The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

by Wilkes, Roger

  In investigating kerb-crawlers we had to exercise the utmost caution and, usually, interviews were arranged over business telephones and the suspects questioned at various police stations.

  On the rare occasions our detectives were compelled to visit the actual homes of these men, they were often astonished to find themselves confronted by extremely attractive and sometimes beautiful wives living in sumptuous circumstances. In one such instance the officers told the wife that they were checking on a hit-and-run accident and asked to see her car. Great tact and discretion had to be used, otherwise hundreds of marriages might well have foundered as the result of our activities.

  In an effort to trap the killer, policewomen were dressed up as flash prostitutes whose job it was to walk the streets of Notting Hill after dark. They did their job so effectively that any one of them would have as many as a dozen cars lined up with drivers waiting to make a bid for their favours. It was a dangerous mission for these girls, despite the plain clothes officers posing as ponces near at hand, and they were subjected to some pretty unpleasant experiences, but nobody asked to be taken off this duty. Each girl was equipped with a small tape recorder, the microphone being concealed in their cuffs or scarves, so that a recording of the conversation was available.

  Until then few of them had realized what odd demands men could make upon women. One “client” wanted to watch a woman as she took a bath and was willing to pay a fiver for the privilege. Another was anxious to undress while a nude woman in high-heeled shoes paraded before him. Flagellation, beating the girl or being beaten by her, was another mode of sexual excitement frequently asked for and there were others interested in witnessing love-making between two women.

  Yet another prime target of the investigation was to discover the paint-spraying site where, undoubtedly, some of the bodies had lain for varying periods before being dumped. It was decided to start a big sweep of the territory from the Paddington end of this huge West London area. Three squads, each of twelve men under a detective sergeant, were formed to search three different sectors, working across twenty-four square miles running parallel with the Thames.

  It was a terribly frustrating task because house after house emptied as the occupants went off to work each day, and often it meant going back to the same place again and again. Some people were away on holiday or business or for other reasons. It was the same with business premises. Some were closed and the occupants and employees had to be found.

  I wanted to know about every male in every building in this area and details of the car he owned or used. I wanted to know if he sprayed his own car, or sprayed cars for friends, or even if he owned a spray gun. I asked for particulars of every small business where spray guns were used and I wanted samples of the pattern of spray that was left at the scene of the spraying.

  It was necessary for samples to be taken from inside the bodies and boots of all cars so that comparisons could be made with samples taken from the bodies of the girls. Many times patterns of paint similar to those found on the girls were uncovered, but in every instance except one there was some difference either in the dust content or colouring. However, each one had to be thoroughly examined and an enormous amount of time was spent on this aspect of the inquiry.

  In addition to the 200-strong CID murder force under my command, I had received maximum cooperation from senior uniformed officers and was able to supplement the squad of detectives with about a hundred men and women from the uniformed branch. When I suggested to Sir John Waldron that I needed even more help and asked if he would allow the 300-strong Special Patrol Group he had recently formed to move in, he agreed at once.

  I wanted the whole of West London to be flooded with policemen—and it was.

  Finally, and strangely enough at the remotest end of the search area, we came up with the paint pattern we were seeking. This was found a short distance from where Bridie O’Hara’s body had probably lain for two weeks before being moved. It appeared to have been hidden at the site of a transformer at the rear of a factory on the Heron Factory Estate, Acton, W.4. It faced a paint spray shop! All the globules of paint matched and the substances that made up the dust on Bridie’s body were in the right proportions. When the area was tested it was found that the spray pattern became fainter as one moved further from this spot and eventually disappeared after a few hundred yards, so it was clear that the bodies on which the pattern was shown had been kept within close range of this particular paint shop.

  There were various chimneys on the Heron Factory Estate and samples taken from a spot close to the transformer clearly pinpointed the place where O’Hara’s body must have been for some time. The smoke and debris from the various chimneys produced a pattern identical to that found on the dead girl.

  It transpired eventually that the paint shop was purely incidental to the killing. It did not lead us to the killer, although he must have had some association with the factory estate. Over 7,000 people on the estate were questioned because the dumping of the body pointed to the killer possessing a very special knowledge of the small area. Although it was technically private property, strangers could cross the estate. Our inquiries showed that the killer must have had legitimate access. Knowing this, we posted police officers there day and night to observe and note the index numbers of cars entering and leaving.

  There were, though, many complications. This particular estate had developed piecemeal over the years, so that during the period of the murders some buildings had been pulled down and others had taken their place.

  By a strange coincidence, Christie, the Rillington Place mass murderer, had been employed on the estate at one time.

  We held press conferences twice daily and at one of them we got a girl who resembled Bridie O’Hara to pose and walk in clothes similar to those she was known to have been wearing when last seen alive. We hoped someone who might have seen her would come forward with information.

  Countless inquiries of all kinds were made. A 50,000 word report was prepared and a vast number of statements taken even at a late stage. In spite of all this, the killer remained unidentified, but I was now conscious that we were at last closing in on the man I was sure I would eventually arrest.

  We decided that there was one way in which we could reach him. We could “talk” to him via the radio, press and television in the hope that we would harass him into making a blunder. It is inconceivable that anybody who commits a serious crime can avoid reading or listening about what the police are doing to effect an arrest. He had to be told that the murders had got to stop and that the entire strength of the Metropolitan Police had been mobilised to ensure his capture. I organized the release of a small but steady stream of hints that we were getting close to him.

  In this war of nerves important clues were leaked in day-to-day bulletins covering our activities in many areas. The original number of suspects was given at twenty but these were gradually scaled down until it was revealed that of the three that remained one was known to be the killer.

  We could never forget the fact that no woman was safe until the killer was in our hands, but it was not to be and within a month of the murder of Bridie O’Hara the man I wanted to arrest took his own life. Without a shadow of doubt the weight of our investigation and the enquiries that we had made about him led to the killer committing suicide.

  We had done all we possibly could but faced with his death no positive evidence was available to prove or disprove our belief that he was in fact the man we had been seeking. Because he was never arrested, or stood trial, he must be considered innocent and will therefore never be named.

  Often, since this massive inquiry, I have tried to decide what I felt for this twisted—or inhuman—being.

  Did I feel pity, sympathy, revulsion, hatred? Or did I possess a sense of vengeance? I discovered that I was unable to answer any of these questions. I knew then, as I know now, that I was just a detective dedicated to the hunting down of a killer.

  The sightless eyes of the vict
ims had asked me to provide the explanations for their deaths; as when I saw that young girl on the slab in the mortuary all those years ago. The fact that the victims were prostitutes did not make the crimes any less horrible. No one was entitled to rob even prostitutes of their lives.

  Without doubt, the killer’s wife and relatives could have known nothing of the double life of the man who was normal by day and Jack the Stripper by night.

  And their feelings count …

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES

  The editor would like to thank the following people and organizations for their kind permission to reprint the following:

  Mrs Betty Allsop for Kenneth Allsop, The Short, Sweet Martyrdom of Jake Lingle from The Bootleggers (Hutchinson 1961); Campbell Thomson & McLaughlin for Eric Ambler, Dr John Bodkin Adams © 1999 Eric Ambler from The Ability to Kill (Bodley Head 1961); John Austin for Colonel Hogan’s Unsolved Murder © John Austin 1991, 1994; The Estate of the late Christianna Brand and A. M. Heath for Christianna Brand, Murder Hath Charms from Brand X (Michael Joseph 1974, © Christianna Brand); Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., for Angela Carter, The Fall River Axe Murders, copyright © 1985 Angela Carter. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN; Solo Syndication Ltd. for John Edwards, Fools and Horses (Daily Mail, 12 March 1994); Orbis Publishing for Daniel Farson, The Case of the Salmon Sandwiches from Unsolved (1984); Patricia Hobson and Lawrence Hughes for The Case of the Movie Murder copyright © 1946 by Erle Stanley Gardner, copyright renewed 1972 by Jean Bethel Gardner and Grace Naso, first published in TRUE, June 1946, and here published by arrangement with Hobson & Hughes LLC; Jonathan Goodman for A Coincidence of Corpses from The Railway Murders (Allison & Busby 1984); J.A. Harding and David Evans for F. Tennyson Jesse, Checkmate; Noel Hynd for Alan Hynd, The Built-in Lover from Murder, Mayhem and Mystery (A. S. Barnes and Co. 1958); Brian Masters for Evidence by Entrapment; Russell Miller for The Obsession with the Black Dahlia from Black Dahlia Website; Mrs Sheena Ellis for William Roughead, The Secret of Ireland’s Eye from Famous Crimes (Faber 1935); David James Smith for The Secret Janet Took to the Grave © 2004 David James Smith. A version of this article first appeared in 1995 in the Sunday Times Magazine; Tom Smith-Hughes for Jack Smith-Hughes, Temptation and the Elder from Eight Studies in Justice (Cassell 1953); Philip Sugden for Jack the Ripper; Mrs Kathleen Symons for Julian Symons, Death of a Millionaire from A Reasonable Doubt (Cresset Press 1960); Viking-Penguin for James Thurber, A Sort of Genius from Vintage Thurber (Hamish Hamilton 1963); David Wallechinsky for Irving Wallace, The Real Marie Roget from The Fabulous Originals (Longmans 1955); Express Syndication for Rebecca West, The Man Who Contracted Out of Humanity, from the Evening Standard (27 January 1950); Orbis Publishing for Colin Wilson, The Zodiac Murders from Unsolved (1984); Robinson Publishing for Kirk Wilson, The Dumb Blonde Who Knew Too Much from Investigating Murder (1993); Viking-Penguin, a division of Penguin Putman Inc. for Alexander Woollcott, The Mystery of the Hansom Cab from While Rome Burns © 1943, renewed by Joseph P. Hennessey 1962.

  Every effort has been made to trace the original copyright holders of the following, without success; the editor and publishers would be pleased to hear from any claimant to legal copyright of:

  Douglas G. Browne and E. V. Tullett, The Murder of Margery Wren from Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases (Harrap 1952); Dorothy Dunbar, And to Hell with Burgundy from Blood in the Parlor (A. S. Barnes 1962); Nina Warner Hooke and Gil Thomas, The Camden Town Murder from Marshall Hall (Arthur Barker 1966); Sydney Horler, The Hoop-la Murder Trial from Malefactors’ Row (Robert Hale 1940); Morris Markey, The Mysterious Death of Starr Faithfull from The Aspirin Age 1919–1941 (Touchstone, nd); Maurice Moiseiwitsch, Florence Maybrick from Five Famous Trials (Heinemann 1962); Elliott O’Donnell, What Became of Martin Guerre from Strange Disappearances (The Bodley Head 1927); Edmund Pearson, The Death of Bella Wright from More Studies in Murder (Smith & Haas 1936); John du Rose for Jack the Stripper from Murder Was My Business (W. H. Allen 1971); Damon Runyon, Arnold Rothstein’s Final Payoff from New York American (1929); Louis Stark, A Case that Rocked the World from We Saw It Happen (Simon & Schuster 1938); and C. J. S. Thompson, The Mystery of the Poisoned Partridges from Poison Mysteries Unsolved (Hutchinson 1937).

  Endnotes

  1. W. H. Auden, The Guilty Vicarage, reprinted in The Dyer’s Hand (Faber and Faber, London, 1948)

  2. Wendy Lesser, Pictures at an Execution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993)

  3. Thomas de Quincey, On Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts (Blackwood’s Magazine, London, 1827)

  4. Thomas de Quincey, ibid.

  5. J. B. Atlay (ed.), The Trial of the Stauntons (Wm. Hodge, Edinburgh, 1911)

  6. John Dryden (1631–1700), Mac Flecknoe (1684)

  7. Rebecca West, Mr Setty and Mr Hume in A Train of Powder (Macmillan, London, 1955)

  8. Educated at Charterhouse and Oxford, Vickers (18881–1965) was a journalist and author of more than seventy novels.

  9. Who wrote the lyrics of Thompson’s campaign song “Big Bill the Builder”.

  10. In some areas of the US and overseas it was called Super Dad. We will refer to it by its shorter title.

  11. I discovered this myself by experiment.

  12. During the Eastbourne hearing Superintendent Hannam reported that he had mentioned his concern over the number of legacies received from patients to the doctor. The reply had been: “A lot of these were instead of fees. I don’t want money. What use is it? I paid £1,100 super-tax last year.”

  13. The Crown cannot have been entirely satisfied with its case. After the doctor’s arrest, they exhumed two more of his former patients about whose deaths suspicions had been entertained. The deaths were found to have been entirely natural. Of course, this fact was never brought out in evidence.

  14. There was a further indictment, for the murder of Mrs Hullett. However, no attempt was made (as there had been at the Eastbourne hearing) to introduce it. Evidently the Crown had no wish to burden itself with the obligation of proving “system”.

  15. See All the Year Round, 29 June 1867, and Celebrated Crimes, by Alexandre Dumas.

  16. Bassardus Visontius (ant Philos) commends to one troubled with heart-melancholy “Hypericon or St John’s Wort” gathered on a Friday in the hour of Jupiter, “When it comes to his effectual operation (that is about the full moon in July); so gathered, and borne or hung about the neck, it mightily helps this affection and drives away all phantastical spirits.” (Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, Part II., sec. 5.)

  17. Bertrande was now just twenty years old.

  18. Arnold Tilh had mysteriously disappeared about the same time as Martin Guerre.

  19. In addition to this rather damning testimony, it was known that the youthful Martin Guerre had been a good swordsman and could speak Basque, his father’s native tongue, whereas the accused had been proved to be a poor swordsman and to be utterly ignorant of Basque.

  20. This statement is important as disposing of one of the defence theories as to the cries, namely, that they were those of the boatman and Mr Kirwan, calling for his wife during their search for the missing lady.

  21. So cries from one end of the island were audible at the other.

  22. The case of Dr Pritchard in 1865 affords a sufficient answer to this argument. During the four months in which he was torturing his wife to death the doctor habitually slept with her, and she died in his arms. At the funeral he caused the coffin to be opened that he might kiss her for the last time.

  23. In fact the Court was the Court of Crown Cases Reserved which had jurisdiction under the provisions of the Statute 11 & 12 Victoria, c. 78.

  24. These gentlemen had not the advantage of inspecting the body or of hearing the evidence. The “testimony” on which they rely was, as we shall see, not “sworn”. It is also to be noted that Mrs Crowe says nothing about the manner of her husband’s death.

  25. This is the
“sworn testimony” which weighed with the ten physicians. It is remarkable that Mr Kirwan omitted at the inquest to mention these seizures, and that he did not instruct his counsel to adduce at the trial evidence of such importance.

  26. See his Rogues Walk Here, pp. 259-85 (Cassell, 1934).

  27. So called because it was built on the land of Dr Lay: his son succeeded him as village doctor and gave evidence at the trial. The chapel was subsequently disused for religious purposes and was used as a schoolroom for the doctor’s children.

  28. It does not appear who Bob was and no witness at the trial possessed this Christian name. It appears from my own inquiries, half a century later, that he was not one of Rose’s five brothers.

  29. Evidence of James Rickards: this clearly refutes any suggestion of serious delay on the part of the police.

  30. But I am told that it is not the practice in Peasenhall to eat rabbit except between the months of October and February since their meat, when they are “struck”, produces intestinal disorders. At the trials Gardiner agreed that the rabbit was inedible and had to be buried.

  31. But, according to local tradition, Gardiner had a “pepper-and-salt” suit that was committed to the flames, together with his third shirt. Unfortunately Mr Stammers, who rejoiced in the local style of “Old Hardeye”, could not see what was burned that morning.

  32. This seems to be corroborated by Gardiner’s second letter to Rose.

  33. I find that his lordship told the jury that tried Chapman in March 1903, “This case is unique, not only from a medical point of view or a chemical point of view, but also unique from a legal and criminal point of view.” When trying Robert Wood of Camden Town in December 1907 he told the jury “You have been engaged in one of the most remarkable trials that is to be found in the annals of the Criminal Courts of England for many years-certainly the most remarkable in my time, which has not been a short one.” Such words certainly flattered the vanity of the jury and, it may be, the vanity of the man who uttered them.