallery.
“It was ten to six in the morning and was a stroke of luck. The guards must have been playing cards.”
“How did you get in?”
“By a ladder that had been left by some builders.”
“You still have not explained fully how you took the painting and how you got into the Gallery.”
The man’s answer, while nonresponsive, was important. He explained why he had taken the painting.
“Well, I don’t know whether you know but I have been fined three times for not paying my television license. The time I took the painting I was incensed that the government would not allow free television licenses to pensioners. That’s why I took the painting.”
Andrews found this answer too bizarre to take seriously. He determined that, as he would put it at a deposition some months later, “further questioning was not going to produce a great deal of information.” He and the man sat in silence until a few minutes later, when Weisner returned, now accompanied by Sergeant Johnson.
Johnson resumed the questioning, which primarily covered the same ground, particularly details about the packaging of the parcel in which the painting had been returned. The man repeated the answers he had already given Johnson’s colleagues, but Johnson said, “You have missed out one of the wrappings, what is it?”
“Oh yes,” the man replied. “It was wrapped in a pink plastic coat cover.”
Johnson asked whether the man used any metal in the packaging process.
“Yes, six screws to hold the lid down.”
Johnson asked, “Would you like to tell me why you surrendered?”
“I didn’t want someone to turn me in for the reward. Someone knows I did it.”
Then the man let on that, notwithstanding their reluctance to charge him, he had already been working on his defense. “It will get thrown [out] you know. The Times legal expert says that when there is no criminal intent there can be no conviction. My defense can demand an acquittal and get it. It’s all in my statement.” The man removed from a brown cardboard folder a typed but unsigned statement that read as follows:
I wrote all the Com letters, plus extras to the Mirror.
London is but 4.5 hours from Newcastle by train, and I have done it more than once without question.
The Com letters were posted generally by Lorry trips.
The case is as dead as a dodo with the exception that there is a price on my head.
I am turning myself in because—
(1) My secret has leaked—I wouldn’t like a certain gentleman to benefit financially by speaking to the law.
(2) I am sick and tired of this whole affair.
(3) By surrendering in London I avoid the stigma of being brought here in “chains.”
My only aid in this affair was a long haired teddy boy lolling in Birmingham station. Would he put a parcel in left luggage for me? Would he be careful as it was glass? I don’t know whether he gave me a name or not, it isn’t usual, but somewhere, somehow, somebody conjured up the name of Bloxham—the boy just gave me the ticket—I wouldn’t know him again.
Why hasn’t he come forward?—either he can’t read, or doesn’t or perhaps he doesn’t wish to get mixed up.
I do not surrender with head down—I am ashamed of nothing—I ask no quarter, but demand my rights.
This generous country of mine grants bail to molesters of little children—so I want bail—furthermore, as without criminal intent there can be no crime—I reason I am only held on a technical charge, which any thinking judge will throw out.
The average man goes for wife and family—I am somehow different and trouble ensues.
My effort has been honest to goodness skullduggery—but evil—no.
On a separate paper, I have given intimate details of the Goya parcel and what it contained.
This is all I am prepared to say before seeing a solicitor—and now I ask you to charge me—or let me go.
Notwithstanding this detailed confession, the police still declined to charge the man. But nor did they let him go. At roughly 9:15 P.M., Detective Superintendent Ferguson McGregor Walker (also from West End Central Police) arrived, was briefed by Weisner and Johnson, and asked the man, “Who are you and where do you live?”
When the man replied, “I haven’t said,” the officers determined that Walker and Johnson would take him to their home base, the West End Station, for further questioning. He provided impressive details that indicated his involvement in the crime, but something still seemed off. He was disturbingly eager to be charged and resisted providing basic answers like his name and residence unless he was charged. What kind of game was he playing?
At West End, at roughly 9:45, the probe resumed. When Walker asked, “Are you going to tell me who you are?” the recalcitrant confessor made a most curious reply: “I don’t see that’s got anything to do with it.”
They asked him to empty his pockets. When the man complied, Johnson spotted
his driver’s license, which gave them the information they had heretofore unsuccessfully sought. Name: Kempton Bunton; place of residence: Newcastle. Johnson read the information aloud, and the man conceded, “Yes, that’s me.”
Walker asked Bunton, “Do you want to make a statement so that I can have more detail regarding you confirming that you took this painting?”
Bunton replied, “No, I have made my statement.”
“I’d like to ask you questions so that I can determine whether or not you are telling the truth.”
“Please yourself.”
Walker pointed to Bunton’s typed statement. “I understand you have produced this statement. Is it yours and is it true?”
“I am not contradicting it.”
“Will you sign it?”
Bunton agreed and signed the statement.
“Do you want me to inform anyone that you are here?”
“No. I don’t know anyone who would be interested.”
“You say you wrote all the Com letters including one to the Editor of the Daily Mirror which led to the recovery of the painting?”
“Yes.”
“I would like you to print two examples at the dictation of Sergeant Ion.”
John Ion, an officer who had just entered the room, dictated two of the thief’s ransom notes, and Bunton handwrote them in print form.
Walker briefly questioned Bunton before finally crossing a major threshold: “Having read your statement and considering what you have told me and printed for me I have reasonable grounds for suspecting you of stealing the portrait and I must caution you.”a
The “caution,” the British equivalent of the US Miranda warning (the latter becoming officially required in 1966), is as follows: “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may he given in evidence”
No doubt buoyed by this step in the right direction, Bunton replied, “Carry on. You will make a big blunder if you don’t charge me.”
“When did you steal the portrait?”
“1961, 21st of August.”
“What day of the week was it?”
“Monday, Monday.”
“What time?”
“5:30 or thereabouts.”
“Was it dark at the time?”
“A bit.”
“As far as I know, it wasn’t dark at the time. Are you telling me the truth?”
“It’s a long time ago. I’m fairly sure.”
“Where did you take it from?”
“Opposite the main door entrance.”
“How did you get in?”
“They were building at the back and I took a ladder when the guards were having a cup of tea or were asleep.”
“How did you get round the back?”
“That was easy.”
“But how?”
“I went through the open toilet window and along a passage and took it.”
“Did you go up any stairs?”
“Only steps up to it.”
“How did you get out?”
“The same way. Through the toilet and over a wall.”
“How were you dressed?”
“I can’t remember. Sometimes I wear a cap.”
“Were you by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go into the gallery for this particular painting?”
“I was not after this painting, no more than any other.”
“Why did you steal it?”
“To ransom it. I thought there would be an immediate collection for it.”
“When you left the gallery, how did you carry it and where did you go?”
“I went to the embankment with it under my arm. I destroyed the frame.”
“Why?”
“It was too big. I broke it up and threw it in the river.”
After several more questions and answers about the packaging of the parcel prior to its return, Walker asked, “Where has the portrait been all this time?”
“It was in the top cupboard in my bedroom at home.”
Thus concluded the interview. Notes in the files of Bunton’s lawyers indicate that the interrogation lasted between two and half and four hours. (Bunton sustained himself during this ordeal with several cups of tea.) The very fact that the lawyers made this observation suggests that they thought their client may have been fatigued.b The defense lawyers made several comments in the margins of the transcripts of Bunton’s interrogation, the most intriguing coming in connection with Bunton’s statement that he “was not after this painting, no more than any other.” One of his lawyers scribbled tersely: “This may prove troublesome.”
Length of interrogation is indeed relevant to the reliability of statements to police, though knowledge of the appropriate contours remains murky. Few interrogations exceed two hours, and some interrogation manuals caution against going beyond four. In the most thorough study of proven-false confessions (published in North Carolina Law Review in 2004), in 84 percent of them, the interrogation lasted longer than six hours. However, the paradigm for all this is the coerced false confession. Kempton Bunton came in and confessed voluntarily.
Surely the statement was troublesome, but in a way that ought to have been favorable to Bunton if his lawyers planned to attack the confession. The ransom notes left little doubt that the theft was triggered by the government’s expenditure of a vast sum to keep Goya’s Portrait of the Duke in England. Bunton’s statement that he “was not after this painting, no more than any other” seemed at odds with the ransom notes that he claimed to have authored. Something did not add up.
But Bunton’s lawyers did not wish to attack the confession, because their client told them it was true and he did not wish to retract it. The remark that he was not after the Goya in particular was troublesome to the defense because it called into question Bunton’s motive. The defense case would rest on the notion that Bunton, peeved by the government’s expenditure of substantial money to keep the Goya, stole it solely for the purpose of extracting ransom money for charity—not to deprive the gallery of it permanently. But if he was not in fact after the Goya (“no more than any other”), that story fell by the wayside.
In any event, at the conclusion of his long interrogation, Bunton was placed in a detention cell for the night. There, according to his memoirs, a little extra drama ensued. Although he acknowledges courteous treatment most of the night, at one point he was asked to surrender his spectacles. He protested against “the Gestapo like” gesture but eventually complied—after he “resolved on the spot to fight the issue when opportunity arose.”
In the meantime, though, he had a bigger fight on his hands. Johnson and Walker rejoined Bunton the next day, July 20, at roughly 1 P.M. Walker said he would “like to continue where we left off” and again read Bunton his rights—the so-called caution. This time, Bunton invoked his right to remain silent. In the course of doing so he made a somewhat opaque remark.
“I am saying no more. I’m finished with everything. I’m not contradicting it. I shall fight this case on the goodness of it.”
He was returned to his cell and formally charged with larceny. He remained silent while the charge was read to him. Bunton was then taken for fingerprinting and returned to his cell.
The next day he was brought before a magistrate at Bow Street Court, where he appealed to be let out on bail pending trial and to be provided the legal assistance due the indigent. The government did not oppose bail, and after a brief hearing Bunton was remanded on his own recognizance and a surety of £250. The magistrate promised a speedy decision on Bunton’s application for legal aid, which was soon thereafter granted. The newly freed man found inexpensive lodging in Camden, where for some reason he gave his name as Mr. Clegg.
Bunton’s court-appointed attorney was an inexperienced thirty-year-old solo practitioner, Hugh Courts, who fortuitously was an arts devotee and thus particularly interested in the
case. Recognizing that the trial would be somewhat involved, not to mention high profile, Courts looked for assistance from his squash partner and friend Eric Crowther. Crowther, a rising forty-one-year-old barrister who would become a magistrate three years later, was in turn assisted by a pair of law students. One of them, a young man from Tanzania named Surendra Popat, made several trips to the Colindale newspaper library in search of everything ever written about the Goya theft. Hugh Courts found this digging so valuable that he applied for and received money for Popat from the legal aid fund. All told, Team Bunton, while young, enjoyed vastly more resources than the typical court-appointed attorney.
On August 11, Bunton and his legal team came before Bow Street Magistrates’ Court for the initial proceeding, where the prosecution declared itself unprepared to proceed and was granted a continuance of six days. On August 17, both sides again appeared before the magistrate, Geraint Rees, and this time several issues were addressed. Taking the lead for the defense, Crowther noted that police had received numerous letters over the years from people purporting to have the painting, and he expressed concern about the admissibility of these letters at trial, since they would prejudice his client. The lead prosecuting attorney, Michael Evelyn, responded that he wished to introduce into evidence eight letters he believed were written by Bunton. Rees ruled, sensibly, that the letters would be inadmissible unless the prosecution could establish a reasonable basis for believing that they had emanated from Bunton. As it happens, the question of which letters Bunton wrote would become a focal point of the trial.
The defense sought dismissal of all charges (a standard move at this stage, and almost always futile); Magistrate Rees rejected this motion as expected. With respect to the most tenuous charge, that of “uttering a menace” in a May 20, 1963, letter to Lord Robbins, prosecutor Evelyn cited a 1937 case that defined menace as “any action detrimental to or unpleasant to the person addressed.” According to Evelyn, the May 20 letter, which demanded £5,000 for The Duke’s return, implicitly threatened not to return it otherwise—a development unpleasant and detrimental to Robbins, chairman of the gallery trustees. The magistrate provisionally accepted the argument. Determining that there was sufficient evidence for the case to go forward on all charges, he remanded the case for trial to Central Criminal Court. Rees did make one ruling favorable to the defense, allowing Bunton to remain out on bail pending the trial.