Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Reading

by John J Eddleston

  The two officers went in to speak to the man and asked for his name and address. He said that he was Benjamin Brown and lived at 11 Waylen Street. Not satisfied with his explanation, the suspect was taken to the police station and asked to give his fingerprints for comparison. Brown refused at first, claiming that he had already given them as part of the mass fingerprinting of the area. Told that he would be detained, Brown finally agreed to give his prints. They were duly checked and found to be a match for those found at both Salisbury Road and Cambridge Place. Benjamin Brown was none other than Benjamin Comas and he was then duly charged with murder, wounding with intent, housebreaking with intent to steal, and larceny.

  After various appearances before the magistrates, Comas faced his trial on the four charges on 11 July 1966, before Mister Justice Stable. The trial lasted until 14 July, during which Comas was defended by Mr Douglas Draycott and Mr RM Talbot. The case for the prosecution was led by Mr F Blennerhassett assisted by Mr John Wood. Asked how he wished to plead, Comas replied that he wished to plead guilty to housebreaking, but was then spoken to by his defence barrister. After some discussion, Comas changed his plea to not guilty on that charge and the charge of murder, but did plead guilty to housebreaking with intent. He was basically admitting that he had broken into Alice Cox’s house but had not taken anything and was not responsible for her death.

  A total of twenty-nine witnesses appeared for the prosecution, many of them serving police officers. However, another one of the most important witnesses was a gentleman named Mark Fletcher.

  Mark Fletcher lived next door to Alice Cox, at 57 Salisbury Road. He testified that three years before Alice’s death, Comas had called at his house, asking for lodgings. Mr Fletcher owned a couple of houses in the area and was known to take in lodgers. He agreed to take in Comas, who then stayed with him for about a year before moving on. Some six weeks before Alice’s death, Comas had returned to Fletcher’s house and asked for lodgings again. This time he was given a room in another of Fletcher’s properties, at 3 Cambridge Place. Comas moved into that address on 27 March 1966 and Fletcher had not seen his tenant since that date.

  This testimony was important because it contradicted what Comas had told the police after his arrest. Comas had begun by denying any involvement whatsoever in the break in at 55 Salisbury Road. Faced with the fingerprint evidence he then changed his story and claimed that he had broken in but it was paid by Fletcher to do it.

  Comas claimed that he had borrowed £30 from Fletcher but was unable to repay it. Fletcher had suggested that he would pay him to break into the old lady’s house next door. No sooner had this claim been made than Comas changed his story slightly, saying that he had only broken in so that he could get some money to repay the loan to Fletcher, again at the latter’s instigation.

  A third statement was then made in which Comas now claimed that he had not been alone in the house. Fletcher had now been with him and if anyone was responsible for killing Alice Cox, then it was Fletcher. Finally, a fourth version had it that Comas had broken in alone and Fletcher had not been present after all.

  Every part of these various statements was totally denied by Mark Fletcher. He said that he had not seen Comas for six weeks and had never been in Alice Cox’s house. This was confirmed, in part, by Cecily Elaine Wood, who lodged with Fletcher at number 57. She agreed that Comas had not been back to the house after his visit in March.

  The judge summed up the case on the fourth day of the trial. The jury retired at 2.20pm and returned to court at 3.55pm to announce that they had found Comas guilty of all the charges. As a result, Comas was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and also received sentences of fifteen years for wounding with intent and fourteen years for housebreaking and larceny.

  An appeal was entered but dismissed on 17 January 1967. Comas, however, was not prepared to let the matter rest there. On 7 July 1967, he wrote a long letter to Superintendent Guiver, from Wormwood Scrubs prison, seeking that Mark Fletcher should be charged with perjury.

  The letter was littered with errors of grammar and spelling, but in it Comas claimed to have proof that Mark Fletcher had lied in court. Comas claimed to have a finance form for the purchase of a car, countersigned by Fletcher acting as guarantor and dated 1962. In his evidence, Fletcher had said that he first met Comas three years before the crime, that is, in 1963.

  The letter, written by Comas from Wormwood Scrubs prison, after his conviction. The National Archives

  In addition, Fletcher had said that he had never seen Comas again after March 1966, but Comas now claimed to have proof that Fletcher had written a letter for him, to the Social Security office, on 6 April. Finally, Comas stated that if he did not receive satisfaction, he would take his case to the European Commissioner in Strasbourg.

  The police were satisfied that there was no grain of truth in this and no action was taken against Mark Fletcher. Comas had lied repeatedly after his arrest and changed his story four times. The authorities believed that he had acted alone and was solely responsible for the death of Alice Cox, and a jury had agreed with that premise.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Red Mini Murder Raymond Sidney Cook, Eric Jones and Valerie Dorothy Newell 1967

  At approximately 9.55pm on Thursday 2 March 1967, Robin Anthony Franklin and Colin Pinfield were driving up Cock’s Hill in Rumerhedge Wood in Peppard, Oxfordshire, when they passed a dark-coloured Cortina parked on a bend in the road. The car had its boot open, and the headlights were off, though the sidelights were still on. There was no sign of any occupant.

  The two men continued on their journey and some one hundred yards further on they saw a red Mini, half on and half off the road. There was a woman lying on the ground close to the driver’s door and a man was bending over her, presumably trying to give what assistance he could. There was a third man at the scene, sitting in the front passenger seat and he appeared to be trying to get out of the car.

  Robin stopped his car and asked what he might do to help, having first sent Colin off to find a call-box and get an ambulance to come. As Robin took in the scene, the man who had been leaning over the stricken woman said that he had not been involved in the accident but had simply found the car, just as Robin had done. He then said he would go back to his own car and get some blankets. To Robin Franklin’s surprise, the man never returned. Presumably he had climbed back into the Cortina up the road, and driven off.

  A police map of the area where the Red Mini Murder took place. The National Archives

  Meanwhile, Colin Pinfield had arrived at Kate’s Cottage, Witfold, where he roused Douglas Charles Edward Johns. Once Colin had explained that he and his friend had come across an accident up the road, and that they needed assistance, Johns dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance to be sent. As he then followed Colin back to the scene, his wife made a second telephone call, this time to the police.

  That telephone call to the police caused Constable Stephen Sherlock to be directed to the scene of the accident and he arrived there at 10.50pm. The constable then noted a red Mini, registration 4499 DP, which had apparently left the road and collided with a beech tree. The officer also noticed that there was a substantial amount of blood inside the car, mainly on the driver’s side and that the windscreen of the vehicle was intact. He also noted that, curiously, the ignition and headlights of the crashed vehicle were off, and the handbrake was on.

  By this time, both of the occupants had been taken, by ambulance, to the Battle Hospital in Reading. Sherlock then spoke to the three men still at the scene, Mr Franklin, Pinfield and Johns, and obtained some initial details of what they had found. Constable Sherlock was also told of the mysterious man who had been with the female driver when Franklin and Pinfield had arrived, but who had then simply driven off.

  The next thing to do was move the car. There seemed to be very little damage to the Mini. The front bumper was off, the off-side front wing was furled back onto the tyre and one headlight was smashed but Sherlock was
able to bend the wing back a little and reverse the car back onto the road. He then asked Mr Johns to drive the Mini back to his garage.

  Seeing that there was little more he could do at the scene, Constable Sherlock went back to his home at Nettlebed, taking with him, as evidence, a handbag he had found at the scene and which, presumably, had belonged to the female occupant of the vehicle. Then, just after midnight, he telephoned the Battle Hospital to inquire after the two injured occupants. He was surprised to be told that the male passenger seemed to be uninjured but the female driver had died from her injuries. Pausing only to report the matter to his headquarters, Sherlock then drove to the hospital to view the body of the dead woman.

  Whilst he was at the hospital, Sherlock also took the opportunity to speak to the male passenger who identified himself as thirty-two-year-old Raymond Sidney Cook and said he was a draughtsman, living at 3 Farley View, Spencer’s Wood, Reading. He also confirmed that the driver of the vehicle had been his wife, June Serina Cook, a forty-one-year-old schoolteacher, though he appeared to have little recollection of the accident itself.

  The hospital had thought that Raymond Cook was drunk. His speech was slurred and he seemed somewhat dazed and incoherent. Constable Sherlock thought that this might be the after-effects of shock, due to the accident and, since he didn’t appear to need any medical attention, offered to drive Cook home. On the way, the constable couldn’t help but notice that the directions which Cook gave to his home were precise and clear. This seemed peculiar considering that, at the hospital, Cook had displayed signs of confusion. It was, perhaps, at this time that Constable Sherlock first began to have some suspicions about the accident.

  Arriving at Cook’s home, Sherlock called out the family doctor and arranged for a nurse to relieve the babysitter who had been taking care of Cook’s two children. Whilst waiting for these people to arrive, Sherlock discovered that the dead woman’s parents actually lived next door, so took the opportunity to rouse them and give them the tragic news that their daughter had died in a car accident. Here, Constable Sherlock’s suspicions were added to when it became clear that June Cook’s parents did not approve of their son-in-law.

  Sherlock had still not finished for the night. He drove to the police headquarters at Henley, and reported that he did not believe that the facts of the case were clear and he had his suspicions that the story he had been told did not explain June Cook’s injuries, especially since her husband did not seem to be injured at all. He then drove back to the scene of the crash to make another examination. Finally, he sent another message to his headquarters, asking that a scenes of crime officer be sent out once it was light enough to see.

  At 6.30am on Friday 3 March, Constable Sherlock was back at the garage where the crashed car had been taken. In the light he could see that there were blood spatters on the outside of the vehicle and what appeared to be a human hair, itself spattered with blood, was adhering to the paintwork over the rear wheel arch. Later still, Sherlock took a statement from Robin Franklin who had driven up to the scene of the crash. He then went back to Spencer’s Wood to see Raymond Cook again.

  A written statement was taken from Cook, who explained that he and his wife had been out together the previous night for a meal. They had gone to the George Hotel at Pangbourne and when they left, Cook himself was driving. After travelling a mile or so he felt sick and asked his wife if she wouldn’t mind driving instead. She agreed and they changed places and he began to doze as they drove on. Suddenly he heard his wife call out. They were on a bend and a car was coming towards them with its headlights dazzling them both. He felt a bump and that was all he remembered until some men were trying to help him.

  There was still the unexplained mystery of the first man at the scene, the driver of the dark-coloured Cortina, who had simply driven off. He might have been a witness to the accident itself or, indeed, been involved. It was essential that he be traced, so a message was sent to all police stations in the area to try to trace the driver of the Cortina.

  Fortunately for the police, one of the first men at the scene was a fireman and therefore perhaps more observant than the average witness. He stated that the Cortina was not only dark in colour, but was actually dark blue. Further, it had a deluxe model grill and no wing mirrors. That made the vehicle more distinctive and therefore, hopefully, easier to trace.

  On 4 March, Sherlock was back at the crash site with Detective Sergeant McMiken, the scenes of crime officer. He took a number of photographs of the damage to the beech tree, and the immediate area of the crash and then decided that he should take a long-shot of the bend where car went off the road. As McMiken set up his tripod some seventy-five yards from the crash site, he spotted a stain in the road, which appeared to be blood. This was pointed out to Constable Sherlock, who took a scrapping off the gravel before both men went to the garage to take further pictures, of the Mini.

  The damaged car was then taken to Henley police headquarters where Sherlock reported his suspicions about the accident to Detective Inspector Issell. Meanwhile, the initial pathology report had been made on June Cook, and the best theory was that the only way Mrs Cook could have sustained the injuries she did was for her to have been thrown through the windscreen and then struck her head on the tree. Sherlock recalled, of course, that the windscreen of the Mini was intact. A second post-mortem was ordered.

  By now, the whole affair was being treated as a suspicious death. Detective Issell and Constable Sherlock called on Raymond Cook again and asked to see the clothes he had been wearing on the night of the accident. Cook reported that he had sent them to the dry cleaners the day after the accident, that he had asked his mother to wash his shirt, and that he had burned the leather gloves he was wearing as they were bloodstained and therefore ruined.

  The next port of call was June’s parents next door. They now explained that they were not on good terms with Raymond because of the way he had treated their daughter. He had deserted her in the autumn of 1966 and gone to live with a woman who worked as a nurse at the Borocourt Mental Hospital. They were rather unsure of the woman’s name but believed it might have been Kim Mule.

  Police checks revealed that the woman Raymond Cook had had an affair with was Valerie Dorothy Newell, who preferred to use the first name Kim. She lived at 5 Sidmouth Street, Reading and apparently Cook had lived with her for some two months at the end of 1966, but had then returned to his wife. Two other interesting facts were also discovered.

  The first of these was that June Cook was quite a wealthy woman. Her parents had given her the house next door to theirs as a wedding present, when she married Cook. She was also insured for £1000 in the event of death in a car accident. Further, she controlled the purse strings in the family. When Cook had left June, she had closed their joint bank account and cut him out of her will. When he returned to her, however, she had re-opened the bank account and again made him the main beneficiary under her will.

  The second fact was that the affair between Raymond Cook and Kim Newell had not apparently ended. There was evidence that they continued to see each other on a very regular basis and Kim Newell was now pregnant. Was this, plus the money he would receive, a motive for Raymond Cook to murder his wife?

  June Cook’s funeral was scheduled to take place on 9 March but the police informed Cook that it would have to be postponed pending further enquiries. In addition, the inquest was also temporarily postponed. That same day, a request for assistance was telegraphed to the murder squad at Scotland Yard and two officers, Detective Superintendent Ian Forbes and Detective Sergeant Peter Hill, travelled from the capital to Reading.

  One of the first steps for Superintendent Forbes was to have the red Mini taken to the forensic science laboratory in Holborn, where a thorough examination could be made. At about the same time, a most valuable witness came forward.

  By now, details of the dark-blue Cortina, and the man who had driven off from the scene of the crash, had been circulated in the newspapers so tha
t the public could offer their assistance. One of those press reports was seen by a house-painter named Angus Macdonald.

  He told the police that he had seen a dark-blue Cortina, with no wing-mirrors, being driven into Reading from the direction of Oxford. The car was being driven by a man but there was a woman passenger in the front seat, apparently giving him directions. By a remarkable coincidence, Macdonald was on his way to visit his mother, who lived next door to Kim Newell. Macdonald was, therefore, able to say that the woman passenger had been none other than Miss Newell. Further, Macdonald recalled the licence plate of the Cortina: 7711 FM.

  The car was immediately traced, to a plant-hire company in Wrexham. Officers were despatched to the company on 12 March, and arrived just in time to see a man climbing into the car. He identified himself as forty-five-year-old Eric Jones of 176 Chester Road, Wrexham, and he said that on the day of the accident he had been in London. He had been to South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, but it was closed so later he had visited the Highgate area. He had certainly not been anywhere near Reading. For the time being at least, Jones was allowed to go.

  In due course, the report on the red Mini came through from Holborn. All the blood on the vehicle was of the same type as June Cook’s. It was heaviest on the driver’s side of the car but there were blood spatters throughout the vehicle and also on the outside. Further, blood had been found on the passenger seat and this had seeped through into the fabric showing that there must have been no-one sitting in that seat when Mrs Cook began to shed blood. There was one final fact. The impact of the car into the beech tree had displaced some of the bodywork and bloodstains had been found in a position which meant that the impact must have taken place after the blood was shed.