Foul Deeds in Kensington and Chelsea

by John J Eddleston

  In the early hours of 7 May, Epton asked to speak to a senior police officer. Divisional Detective Inspector John Ball went to see Epton, who then made a further statement, admitting that he had been involved in Winifred’s death. He was then charged with murder.

  Epton’s trial on that charge took place at the Old Bailey, before Mr Justice Birkett, on 16 June 1946. During the two days that the proceedings lasted, Epton’s defence rested in the hands of Mr Malcolm Morris, whilst the case for the prosecution was led by Mr Anthony Hawke, assisted by Mr Henry Elam.

  The body of Winifred Mulholland had been examined by Professor Donald Teare. Called to the scene in Finborough Road at 10.00am on 6 May, Teare had performed the post-mortem later that same day.

  Professor Teare reported a series of circular shaped abrasions on Winifred’s body. One group were on her right cheek and another two were on her left. There were similar wounds around the chin and left eye. All of these wounds could have been caused by a hammer found inside Epton’s flat.

  Continuing his evidence, Professor Teare detailed an irregular shaped wound, four inches across, in the centre of Winifred’s forehead. There was another wound at the back of her head and these could have been caused by an iron, again found in Epton’s flat. These wounds had fractured Winifred’s skull, causing a corresponding laceration of the brain, which was the direct cause of death. Considerable violence must have been used.

  Winifred had sustained even more injuries after she was dead. There was a wound on the front of the throat, bruises on the knuckles of her right hand and other bruises on the fingers of her left hand. Her neck vertebrae had been fractured and the lower end of one thigh bone was broken. These wounds could have been caused by a fall onto the steps from the first-floor balcony.

  Dr James Stanley Higgs had been the first doctor on the scene on 6 May. He had confirmed that life was extinct. The following day he had taken blood samples from the dead woman and also from Epton. Both samples had been sent to the police laboratory.

  Walter Eric Montgomery was a Senior Scientific Officer at the Metropolitan Police Laboratory at Hendon. He had examined various articles taken from Epton’s flat. Blood had been found on some linoleum, and there were signs that this had been swabbed by something in an attempt to clean it up. There were bloodstains and hairs adhering to a flat iron, but he had found nothing of value on a hammer. A rug, also taken from the flat, was heavily bloodstained at one corner. All the stains were of type A, but tests had shown that both Winifred and Epton had blood of that type.

  Of more value were hairs and fibres taken from various locations. On the bloodstained rug, Walter had found three dyed rabbit hairs, and these matched hairs taken from Winifred’s distinctive coat. Similar hairs were found on the stonework above the portico outside 17 Finborough Road, and the ironwork around the balcony. Dyed rabbit hairs, and bloodstains, were also found on Epton’s trousers.

  Epton’s second written statement was then read out. In this he admitted that he had met Winifred at around 10.00pm, on 5 May, in Piccadilly. They fell into conversation and he asked her if she would like to come home with him. She accepted, saying that she had nowhere else to go.

  Back at the flat, Epton claimed that they then had sexual intercourse, on a chair, after which he went to his bedroom. Whilst there, he noticed that £9 was missing from his hip pocket. Going back into the living room, Epton demanded to know if Winifred had taken his money. She said that she hadn’t but she was grinning as she denied it. At this, Epton grabbed her, reached out for something, and struck her on the head. She fell and it was plain that she was dying. Rather than go for help, Epton then dragged her into the bedroom and left her there before going into his kitchen and making himself a cup of tea. Later, he had gone back into the bedroom and found that Winifred was dead. He left her there that night and later that morning, pulled her back into the front room where, at about 4.00am, he put her over the balcony.

  With all the evidence against him, and his own confession, there could be no doubt as to the verdict. Found guilty, Epton was then sentenced to death. This was, in fact, the first death sentence awarded since the House of Commons had voted to abolish capital punishment, a vote that was subsequently overturned by the House of Lords.

  In fact, Epton never did hang. On 20 July, his sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment. He was, of course, the second man to have killed in Finborough Road. Ronald True had murdered Gertrude Yates, twenty-four years earlier, at number 13a, just a couple of doors away from where Winifred Mulholland had died.

  Chapter 32

  Thomas John Ley and Lawrence John Smith

  1946

  On Saturday, 30 November 1946, Walter Thomas Coombes left his home to gather some firewood from the nearby Chalk Pit woods, in Surrey. On his way back home he decided to go via the chalk pit itself, and turned onto a track close to Limpsfield Road, in Hamsey Green, just north of Warlingham.

  Walter had not gone very far, when he spotted a bundle of rags in a small trench. Curious as to what the bundle might be, Walter walked towards it and, the closer he got, the more he thought that someone had dumped a tailor’s dummy in the woods. However, as he reached the bundle he realised that this was no dummy. It looked very much like a man’s body. Walter ran home to tell his father what he had found.

  Walter’s father was also named Walter Thomas Coombes, and he took his son back to the woods to investigate further. Walter senior saw the bundle for himself and still wasn’t sure if it were a man’s body or not. At one stage he crouched down, lifted one of the trouser legs very slightly and touched the leg of the bundle. Now there was no doubt. Walter had felt cold human flesh. There was a body in the woods. Walter returned home with his son, and telephoned the police.

  Constable Cyril Victor Hearn arrived at the woods at 4.30pm. He began by taking a close look at the body. The man, whoever he was, lay on his right side with his legs protruding from the end of the shallow trench. His left forearm rested on the edge of the trench. The man’s head was encased within a grey tweed overcoat. His left arm was still in the sleeve of this coat but his right arm was out, and the coat had then been twisted around and over his head.

  Looking closer still, Hearn saw that the man had a length of rope wound twice around his neck. Perhaps this was a case of suicide. The man might have hung himself from a nearby tree, and after his death, the rope had snapped, and his body had rolled down the small hill and landed in the trench. That might also account for the coat being wound about his head.

  It was obviously important to identify the dead man and Constable Hearn now made a careful search of his pockets. In one pocket, Hearn found a blue Freemasons membership card, and this gave the name John McMain Mudie. Other papers gave an address. Apparently Mr Mudie had been staying at the Reigate Hill Hotel, in Reigate itself.

  The police officers investigating the case visited the hotel, and gave a description of the dead man. That confirmed that the dead man was indeed John Mudie. Margaret Kinniburgh Park was the owner of the hotel, and she confirmed that Mudie had worked at the hotel, since May. Originally he had been taken on as a night porter, but in due course had been asked to help behind the bar. By the time of his death he had been put in charge of the bar. He had grown to be friendly with one of the assistants at the hotel, a Miss Phoebe McGill, and seemed to be happy enough. Margaret knew of no reason why Mudie would have taken his own life.

  A check was made on any telephone calls, which Mudie had made, and the log showed that on 22 November, Mudie had telephoned a John William Buckingham, of Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood. A search of his room revealed two letters, concerning some cheques that needed to be returned, from a firm of solicitors named Denton, Hall and Burgin of 3 Grays Inn Place, London. One of those letters had been sent to Mudie at the hotel, but the other had been addressed to him at 3 Homefield Road, Wimbledon.

  The next stop was the solicitor’s office in Grays Inn Place. They confirmed that they had written two letters to Mudie.
The first had been sent to his lodgings in Homefield Road and, when he had moved to the hotel at Reigate, a second letter was sent there. These letters had been written on behalf of one of their clients, a company named Connaught Properties Limited, the chairman of which was a gentleman named Thomas John Ley.

  Thomas Ley was something of a famous figure. He had been born on 28 October 1880, in Bath, but his father had died when he was very young, and his mother then took him and her three other children to Australia, arriving there in 1886. After leaving school, Ley had first worked as an assistant in his brother’s grocery shop, but later became a clerk in a solicitor’s office in Sydney. He had shown a keen interest in politics and, in 1917, Ley became a member of parliament in New South Wales.

  In 1922, Ley became the New South Wales Minister for Justice. By 1925, he was a member of the Federal House of Representatives, but during the elections of that year, a curious thing had happened. Ley had offered his Labour opponent, Frederick McDonald, a bribe of £2,000, being a share in a property, in return for withdrawing from the ballot. McDonald refused the offer and, after Ley had won the election, decided to make the details of the attempted bribe public. However, the case collapsed when McDonald mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again.

  There were also other curious incidents in Ley’s past. One political opponent had fallen from cliffs near Sydney, another had fallen overboard from a ship and drowned. All these might well have been coincidences, but there were some who said that Ley had organised these ‘accidents’. Whatever the truth of that, Ley was defeated in the 1928 election and decided to return to England with his mistress, Maggie Evelyn Byron Brook.

  By now, the police had determined that Mudie’s death was not a case of suicide. If, as had been believed, his body had rolled into the ditch, then his clothing would have collected leaves, dirt, grass and other debris from the floor of the woods. No such items were found. Mudie’s suit was pristine apart from the mud stains from the ditch itself. This was confirmed at the post-mortem when it was shown that no vertebrae had been broken as would have resulted from a drop. Mudie had died from asphyxia. He had been slowly strangled. It was clear that he had been killed elsewhere and his body then dumped in the woods.

  The investigation continued and the police could not help but notice that Maggie Brook, Ley’s long-time mistress, lived in one of the flats at 8 Beaufort Gardens, where Mudie had once lived. This gave a second link between Ley and Mudie but, as yet, there was no strong evidence. The police, however, did have one lead.

  In the days before he had last been seen at the Reigate Hill Hotel, Mudie had spoken to other members of staff about being invited to a cocktail party by a well-to-do woman. She had, apparently, been in the bar with her chauffeur and had fallen into conversation with Mudie. An invitation had been made and he was now only waiting for the date to be confirmed. He had, however, told the woman that the best day for him would be a Thursday, as that was his regular day off. Apparently, the woman, and her chauffeur had indeed called, at around 7.00pm on Thursday, 28 November. Mudie had not been seen alive since that date. Could this woman and her servant have been involved in his murder? Yet again, there was no hard evidence on the matter, and neither of the people could be traced.

  The newspaper reports had given all the details of the investigation thus far, and everyone who read the stories knew that the police were looking for the elegant woman and her chauffeur. The police were also regularly questioning two people; Ley himself and John Buckingham, a man who Mudie had telephoned from the hotel. It was that pressure which finally led to a break in the case.

  At 5.55pm, on Saturday, 5 December 1946, three people walked into the offices of Scotland Yard, and announced that they had some information on the body found in the chalk pit in Surrey. The three were forty-three-year-old John William Buckingham, his twenty-one-year-old son who had the same name, and Lilian Florence Bruce.

  Buckingham senior said that some six weeks ago he had been in the Royal Hotel in Southampton Row, London, when a porter he knew said that there was a man who wanted a job done, and would pay handsomely for it. Buckingham explained that he did not wish to be involved in anything illegal, but the porter said it was nothing like that. Buckingham said he would like to know more and, in due course, the porter introduced him to Mr Ley.

  Ley explained that he was a retired solicitor, but still looked after the financial interests of two women. One of these was a Miss Brook, and she was being blackmailed by a man. That man, Mudie, was now living at a hotel in Reigate, and Ley wanted nothing more than to talk to him, and offer him £500 to stop his illegal activities and leave the country.

  Two days after this, another meeting was arranged, at which Ley introduced a man named Smith, who he said worked for him as a builder’s foreman. He would help Buckingham to bring the man to one of Ley’s flats at 8 Beaufort Gardens, where he and Smith would make him the offer of money for his silence. The trouble was that Mudie would not just climb into a car with two strange men. Some subterfuge was necessary, and it was Buckingham who came up with the idea of using the attractive Lilian Bruce, a friend of his, to invite Mudie to a cocktail party.

  The plan was put into action, and Mudie agreed to go to the party. The pick-up was made on Thursday, 28 November, with both the Buckinghams, Miss Bruce and Mr Smith going to fetch Mudie, and bring him back to London. Once they were at the flat, Miss Bruce and the younger Buckingham left, and the other two escorted Mudie into the flat. There he was seized, trussed up with a rope and left inside the flat. Buckingham senior then left, having been paid £200 for his trouble. He believed that the roping of Mudie was just to frighten him into accepting the offer, but now he knew that Ley and Smith must have murdered Mudie and dumped his body in the Surrey woods.

  With this information, the police made three arrests. John William Buckingham had been directly involved in tying Mudie up, so he was arrested as an accomplice to murder. Ley was arrested and charged with murder and the Smith referred to in the story was identified as Lawrence John Smith, a man who worked for Ley. He, too, was charged with murder.

  Now that the police had all the story and the names of all those involved, they could determine the real reason for this terrible murder. It was nothing to do with blackmail, though it was all about Maggie Brook, Ley’s mistress. It transpired that although she now lived in Beaufort Gardens, Maggie had once lodged at 3 Homefield Road, the same address that Mudie had lived at. Ley had managed to convince himself that some sort of sexual relationship had taken place between Mudie and Maggie, and that was the reason he wanted Mudie dead.

  In due course, the charges against Buckingham were dropped, especially as his evidence would be crucial for the prosecution. That left Ley and Smith to face their trial together. That trial was due to start on 26 February 1947, before Mr Justice Hilberry, but the defence argued that they were not ready to proceed and the hearing was put back to March.

  Eventually, both men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. An appeal was heard, on 21 April, before Lord Justice Oliver, Mr Justice Atkinson and Mr Justice Cassells. That appeal was lost and the death sentence confirmed. Both men were due to hang on 8 May 1947.

  In fact, neither man did hang. Smith’s sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment, whilst Ley was adjudged to have been insane at the time of the murder, and was then committed to Broadmoor. He died there very shortly afterwards, on 29 July 1947.

  Chapter 33

  John George Haigh

  1949

  In the autumn of 1898, John Robert Haigh married Emily Hudson in Wakefield. That fact has led a number of authors to erroneously believe that their only child was also born in Wakefield. In fact, a few years after they had married, the Haighs moved to Stamford in Lincolnshire and it was there, on 24 July 1909, that Emily gave birth to a son, who they named John George.

  It can be said that a number of factors would eventually fashion the emotional make-up of John George Haigh. It is true that in later year
s, Emily would say that during the latter part of her pregnancy, she had felt very nervous and anxious. There is also the fact that John Robert Haigh was out of work, perhaps adding to that anxiety. Added to this, it should be noted that both John Robert and Emily were members of the Plymouth Brethren, an Evangelical Christian movement, and they believed that the world was an intrinsically evil place. They determined that their son would be protected from such evil, and their beliefs were reflected in his upbringing.

  Fortunately, whilst John George Haigh was still a baby, his father found work in Yorkshire and the family moved to Outwood, near Wakefield. Here they brought up their son in a most strict manner, forbidding him from mixing with other children and building a high fence around their back garden, so that he could play there, free from the influence of others. No radio or newspaper was allowed in the house and Bible stories were the order of the day. Haigh was, however, quite a bright boy and he later won two scholarships; one to the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield and one to Wakefield Cathedral, where he became a choirboy.

  During these formative years, the fear of God’s wrath was drilled into Haigh. His father had a blue mark on his forehead, caused by an accident in his youth. He told his son that he had sinned and this was the mark of Satan, put there for all the world to see. As for his mother, well, she was free from such blemishes, showing that she was a pure angel and should be treated as such.

  Although he was a bright boy, Haigh could not be bothered to apply himself. It is true that he won three prizes; one for geography and two for divinity, but he also discovered a talent for forgery. He would copy his teacher’s handwriting and pen his own glowing school reports, finding that to be much easier than applying himself to his studies. The truth about his academic achievements came when he took his school certificate, and failed.