by James Moore
The Crown pub in Kingsclere, Hampshire, was the scene of a wartime shoot out. (© James Moore)
There is no doubt that in an era still tainted by casual racism, the treatment of black soldiers by MPs was not always respectful. Interestingly none of the accused had previous offences on their army records. Yet during their court martial some of the men seemed not to appreciate the gravity of what they had done – taking the lives of two of their fellow soldiers, who were, as it happened, also black, but the innocent Rose Napper too. By 7 p.m., on the first day of proceedings, two of the defendants displayed their contempt by sleeping in the dock. The men had pleaded not guilty but the evidence presented seemed damning and only one of those being prosecuted, Willie Crawford, took the stand to defend himself. He maintained that he had only joined the group later in the evening and had not actually taken part in the shooting. However, the next morning he and eight of his fellow defendants were found guilty of being absent without leave, riotous assembly and murder. Hearing the verdicts, the reality of the situation seemed to sink in for two of the men, Fleming and Lockett, who put their heads in their hands and began to sob. They were all given a dishonourable discharge from the army and ordered to serve life sentences with hard labour. One of the men, Lawton, was only found guilty of being absent without leave but later retried and given the same sentence as the others.
The GIs were quickly shipped off to serve time in American jails. Some reports written in the decades since the episode claim the affair was hushed up to preserve Anglo-American relations. In fact, what was remarkable is that the case was reported in some detail in several local and national newspapers. Indeed, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had just masterminded D-Day, was so appalled by what had happened that he sent a personal message of sorrow and regret to the people of Kingsclere.
LOCATIONS: The Crown, Newbury Road, Kingsclere, Newbury, Berkshire, RG20 5QU; The Swan Hotel, Swan Street, Kingsclere, Berkshire, RG20 5PP, 01635 298 314, www.swankingsclere.co.uk
THE DASHING PILOT TURNED PSYCHO KILLER, 1946
Strand Palace Hotel, London; The Norfolk Hotel, Bournemouth; Nag’s Head, Belgravia, West London
As he went to the gallows, double murderer Neville Heath was offered a last tot of whisky by the governor of Pentonville Prison in London. He quipped back, ‘Make that a double.’ Heath downed the drink and was then hanged by the famous Albert Pierrepoint in just seven seconds. The manner of Heath’s death at 9 a.m. on 16 October 1946 was typical of a man whose disarming charm had beguiled women and lured two of them to their deaths. It was also resonant of the nonchalance he had displayed once finally caught for crimes that were startlingly cruel.
The Strand Palace Hotel where murderer Neville Heath assaulted a woman in February 1946. (© James Moore)
Heath, born in 1917, was a dashing former RAF pilot. But he was also the ultimate cad, with a failed marriage behind him and a less than illustrious military career in which he had been guilty of fraud, gone absent without leave and spent time in the South African Air Force before returning to England at the end of the Second World War. It was in early 1946 that he had embarked on a campaign of sexual assault and murder.
The story of Heath’s descent into depravity begins at the Strand Palace Hotel located at the heart of London’s ‘Theatreland’. Built in 1907, the Strand Palace built a reputation for high jinks throughout the 1920s and soon exuded glamour with its stunning art deco decor and glittering entrance. During the Second World War the Strand Palace stayed open amid the air raids and was a famous haunt for wild socialising even as the bombs fell.
In the early morning of 23 February 1946, sounds of a struggle in room 506 of the Strand Palace were reported to the head porter, who went to listen at the door. He heard a woman screaming for help. The room had been booked by a man calling himself Captain James Robert Cadogan Armstrong. He returned with the assistant manager and the pair opened the door. Inside they saw a naked woman lying on the bed. Her hands were tied behind her back and a naked man was standing over her. He demanded to know what the staff meant by storming into his room, while the woman, Pauline Brees, cried, ‘Thank God you came in.’ The assistant manager asked the woman if he should call the police. But, deciding that she didn’t want any fuss, she got dressed and left. Armstrong swiftly checked out of the hotel.
It would turn out that Pauline had a lucky escape that night. She’d met Armstrong, who was really Neville Heath, a week before, and on the night of the assault the pair had visited several pubs in the capital before going to the Strand Palace for a nightcap. The incident was quickly forgotten at the hotel. But had the matter been brought to the attention of the police at the time, Heath might not have been emboldened to carry out more attacks on women.
In June of 1946, Heath moved into the Pembridge Court Hotel off Notting Hill Gate in West London, this time under his real name though posing as a Lieutenant Colonel. Heath was apparently never short of a date and had met an attractive 32-year-old artist called Margery Gardner whilst drinking in the Nag’s Head, a pub in Kinnerton Street in upmarket Belgravia. Interestingly the pub was also frequented by the serial killer John Christie. Then on 20 June, Heath, now calling himself ‘Jimmy’, went for dinner with Margery. The couple returned to his hotel together at midnight.
The next morning Margery’s body was discovered in Heath’s room. Her face had been savagely whipped and her nipples had been violently bitten. Margery’s wrists and ankles had been tied and she had been suffocated. Neither Heath, nor the riding crop which was judged by a pathologist to have inflicted many of Margery’s injuries, were anywhere to be seen.
Three days later Heath was in Bournemouth, Dorset, where he had booked into the luxurious Tollard Royal Hotel, this time calling himself Group Captain Rupert Robert Brook.
The Nag’s Head, Belgravia, West London, was one of Heath’s haunts. (© James Moore)
The police chose not to publish Heath’s photograph and so he remained unrecognised on the south coast. And during his stay at the Tollard Heath he maintained his insouciant manner. He told one waiter, ‘I haven’t got a bean on me today … put it down, old chap, on my crime sheet.’
On 3 July Heath met Doreen Marshall, a 21-year-old former Wren from Pinner, on the promenade. She was staying at the Norfolk Hotel whilst she recovered from a bout of measles. They went for tea. Heath then invited Doreen to share dinner with him at the Tollard. That evening the couple feasted on duck and enjoyed a magnum of champagne. At around 11.30 p.m. Doreen said she would get a taxi back to her hotel. But Heath insisted he would walk her back to the Norfolk. Two days later, staff there reported her missing.
When police investigated they found witnesses who recalled her dining with Heath at the Tollard. Knowing he would be the prime suspect, Heath did not flee as might be expected but instead brazenly presented himself to police officers on 6 July. He admitted that he had walked Doreen half way back to the Norfolk but that she had gone the rest of the distance herself. He didn’t get away with the argument. While his picture had not been released publicly it had been made available to police stations, and one officer noticed the resemblance between Heath and the man calling himself Brook. Heath had done little to cover his tracks. Looking in his jacket, police found a ticket for a locker at the local station. Inside they found a suitcase – and a leather riding crop, stained with blood.
Neville Heath, a debonair former pilot who killed two young women. (© Getty Images)
A few days later, Doreen’s naked body was discovered in Branksome Dene Chine, a wooded ravine near the beach. She was naked and had been beaten over the head. Doreen also appeared to have been tied up. Her throat had been cut, her nipples bitten off and, as with Margery, her genitalia had been mutilated. Heath had also stolen her watch and a ring to pawn.
The murderer seemed to care little what happened to him after he was arrested and initially planned to plead guilty at his trial. But in the end he told his barrister, ‘All right, put me down as “not guilty”, old
boy.’ At his trial, held at the Old Bailey that September, doctors testified that though Heath was a psychopath he was not insane. He was found guilty in less than an hour and sentenced to death. In one of his final letters, Heath wrote, ‘I don’t know what time they open where I’m going, but I hope the beer is better than it is here.’
LOCATIONS: The Strand Palace Hotel, No. 372, Strand, London WC2R 0JJ, 020 7379 4737; The Nag’s Head, No. 53 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, Westminster, London, SW1X 8ED, 020 7235 1135; The Norfolk Hotel, Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 6EN, 01202 551 521; The Pembridge Court Hotel is now a private residence; The Tollard Royal in Bournemouth has been converted into apartments.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ACID BATH MURDERER, 1944–49
The Goat, Kensington, London; The Kensington Hotel, South Kensington, London; The George Hotel, Crawley, Sussex; The Metropole Hotel, Brighton
When he began his killing spree, the arrogant and cunning John George Haigh was already a convicted criminal. Haigh had been locked up for fraud, but while he was in prison he began to believe that he could get away with murder. After experimenting on mice in the prison workshop he had come to believe that he could destroy a body almost entirely with acid – and also that if he destroyed the evidence of murder in this way, he would avoid the noose.
Haigh was born in 1909 the son of an engineer and had a conservative Christian upbringing in Yorkshire. Rebelling against his strict moral upbringing he was soon up to no good, ending up in jail three times for dishonesty including setting himself up as a bogus solicitor. By 1943 he had been released, and in the summer of 1944 he turned to more serious crime, setting out to prove his murder hypothesis.
His opportunity came when he bumped into an old employer, William Donald McSwann, 34, who owned a string of amusement arcades. Haigh had once worked as McSwann’s chauffer. The pair had renewed their acquaintance in The Goat pub in Kensington High Street, a cosy hostelry with history dating back some 300 years. On 9 September the pair met up in The Goat again at about 6 p.m. They had a couple of glasses of wine together and a pub meal. Dapper Haigh no doubt used his considerable charm to lure McSwann back to No. 79 Gloucester Road nearby, where he had a workshop.
Haigh smashed in McSwann’s skull with a pinball table leg, then drank his blood before putting his body in a 40gal barrel full of sulphuric acid. Within a few days most of McSwann’s body had dissolved and Haigh poured the rest down a drain. Haigh told McSwann’s parents, Donald and Amy, that their son had disappeared in order to avoid call-up for military service. They fell for this deception along with letters that Haigh faked in McSwann’s handwriting asking them to forward cash through him. But Haigh was even more ambitious. On 2 July 1945 he invited the couple to his Gloucester Road workshop and killed them, disposing of them in the same way and drinking their blood too. Using forged documents, Haigh then managed to get his hands on the couple’s property, amassing £8,000.
Callous Haigh’s main motivation for the murders appears not to have been a vampiric desire to drink their blood but financial, and by 1948 he was in need of more cash to feed a gambling habit. By this time he was living at The Onslow Court Hotel, now renamed The Kensington Hotel, but he also kept a workshop in Crawley, Sussex.
He had got friendly with a couple called Archibald and Rosalie Henderson, and in February that year Haigh drove Henderson from the Metropole Hotel in Brighton, where they were staying, to the workshop where he then shot him in the head. The same day he returned to take Rosalie to the same workshop, saying that her husband had fallen ill. After shooting her too, he plunged their bodies into oil drums full of acid. Then he went back to the Metropole where he paid their bill and flogged their possessions. Haigh attempted to cover his tracks by writing letters to relatives claiming that the Hendersons had gone to South Africa.
By 1949 Haigh was on the lookout for another victim. But by now he was getting cocky. And the murder of his next target, a fellow guest at the Onslow Court Hotel, would prove his undoing. Claiming to be an inventor he befriended Olive Durand-Deacon, 69, and invited her to see his workshop so that the pair could explore her idea of manufacturing artificial fingernails. On 18 February 1949 they travelled to Crawley where they were spotted calling at The George Hotel – now the Ramada Crawley Gatwick – before driving off. Once at his workshop, Haigh shot Durand-Deacon and stripped her of valuables before putting her body in another acid bath. At 9.30 p.m. he went back to The George Hotel where he had dinner before driving back to the Onslow Court. At his trial a witness also revealed that Haigh had been spotted in The George earlier that day with a woman matching Durand-Deacon’s description.
The Goat, Kensington, West London, where John George Haigh dined with one of his victims. (© James Moore)
Two days later a friend at the hotel insisted on going to the police to report Durand-Deacon missing and Haigh went with her. He told them how he had arranged to meet Olive to take her to his workshop but that she hadn’t turned up for the appointment. Suspicious, officers looked into Haigh’s criminal history. They went to his workshop and found his gun as well as a dry cleaner’s receipt for Mrs Durand-Deacon’s coat. It also emerged that he had tried to pawn some of her jewellery locally. And it turned out that Haigh’s acid baths had not entirely destroyed every scrap of evidence as efficiently as he would have wished. In the sludge at his workshop, a pathologist found human gallstones, Durand-Deacon’s dentures, part of a foot and other bone fragments.
Quizzed by detectives, Haigh admitted to killing six people and boasted, probably falsely, that he had killed another three. But he taunted police, saying, ‘How can you prove a murder if there is no body?’ As it happened, he had not only misinterpreted the law but the evidence from his workshop was enough to convict him once their link to Olive had been proven.
Haigh was tried at Lewes Assizes on Monday 18 July 1949. His defence tried to claim he was insane, pointing to Haigh’s desire to drink his victims’ blood. However, it was revealed that during police interviews he had also asked, ‘What are the chances of getting out of Broadmoor?’ The very next day a jury swiftly found him guilty. He was hanged at Wandsworth prison by Albert Pierrepoint on 10 August 1949. When a waxwork of Haigh was put up at Madame Tussaud’s, it turned out he had donated one of his own suits and a tie.
LOCATIONS: The Goat, 3A Kensington High Street, London, W8 5NP, 020 7937 1213, www.taylor-walker.co.uk; The Kensington Hotel, formerly the Onslow Court Hotel, Nos 109–113 Queen’s Gate, South Kensington, London, United Kingdom, SW7 5LR; The Ramada Crawley Gatwick, formerly The George Hotel, High Street, Gatwick, RH10 1BS, 01293 524215; The Hilton Metropole, King’s Road, Brighton, BN1 2FU, 01273 775432, www3.hilton.com
WHEN BLOOD MINGLED WITH BEER ON THE PAVEMENT, 1955
The Magdala, Hampstead, North London; The Crown, Penn, Buckinghamshire
On 13 July 1955 an attractive 28-year-old woman with bleached blonde hair and wearing a simple blouse, skirt and black court shoes went to the gallows at Holloway Prison in London. The hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, completed the execution of his slightly built 5ft 2in charge in just twelve seconds. Pierrepoint later said, ‘She died as brave as any man.’
Ruth Ellis was to be the last woman hanged in Britain, convicted of shooting her philandering lover, 25-year-old racing driver David Blakely. There was no doubt about her guilt. She herself had admitted in court, ‘It’s obvious when I shot him I intended to kill him.’ But in the years that have followed the case many have questioned whether the verdict was a just one, with many believing the background to her crime meant she should have been given a reprieve from the noose.
The dramatic killing, on Easter Sunday 1955, was played out at the entrance to the Magdala Tavern near London’s leafy Hampstead Heath. At 9.20 p.m. Blakely, 5ft 9in with brown eyes and slicked back hair, emerged cheerfully from the pub with his friend Clive Gunnell. Blakely had only called in to the packed bar to buy some cigarettes for a friend and have a quick drink. The pair exited carrying three quarts of l
ight ale and were aiming to head back to the party they had been attending.
Outside, Ellis, a nightclub hostess and part-time model, was waiting for Blakely, her back to the wall of the pub. Wearing a grey two-piece suit with a green sweater and horn-rimmed glasses she shouted, ‘Hello, David’ and then pulled a .38 calibre Smith and Wesson revolver from her handbag. When Blakely saw her with the gun he ran towards his car, parked just feet away. Ellis fired two shots. The first missed, but the second hit its mark. Blakely staggered round his car with Ellis following, firing another shot at point blank range. Her victim fell to the ground, trying to raise himself on an elbow before Ellis pumped another two shots into her on-off boyfriend.
The landlord of the Magdala, John Colson, remembered, ‘We were very busy … and suddenly I heard this noise going on outside – shots. Nobody seemed to think it was shots, we all thought it was a car backfiring and nobody took a lot of notice of it.’
But an eye witness outside the pub recalled:
The man stumbled as he ran round the car and when he had completed a circuit of the car he fell face downwards on the pavement between the public house door and the car. All the time he was running the woman was pursuing at a distance of about 2yds and firing continuously. After the man had fallen on to his face the woman stood over him and I saw her fire the gun once; the gun was pointed at the man’s body. After this she fired again, but this time all I heard was a click, as though the gun was empty. I heard a man who was standing beside the public house entrance shouting ‘Look what you’ve done Ruth.’