When Peter told Chrissie that he’d arranged for the doctor to visit the following morning, she asked him to fetch the good pillowcases from the other room. He said he looked for around fifteen minutes but did not find the pillowcases. When he went back into the other room of the two-roomed flat, the curtains around their bed were drawn and he assumed Chrissie had gone back to sleep. He sat at the table for a while, smoking a cigarette, and then he went over to see how she was. When he drew back the curtain, he said, he got the shock of his life. His beloved Chrissie was lying in the bed, a rope tied tightly around her neck. Her face, the face he loved, was swollen, the tongue protruding from the mouth – the mouth he had kissed.
‘I don’t know what happened next,’ he said in court. ‘I must have collapsed or something. It knocked me out.’
Only two people knew exactly what happened in that small cramped room in that Glasgow tenement – and one of them was dead. We have only Peter Queen’s version of events and the theories of the prosecution. However, what Queen did next would not help his assertion that Chrissie had somehow managed to strangle herself. He did not try to loosen the noose that was biting into her neck and nor did he try to alert a doctor. Instead, he rushed out of the flat and into the street where he met PC Alex McLeod walking his beat. PC McLeod said the man mentioned nothing about his wife being dead but merely asked for directions to the nearest police office. PC McLeod directed him to the Partick office, known locally as the Marine. It took Peter a few minutes to walk through the dark of night to the police office, finally arriving there at around 3 a.m. By now, he was extremely agitated. He threw his house keys on to the counter and told police that his wife was dead in their flat. Then came the fatal six words – six words that would hold the key to life and death for Peter Queen less than three months later. For his guilt or innocence depended on which version the jury believed.
The police version was that Peter Queen, on being asked what had happened, said, ‘I think I have killed her.’ If this was the case, it was a clear confession. Peter had his face buried in his hands as he spoke, the officers said, but, when he said the words, he looked up and his voice was perfectly clear.
Peter Queen, though, denied saying this. His version was that, when asked what happened, he replied, ‘Don’t think I have killed her.’ – one word of a difference. It was a very subtle difference but a difference nonetheless. Where the police version was a confession, this was a denial. But the police had a major problem with their version. Although they were emphatic that the words had been spoken just as they stated, no one had thought to take a written record. Here was a man who was, apparently, confessing to murder. That confession was witnessed by at least two officers and yet not one of them had thought to write it down. In court, when being questioned about this very point, the police witnesses became very evasive and it wasn’t until the trial judge, Lord Alness, asked them pointed questions was it admitted that no official record was kept.
Meanwhile, back on that November night, officers had arrived at the flat to find the light still burning in the death room. They found Chrissie Gall lying on her back, her face turned away. Her left arm was fully extended from the shoulder, her right one was under the covers, which were pulled up to her chest. Both her dressing jacket and boudoir cap were still in place. She looked peaceful, with no expression of pain. She looked asleep. But she wasn’t asleep. There was a cord, cut from the kitchen pulley, tied round her neck in what appeared to be single knot. The flesh of the neck was broken, her face was discoloured, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, her tongue bulging slightly from beneath her teeth, the upper set, which were false, still in place. One of the officers loosened the tight noose although it was not as tight perhaps as the one awaiting Peter Queen who, within two hours, was formally charged with murdering Christine Robertson Gall.
‘I have nothing to say,’ he replied. And, this time, his words were carefully noted.
The Crown case was very simple. Peter Queen, tired of his lover’s drinking, of her depressions, of her suicide threats, had finally snapped, cut a length of cord from the kitchen pulley with a kitchen knife and had strangled her. They had medical experts to support their case, including Professor John Glaister, the highly respected Chair of Forensic Medicine at the University of Glasgow, and Professor Andrew Allison, of St Mungo College, who carried out the post-mortem. Both men believed that Chrissie Gall’s death was inconsistent with self-destruction. Professor Glaister summed up their view saying, ‘Several factors exclude suicide. These include the attitude of the body, the position of the arms, the position of the ends of the ligature, the fracture of the cricoia and the degree of constriction.’
They believed Chrissie Gall would have fallen unconscious before sufficient pressure was brought on the noose to kill. Her grip would have then relaxed and her hands would then have fallen away from the ligature. Also, one of the arms was found under the bedclothes, while the cricoid cartilage – a round cartilage in the larynx – had been fractured. In their opinion, it would take tremendous pressure to crack this tough piece of gristle. ‘The degree of force was fairly considerable and death would be rapid,’ opined Professor Allison.
But, in Spilsbury and Smith, the defence had their own heavy-hitting forensic team – and they felt the opposite was possible, although one of the dynamic duo was not prepared to state with certainty that Chrissie Gall killed herself.
Sir Bernard Spilsbury was a legal legend. In English courts, it was said, his word was law and few juries questioned his judgement in a case. Along with Sir Sydney Smith, the eminent pathologist from Edinburgh University, he was hired by Queen’s defence to look at the death of Chrissie Gall. It was the first and last time these two forensic giants would appear on the same side in a murder case.
From the beginning, Spilsbury was convinced Chrissie Gall had killed herself. There were no signs of a struggle in the room. The bed appeared undisturbed. Although the cricoid cartilage was cracked, there was none of the haemorrhaging or bruising on the deeper parts of the neck or thyroid he would expect to see in murder by strangulation when the killer generally keeps the pressure up on a tight ligature. The ligature itself was low down on the neck, with the half-knot just slightly to the right. He felt that, if it were murder, the ligature would have been higher up and the knot would have been further to the right. He doubted if a killer would use a half-knot for fear it might slip. Also, there was no sign of Chrissie scraping at the noose as it tightened on her throat, which might be expected if it was murder.
The Crown assertion that she would lose consciousness quickly and let go of the ligature was easily explained, Spilsbury thought. Under the microscope he saw that the fibres of the cord wove together under pressure and would have stayed in place, even after her hands fell away However, there seemed to be no explanation as to how she did all this yet still have one arm under the bedclothes.
Although he did not believe Peter Queen killed the woman, Sir Sydney Smith did not feel the evidence was strong enough for him to say without any reservation that Chrissie Gall killed herself. He tended toward the suicide theory but he could not completely rule out the possibility of murder. In the end, it would be up to the jury to decide which version of Chrissie Gall’s last moments was the truth.
The case was a sensation in Glasgow. Spectators packed the public gallery for the five-day trial, some queuing up from six in the morning to be sure of a seat. The unlucky ones milled about outside the courtroom, braving the January rain for a chance to witness such unusual proceedings. For the ‘Murder or Suicide’ case had caught their imagination.
The Crown presented their case first. Peter Queen had murdered Chrissie Gall because he had tired of her drinking and her depression. He had cut the cord from the pulley and strangled her as she lay in a drunken sleep. She did not know what was happening and that was why there were no signs of a struggle. However, the post-mortem failed to confirm the presence of alcohol in the stomach or blood – probably because the d
octors performing it omitted to carry out the necessary tests.
They used the fact that Peter Queen failed to check for a pulse when he found the body, failed to fetch medical help and, the pièce de résistance, confessed to the police by saying, ‘I think I have killed her.’ True, the officers involved did not write that down at the time but that did not mean he did not say it.
A dramatic trial was made even more sensational by the collapse of one of the expert witnesses in the box. Professor Allison had a serious dose of the flu and, while being cross-examined by the defence, his face visibly paled and he pitched forward. Defence counsel R McGregor Mitchell saw him sway and was the first to his side, catching the man and helping him to a seat. Professor John Glaister and Sir Sydney Smith were among the medical men who treated him. The trial was adjourned for the day but the forty-eight-year-old professor had recovered sufficiently to resume his evidence the following day.
The defence hammered away at the suicide theory. Chrissie Gall had suicidal tendencies, even the prosecution’s own witnesses confirmed that. Peter Queen had shown nothing but love, support and tenderness towards her – something that was, again, confirmed by the prosecution’s own witnesses. So, according to the eminent pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, supported to an extent by Scotland’s own Sir Sydney Smith, she had killed herself.
Peter Queen opted to take the stand and spoke for five hours about his life with Chrissie and his shock at finding her dead in bed that terrible November night. He spoke emotionally about taking her in his arms and crying out, ‘Chris, Chris, speak to me.’ The strain of reliving that night was evident. As he spoke his body swayed, a nerve jumped in his face and his eyes were tightly closed, ‘as if he was trying to shut out the memory of the scene,’ wrote one journalist.
He insisted the police version of his initial statement was wrong. He was asked in court, ‘When you were asked what was the matter, what did you say?’
‘I said, “My wife is dead. Don’t think I have killed her.”.’
‘What gave you the idea that there was any question of killing?’
‘They kept on asking me what was the matter. I thought I might be blamed. That is why I said, “Don’t think I have killed her.”.’
He denied he had tired of Chrissie although he did admit he was very worried about the route their life was taking. ‘The impression she gave me,’ he said, ‘was that it was due to her living with me – to the fact that her people might get to know about us.’ And he firmly denied strangling her to be rid of a woman who had become a drain on him both financially and emotionally.
‘I put it to you,’ accused the advocate depute, ‘that what really happened that night is that you, with a bread knife, cut the end of the pulley rope.’
‘I did not,’ said Queen.
‘And strangled her,’ he continued.
‘I did not.’
Finally, as it always must, it all came down to what the jury believed. The nine women and six men left the courtroom at around 3.30 p.m. on Saturday 9 January, to consider their verdict. For two hours, they disputed and debated and discussed. For two hours, they argued whether the prosecution’s expert witnesses were more expert than those that the defence had produced. For two hours, they talked over the true nature of Queen’s statement to the police. Was it a confession or a denial?
At 5.30 p.m., the bell rang to alert all interested parties that the jury had reached a decision. The judges, the lawyers, the witnesses, the spectators, the journalists and, more importantly, the accused all filed back into the court to hear the dread news. Peter Queen stood in the dock, his face pale and his body stiff, as he waited to hear his fate. His father sat beside the dock, his face tense. The two men – and everyone else in the courtroom – watched as the jury took their places and the forewoman was asked for their verdict on the charge of murder. The woman could not speak but the handkerchief that fluttered to her face to dab at the tears spoke volumes. It was left to a male juror to speak out. ‘Guilty, my Lord,’ he said in a clear voice. A sigh breathed through the room and somewhere a woman cried out.
Queen, rigid now as he stood to face the judges, knew in his heart there was only one punishment under law for the crime of murder. The jury had reached a majority verdict and had lodged a strong plea for clemency but Lord Alness had no choice – he had to sentence thirty-one-year-old Peter Queen to death. In a trembling voice, the judge decreed that he would hang in Duke Street Prison on 30 January.
Peter Queen’s head bobbed slightly as he turned, picked up the hat from where he had left it on the bench behind him and was led to the cells below. His father, tears brimming in his eyes, stretched his hands through the bars around the dock but could not reach his son.
It was the longest trial in Glasgow for decades and the first in thirty years to be concluded on a Saturday. There was an appeal, of course, but it failed and the execution date was duly amended to Saturday 13 February. But the jury’s wish for mercy was echoed in a petition signed by 400 of the city’s leading politicians and citizens. And the powers-that-be listened. Just after breakfast on 10 February, Peter Queen received a visitor in his cell. It was Glasgow’s Lord Provost Sir Thomas Kelly and he had come bearing a letter from the Secretary of State for Scotland authorising the sentence to be commuted to penal servitude for life.
On his release some years later, Queen returned to Glasgow to begin his life again and took a job as a bookmaker’s clerk. He made new friends but few of them knew of his past. He died in 1958 in happy obscurity.
7
WHO LOVES MOST
Buck Ruxton
The three sisters had come to the seaside resort to see the spectacle. They came every year in September to wonder at the bright lights and to be amazed by the splendour that modern technology could create. The lights sparkled in the dark of the night. They winked at their own reflection shimmering on the sea’s black surface. They hung on Blackpool’s landmark Tower like a string of twinkling beads. The sights and the sounds and the ambience of the Lancashire town, as usual, amazed the women. They were Scots and somehow the lure of Blackpool has always proved a strong one for that particular nation. But the day, as all days must, reached its end and it was time for one of their number to return home. She lived in Lancaster to the north and she had only come through for the day. At 11.30 p.m., she climbed into her husband’s Hillman Minx car and bade goodbye to the remaining two. As she left, she promised to return the following day and then they drove off, the lights of the car merging and finally disappearing among the countless others glittering through the night.
But these three sisters would never meet again.
On Sunday 29 September 1935, Susan Haines Johnson, from Lenzie, north of Glasgow, was on holiday in Moffat, a picturesque town in what is now Dumfries and Galloway. About two miles north of the town is Gardenholme Linn, a small stream that tumbles through a ravine towards the River Annan. The stream is crossed by the Edinburgh to Carlisle road by means of a bridge and Miss Johnson was on this bridge, admiring the view and watching the water cascading over the rocks below, when she noticed a curious package lying beneath her. It was not the package itself that was curious, it was what appeared to be sticking out of it that caught her eye. It looked, from her vantage point, like a human arm.
An ashen-faced Miss Johnson returned quickly to the Moffat hotel that she was staying in and told her brother Charles what she had seen. Together they made their way back to the bridge over the gully and the macabre bundle. Charles climbed down as far as he could for a closer inspection and confirmed that it was, indeed, a human arm. But it did not end there, for he could see a further four packages nearby. Shinning back up the side of the ravine, the Johnson siblings sped back again to Moffat to alert the police. A Sergeant Sloan was the first man on the scene and he gingerly opened the bundles to reveal their grisly contents.
The body parts were wrapped in a variety of items, including a bed sheet, a child’s woollen romper suit, a blouse and pages from news
papers The Sunday Graphic, Daily Herald and Sunday Chronicle. There were arms and legs and feet and pieces of flesh, all hacked from the body. There were two heads. And there was a piece of a human torso.
The shocking discovery sparked a full-scale search and, over the next month, a total of thirty packages were found in the area. The final tally of body parts reached seventy, including the two human heads, two sections of human trunks, seventeen limbs and over forty pieces of ‘soft tissue’, including three female breasts, two portions of external female sex organs and a uterus. Curiously, there was also a Cyclops eye – a specimen where, due to a malformation of the skull and brain, two eyes merge into one – found among the fleshy items although this proved to be something of a red herring. It was later assumed to have been a surgical specimen that had somehow made its way into the bundles.
The bodies had been dissected with some surgical skill and all means of identifying them had been removed – facial features had been scraped away, fingers and thumbs had been severed, teeth had been pulled, heads had been scalped. The killer no doubt believed he had committed the perfect murders by mutilating his two victims in such a fashion. He would have been convinced that tracing the victims back to him was nigh on impossible. But, although it is said there are only two things that are certain in this life – death and taxes – there is, in fact, a third. And that is that nothing is perfect.
Bakhtyar Rustomji Ruttonju Hakim was a doctor and a well-respected one at that. He was a Parsee. Parsees adhere to Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest religions which is now in decline due to strict rules that forbid marriage with other faiths. The word Parsee is derived from the word Persian and it was from there that the followers of the Iranian prophet Zoroaster fled around 1,000 years ago. They settled in India and thrived, becoming wealthy, educated and socially aware. Bombay-born Bakhtyar Hakim was a fine example of the Parsee tradition. He qualified in medicine at both his home university and in London. He was also a Bachelor in Surgery at the University of Bombay although he did fail the exam for fellowship of the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. Serving with the Indian Medical Service, he practised his skills in the Iraqi cities of Basra and Baghdad before arriving in London, where he worked for a time.
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