And then it was on to New York, where the Duke signed an agreement to drill for oil on his Canadian ranch. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the FBI to see the exhibit rooms, communication section, laboratory, firearms range and Identification Division, where they were shown round by J. Edgar Hoover himself. The couple visited art galleries, service canteens and navy yards, inspected training units at Harvard, and reviewed naval troops at Newport, Rhode Island, where they dined with Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt. Finally they saw Aunt Bessie in Boston.
Their timing was deliberate, because shortly after they left, the trial of Alfred de Marigny opened.7 The evidence against him looked strong, not least the discovery of his fingerprints on the bloodied Chinese screen in Oakes’s bedroom, a room that de Marigny was supposed not to have visited, but the prosecution’s key evidence soon began to unravel. Even though the two detectives had been working closely together, Captain Barker had only announced the discovery of the fingerprint to his colleague when he and Captain Melchen saw Lady Oakes at Oakes’s funeral several days after the print had been discovered, and long after de Marigny had been arrested.
The fingerprint produced in court had supposedly been lifted from the screen but, on cross examination, it became clear that the detectives were not sure from where it had been taken on the screen. It then became apparent from the patterns behind the fingerprint that it had actually been lifted from a water glass – a glass given to de Marigny by the detectives when interviewing him.
It now emerged that the detectives, in particular Barker, were not quite as reputable and experienced as had been assumed. According to his FBI file, Barker, who had started his police career as a traffic cop and clerk, had been suspended for drunkenness and demoted for insubordination, and had close connections with organised crime, especially Meyer Lansky, also known as the mob’s accountant and instrumental in the establishment of illegal gambling in the US.8
De Marigny’s defence lawyers were able to explain away the burns on his hands from lighting candles in hurricane shades and his friend, the Marquis Georges de Visdelou, provided an alibi for the night of the murder, saying he had spoken to de Marigny at 3 a.m. in the flat they shared. It was, however, the planted fingerprint evidence that was to be decisive.
On 14 November, after just over an hour’s deliberation, the jury by a majority of 9 to 3 returned a verdict of not guilty. It was clear the authorities, especially the Governor, did not want de Marigny around. The next day he and de Visdelou were ordered to be deported. Writing to the Colonial Office that day with copies of the newspaper editorials, Heape noted of one of the Bay Street Boys factions: ‘The Solomon gang are out for blood and we may expect another Committee of Enquiry by the House. The general opinion is [that] Marigny is guilty of the murder, but the Chief Justice could only sum up in his favour on the evidence produced in Court.’9
Ten days later, the Duke in a telegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies added of de Marigny that he was ‘an unscrupulous adventurer . . . gambler and spendthrift. Suspected drug addict. Suspected of being concerned in the unnatural death of his godfather Ernest Bronard.’10
Ridding the colony of the two men proved more difficult than anticipated. The War Office refused to provide transport and the American authorities denied visas for travel via Miami. In the event, it was not until early December that de Marigny and Nancy sailed to Havana and the finca of their friend Ernest Hemingway – where Nancy proceeded to have an affair with Hemingway’s son Jack.11
The trial and verdict had been a disaster for the Duke, showing his lack of authority and judgement and revealing how he had tried to frame an innocent man. To date, no one apart from de Marigny has been charged for the murder and speculation continues with a regular stream of books, each with their own theory of the killer. One candidate, however, remains particularly strong – Harold Christie.
Christie’s family had been on the island since the mid-eighteenth century and he was now regarded as one of its most prominent citizens, being elected to the House of Assembly in 1928. He had made a fortune buying up beachfront properties from poor farmers and redeveloping them for British and American investors. But there was a darker side, with a police and FBI record as a bootlegger going back to 1923, when he had been charged with illegally transferring a schooner from the American to British registry of ships to make it easier to smuggle alcohol into the US.12
He was now a key witness and his testimony raised many questions. Though he had been sleeping a few doors away from Oakes, he claimed to have heard nothing. Why did he offer Oakes a glass of water on finding the body, when it must have been clear the magnate was dead? Was he actually at Westbourne that night? How did he explain the sighting by an old school friend, Captain Edward Sears, the head of the Bahamas police traffic division, of him in a car in central Nassau at midnight on 7 July, supposedly with his brother Frank? Why did he park his car at the country club, rather than outside Westbourne, if he was not to use it until the morning? Why were the bloodstains found in the bedroom that Christie slept in not investigated?
Christie certainly had a motive. There were rumours he had double-crossed Oakes in a property deal. In revenge, Oakes had called in Christie’s IOU notes, sought repossession of Christie’s only fully-owned asset, the island of Lyford Cay, and talked of planning to move to Mexico, taking much of his business with him and thereby ruining Christie. What no one doubted was that, as a key figure amongst the Bay Street Boys and a member of the Executive Council, Christie was not someone who was ever going to be fully investigated.
Other mysteries remain. De Marigny’s friend, Basil McKinney, himself to be charged the following year with smuggling drugs onto the islands, claimed that two watchmen at Lyford Cay told him they had seen a cabin cruiser arrive at 1 a.m. on the night of the murder, two men being collected by car and returning an hour later. According to de Marigny, shortly afterwards one drowned and the other was found hanging from a tree. Were these hit men brought in from the outside?
Why was the commissioner of police since 1936, Reggie Erskine-Lindop, a policeman of great experience and integrity, taken off the case and transferred sideways as the commissioner in Trinidad, especially when he was narrowing in on a suspect? Lindop later revealed that ‘de Marigny was an unprincipled rascal, but he did not kill Oakes. My investigations had just reached the point where, during the interrogation of a possible subject, I extracted information that I am sure was a clue to the murderer or his accomplice, when the case was taken out of my hands. I was transferred to Trinidad and not asked to give evidence at the trial.’13
And who ensured the transfer? The Governor. ‘It was largely at the insistence of HRH that we moved Lindop and landed Trinidad with a problem,’ states a Colonial Office report re-examining the case.14 Why was the Duke so keen to shut down the story? In July 1942, a secret State Department memo had noted that Axel Wenner-Gren had $2,500,000 frozen on deposit in the Bahamas, ‘made at the express request and in part for the benefit of the Duke of Windsor’.15
This was money that the Duke hoped could circumvent currency regulations and either use in America or invest in Mexico – he had plans to buy a villa there – safe from the ravages of war. Oakes and Christie had also invested heavily in Mexico through the Banco Continental, set up by Wenner-Gren in June 1941, in the hope of protecting their money from the war and consolidating their fortunes.
According to Pat Wertheim, who has studied the case:
a careful accounting of Oakes’ estate at the time of his death came up $15,000,000 short . . . Oakes had put that money into Banco Continental (supposedly created as a stash house for Nazi war loot being moved out of Germany prior to the end of the war), along with money put there by Christie and the Duke. My interpretation, if not the overt suggestion, was that when Oakes was killed, only Christie, the Duke, and Maximino Comacho (the banker and brother of the President of Mexico) knew of Oakes’s money stashed there. The conclusion, then, was that after thin
gs had cooled down, they realised that money was free for the taking and split it. That would have put an extra $5 million into Christie’s pocket for his real estate developments and another $5 million into the royal coffers when the Duke returned to England.16
Finances certainly seem to have connected many of those associated to the murder. When investigators called at de Marigny’s apartment on 8 July, they found him with John Anderson, an accountant who was responsible for Wenner-Gren’s businesses after the Swedish tycoon’s blacklisting. It was Anderson who had driven de Marigny to the scene of the crime on the 8th, who had spent most of the day with him, and whom it was discovered owed de Marigny $1,000 – Anderson was a compulsive gambler:
The Miami police investigator stated that Anderson had been questioned regarding de Marigny’s possible connection with Axel Wenner-Gren and when this subject was brought up, Anderson became extremely nervous and did not volunteer any information. The investigators felt that Anderson had some possible tie-in with de Marigny and Wenner-Gren, and they viewed his operations with suspicion.17
Anderson, then in his late thirties, had originally worked as an accountant in Montreal before taking over the Bahamas General Trust Company in 1936 and heading the Bank of the Bahamas owned by Wenner-Gren. The Bahamas General Trust had been set up by Lord Beaverbrook and he held 10 per cent of the 5,000 shares with Arthur Vining Davis, president of the aluminium producer Alcoa, holding the controlling interest.
Sir Harry Oakes, Harold Christie and Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor were also shareholders and, according to one report, ‘prior to the death of Sir Harry Oakes, a scheme was afloat for this controlling interest to be distributed between Mr A.V. Davis, Sir Harry Oakes and Hon. H.G. Christie. The proportions and considerations are not known.’18
In October 1942, de Marigny had told his friend, Georges de Visdolou, that Oakes planned to replace Anderson as managing director with de Marigny and that the Oakes family was ‘surrounded by sharks whom they distrust and for this reason they make hardly any use of their capital in Nassau.’19
Anderson had been the subject of numerous censorship and security reports and had come to the authorities’ attention ‘when a Miami police officer called at this office to attempt to locate a message in our files which he believed would establish the motive for the murder of Sir Harry Oakes’.20
Censorship interest had been aroused because it was thought Sir Harry Oakes and de Marigny ‘might be intermediaries between J.H. Anderson and H.B. Griffiths in Nassau and Axel Wenner-Gren in Mexico.’21
Anderson, interviewed about the murder, told the FBI:
that Christie and Wenner-Gren brought in Duke of Windsor into a plot to divert millions of dollars to Mexico, to be exploited there after the war . . . I was told that Anderson does not know where the records were kept or how, but Wenner-Gren let it be known that he was holding $2,500,000 (US currency) for Windsor – some of it the Duke’s money, all of it available to him . . . unthinkable that former King of England might have a hand in it.’ 22
It seemed the murder might not be as simple as it seemed.
* * *
Nancy Oakes had stood by her husband throughout the trial. She had also brought in a private detective, at $300 a day plus expenses, to conduct his own investigation. A master of self-promotion, the Alfred Hitchcock lookalike, Raymond Schindler, was the most famous and highest paid American detective of the day.
‘It is my considered opinion that the murderer of Sir Harry (Oakes) can be found, identified, convicted and brought to justice,’ wrote Schindler, who remained obsessed with the case, to the Duke in July 1944, offering to work on it for free with his colleague Leonard Keeler, the developer of the lie detector.23 The Duke politely declined. The detective was not put off, speculating in the magazine Inside Detective shortly afterwards that the body had been moved to the bedroom and that there was a voodoo element.24
The following month, Christie met with an FBI officer to find a New York private investigator to re-examine the murder paid for ‘by contributions of a few influential people in Nassau’.25 An FBI report of August 1944 thought that ‘in view of Oakes’ background, it might have been committed by some of the big time mobsters with whom Oakes had previously been associated.’26 In the spring of 1945, the FBI were tipped off by Scotland Yard of ‘possible additional evidence’ of ‘a native of the Bahamas but who is presently in the United States’, but they were not interviewed.27 The inference was that this was Harold Christie.
In August 1946 a new Governor, Sir William Murphy, asked the Colonial Office to reconsider the evidence against de Marigny and Scotland Yard conducted a review of the case, but only on the basis of the trial transcript. They concluded that ‘in our opinion, de Marigny was the murderer and, with great respect, we think the case was mishandled . . . There should have been a conviction if the facts had been investigated and put before the Court in a proper manner.’28 They saw no purpose in reopening the case, especially after de Marigny could not be retried. It suited everyone’s purposes to let sleeping dogs lie.
In September 1950, Edward Majava, a seaman on holiday in California, was arrested for drunkenness and claimed that he had been told the name of the killer by a society portrait painter, Mrs Hildegarde Hamilton. He was sufficiently convincing for August Robinson, an assistant superintendent in the Bahamas police, to fly to Oakland. Majava told him that Christie had paid a Bahamas hit man.
The next month the Washington Star quoted a woman who claimed, ‘Everybody in Nassau knows who did it and why. But he is so powerful nobody dares touch him.’ According to the unnamed woman, the actual slayer was the son of a white father and Negro mother, and ‘he acted only as the hireling of a “powerful” plotter’.29
The lawyer Felix Cohen wrote to the British embassy in Washington in November 1950 after a colleague, Bettie Renner, who was supposedly looking into the case, was murdered, complaining that the authorities were turning a blind eye to various murders and witnesses felt intimidated about coming forward. He singled out Newell Kelley, Harold and Frank Christie.30
Three years later a local American hotelier, Daniel Cusick, told the FBI that ‘the Bahama Islands are controlled by Harold and Frank Christie’ and that ‘on one occasion someone shot him, and he feels confident it was a Christie hired gunman.’ The FBI said they could not help as they had no investigative jurisdiction.31
The first full-length study of the murder, The Life and Death of Harry Oakes, was written by the Daily Express journalist Geoffrey Bocca in 1959. He was helped in his research by Christie and initially by his former employer, Lord Beaverbrook, who had a house in Nassau; but during the course of the research, Beaverbrook suddenly withdrew his support. ‘I am opposed to the book about Oakes,’ he wrote to his former protégé. ‘I dissociate myself from it altogether because of the implications in relation to other people.’32 Bocca, who had planned to name Christie, subsequently suggested the killers were a ‘syndicate of financial adventurers involved in an intricate plot to get their hands on Oakes’s fortune.’33
The Bocca book stimulated new interest in the case. In March 1959, Canadian television transmitted a programme on the murder. On 8 June, Raymond Schindler wrote to the Bahamian attorney general saying that the Duke had been responsible for a cover up.34 Two days later Charles Bates, the legal attaché at the US embassy in London, sent an FBI report dated 28 May 1959 on the case to Hoover. That report remains closed.35
On 8 July, Nancy Oakes was interviewed at Scotland Yard, on the understanding that her information would not be made public without her permission. The following month, a Scotland Yard memo concluded that, ‘One or more of the beneficiaries might have been responsible for the death of her father’, naming as the hit man, a former narcotics officer in California called Stanley E. Halstead, who had known Oakes in his mining days.36
Later in 1959, Cyril Stevenson, leader of the Black Progressive Liberal party and editor of the Bahamian Times, began a campaign for a reopening
of the investigation. ‘I am prepared to say that, in my opinion, Oakes was killed by one of his close friends, whom he had no reason to suspect.’37 Twenty-four hours later, four shots were fired into the office where he usually worked.
Christie’s former secretary, sixty-year-old Dorothy Macksey, was raped and murdered in 1962. The authorities were quick to stress that there was no connection to the Oakes murder, but she was only one of many involved in the case who met sudden deaths. Sir Harry Oakes’s heir, Sydney, died in a car accident in 1966. According to writer John Marquis, he ‘had been working on documents relating to the Oakes’s land holdings on New Providence. There is talk of a faulty drive-shaft and possible interference with the car.’38
Another son, Pitt, suffered from years of mental illness and according to de Marigny, ‘he would run through the house naked barking like a dog and raising his leg to relieve himself on the furniture.’39 He had died shortly before Macksey of alcoholism but, according to the author John Marquis, his death was more sinister. ‘He didn’t die from drink, a source told me . . . Someone felt the need to silence him for ever.’40
As for Harold Christie, in 1959, aged sixty-two, he married a divorcee twenty years his junior. His business interests prospered. He eventually became chairman of the Bahamas Development Board and was knighted in 1964. But the increasing public suggestions of his involvement led Christie to issue a statement through his lawyers, threatening action against anyone who accused him.
His lawyers sent legal letters to Marshall Houts, an American academic who had served in the FBI and CIA, when his book King’s X was published in 1972, seeking to have the book withdrawn. After discussions, Christie then asked that he be allowed in the second printing ‘to make a statement that would detail Christie’s side of the case.’41 That statement never came.
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