by Alan Hirsch
On May 30, 1969, John Bunton, accompanied by his brother Kenneth, was driving south. The plan was for Kenneth to help John get a job at Granton Lions railway sweeper company, where Kenny worked in a supervisory capacity. The brothers failed to make it that far, getting pulled over by police (for reasons that remain unclear) just outside Huddersfield. A quick check revealed their vehicle to have been stolen. Because Kenneth had a few prior convictions, John, who was behind the wheel, took sole responsibility for the theft. The police accepted Kenneth’s claim of ignorance and let him go. They arrested John, took him into custody at Milgarth Street Police Station in Leeds, and charged him with theft of a motor van and operating the vehicle without insurance. While in custody, he was read his caution before being interviewed by Detective Constable Christopher Roy Forder.
Early in the interview, John Bunton said, “There are a couple of things that have been troubling me for some time. Are you going to take my fingerprints?” Forder replied that his fingerprints and photograph would be taken in due course and his fingerprints would be matched against marks found at the scenes of outstanding crimes. That prompted Bunton to reply, “I want to get something off my chest. It happened in London, but I don’t want to say any more until I’ve seen a solicitor.”
Forder did what the law required, terminating the interview and advising Bunton as to the procedure for obtaining legal counsel.
The next day, Bunton appeared at Leeds City Magistrate Court, where the magistrate denied him bail and remanded the case until June 6. On that date the case was further postponed until July 8, but Bunton was allowed out on bail and appointed legal aid assistance: Richard Vaughan, a solicitor from the Leeds firm of Fox Hayes Airedale House.
On Monday, June 9, Vaughan phoned Forder and informed him that his client wished to admit to an unrelated offense in London. Since that involved a different jurisdiction, Forder informed Detective Inspector George Chandler of West End Central.
On June 11, at 1 P.M., Chandler and Detective Sergeant Richard Bott interviewed John Bunton, in the presence of his solicitor Richard Vaughan, at the Leeds police station. Immediately after introductions were made, Vaughan declared his client responsible for the removal of the Goya from the National Gallery in 1961 and asked his client to verify as much. “Yes,” Bunton replied. Vaughan stated, “Mr. Bunton was told by me that he was letting himself in for trouble. Nevertheless, I am not sure that he has committed an offense.” Bunton was coming clean, Vaughan explained, because he “has no previous convictions and would like to clear up the old matter from London.”
Chandler proceeded to read Bunton his rights and asked if he was willing to make a statement. Bunton replied, “It’s not so simple. I took the painting from London but after that up until I handed the painting into the left luggage office in Birmingham, I did not see it.”
Chandler responded, “After the statement has been taken, I will clear up any points which have been raised by way of questions which will be recorded with the answers given by you.”
Vaughan chimed in to remind the officers that Bunton’s father had been convicted only of stealing the painting’s frame and had received a sentence of just three months. He angled for similar lenient treatment for his client, noting that “Mr. Bunton said to me that when he took the Goya he had no intention of permanently depriving anybody of it.”
Chandler ignored this remark and asked Bunton to explain what had happened, going “stage by stage,” starting with the theft in August 1961. Bunton agreed and proceeded to give a lengthy statement, taken down by Sergeant Bott. The statement was read back to Bunton, who signed it. At that point Chandler asked a series of clarifying questions, which, along with Bunton’s replies, were taken down by Bott. These too were signed by Bunton. The entire process took five hours. At 6 P.M., Chandler informed Bunton and his attorney that the matter would be referred to the DPP and that they would receive the results in due course.
Bunton’s fifteen-hundred-word statement began with his father’s unsuccessful campaign for free television for the elderly and his own determination, in early August 1961, that “if I was to remove a picture from the National Gallery this would draw attention to my father’s campaign.” He then described in detail his employment and whereabouts in and around London throughout August and how “on a number of occasions while I was in London I visited the National Gallery.” He explained exactly how he had stolen the painting, giving roughly the account set forth in the previous chapter.
After Bunton gave the statement, Chandler asked why Bunton hadn’t told the police the truth during an interview (discussed below) conducted in the aftermath of his father’s trial.
“It would have been ridiculous,” John Bunton replied. “I didn’t want to be involved in any charges.”
Chandler asked whether Bunton was certain he had been alone when he had taken the painting.
“Of course I was on my own. That’s obvious.”
Chandler asked several questions about the mechanics of the theft, which Bunton answered in convincing detail. Having established the likelihood that John Bunton had in fact taken the painting, Chandler sought to determine what had happened in the aftermath, including the possible role of accomplices. He asked about Kenneth Bunton’s role, and John said that he had never discussed the theft with his brother. Chandler asked whether, in the immediate aftermath of the theft, John had told Kempton that he wished to burn or otherwise dispose of the painting. (Chandler had in front of him the statement Pamela Smith had given police during Kempton’s trial, which included the claim that John had considered arson.)
Quite the contrary, John Bunton replied, “Extra care was taken with it and such a thing would not enter one’s head.”
He said that when he turned the painting over to his father, the latter explained that he “intended to use it as a tool in his campaign and that it should ultimately be returned to the National Gallery.” John Bunton reiterated that in March 1965 he dropped the painting off at the left luggage office in Birmingham, but he did not recall giving Bloxham as his name. As far as he could remember, he gave no name because “none was required.”
Under Chandler’s prodding, John Bunton recalled that he had testified at his father’s trial about the typewriter and “absolutely” had told the truth.
Why had he allowed his father to be prosecuted for his crime?
“He ordered us. It was his wish.”
Chandler asked Bunton if he would supply a handwriting sample, and Bunton readily assented.
It would have been easy for the police to dismiss John Bunton’s confession. The case, for several years an embarrassment to the government, had finally been brought to a resolution by the jury verdict in November 1965 and then had mercifully faded from public view. Why reopen it? The public already knew that the government had failed to recover the painting for four years. Did it now have to know that, after the painting was finally returned, the wrong man had been prosecuted and convicted? Sweeping this new development under the rug must have been sorely tempting.
To its credit, the DPP did no such thing. To the contrary, it delved deeply in an effort to corroborate or disprove John Bunton’s confession. It began by contacting the men he had listed as his employers and landlord during the summer of 1961. According to the 174-paragraph report eventually produced, it was “established beyond doubt that he was in London at that time.” The DPP noted that his account of how he had stolen the painting made sense, though it could not verify that an automobile had been stolen in the area where Bunton claimed to have seized his getaway car. The report on the investigation noted only one “major discrepancy” between Bunton’s account and the evidence in the case: “He claims to have taken the painting during the early hours of the morning . . . whereas the attendants at the Gallery discovered the painting was missing before midnight the previous day.”
Chandler’s report revealed, for the first time, an intriguing postscript to Kempton Bunton’s trial. As noted in chapter 13, the tria
l was interrupted by Pamela Smith coming forward to tell police that John Bunton, not Kempton, had stolen the painting. While it was in both the defense’s and government’s interest to ignore her contention, and thus her allegation never came to light, the police apparently took it seriously. Chandler’s report noted that, on December 2, 1965, two weeks after Kempton Bunton’s conviction, Detective Chief Superintendent Ferguson McGregor Walker and Sergeant William Johnson had interviewed John Bunton. Indeed, the DPP file following Bunton’s 1969 arrest includes that interview.a
John Bunton recalls that this interview took place at 3 A.M. in the Roughton House hostel, with the cops for some reason paying him a middle-of-the-night visit. The DPP file neither verifies nor refutes this recollection.
The first substantive question asked of John Bunton at that time was whether he had assisted his father in posting any letters. He replied: “I don’t know who has been saying these things. I don’t want to discuss this affair at all.” He wasn’t kidding. Asked for “some details about where you have been living for the past four years,” he replied, “I couldn’t remember.” He pointedly denied that he had deposited the painting in the left luggage office and also denied any knowledge of what had happened to the frame. Probably primed by Pamela Smith’s statement, the authorities asked why he had written his father from London in August 1961, saying that he was in trouble and wanted his father to come see him. John Bunton said, “I can’t remember writing such a letter.” They asked point-blank if he had taken the painting, and of course he denied doing so. The interview ended abruptly when Walker noted that there were marks on some relevant letters and asked if Bunton would supply his fingerprints so it could be determined whether he had written or posted any of them.
“No,” he said, which surely did nothing to dampen their suspicion. But they opted to let the matter lie.
Reviewing the transcript of this interview four years later, during the 1969 investigation triggered by John Bunton’s confession, Detective Inspector Chandler noted that “in view of what has since transpired it is significant that [Bunton] refused to allow the officer to take a set of his finger impressions for elimination purposes.” With Bunton now under arrest, they no longer needed his permission (which in any event he granted). They took his fingerprint impressions.
Chandler also interviewed the other relevant Buntons. In the late afternoon on June 19, he and Sergeant Bott visited Kempton Bunton in his home in Newcastle upon Tyne. Now sixty-five, Bunton was unemployed and living on his old age pension, supplemented by national assistance. Chandler told Bunton what he already knew: His son John had given a statement claiming that he, not Kempton, had taken the painting. Chandler showed the statement to Bunton, who simultaneously declined to read it and corroborated it. “It’s a long statement, too long to read,” he said. “One question I can answer. Did he steal it? He did take it.”
“Were you with him when he took it?” Chandler asked.
“I can say no more than he took it. I know I am liable for a false trial.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Telling lies in Court. I never took the painting, it was John.”
At this point Chandler saw fit to give Bunton the legal caution. Bunton found himself in a bind—wanting to acknowledge that John had taken the painting but wishing to avoid conceding that he had perjured himself in claiming his own guilt on the witness stand. He tried to thread the needle, telling Chandler, “The only question is that John has admitted something that is quite true. Where do you go from here? Is there any purpose of going further?”
“That is a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Will you tell me why you said you took the painting?”
“John is a young chap and I didn’t want to see him in trouble.”
“Did you send a telegram to John when he was living in Grafton Way, London, in 1961?”
“I don’t know, I can’t remember.”
“Did he meet you at Kings Cross Station?”
“That’s all been said. I was not anywhere near when he took the painting.”
At this point Bunton saw the wisdom of actually reading his son’s statement and asked for “a carbon copy. . . so I can read it at leisure.”
Chandler replied, “No, there’s plenty of time for you to read it now,” and handed Bunton a copy. Kempton read through it and said, “That seems pretty right.”
“You mean that what your son has said coincides with what actually happened?”
“Yes.”
“Do you wish to make a written statement?”
“No. Definitely not.”
Chandler informed Bunton that the findings from the investigation would be turned over to the DPP and he would soon learn his fate.
“I’m not worried about myself,” Kempton Bunton replied. “I’m an old man now, but John is a young man. Surely he needn’t be charged.”
“That is not a question I can answer,” Chandler said, and the twenty-five -minute interview came to an end.
Several days later, joined by a different officer, Detective Constable Eric Price, Chandler interviewed Kempton’s son Kenneth. A little after 2 P.M., on June 24, they summoned Kenneth to Oldham Police Station. Upon arrival, he said, “I’ve heard of you from John, you saw him in Leeds, didn’t you? But why do you want to see me?”
Chandler ignored the question, asking Bunton to verify that he had lived “with a woman called Pamela Smith” from 1963 until 1965, and he received a surprising reply.
“Yes. I’m still living with her now.”
“I understood that she left you and went back to live with her husband in November, 1965,” Chandler said.
“Yes, for three days. She has been with me ever since.”
If Kenneth is to be believed (and he had no motive for dissembling on this point), Pamela Smith’s decision to come forward during Kempton’s trial was triggered by a short-term crisis in her relationship with Kenneth. Chandler turned the interview with Kenneth away from Pamela Smith and toward the question of ultimate fact.
“Your brother John has admitted to me that he took the Goya painting from the National Gallery in August, 1961. Do you think he is telling the truth?”
“I’m certain he is,” Kenneth said.
“Why are you sure?”
“Well, back in 1961, my father used £70 belonging to me to go down to London to help John, who he said was in some sort of trouble. When he came back he told me that John had stolen the painting from the National Gallery.”
“Would you like to make a written statement regarding this matter?”
“No. I am putting nothing in writing.”
“Has John ever told you himself that it was he who took the painting?”
“Yes, but only since he was arrested in Leeds.”
“Did you assist your father in packing the painting when he brought it back to Newcastle?”
“No. I never saw the painting and never had anything to do with it.”
“Wasn’t there an agreement between you and your father for yourself to get a quarter of any reward for the recovery of the painting?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you come to the police when your father gave himself up in 1965 and tell the true story?”
Kenneth gave essentially the same answer his brother John had given two weeks earlier (bolstering their credibility, unless they had coordinated their stories): “The old man wanted it that way. If any of us had gone against him he would never have had anything to do with us again.”
Thus concluded the forty-minute interview.
In his statement, John Bunton claimed to have written the May 20, 1965, letter to the Daily Mirror, which included with it the ticket to the luggage office where the painting could be retrieved. Ronald Mitchell, director of the forensic science laboratory in Cardiff, then compared Bunton’s handwriting sample to the writing in the letter and on the envelope. In a letter dated July 8,1969, Mitchell acknowledged similarities but also differences between
John Bunton’s sample and the original items. He could neither implicate nor exonerate Bunton.
The authorities left no stone unturned in their effort to verify John Bunton’s confession. For example, John claimed to have received from his father a telegram in August 1961, after he notified his father of the theft. The authorities attempted to trace the telegram but discovered that records of telegrams are kept for only nine months. The eight-year gap between the theft and John Bunton’s confession hindered the investigation, but some of the relevant events had taken place in 1965 and were more easily corroborated. For example, the investigation confirmed that John Bunton had been employed as a radial arm driller and living in Birmingham from May 1965 until August 6, 1965, leading Chandler to find it “more than likely true” that he had posted the letter to the editor to the Daily Mirror (postmarked Birmingham) that led to the painting’s recovery in the left luggage office in Birmingham. Bunton also appeared to be truthful in claiming to be the man who returned the painting, since he had worked in Birmingham at the time and the description given by the luggage room attendant who received the painting “undoubtedly fits John Bunton.”
In July Chandler issued a lengthy report detailing the full narrative of the theft given by Bunton, as well as the results of the exhaustive investigation to determine its accuracy. Toward the end of the report he wrote that “in view of the somewhat complicated nature of this admission, i.e., John Bunton’s father already having served a sentence of imprisonment for stealing the frame of the painting,” he had arranged with the head of the DPP, Sir Norman Skelhorn, to discuss the new developments and how best to proceed.
Chandler’s report acknowledges the absence of definitive proof corroborating John Bunton’s confession, but it clearly comes down on the side of regarding the confession as true. The reasoning seems sound. Kempton and John Bunton had given similar accounts of how each had taken the painting. Presumably, the false confessor had adopted the details given to him by the true confessor. Paragraph 168 of the report states, “If the painting was in fact stolen in the manner described by both Kempton and John Bunton, I am more inclined to accept the admission of the latter as the correct one.” The reason is straightforward—the very reason Kempton’s claim to have taken the painting was initially greeted with skepticism by the police and later Judge Aarvold. As Chandler’s report observes, the heavyset, fifty-seven-year-old Kempton Bunton would have been hard-pressed to pull off the theft, whereas his son “was only 20 years of age, is still of good physique and would have been quite capable of taking the painting in the manner in which he describes.”