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Detective Monthly

JUNE 2021

MADMAN WENT TO LONDON TO KILL THE QUEEN

EAST END MYSTERY OF THE FRONT DOOR KEY …And the Body In The Front Room

“I’ve Murdered Someone In My House,” Said Ashleigh’s Killer

AMERICA’S MOST MURDEROUS FAMILY MARIE-LOUISE’S TERRIBLE SECRETS

DEADLY WIN ON THE FOOTBALL POOLS

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CONTENTS JUNE 2021 46 EAST END MYSTERY OF THE FRONT DOOR KEY

CASES FROM BRITAIN...

8 MAJOR BRITISH MURDER CASES: MADMAN WENT TO LONDON TO KILL THE QUEEN

London watchmaker Percy Busby was brutally murdered in his own home. Investigators believed that robbery was the motive, but with a key left in the front door could they be certain that the suspect with the cash was the killer?

Ronald Dixon told police he thought he was King Ron, and his rightful place was on the throne. Arrested and temporarily sectioned, he ended up back in the north-east. But his thoughts of murder clearly hadn’t gone away...

FROM THE USA...

4 AMERICA’S MOST MURDEROUS FAMILY

The Blairs of Kansas City are infamous in the US – with good reason. Terry Blair, a rapist and serial killer who murdered for the first time at the age of 21, is perhaps the best known...

16 MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE?: CONVICTION OVERTURNED – BUT TOO LATE TO SAVE GEORGE FROM THE GALLOWS

20 GANGLAND CONFIDENTIAL: LONGSHOREMAN WHO FOUGHT THE MOB

A double-murder at Liverpool’s Cameo Cinema netted the killer just £50 – and six months later the investigation had got nowhere. When an anonymous tip-off put small-time crook George Kelly in the frame a dreadful chapter in British justice got underway

Meet Pietro “Pete” Panto, the Italian-American union activist who led the fight against the Mafia-run International Longshoremen’s Association

AND FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD...

40 MURDER THE FRENCH WAY: MARIE-LOUISE’S TERRIBLE SECRETS

25 THE DEFENCE RESTS, PART SEVEN After defending George Joseph Smith at the Old Bailey murder trial, the celebrated advocate Sir Edward Marshall Hall argued that hypnotic suggestion was the key to the sensational Brides in the Bath case

She was a published author, writing under the pen-name Hera Mirtel, and making up stories came easily to her.

When investigators accused Marie-Louise Bessarabo of killing her husband and hiding his body in a trunk, she claimed their version of events was pure fiction. So was the body really that of M. Bessarabo?

35 ASK TC: DEADLY WIN ON THE FOOTBALL POOLS Workaholic Yorkshireman Eli Myers had won a small fortune with his syndicate – but that was where his good luck ran out...

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BRUTAL KILLERS OF KANSAS CITY

AMERICA’S MOST MURDEROUS FAMILY W

EEDKILLER ISN’T pleasant stuff, but surely that smell was something different?

So the neighbour called the police about the abandoned house on Montgall Avenue, in East Kansas City, because this really wasn’t normal. It was sickly, sticky and somehow hanging around in a way that no other odour had ever done before.

When the police arrived on September 2nd, 2004, they jemmied open the padlocked garage and made an awful, shocking discovery.

The bodies of two women lay under a tarpaulin. They were Patricia Butler, 58, and on top of her, Shellah McKenzie 38.

Patricia’s body had been left there the longest – at least a fortnight, if not longer – while Shellah’s had only been there for a week or so.

Shellah had been strangled, but Patricia’s body had decomposed so badly it was impossible to tell what the cause of death was.

Surprisingly, though, that wasn’t the oddest thing about the situation.

Because the following day, an anonymous man called 911 and said that he was the killer. What’s more, he went on to tell them where to find a third body.

Yet this wasn’t even the beginning of the story. That went back decades, to the early 80s.

T

he Blair family is one of the most infamous in modern US history.

A collection of murderers, rapists and who knows what else, they have seen almost

4 truecrime

They are one of the most infamous families in US history – with a horrific record of violence stretching back decades. No family, it seems, can match the Blairs for deadly behaviour

Terry Blair – a rapist and killer who murdered for the first time at the age of 21

every member sentenced to jail for a whole range of vicious, bloodthirsty crimes.

And their story is genuinely eye-popping.

It begins in August 1978, when Janice Blair, who lived with her children in extreme poverty in Kansas City, shot

her partner dead.

Elton E. Gray was a known drug dealer, and because Janice had a long history of mental illness, she made what is known as an Alford plea.

It’s basically a situation where a defendant claims

they’re innocent, but acknowledges that the prosecution case has so much evidence against them that a jury would probably find them guilty.

So the defendant pleads guilty in order to avoid a potential death sentence.

Because Janice suffered from mental illness, she was given five years’ probation and ordered by the judge to undergo psychiatric help.

There’s no evidence that she did.

But there’s plenty of evidence of what her family did, none of it pleasant.

For four decades, Kansas City was terrified of the Blair family, and with good reason.

Janice Blair, her sons, stepsons and their children, too, killed and raped their way to an astonishing litany of victims all the way from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Picking on women because they were prostitutes, taking on paid hits, attacking people at random...there was virtually nothing that the members of the Blair family wouldn’t do.

The fourth of Janice’s 10 sons, Terry Blair, now 60, became the most notorious and prolific of the Blair family of killers.

It was his call that boasted of being the killer of Patricia Butler and Shellah McKenzie, along with the as-yet-unidentified third victim.

Case report by Mark Davis But there was more to come. Much more.

to have a long-standing hatred of prostitutes, had told him that he wanted to kill every prostitute in Kansas City until they were either all wiped out or he was captured, whichever happened first.

Unfortunately, at first police were unable to link Blair directly to the phone used to make the calls to 911 regarding the other murders and attacks.

But by triangulating the signal from the phone via various masts around the city, the police were able to establish that all of the calls had been from a place close to where Blair was living.

Initially, Terry Blair was arrested on a charge of

T

erry Blair’s killing spree began in the early 80s, when he just 21.

In 1982, he was found guilty of killing Angela Monroe, his pregnant ex-girlfriend and the mother of his two children, and sentenced to 25 years.

He claimed in mitigation that he’d killed Angela because she was a prostitute and refused to stop seeing her clients so that she could concentrate on raising their two sons.

However, there was no evidence to back any of this up.

Nevertheless, he was released on parole after 21 years, in 2003.

Within weeks he’d broken his parole conditions by vanishing from the half-way house where he was supposed be staying.

Not long afterwards, the police began the hunt for a local killer, a homicidal maniac apparently determined to rid the streets of prostitutes.

East Kansas City is a slum area known for its shocking deprivation, terrible crime rates, widespread drug-dealing and prostitution.

The day after the neighbour on Montgall Avenue alerted the police to the presence of the bodies of Patricia Butler and Shellah McKenzie, a man called 911 claiming to be responsible.

He also told them where they could find another body.

It was in an alley a few blocks from where the first two women had been found.

He said that he wanted to report the location and the body, but didn’t want to discuss anything else.

Naturally, the dispatcher tried to get the man’s name, but he refused to say.

“Oh no,” he said, calmly.

“I couldn’t do that.” He merely repeated the location of the third body and also claimed responsibility for the other two deaths.

Then he called again the next day, this time alerting police to the location of two more bodies.

He said they’d be found in a thickly wooded area close to Highway 42, and they’d been there for over a week.

When challenged about

Above, Diamond White, the nephew of Terry Blair.

Below, violent abductor and rapist Clifford Miller

all this, he merely said he’d call himself Scott, before claiming that all the women had deserved their fate – “They’re prostitutes, scum and a disgrace,” he insisted.

He added that there were even more bodies waiting to be found and promised to call again with more information.

Then, when a local radio station revealed that the caller had been using a mobile phone, he stopped calling in.

By now, several other women had reported being raped and assaulted in the same area.

But were the attacks linked to the bodies the caller had claimed he knew about?

Police began by noticing that all of the victims could be found in a small radius around a street called Prospectus Avenue, where the notorious Blair family used to live.

And it wasn’t long before investigators narrowed down their search to Terry Blair.

F

irst, Blair was a physical match for descriptions of the attacker given by those who’d survived their ordeal.

A witness claimed that Blair, who was known

Terry Blair was charged with six counts of firstdegree murder, one count of first-degree assault and three counts of forcible rape. Because he’d already violated his parole, bail wasn’t even considered violating his parole, and having failed to stay in contact with his parole officer.

However, detectives were very keen to question him about the murders and sexual assaults.

On October 15th, 2004, Terry Blair was charged with six counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree assault and three counts of forcible rape.

Because he’d already violated his parole, bail wasn’t even considered.

His alleged victims were named as Patricia Butler, Shellah McKenzie, Carmen Hunt (another woman whose decomposed body was found in a derelict house), Darci Williams, who was found strangled with her own clothes in the alley mentioned by the anonymous 911 caller, Anna Ewing and Claudette Juniel, the woman found in the woods with her neck broken.

Anna Ewing’s death had truecrime 5

originally been recorded as an accidental suicide from a drug overdose, but the new information prompted police to exhume her body and reexamine it.

This time, the Medical Examiner classified her death as murder.

Blair was also charged with the deaths of Sandra Reed, 47, and Nelia Harris, 33, but these charges were later dropped.

Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for Blair pleading guilty.

So a bench trial with a lone judge, John O’Malley, was set.

T

he case became known in the press as the Prospect Corridor Killings, and although most of

Terry Blair’s victims. Top row, left to right: Patricia Butler; Anna Ewing; Carmen Hunt. Above, left to right: Claudette Juniel; Shellah McKenzie; Carmen Hunt

characteristics, such as being male and African-American, but among other things, their pitch and pacing are

Police at Montgall Avenue, East Kansas City

the evidence was fairly circumstantial, it was revealed that Blair’s DNA had been found on the body of Shellah McKenzie.

His defence argued that this only meant that he’d met the woman, not that he’d killed her.

The prosecution countered that, as she hadn’t tidied herself up afterwards, Blair must have been the last one to see her alive.

Blair denied having been the man to make the 911 calls boasting of the killings and knowing where the bodies had been left.

A defence witness, Professor Thomas Purnell of the University of Wisconsin, said that Blair’s voice and the voice heard on the three calls had some similarities, but also some differences.

“It’s unlikely that the 911 speaker and Mr. Blair are the same person,” he said. “Blair and the caller share some 6 truecrime

different.”

Professor Purnell agreed that voice identification was an inexact science, and he admitted that he’d only conducted experiments among his students. He also admitted that the caller

could be disguising his voice.

Eventually, the judge ruled that the weight of evidence was a strong indicator that the voice on the calls did indeed belong to Terry Blair.

“The caller tells precisely where the victim can be found,” Judge O’Malley said, “down to the clothing the victims were wearing.

This seems to confirm that the caller was responsible for all the murders and was not acting in concert with anyone else.”

On March 27th, 2008, Terry Blair was found guilty of all six murders and sentenced to six life sentences with no possibility of parole.

Family members of the victims sat in the courtroom, hugging each other and sobbing, while Blair remained motionless.

“The truth will always survive over evil,” said Iris Williams, the mother of Darci Williams.In addition to having lost her daughter, Iris was suffering from cancer

“Woman-hater” Terry Blair in court – he was sentenced to life without parole for the six murders

at the time of the trial. “You could look in his eyes and they are blank,” she said.

“But when he looks at a woman, it’s an evil look. It’s just like hatred.”

She continued to decry her daughter’s killer.

“I don’t have much time left,” she said, “but at least I know that monster will never walk the streets again.

If he doesn’t suffer in prison for his crimes, he will in the hereafter.”

Terry Blair appealed against his conviction, and because he continued to deny responsibility for the killings, his motives will probably never be known.

In fact, he is suspected of having been responsible for six other murders of women in the area, but with no more information available, these cases will probably remain unsolved.

“I don’t have much time left, but at least I know that monster will never walk the streets again. If he doesn’t suffer in prison for his crimes, he will in the hereafter” His appeal failed in August 2009, and Blair is now serving his sentence in the high-security Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, Missouri.

T

erry Blair may be the most notorious member of his family, but he’s far from the only killer.

As well as his mother, Janice Blair, having killed in 1979, one of his brothers, Walter Junior, was found guilty of having carried out a hit for money.

While he was in prison in his teens for early offences, Walter met Larry Jackson, who was on remand awaiting trial for rape.

Jackson approached Walter, believing he was a man known “to get things done” and offered him $2,000 to kill the woman accusing him of rape before the trial could take place.

After Walter was released, it’s known that he had

several phone conversations with Jackson, during which the price rose to $6,000.

On August 16th, 1979, Walter Blair went to the apartment block where 21-year-old Kansas City student Katherine Jo Allen lived. When she arrived at the door of the block, he brutally attacked her.

Blair hit Katherine on the head with a brick, and then shot her several times, in the head, chest and arms.

He was given the death sentence for the killing, and even though his defence team claimed to have sworn statements from nine others that Larry Jackson (who, incidentally, was never charged with any aspect of the case) had claimed to them that the killing had in fact been carried out by a man called Ernest Jones.

Because Jones was dead and unable to defend himself, this evidence was rejected and the Missouri Supreme Court refused to overturn Walter Blair’s conviction.

Eventually, after four stays, the death penalty was finally carried out, and Walter Blair was executed in July 1993.

O

ther members of the Blair family also carried out truly heinous acts.

For example, in 1992, half-brother Clifford Miller was convicted of abducting a woman from a bar, then shooting and raping her multiple times. She spent two months recovering in hospital from the gunshot wound, a fractured skull, a broken wrist and broken cheek bones.

Miller was given two life sentences plus another 240 years for the charges.

It wasn’t just the male side of the family, either. At least one sister got involved, too.

Warnetta White, sister of Walter and Terry, was charged alongside her then-husband Niola White III with stabbing a man to death. She was also jailed for suffocating her boyfriend, a crack dealer.

And then her son, Diamond White, turned out to be more than just a regular chip off the old block.

He first got into trouble at the age of just six, and he subsequently ran up an impressive record of offences by the time he was 16.

Born into a family of murderers: killer Diamond White

White made a series of appearances in the juvenile courts for assault, car theft and drug offences, amongst others. In the six months leading up to his 16th birthday, he had been charged with robbery four times, and the judge decided that he should be treated like an adult and sent to jail.

But while he was awaiting trial, he and two other boys anally raped another

15-year-old boy.

So when he turned 16, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

However, Diamond White didn’t bother to make the slightest pretence that he was going to go straight.

If anything, he went straight back to his old ways.

And as soon as he was released at the age of 34, he started to run riot once more.

A hand-cuffed Walter Blair.

Inset, a mug-shot of the killer who was executed in July 1993

O

n June 24th, 2009, White and two accomplices shot and killed 22-year-old Kevin Ashline outside the Alps Apartments in Kansas City.

It started as an attempted robbery, but even though CCTV showed that Ashline threw his hands up and apparently shouted “I’m not carrying anything, I’ll walk away, please, I don’t have anything to steal,” White shot him anyway.

“He didn’t know any other way of life,” claimed John Picerno, White’s defence attorney. “He was born into a family of murderers. He never stood a chance. Where was the help this kid needed when he was growing up?

He only did what he saw his family do. He never knew or understood there could be an alternative way to live your life. From the moment he was born, he was destined to become a criminal. The court should show some mercy and understanding, not lock him up and throw away the key.”

Mr. Picerno pleaded in vain. His client was found guilty of seconddegree murder, robbery and armed criminal action and sentenced to two life sentences plus 100 years.

However, his attorney was right – the family that Diamond White grew up in had a truly horrific way of life.

But why?

“The biological theory says that this is genetic, that people are wired for these kinds of behaviours,” said John Hamilton, criminal justice professor at Park University, Missouri.

“The opposing theory says we are a blank slate so we aren’t fated one way or the other,” he continued. “But we will tend to model and copy who we associate with.

“This doesn’t take into account social deprivation, domestic abuse and other factors. But whichever way you interpret this, the case of the Blair family history stands alone in terms of the brutality, violence towards women, hatred of authority, that made them what I believe to be the most dangerous family in the US. “Thankfully, their dynasty of terror has come to an end.”

Here’s hoping Professor Hamilton is right. truecrime 7

H S I T I R B MAJOR R CASES MURDE

W

HEN RONALD DIXON set out from Heaton, Newcastle, to make his way to London he had one object in mind.

That was to break into Buckingham Palace, kill the Queen, and take her place on the throne.

For Dixon had convinced himself that he was the true king of England. “I am King Ron,” he told the startled investigators who arrested him in the nick of time.

“And I want the place that is rightfully mine.”

Dixon had never made a great secret of his madness to the rest of the world. When he was 21 a psychiatrist examined him and reported mental problems. A year later, after a frenzied middleof-the-night hammer attack on his parents, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Ten years after that he made his bid to break into Buckingham Palace.

When he applied for a disability living allowance, he wrote on the application form: “I need someone to keep an eye on me throughout the day and night.

I need someone to calm me down when I get anxious and hear voices, when I am depressed and confused. I do not realise if my condition is getting worse.

“I’m a danger to myself and others. If I do not take my medication I will become psychotic. I hear voices in my head. These voices do things like tell me to attack my enemies.”

Despite all these manifestations of acute and dangerous mental problems, psychiatrists believed he could be integrated back into the community, and allowed him to live freely in his own apartment. The results of that policy were to end in an appalling tragedy.

Born in 1972 into a family of three children, Dixon was brought up by his parents in a comfortable home in Sunderland. They endured a nightmare ordeal at his hands when he was 22. At 2.20 a.m. on November 12th, 1994, they were asleep in their home in Shakespeare Street, 8 truecrime

MADMAN WE TO KILL “I’ve Murdered Someone In My House,” Said Ashleigh’s Killer

A danger to himself and others: Ronald Dixon who described himself as King Ron to investigators

Sunderland, when Dixon crept into their bedroom, clutching a hammer.

Without any warning he beat his father with the hammer, causing serious head and body wounds. Then he turned to his mother, who, hardly believing what she was seeing, was screaming out in fear and panic. He only stopped beating her when the handle of the hammer

broke.

When the police arrived Dixon could offer no explanation for the attack.

They charged him with attempting to murder his father and causing grievous bodily harm to his mother.

But when he came to court his distraught parents begged the authorities in a letter not to jail him, but to send him for psychiatric treatment.

The judge, clearly moved

by their plea, gave him a probation order, conditional upon his attending a mental hospital for treatment.

Four years later Dixon was finally diagnosed as having a mental illness, assessed as suffering from “grandiose and persecution tendencies.”

His parents died years later of natural causes, but they were aware of their son’s disturbing deteriorating mental health.

He was given a rented ground-floor flat in Heaton, Newcastle, through the charity Mental Health Matters, which decided he could be re-integrated into the community. Another charity, Mental Health Trust, was risk-assessing him. But the professionals dealing with him were noticing growing signs of paranoia.

They knew that he was getting himself deep into credit card debt, drinking heavily, missing medical appointments, and that he was becoming truculent over taking his anti-psychotic medication. When his request to be taken off his regular once-every-five weeks injection, that controlled his erratic behaviour was refused, he simply declined to take any more medication.

“I don’t believe I need any more medicine,” he said.

“Besides, I’ve only been making up this illness and the symptoms. It’s just a ruse to keep the police off my back and keep myself out of jail.”

Early in 2006, Dixon vanished from his Heaton flat. He set out for London and on January 16th he was

Case report by John Sanders

ENT TO LONDON THE QUEEN

Above, killer Ronald Dixon is captured on CCTV as he enters Clifford Street police station, where he admitted to an officer, “I’ve murdered someone in my house.” Background image: Buckingham Palace

arrested by the special Royal Protection police while he was attempting to get inside Buckingham Palace. Asked what he had intended to do if he managed to break in, he replied: “I was going to kill my mother (meaning the Queen) and take her place – the place that belongs to me.”

Asked who he thought he was, he replied: “I am King Ron. And I have come to take the place that is rightfully mine.”

He was temporarily sectioned for a period of time to allow the police to investigate his background and allow him to get psychiatric treatment. But after being briefly detained, he was thought fit to return to live in the north-east.

Back in Heaton, Dixon’s psychiatric nurse told his charity manager that, given his patient’s current state of mind, no one from their office should visit Dixon on their own. “It would be safer,” he said, “if in future all visits were made in pairs.”

That was to turn out to be an extremely wise piece of counsel. Unfortunately, it was never passed down to the operating staff, with results that were to prove catastrophic.

Two days before Christmas, 2005,

Ashleigh Ewing. She was described as a vibrant, active and intelligent young woman with enormous potential

22-year-old Ashleigh Ewing joined the charity Mental Health Matters. She had

recently graduated in psychology and as part of a six-month probationary

period she was required to “shadow” a full-time health worker.

She was selected to assist in the case of Ronald Dixon, and accompanied by his regular visitor she met him at his ground-floor flat. The visit went well enough, and Ashleigh told him she would be back to see him again in the New Year.

Early in January she went back to the flat. This time there were no pleasantries.

“I don’t want you coming here again,” Dixon told her.

“In fact, I don’t want anyone visiting me again. I’m quite capable of managing on my own.”

Ashleigh shrugged and left. All she could do was go back to her manager and make out a report. But Dixon’s mind was slipping into an abyss. He was seen walking around with bottles of spirits, and was constantly drunk. He wasn’t paying any rent or domestic bills, and he wasn’t taking any medication.

In an effort to get some money for alcohol and cigarettes he smashed up a payphone that had been installed for his private use.

When the charity found out, they came to an agreement with him that he would pay back £5 a week until the £200 it had cost was repaid. truecrime 9

In fact, he never repaid a penny.

On a spot visit Ashleigh Ewing saw him in the street clutching a bottle of vodka. Neighbours told her that Dixon had been acting strangely and some of them had seen him being aggressive to his dog, which he loved. Again, all Ashleigh could do was report the situation to her manager.

A few days later, on Friday, May 19th, 2006, she

Forensic officers at the crime scene

was asked by a colleague as a favour to go to Dixon’s flat and hand him a letter

demanding the weekly payments for the damaged payphone. She wasn’t on

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the rota to visit Dixon that day, but she was due to visit another patient in the care of Mental Health Matters, who was living in the flat above Dixon’s.

When she called at the upstairs flat the patient was still in bed and not ready to see her. So she filled in the waiting time by going downstairs to deliver the letter.

At 10.20 she knocked heavily on Dixon’s door.

He opened it after a few minutes, muttering darkly to himself, and beckoned her in. Once inside she handed him the letter. While she watched he opened it, and then threw it aside.

A few minutes later the upstairs patient heard screams and banging coming from Dixon’s flat. Worried, he rang Ashleigh’s mobile, but there was no answer.

“I’ve just murdered someone in my house. I am the king of England” Next he rang the charity’s office, telling them there had been screams and a commotion, but it had now died down.

The charity also tried Ashleigh’s mobile, but although it rang no one answered. The manager called the police.

At 10.50 a.m. Dixon was caught on CCTV coming out of his flat with his dog on a lead. He checked the door after closing it behind him and walked off briskly down Shields Road. He was next seen entering the police station in Clifford Street.

Walking up to the desk he said calmly: “I’ve just murdered someone in my house.”

Asked what had happened, he wouldn’t elaborate, beyond declaring over and over again, “I am the king of England.”

Police found Ashleigh’s body where he left it on the kitchen floor. She had gone to his flat, according to a commentator, “like a lamb to the slaughter.” She had been stabbed 35 times on her face, neck, head and upper body, with four different kitchen knives, whose blades varied from five inches to

nine inches. One wound was inflicted with such force that the snapped blade was embedded inside her.

When Dixon had finished off all the knives he used a pair of scissors to inflict more wounds.

A reconstruction of the murder showed that he had attacked her first in the lounge and followed her as she fled into the kitchen.

When she was dead on the floor he took a shower and carefully selected some clean clothes before going to the police station with his dog.

On Monday, October 22nd, 2007, Dixon, now 35, stood in the dock at Newcastle Crown Court flanked by four nurses, and

Above, Ronald Dixon. He denied murder but admitted manslaughter. Left and below, victim Ashleigh whose screams were heard in the flat above Dixon’s

schizophrenia. He was ordered to be detained at Rampton Secure Hospital.

But, added Judge David Hodson, “answers must now

pleaded not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.

Paul Sloan, QC, prosecuting, told the court that Ashleigh Ewing had been a vibrant, active and intelligent young woman with enormous potential.

She first worked with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, and later at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Newcastle. “It is perhaps ironic that she left that job because of fears for her personal safety, as her duties involved her working alone on night shifts.”

She had been working for the charity Mental Heath Matters for only a few days before she met Ronald Dixon. “The day she was murdered was to be the last day of her probation period,” Mr. Sloan said.

Psychiatrists for the prosecution and for the defence testified that Dixon was suffering from paranoid

follow as to why this tragedy happened.”

Ashleigh lived in Hebburn with her parents. Their local MP, Stephen Hepburn, said:

“This is an appalling case. I know the family personally.

I fully support their calls for an independent inquiry into what happened. It is dreadful

She had been stabbed 35 times on her face, neck, head and upper body, with four different kitchen knives. One wound was inflicted with such force that the blade was embedded inside her that such an inexperienced young woman was sent to see someone with his record.

I am devastated and we need a full inquiry into how this was allowed to happen.”

In February 2010, Mental Health Matters admitted breaching health and safety rules. They issued an unreserved apology to Ashleigh’s family during the hearing at Newcastle Crown Court. The charity was fined £30,000 for failing to protect an employee and also told to pay £20,000 costs. truecrime 11

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CHRONICLES OF CRIME True Crime’s monthly diary of criminal events day by day as they were reported in the national newspapers. This month, news from around the world in March and April 2021. Researched by Richard Sharpe

March 29th KNIFE-KILLER JAILED FOR MURDER AGAIN EMMA-JAYNE MAGSON, who was convicted of murdering her boyfriend in 2016,

Above, killer Emma-Jayne Magson. Below, victim James Knight

FOUR KILLED IN SHOOTING RAMPAGE April 1st AMINADAB GAXIOLA GONZALEZ, 44, has been charged with four counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder after a shooting rampage at an office building in Southern California.

Gaxiola allegedly struck at the offices of Unified Homes in the city of Orange,

Above, police at the crime scene in Orange. Left, suspect Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez

south-east of Los Angeles.

Police identified the four dead as Luis Tovar, 50, who owned Unified Homes,

KILLER DUMPED BODY PARTS IN BIN BAGS April 6th

has been convicted of the same offence at a retrial.

The 28-year-old, from Leicester, fatally wounded James Knight by stabbing him in the chest with a steak knife at her home in Sylvan Street on March 27th, 2016.

The killer, who claimed she was being strangled and was acting in self-defence, was given a minimum sentence of 17 years behind bars – the same sentence she was given in 2016.

The Court of Appeal had ordered a retrial after hearing that evidence about the killer’s mental state was not put before the trial jury at Leicester Crown Court.

However, jurors at the retrial at Birmingham Crown Court did not accept her version of events.

The court heard that Emma-Jayne and James Knight had been in a “volatile” relationship since October 2015.

Leticia Solis Guzman, 58, Jenevieve Raygoza, 28, and her brother Matthew Farias, aged nine.

Police say the suspect, who was taken to hospital after apparently being shot by police, chained the front and rear gates of the office complex before he struck.

CCTV footage reportedly showed him armed with a semi-automatic handgun. He carried a backpack containing other ammunition.

KILLER AZAM MANGORI, 24, must serve at least 20 years behind bars for ending the life of a “bright, vivacious, intelligent young woman” in Exeter in September 2020.

Mangori followed 32-year-old Lorraine Cox, who had been on a night out, and killed her in his flat above a kebab shop by smothering her with a T-shirt.

He then kept his victim’s

Above, Lorraine Cox. Left, her killer Azam Mangori

body in the flat for a week before dismembering it and dumping body parts in bin bags in an alley behind his flat and in woodland at Newton St. Cyres.

Mangori was found guilty of murder by a jury at Exeter

Crown Court.

The court was told that after killing Lorraine, Mangori used her SIM card to send messages to her family and friends to make it appear that she was still alive.

He was captured on store CCTV buying bin bags, tape, a suitcase and an air purifier.

Jurors heard evidence that the killer had also looked at amputation videos in the days before Lorraine’s disappearance.

Mangori, of Stoke-onTrent, admitted preventing a lawful burial.

In court prosecutor Simon Laws QC described Mangori as a “fluent and determined liar.”

GAY MAN BEATEN TO DEATH BY THUGS April 6th SHAE NICHOLSON, 20, Martell Fabian Brown, 24, and a teenage boy have been found guilty of killing a gay man in South Yorkshire.

Sheffield Crown Court heard that vulnerable and reclusive Jerry Appicella, 51, was attacked by the thugs in Denaby Main as he made his way home from a Go Local shop.

Mr. Appicella was beaten with a metal pole and a brick

Killers Shae Nicholson (left) and Martell Fabian Brown

in an alleyway on December 3rd, 2019. He escaped but is believed to have died

hours later. His body was discovered at his home by police on December 15th.

Prosecutor John Harrison said: “They beat him, kicked him, stamped on him and struck him with the weapon.

He was knocked to the floor and the attack continued.”

Nicholson was found guilty of murder. Fabian Brown and the boy were found guilty of manslaughter. l more Chronicles on page 33

truecrime 13

Comment

Send your letters to: Comment, PO Box 735, London, SE26 5NQ or email truecrime@truecrimelibrary.com (please put your address on emails). We pay £8 for any that are published

PROHIBITION’S UNINTENDED EFFECTS Reading the exploits of the Purple Gang (“The Purple Gang And The Collingwood Massacre,” May) reminded me that Prohibition was a prime example of the law of unintended consequences – it turned small-time crooks into millionaires, kicked the murder rate up a notch, criminalised large sections of the community, killed thousands through tainted liquor, saw women turn to bootlegging in droves and soaked up valuable police time and resources.

As the tide turned, harsh punishments were demanded by temperance advocates – such as being hung by the tongue from an aeroplane; forced sterilisation of degenerates; branding with a Under the radar: women tattoo; or being placed inside bootleggers bottle-shaped cages in public squares. It was even suggested that poisoned alcohol be deliberately distributed!

Gangsters queued up to join temperance leagues – the longer Prohibition lasted, the richer they became. The KKK supported Prohibition – no, I don’t know why either, nor do I care. It was even suggested the Bible be edited to remove any mention of alcohol. Good grief – what about the Last Supper and water-into-wine? It’s enough to drive you to drink.

Andrew Stephenson, Newhaven

LENGTHY SENTENCE INJUSTICE? Reading about Joseph Ligon (Chronicles Of Crime, April) was very interesting. Spending 68 years behind bars seems extremely harsh, especially when you take into consideration he was 15 years old when he was convicted. But, on the other hand, you have the fact that he took part in violent crimes in which people died. His very lengthy prison sentence seems an injustice when you take into account other criminals getting lesser sentences for similar crimes. Probably the loved ones of his victims perhaps think he got what he deserved?

Owen Hollifield, Caerphilly

SYMPATHY FOR DOREEN AND LISA My thanks to True Crime (April) for two particularly poignant stories. First, “Eastbourne Tragedy: ‘A Mother’s Living Nightmare’” where poor Doreen Jeffs, beset by profound depression, killed her baby Linda. Her trial must have been a tremendous ordeal for her, even though she aroused so much sympathy from those trying her, such as these words from her defence counsel: “She is a woman who committed an offence while under the stress of childbirth.” A year’s probation would have suggested that the worst was over for her, but she never really recovered, and tragically took her own young life on the cliffs Killed her baby: of Beachy Head. What a waste.

Doreen Jeffs The second heartbreaking story was that of Lisa Montgomery (“Womb Raider...Why Lisa Had To Pay For Her Crime – With Her Life”). Her crime, of stealing a foetus from the womb of Bobbie Jo Stinnett, was dreadful, and as writer Francesca Morrison comments: “Understanding how it happened does not condone or excuse it.” But her trial process, her time spent on Death Row and her eventual execution by lethal injection took no account of the unbelievably abusive horrors that Lisa had been subjected to since her own birth. The writer’s final words, in the excellent piece which accompanies Lisa’s story (Foetal Abduction: A Rare Crime) sum up the terrible circumstances: “14 years on Death Row after a life of suffering and torment.” Again, what a waste. It’s

14 truecrime

JUSTICE TOOK 33 Colleen Stevens, of Cork City, writes: “I wondered if you would feature the case of Surrey schoolboy Roy Tutill, who was murdered in 1968 by Brian Field. It would be very interesting to read – hoping you will oblige.”

You’re right, Miss S, it’s a fascinating case in which justice was finally served on a child-killer – 33 years after the murder. For a full account of the case, we’d like to point you to the April 2018 edition of our sister magazine True Detctive. Copies are still available to buy from the Back Issues section of our website shop at www. truecrimelibrary.com or by calling Forum Press on 020 8778 0514.

Meanwhile, for all our readers, here’s a short account of the case...

On Tuesday, April 23rd, 1968, Roy “Tuts” Tutill, 14, a pupil at Kingston Grammar School, made a fatal decision: he decided to hitch-hike home from school to save the bus fare money. He wanted a new bike and a model train set. Roy lived at Brockham Green, near Dorking, and at 3.30 p.m. he left school with his friends and caught a 65 bus which took him to the Bridge Road roundabout on the A24 at Chessington.

Roy was last seen alive thumbing a lift in Leatherhead Road, Chessington. Three days later his body was found in a copse at Mickleham. He had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and his bus ticket was found in his trouser pocket. His school blazer had been left folded on his body.

More than 10,000 people were interviewed in the intensive investigation, but the murder remained unsolved.

In August 2000, Surrey Police reopened their investigation into the murder and, because of the advances in DNA profiling, Roy’s clothes were

25 years ago this month...

True Crime Summer Special 1996

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

E FOR ROY 3 YEARS

granting reprieves were mostly on the grounds of provocation by the victim or mental impairment of the accused. However, John Constantine was neither provoked nor insane and there was little sympathy for him from either the judge or the jury, who made no recommendation for mercy. I wonder if racist considerations might have affected Constantine’s fate, as I am assuming he was of West Indian origin.

Incidentally, I am sure other readers will have noticed the error in the story which said “it was five years since the last hanging in England” when Guenther Podola was hanged. In fact, Podola was hanged in 1959, the year before Constantine’s execution on September 1st, 1960.

Brian Mowat, Inverurie

NO SURPRISE TRUMP LET KILLER LISA DIE

Left, murdered Surrey schoolboy Roy Tutill. Above, the copse where his strangled body was found on April 26th, 1968. Below, his killer Brian Lunn Field

resubmitted for further examination. A DNA profile was obtained from semen found on his trousers, and it was checked at the national database to see if it could be matched.

In January 2001, it was found to match the DNA profile of a drink-driver arrested in the West Midlands in September 1999. Farm labourer Brian Lunn Field, who had an alarming criminal history, and had long been suspected of Roy’s murder, was arrested at his home in Solihull the following month.

Initially, Field, 65, who had lived in Surrey at the time, denied any knowledge of Roy’s murder but he later made a full confession. At the Old Bailey in November 2001 he pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life behind bars.

Judge Gerald Gordon told Field: “This was the killing of a normal, happy, healthy boy, an act particularly obnoxious to all right-minded people, to satisfy your sexual desire. This act and its consequences must have haunted his parents for the rest of their lives, and the rest of his family still suffer from what you did.” surely not too difficult, is it, to appreciate how the stories of Doreen Jeffs and Lisa Montgomery complement each other?

Stuart Davies, Barnstaple

WAS HANGED KILLER VICTIM OF RACISM? In “Two Shopkeepers Slain” (May), the story about the murders of two shopkeepers in 1960, the author Matthew Spicer raises the question of how the perpetrators of these crimes were punished. Was it fair treatment that one of the guilty men was hanged while the other man, convicted of a similar crime, was reprieved from the gallows?

Both the perpetrators, John Constantine and Mihaly Pocze, were convicted on overwhelming evidence at their trials.

Mihaly Pocze was reprieved from hanging because there were doubts about his sanity. In the True Crime series on reprieves published in 2019 and 2020, the reasons given for

Find us online at www.truecrimelibrary.com

“Womb Raider...Why Lisa Had To Pay For Her Crime – With Her Life” (April) was one of the saddest stories ever.

I believe in capital punishment, except where the killer is proven to be seriously mentally ill. Lisa Montgomery was certainly so but was executed for the murder of a heavily pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett, whose baby she cut from the mother’s womb and abducted. Thankfully the baby was soon found safe and well with Lisa and placed with her father, now a grieving widower.

Lisa’s crime was barbaric, but from her first breath Lisa was shown that the world is a brutal and merciless place. Her childhood was a living nightmare of rape and physical and emotional abuse. Her Abused as so-called “mother” Judy beat her regularly, a child: and by the age of 11 Lisa had been raped, Lisa Montgomery sodomised and beaten repeatedly by her alcoholic stepfather. One beating by this brute left her brain-damaged as was later medically proven.

Judy soon started pimping her daughter out to local workmen in return for odd jobs around the house while the stepfather invited his equally perverted friends around to gang-rape her.

To add further indignity, these filthy beasts then urinated on Lisa.

When the then-President of the US Donald Trump refused Lisa’s lawyer’s appeal that she was too mentally ill for execution he reasoned that this “especially heinous crime deserved execution.”

Just as expected from a man who is believed by many to be racist and homophobic, and who calls the poor “losers,” sees women as sex-objects and ridicules the disabled.

Ann Nicholl, Strabane

WHY WASN’T LISA TAKEN INTO CARE? To say that Lisa Montgomery’s life was a trainwreck would be the understatement of the 21st century (“Womb Raider...Why Lisa Had To Pay For Her Crime – With Her Life,” April). She didn’t stand a chance, even before she was born, thanks to her mother Judy Shaughnessy’s heavy drinking.

The thing that incenses me the most – more than the unspeakable abuse to which Lisa was subjected, even the horrific killing and mutilation of pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett and the theft of her baby, was the fact that Lisa was not taken into care like her older half-sister Diane. If Judy was reported for neglecting the two girls, why was the younger Lisa left behind to face the “tender mercies” of her horrible family?

In another loving adoptive home she would have had a life of normality, even if she retained the dim memories of her traumatic infancy.

Lisa’s subsequent life would not have been the long, 50-odd years’ trudge down her own road to Calvary. I can’t decide on whether or not she should have been executed. If Lisa “...went to her death ‘like a child of five’...barely understanding what was happening” maybe she was spared the horror of anticipating her own death. Some pro-death penalty supporters say many other people have suffered extreme abuse during childhood, but never went on to kill.

The happiest part of this grim case? At least baby Victoria survived and was reunited with her father Zeb Stinnett.

B. Waters, Inverness truecrime 15

CONVICTION OVERTURNED But Too Late To Save George From The Gallows

W

E USED to think the police could do no wrong. We now know otherwise, our view changed by cases of police corruption. Once, when a man was hanged for murder, we assumed that justice had been done. That view, too, has long since changed, due to a spate of convictions found to have been unsafe.

Case in point: the conviction

Case report by

A.W. Moss and execution of George Kelly, a Liverpool tearaway of the late 1940s.

Kelly was destined to find more fame half a century after his death than he ever did in life, and for all the wrong reasons. He had been a small-time crook little-known outside his patch, whose reputation was inflated by the media to that of a ruthless gangleader.

One newspaper called him “The Little Caesar of Lime Street.”

On the evening of March 19th, 1949, as the audience at Liverpool’s Cameo Cinema watched the film Bond Street, the cinema’s 44-year-old manager Leonard Thomas was shot dead in his office and his assistant John Catterall, 30, was mortally wounded.

The double-murder netted only £50, and nearly six months passed with the investigation getting nowhere. Then the police received an anonymous letter: “Dear Sir,” it began, “This is not a crank’s letter or suchlike, nor am I turning informer for gain. It says in the papers you are looking for one man. I know three and a 16 truecrime

Above, the Cameo Cinema where the manager and his assistant were shot dead in March 1949. Below, George Kelly: a small-time crook who found himself wrongly accused of murder

girl, not including myself, who heard about this plan for the robbery. I would have nothing to do with it and I don’t think

the girl had. There was only two men went. The man he took with him lost his nerve and would not go in with him, but said he would wait outside, which he did not.”

The writer added that the letter was anonymous through fear of prosecution as an accessory, and asked the police to respond with an advertisement in the personal column of the Liverpool Echo “giving me your word that I won’t be charged.”

The police replied in the small ads.: “Letter received.

Promise definitely given.” But the writer failed to come forward.

Detective Chief Inspector Herbert Balmer suspected

MISCARRIAGE OF

JUSTICE?

that the letter was from a prostitute who associated with criminals. The handwriting of all known prostitutes in the city was checked, and Balmer’s hunch was confirmed. The writer was a Liverpool street-walker. Identified and questioned, she said she knew the names of only two of the people she had mentioned in her letter.

Neither was the killer. They were another prostitute named Jackie Dickson and her lover James “Stutty” Northam.

Both had criminal records, and they were arrested and interrogated. Northam admitted being present when the raid was planned.

According to the statement he made, the killer was George Kelly, who was already a suspect – the police had questioned him on the day after the shootings, but he had an alibi. He said he was in a pub at the time of the raid, and he named witnesses who could confirm this.

Northam, however, claimed that after the raid he had asked Kelly what had gone wrong. Kelly told him he had gone to the cinema with an ex-seaman, Charles Connolly, who was to follow him up to the manager’s office in case the assistant manager turned up unexpectedly. But at the last moment Connolly had refused to accompany Kelly beyond the cinema’s side door.

Northam’s statement continued: “Kelly said he got to the manager’s office and walked in. There was an old fellow sitting down. Kelly said he wanted the takings, and then pointed to the bag on the table. The man said, ‘Don’t be such a fool. Put that toy away.’ And Kelly said, ‘This is no toy – and I want that bag.’

“The man then stood up and said, ‘You can’t take that bag. It belongs to the company. You can take some of my own money.’ He then tried to brush the gun aside.

“Kelly told me, ‘I couldn’t be bothered with him any more, so I shot him.’ He put the gun in his pocket, picked up the bag and started to make for the door. When he was a few feet away the door opened. Another man came in and closed the door behind him. The man kept his hands behind his back and said to Kelly, ‘What are you doing here?’

“The man then came towards him, made a grab at the bag and the cash went all over the floor. The man tried to tackle him and Kelly butted him. Kelly said the man then let go of him for a second, so he pulled out his gun and shot him in the chest. He went down screaming and tearing at his chest. The man got to his knees again and tried to tackle Kelly, so he shot him again.

“The man was stretched out by the door. He had to drag him away so that he could try to open the door.

Kelly thought the man had locked it when he came in, so he shot the lock off.

He rushed down the spiral staircase and out of the cinema.”

Northam went on to say that after making his getaway Kelly had boasted to him that he had a cast-iron alibi.

He had made a point of

Justice Cassels decided that the defendants should be tried separately.

“I have come to the conclusion,” he said, “that it is in the interest of justice that the jury in a long case like this, particularly a retrial and on a capital charge, should not have to dissect evidence of individual witnesses and relate it to more than one person under trial.

“I don’t think the defence is prejudiced. On the contrary, it may well be favoured by a separate trial in that there will be before the jury no evidence other than that relevant to the issues being tried concerning one person.”

Kelly was tried first, the jury hearing that the

Above left, George Kelly. He was “at the bevy” at the time of the raid, firstly in the Spofforth Hotel (below) and then the Leigh Arms. Above right, top to bottom, Detective Chief Inspector Bert Balmer; Charles Connolly.

He admitted robbery to avoid Kelly’s fate

being seen in nearby pubs immediately before and after the shooting.

Jackie Dickson made a statement saying that she had witnessed the planning of the raid in which Kelly was to be the gunman and Connolly his accomplice.

O

n September 30th, 1949, the pair were arrested and charged with the murders. Their 13-day trial was the longest in British criminal history to date, and in his summing-up Mr. Justice Oliver told the jury

they had three questions to consider. Was Kelly the gunman? Did he fire the fatal shots? And was Connolly guilty of murder if he had agreed to the raid?

In law, the judge directed, if Connolly knew that Kelly was armed and would use the firearm, then he was equally guilty.

After five hours’ deliberation the jury failed to agree and a retrial was ordered.

When this began at Liverpool Assizes in the following February, Mr.

“The man tried to tackle him and Kelly butted him. Kelly said the man then let go of him for a second, so he pulled out his gun and shot him in the chest” shootings had taken place at about 9.30 p.m. Dealing with Kelly’s alibi, the prosecution said he left the Spofforth Hotel before 9.30, and when he appeared at the Leigh Arms some time after 9.45 he deliberately ensured that others noticed him. He tapped a taxi-driver on the shoulder, telling him, “You can have a drink with me, pal. The best in the house.” The cabbie, who knew him only as a nodding acquaintance, asked, “You been in the sun?”

Kelly refuted everything said by the Crown’s witnesses, claiming that what he actually said to the taxi-driver was, “I’ve been having a go at the bevy” – a Scouse expression for going “on the beer.”

The court heard that while in custody during the first trial Kelly was visited by a brother accompanied by several friends. He allegedly said to them, “Don’t forget, boys, if I go down it’s up to you to do something about that grass.”

He admitted saying something to that effect in truecrime 17

the presence of a prison officer, but claimed it was not intended to be a threat.

The prosecutor Mr. William Gorman asked: “Did you mean them merely to see him and say, ‘Please tell the truth’? Is that what you meant?”

“All the time I’ve been in prison, my brothers have threatened nobody yet,” Kelly insisted.

“What do you mean by ‘yet’?” asked Mr. Gorman.

“Is that something that’s still to come?”

This was to prove damning, coupled with the statements of Northam and Jackie Dickson. The jury retired for only an hour. They returned to find George Kelly guilty, and he was sentenced to death.

Stunned by the verdict, he had to be helped from the dock by two warders who took him below.

Charles Connolly, 26, appeared in the same court five days later, to deny the two murders but to admit robbery and conspiracy to rob. The prosecutor announced that no evidence would be offered on the murder charges, and Connolly was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for the other offences.

George Kelly’s execution followed on March 28th, 1950. And that was that, thought the police and public: a double-killer had got his comeuppance. The pair’s friends and relatives continued to insist that Kelly and Connolly were innocent, but nobody wanted to know.

“Kelly richly deserved to hang,” declared the Daily Express, “and the world is the better for his removal.”

He became history, and remained so until his case resurfaced in 1998.

Above, the queue outside St. George’s Hall, Liverpool, for the trial of Kelly and Connolly. Inset above, trial judge Mr. Justice Oliver. Below, James Northam

Mr. Justice Oliver. For this reason the defence counsel Rose Heilbron didn’t call him to testify at Kelly’s second trial.

George Skelly, however, was impressed by his brother’s unshakeable belief

in Kelly’s innocence. He began his own investigation, and the more he learned, the more he became convinced that his brother was right.

In Skelly’s book, Detective Chief Inspector Bert Balmer is the villain of the piece.

“After Kelly’s execution,” the author claimed, “there was an atmosphere of unashamed triumphalism in the Liverpool CID,

particularly among the Murder Squad who received eulogies and commendations galore from the city’s Watch Committee. In this euphoric climate a senior detective involved in the case admitted to a well-known criminal lawyer that Kelly and Connolly and been fitted-up, telling him, ‘they were only scum anyway.’”

The protests of the two convicted men’s families and friends fell on deaf ears, Skelly wrote, because “the general feeling was that they would say that, wouldn’t they? After all, hadn’t the two villains had not one, but two trials? What could be more fair? And did anyone for one moment, in 1950, believe the police would tell lies? Hadn’t the two main prosecution witnesses been publicly complimented and financially rewarded by the trial judge for their publicspirited action? And weren’t Connolly’s guilty pleas to robbery and conspiracy to rob a virtual admission of the rightness of the convictions?”

After his release from prison Connolly became a popular night club “greeter” on Merseyside. George Skelly first met him in 1993,

T

he first intimation of this came with the publication of The Cameo Conspiracy,

by George Skelly. Ever since the murders the author’s eldest brother James had maintained that Kelly was innocent. He said he knew this because he was elsewhere with Kelly at the time the two defendants were alleged to have been with the two prosecution witnesses, plotting the raid on the cinema. But James Skelly had a criminal record, so his evidence at the first trial was discredited by

18 truecrime

The Leigh Arms where Kelly spoke to a taxi-driver

and in the ensuing three years came to admire and respect him as a sociable, active and clean-living ex-amateur boxer.

“During his wartime service in the Royal Navy he had an impeccable record, serving in the Pacific and on decoy duty in the Normandy landings,” the author noted.

True, Connolly had a criminal record…but then, so did everyone else involved in the case, including the prosecution’s key witnesses.

Connolly had been urged by his counsel to admit the lesser charges in order to avoid Kelly’s fate, and he died in 1997 aged 73, still tortured – said Skelly – by the belief that his guilty plea had been responsible for the other man’s execution.

Balmer’s career had meanwhile progressed from success to success, culminating with his retirement as Liverpool’s Deputy Chief Constable.

But he failed to win his last two battles. The first was with officialdom which denied him the top job in Liverpool. Home Office policy precluded officers from becoming the Chief Constable of a force in which they had spent their entire service. His reputation was by now legendary, and he was piqued and retired in a huff. His second battle was with cancer, from which he died in 1970.

Skelly’s book claimed that Jackie Dickson didn’t know George Kelly, and knew Charles Connolly only by sight as a frequenter of Lime Street. She named him as a man she thought might be involved in the murders because, like a suspect described in the newspapers, he wore a trilby. Northam

knew neither Kelly nor Connolly.

So why did Jackie Dickson and Northam make statements incriminating Kelly and Connolly?

According to Skelly’s book, Balmer threatened Jackie Dickson with the prospect of seven years’ jail for theft and jumping bail.

He told Northam the police had evidence he had stolen a lorry which killed a woman in Lime Street, adding that he could also be prosecuted for aiding and abetting Jackie Dickson in skipping bail. For the latter he could face 10 years in jail. And he might even go to the gallows for the case in which a woman had lost her life.

Balmer allegedly told the two potential informers that their way out was to co-operate with him in providing evidence against his two suspects, Kelly and Connolly. If Jackie and

“What can now be established are such grave doubts about the safety of Kelly’s conviction that it must be reviewed.

No jury today would ever convict on the evidence as it stood then” Northam helped the police, the police would help them, dropping all other charges against them and ensuring that Jackie was conditionally discharged on the theft rap for which she had been on bail.

So to stay out of jail, Skelly’s book claimed, the pair agreed to become informers and signed the fabricated statements which sent one man to the scaffold and robbed another of 10 years’ liberty.

“What can now be established,” Skelly wrote, “are such grave doubts about the safety of Kelly’s conviction that it must be reviewed.”

The witnesses’ statements were uncorroborated, there was no forensic evidence against either Kelly or Connolly, no murder weapon, bloodstains or

Kelly’s defence counsel Rose Heilbron

fingerprints. “No jury today would ever convict on the evidence as it stood then,” Skelly argued.

I

n March 1998 the solicitor acting for Kelly’s daughter, Mr. Robin Makin, applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission for her father’s conviction to be reviewed.

Mr. Makin submitted that the evidence was unreliable because witnesses had been given inducements, and on February 8th, 2001, it was announced that the Commission had referred the case to the Court of Appeal.

Mr. Makin claimed that Kelly’s fate was an

indictment of the justice system and policing that prevailed at a time when it was thought more important to reassure the public by securing a conviction than to investigate a case properly.

In 2003 the Court of Appeal at last overturned the convictions of Kelly and Connolly, ruling them unsafe. “However much the Cameo murders remain a mystery,” said Lord Justice Rix, “we regard the circumstances of Kelly and Connolly’s trials as a miscarriage of justice which must be deeply regretted.”

During the appeal the judges heard that a statement made by a prison

The Condemned Man Writes Dear, Harry, Doris has been up to see me and she has given me some very good news. But it’s no good if these people don’t take action about it, Harry I can’t believe I am sentenced to Death, I don’t know the first thing about this Murder, why these people has blamed me God only knows.

Well there is a lot of people who knows I am innocent of this Crime, But what can we do about it, Tell all the Boys I was asking about them, Please do me a favour, if I get Hung for this Harry please try some day to prove me innocent, I know it will be to late then, But it will clear my family’s Name, also it will get those people in trouble who blamed me George for it.

Kelly’s sad There is one thing I can do I can face letter to God with a clear Conscious so why his friend should I worry, Harry Nobody knows Harry what it is like to be sentenced to Death when I know in my own Mind that I am a innocent man.

People can only do their best for me. That Saturday night I left the Lee Arms pub, and went down to the (spoford) for a pint just to see if Doris was there, I went in there about 9.15 and stayed there till 9.20. I could not see Doris so I went back to the Lee Arms pub and stayed till 10 pm. So here I am convicted of Murder.

The people who Blamed me for this I have never seen them in all my life, who the man who was charged with me, I can’t understand it please write me a letter.

From George Kelly. Good Luck

inmate, claiming that a man named Donald Johnson had confessed to committing the murders, had not been disclosed at the defendants’ first trial. The Crown conceded that the inmate must have spoken to Balmer.

But Kelly, who always protested his innocence, seems to have been as badly treated in death as he was in life. After his conviction was quashed his family, devout Roman Catholics, wrote to the Home Office asking to be given Kelly’s remains and were told that a car park had been built over the old prison burial site.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “We have received an application for the exhumation of George Kelly’s body. We can confirm that at HMP Liverpool a secure car parking area has been built over the body, but there are pre-concrete slabs over the grave so it is easily accessible.”

True Crime asked author and former prison officer Tim Leech about this, and he said: “I can’t imagine the prison authorities doing such a thing without, as they did in Leeds Prison, putting an advertisement in a local paper beforehand asking for any relatives of prisoners buried there to come foward.

“In the past prison authorities have moved the graves if they knew they were building over an old graveyard. It is very surprising.”

Tim also told us that at Leeds Prison, when the prison graveyard was cleared, a professor of forensic science from Leeds University took away samples of the thighbone of each of the 93 bodies buried there.

Because the exact date of death was recorded at the prison from 1864 to 1961, the professor could use each sample as a yardstick to pinpoint the exact year of death of any skeletons dug up in future.

Eventually Kelly’s remains were returned to his family and a service was held for him in Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral. l For more on the case see The Cameo Conspiracy

by George Skelly. TC thanks Mr. Skelly for the use of some photographs in this story. truecrime 19

P

IETRO “PETE” Panto walked apprehensively along Brooklyn’s President Street.

He had been summoned to a meeting with Emil Camarda, vice-president of the ILA – the International Longshoremen’s Association. And there was no question as to why.

Panto had become the unofficial leader of rank and file members complaining about working conditions on the piers – and about the hoodlums in charge.

A journalist had described New York’s waterfront as “a pirates’ nest” of gangsters and racketeers. Thousands of men, mostly ItalianAmericans, laboured on Brooklyn’s docks and all were members of the six “Camarda locals” run by patriarch Camarda and

of working that day.

Those not chosen would have to wait until the next shape-up at 12.55 p.m.

They would while away the hours drinking and gambling in the many mob-controlled bars dotted along Columbia Street.

Loan sharks hovered nearby. The shark would strike a deal with the hiring boss to employ men who owed him money. Others lost heavily to mob bookies and could be leaned on to set up cargo thefts and

20 truecrime

(Mangano’s brother-in-law), “Dandy Jack” Parisi, “Tony Spring” Romeo; and Mendy Weiss. All of them cut terrifying figures around the Red Hook and Brownsville areas of Brooklyn.

E

mil Camarda knew Vincent Mangano “from the other side” – the two had grown up together in Palermo. Arriving in America aged 17, Mangano settled in Red Hook and turned to bootlegging

Vincent Mangano many of his family.

Those men, Panto included, knew not to resist Camarda. “Nothin’ changes on the waterfront,” they said. “Mind your business or you’ll end up in the East River.”

But Pete Panto was different. He was an idealist who demanded free elections and an end to the “shape-up” – the routine whereby hundreds of longshoremen gathered each morning at 7.55 a.m. in a semi-circle, 10 to 15 deep, to see who would be picked for work. And doing the choosing was a hiring boss who picked men willing to make a kickback so that half of their earnings would be taken back for the privilege

the word that “he’s a red, he’s a radical – he’ll get you and the union in trouble.”

When that didn’t work, bribes were offered and refused by Panto.

Whatever he was expecting of his meeting that day, it wasn’t what he got. The fatherly Camarda warned him not to have the men “hit the bricks” – that is, go on strike. Though Camarda professed to like Panto personally, he told the young insurgent, “I wish you would stop doing what

Albert Anastasia

Mendy Weiss

Was He A Victi drug-smuggling.

In the spring of 1939 Panto, a gifted orator fluent in Italian and English, had spoken at a series of increasingly large and rowdy mass meetings denouncing the shape-up, the brutal working conditions and the staggeringly corrupt ILA leadership.

The union officials had hit back, labelling Panto a communist and spreading

you’re doing,” and issued a thinly veiled threat to the younger man: “The boys don’t like what you’re doing, so lay off.”

The “boys” included Vincent Mangano, head of one of the original five New York Mafia families established by Lucky Luciano in 1931; his underboss Albert Anastasia, czar of the Brooklyn waterfront; and associates Gus Scannavino

during Prohibition. He was arrested in 1928 at a gang convention in Cleveland.

His brother, Philip, had joined him and became a business agent for Local 903. He had had been arrested for homicide – but not convicted Perhaps the most terrifying of all “the boys” was Umberto Anastasio, a ruthless killer from Calabria, who had jumped ship in New York back in

This Report By Tom

Prior

Right, Pietro “Pete” Panto. The ItalianAmerican longshoreman and union activist led the fight against the Mafia-run International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) 1917, aged 15. A couple of years later he was a longshoreman, but soon swapped his baling hook for a knife and gun that duly landed him on Sing Sing’s Death Row. On May 16th, 1920, Umberto and his partner Giuseppe Florino cut down George Terrillo, most likely over the pair’s cargo-pilfering.

An eye-witness, a former girlfriend of Florino’s, identified them. A jury quickly found them guilty and sentenced them to die in the electric chair.

The pair languished in

im Of Murder Inc? Sing Sing until the prime witness recanted her testimony and fled back to Italy after four of her family were murdered.

Granted a new trial, the pair walked free and Umberto Anastasio, now known as Albert Anastasia, returned to the Red Hook piers with a much more fearsome reputation.

Albert and his pal, Florino, were hit with more murder charges over the

coming years as Mafia factions shot it out across Brooklyn. On one occasion Anastasia took a bullet in the hip. He was later arrested for concealing a weapon and jailed for two years.

The Mafia feuding ceased after Joe “The Boss” Masseria was gunned down in a Coney Island restaurant as his bodyguard, Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano took a toilet break. Anastasia was

purported to be one of the shooters.

Joe Masseria’s death left Salvatore Maranzano triumphant but after declaring himself “Boss of Bosses” he barely lasted 150 days before Luciano sent a squad of killers to cut him down.

By the middle of the 1930s Anastasia and two of his brothers, “Tough Tony” and Geraldo, all held roles in the ILA and ruled the

Brooklyn piers with an iron fist. Another brother took a different direction as a priest.

P

ete Panto’s friends and colleagues warned him not to cross Anastasia. But his response was that he wouldn’t be frightened off.

Proving he wouldn’t be scared off by Camarda’s goons, Panto organised open-air meetings in front of the Brooklyn piers where, truecrime 21

spurred on by cheering dock workers, he made open and increasingly daring attacks on the gangsters who infested the ILA and the corrupt union officials who allowed them.

At the beginning of July 1939 Panto addressed a boisterous meeting of 1,500 longshoremen who cheered him wildly as he spoke out against the kickbacks the men were forced to pay.

Speaking in Italian, he asked the men why they should they pay a monthly advance to a mobbed-up barber for haircuts they never received – when, if you did try to get a haircut, you would never be hired

Anthony “Tony Spring” Romeo – the driver on the night Panto disappeared... again. Why did they have to buy grapes at exorbitant prices from a mob-run store in order to make homemade wine? Why did they have to buy tickets for the City Democratic Club ball in a venue that held only 500 people when 10,000 tickets were sold?

The biggest cheers of the night came when Panto weighed into Joseph Ryan, president of the ILA. The fabulously corrupt union leader dubbed “King Joe” by the men had a $20,000 yearly salary and a job for life. But he connived with shipowners and stevedoring companies to keep wages low while allowing gangsters to infest the union at every level.

Such a public demonstration by dockworkers had never been seen before on the Brooklyn waterfront. It certainly didn’t go unnoticed.

Just over two weeks later, on July 14th, 1939, Panto finished work on 22 truecrime

Brooklyn District Attorney William O’Dwyer the Moore-Mack pier at five o’clock and walked the short distance to his rented apartment. He was looking forward to a date with his fiancée, who had the unfortunate name Alice Maffia.

As he got changed, someone came to tell him that he was wanted on the phone at the corner store.

He returned after taking the call, badly shaken, and told his fiancée’s brother Michael to tell his sister Pete had to meet with “two tough mugs” later that night. Their date was off.

Pressed for more details

by Michael Maffia, Panto replied that he had to meet with some men he didn’t like “and I don’t think it’s entirely on the square.”

Pete Panto was last seen climbing into a dark sedan driven by Anastasia man Anthony “Tony Spring” Romeo with Gus Scannavino, another Brooklyn ILA vice-president. Sitting in the back, perhaps there to ease Panto’s fears, was Emil Camarda himself.

The car sped off and Pete Panto was never seen alive again.

Soon after, when a union-appointed gang boss took over Panto’s job, refusing to hire rebellious men, the message was loud and clear. ays after Panto’s disappearance a chalked slogan was scrawled across the Brooklyn waterfront: dov’e Panto? – where is Panto? Police and Camarda goons washed it off, only for

it to return day after day.

The police refused to investigate Panto’s disappearance, apparently believing he’d skipped town to escape debts.

Alice Maffia wrote to the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper asking for help in the search for her fiancé. Famed radio and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell speculated that the police really believed “Pete is wearing a cement suit at the bottom of the East River.”

The disappearance of the insurgent longshoreman created such uproar among his followers, now led by Panto’s best friend Pete Mazzie, that officials were forced to take notice.

Special Prosecutor John Harlan Amen, probing waterfront rackets, subpoenaed the union’s books. The books were hurriedly destroyed and new ones with better figures were produced.

Newly appointed Brooklyn District Attorney William O’Dwyer moved in on the Panto case and rounded up some 100 waterfront characters after taking over the subpoenaed books. When he questioned one union official, Anthony Giustra, the man quickly admitted he had destroyed

the Local 338-1 books because for years he had been delivering the union dues to “Tony Spring” Romeo, long-standing collector for Anastasia. The investigation alleged that more thsn $600,000 had been looted from union funds.

On March 28th, 1940, O’Dwyer met with a dozen union leaders as well as Alice Maffia. He had been elected on a ticket to fight organised crime and racketeering and to clear up the murder rate in and around Red Hook and Brownsville. He promised he would “deliver Pete Panto or what’s left of him.” He did not reveal that he had already received information that Panto had met his fate at the behest of Albert Anastasia.

O’Dwyer’s investigators had targeted a Brownsville outfit led by vicious killer Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.

They had received a tip-off that Reles, his partner Bugsy Goldstein and an underling called Dukey Maffetore had killed a man some years before.

Dukey was picked up and under intense interrogation cracked and began telling about a couple of murders he was involved in. He also

D

Murder Inc. killers turned squealers Allie “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum (left) and Abe “Kid Twist” Reles (right) both provided accounts of Pete Panto’s murder

recommended that the cops “should go get Pretty. He’s smart. He knows more than me.”

Abraham “Pretty” Levine was indeed smarter and took longer to crack but crack he did. Kid Twist, he said, was the leader of a murderfor-profit gang that were connected to three dozen Brooklyn killings. A police sweep scooped up all the names uttered by the pair – including Reles.

C

ooling his heels in the Tombs prison, Kid Twist saw the writing on the wall and told his wife to contact O’Dwyer. Standing before the district attorney, Reles told him he could “make him the biggest man in the country” – but there was a condition. “I gotta make a deal,” said Reles.

A deal was duly struck with Reles, granting him immunity from prosecution for the many murders he had committed. For his part, he provided 12 days of testimony, in the minutest detail, that filled 25 stenographer’s notebooks.

Kid Twist revealed that what was to become known as Murder Inc. had accounted for 85 killings, while his boss Anastasia had personally killed 30 men.

“In Brooklyn we are all together with the mob on the docks,” explained Reles.

“Albert Anastasia, who is

Turkus prosecuted scores of hoodlums. He would send a number of Murder Inc.’s killers to the electric chair.

Reles’ testimony uncovered the mystery of Panto’s disappearance. The valiant longshoreman had been strangled to death by hulking killer Mendy Weiss.

“Mendy strangled him as a favour for Albert,” recalled Reles. Weiss, he added, had even confided to him that he “hated to take that kid but I had to do it for Albert because Albert has been good to me.”

According to Reles, Panto was buried at a chicken farm in New Jersey.

While O’Dwyer’s detectives hunted for Panto’s remains the district attorney dealt a mortal blow to the insurgent dockworkers by ending his waterfront investigations.

He had met with ILA president Joe Ryan who agreed to reorganise the Camarda locals by removing known gangsters from the union and calling fresh elections.

But it was a “whitewash” – the same officers as before were kept in place, even the man who had forged the books.

O’Dwyer’s inaction sparked off a campaign of violence against the union rebels that weakened and demoralised them.

And nearly 18 months

Despite a police guard “Kid Twist” plunged 60 feet to his death, and at a stroke the waterfront problems the Mob had struggled with began to end our boss, is the head guy on the docks. He is the law.”

In short order Anastasia, Dandy Jack Parisi, Tony Romeo and other mobsters began to disappear from Brooklyn. Meanwhile O’Dwyer’s assistant Burton

after his disappearance, the lime-encrusted body of Pete Panto was found buried at a desolate meadow in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. He had been trussed up with rope and stuffed into a sack.

Joseph “Big Joe” Ryan.

The ILA president’s reforms proved to be to the satisfaction of the Mob, not the waterfront workers Now, as the body was moved, chunks of frozen lime broke away exposing part of the skeleton and ragged pieces of clothing.

Seasoned detectives, hardened by many a crime scene, were visibly moved by the fate that befell Pete Panto.

Panto’s remains were transported back to Brooklyn under police guard. Identification was made by Pete Mazzie, his friend and leader of the rebels, who confirmed a noticeable gap and two broken teeth were consistent with his friend’s features.

O’Dwyer announced that he had evidence linking the crime to Albert Anastasia, Mendy Weiss and James (Dirty Face) Ferraco, and planned to prosecute them.

On the walls leading to the docks, a new piece of graffiti appeared: “Who Paid for Panto’s Murder?”

Thousands lined the streets with heads bowed as Pete Panto’s mile-long funeral procession made its way through Red Hook. Fifty men of the Rank-and-File Committee, holding aloft a giant portrait of Panto adorned with flowers, led mourners to Sacred Heart Church where a poem was read out: Drop hooks all you longshoremen This Panto burial day This working man from off the docks Our martyr in the fray.

O

n February 17th, 1941, Allie “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum, another

Murder Inc. turncoat, gave a detailed account of Panto’s execution to an O’Dwyer assistant. He disclosed a conversation with Mendy Weiss shortly after Panto’s disappearance: “He tells me that Ferraco, Anastasia and himself were in a house in Lyndhurst, waiting for somebody to bring some man out there that they were supposed to kill and bury. He said, ‘The guy just stepped into the door and must have realised what it was about and he tried to get out. “‘He almost got out,’ Mendy said ‘It’s a lucky thing I was there. I grabbed him and mugged him and he started to fight, and he tried to break the mug, but he didn’t get away.’

“I said, ‘What was it about?’ He said, ‘It’s Panto, some guy Albert had a lot of trouble with down on the waterfront. He was

Pete Panto’s broken body was discovered 18 months after his disappearance.

Thousands mourned at his funeral threatening to get Albert into a lot of trouble. He was threatening to expose the whole thing and the only thing Albert could do was to get rid of him. “‘He tried all sorts of different ways to win him over, but he couldn’t do anything with him. He had to kill him.’”

To mug, in those days, meant to choke with one arm.

Tick Tock described scratches on Weiss’s face and huge hands, and one of his fingers being nearly chewed to the bone – testimony to Pete Panto putting up a terrific struggle against his killer.

No action was taken on that statement. In fact truecrime 23

very few people knew it existed until a State Crime Commission came across it in 1952.

According to O’Dwyer his case against Anastasia for Panto’s murder fell apart on November 12th, 1941, when Abe Reles fell – or was pushed – out of a hotel window, plummeting 60 feet to his death while being guarded by six policemen.

Few longshoremen believed it was an accident. The demise of Reles had an effect on the waterfront rebels. With the Panto case closed, fewer and fewer dockers dared to attend public meetings and the uprising petered out.

With America now at war, O’Dwyer was commissioned into the Army. One of his underlings removed the wanted notices for Anastasia, Tony Romeo and Jack Parisi from police files. O’Dwyer returned from the conflict a hero and became mayor of New York with the help of Mafia bosses Frank Costello and Joey Adonis.

But accusations that he failed to prosecute Anastasia, when he had more than enough evidence to prove the gangster’s guilt in the killing of Pete Panto, dogged his political career. His shady dealings with organised crime forced him to retire in disgrace. anto’s killers may have escaped the law but most of them met a similar fate to his. Just months after Panto’s funeral, Emil Camarda was shot and killed in his office following a quarrel with a vice-president of a stevedoring company whom he had accused of shortchanging workers on pay.

Dirty Face Ferraco disappeared from the Brooklyn wharves and was believed to have been murdered. And in July 1942 police picked up Tony “Spring” Romeo who told the cops he had been warned to stay away from the Brooklyn waterfront.

Not long after, his horribly tortured body was fished from a Delaware river.

Romeo was one of those thugs whose death came as a relief to many – not least his wife. She told the police: “I guess he got what was coming to him. I’m glad it’s over. I’ve been slipping in and out of morgues for two years now, always expecting

P

24 truecrime

Albert Anastasia meets a fittingly brutal end in the New York Park Sheraton Hotel barbershop in 1957 to find his body when police call me.”

Mendy Weiss was convicted of another Murder Inc. killing and sentenced to die in the electric chair along

with Louis Capone and Murder Inc.’s boss Louis “Lepke” Buchalter. Weiss protested his innocence in court but a police sergeant, present when Panto’s The body of Philip Mangano, brother of Mob boss Vincent, was found in a Brooklyn swamp with three bulletholes in his head. The brothers disappeared on the same day – but Vincent The Executioner’s body was to prove more elusive...

pathetic remains were recovered, looked him in the eyes and snarled with contempt at the unrepentant killer: “Pete Panto is waiting for you.”

With all the witnesses to the murder of Panto dead his nemesis Anastasia, after a short stint in the Army, returned to terrorise the Brooklyn waterfront where he was now known as the “Lord High Executioner of Murder Inc.” Anastasia took over control of the Mangano family on April 19th, 1951, when Vincent Mangano vanished, never to be seen again. His brother Philip was found the same day in a marsh with three bullets in his body.

But on October 25th, 1957, gangland justice took over where the law had failed. On that day Albert Anastasia walked into the barbershop of the fashionable Park Sheraton Hotel in New York. At 10.20 a.m., just as the mob boss was settling down for a shave, two men calmly strolled into the shop, walked over to Chair No. 4 where Anastasia sat, and poured a fusillade of shots into his head and back. The two gunmen disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

A waterfront priest once said that New York’s piers only had saints and sinners, no in-betweens.

There were many sinners but only one saint. And that was Pete Panto.

by William Kendal

In Part 7 of the series The Defence Rests, Sir Edward Marshall Hall offers an original theory as to how three newly married women died while each was taking a bath

LADY-KILLER

BY PROFESSION

Sir Edward Marshall Hall

Was hypnotic suggestion the key to the “Brides in the Bath” murders?

O

F ALL the dates in the calendar of crime, Saturday, July 13th, 1912, is one of the most fateful. It triggered events that led to one of the most sensational cases ever tried by a British jury, and it gave Edward Marshall Hall one of the most challenging assignments in his distinguished career as a defence advocate.

The story began in May 1912 when George Joseph Smith, claiming to be Henry Williams, an antiques dealer, rented 80 High Street, Herne Bay, in Kent, for himself and his wife Bessie, whose maiden name was Mundy. He told the house agent’s secretary that his wife, a bank manager’s daughter, had all the money and he himself had none. She had inherited £2,500 which had been invested for her.

The house had no bath, so on July 9th he bought one and had it installed.

Two days later he took Bessie to a Dr. French, telling him she’d had a fit. From the symptoms Smith described, the physician concluded that Bessie was an epileptic.

The next night he was called to the

At Weston-super-Mare (above) Bessie Mundy (left) spotted her runaway husband. Falling again to his charm, she slept with him that night and sealed her fate

house, where he found that Bessie was slightly feverish. On the same night she wrote to an uncle, saying she’d had two bad fits and that her husband had been “extremely kind.”

“I have made out my will,” her letter concluded, “and I have left all I have to my husband.”

Then on the Saturday morning of July 13th the

doctor received a message from Smith, saying that his wife had died in the night. This was confirmed when the doctor went to the house. Bessie lay naked in the bath, her head below the water.

The doctor found no sign of injuries, and Smith wrote to Bessie’s relatives: “Words cannot describe the great shock I suffered in the loss of my wife.”

truecrime 25

He had found her dead in the bath, he said, on his return from going out to buy fish.

A verdict of death by misadventure was returned by the jury at the inquest, which relatives were given no opportunity to attend.

Had they been present, the coroner might have taken a different view of the widower who he said had been devoted to his wife.

It was later to emerge that Smith had met Bessie in 1910, when as a 33-year-old spinster she was living at a boarding-house in Clifton, Bristol. They married at Weymouth on August 20th, and on the wedding day Smith applied for a copy of her father’s will. From this he learned that her property was vested in trustees from whom she received her monthly income. They had accumulated £138 from the invested fortune, and through a solicitor Smith obtained payment of this sum in gold in September.

Upon receiving it he promptly abandoned Bessie.

In a letter he told her that living with her had affected his health, and he had to go away for a long cure before he could return.

Despite her plight, she was clearly well rid of him, and she took lodgings with a charitable landlady at Weston-super-Mare.

Then two extraordinary things happened on March 14th, 1912. Bessie was looking at the sea from the esplanade, when out of the corner of her eye she saw the familiar figure of her runaway husband. That was strange enough, and what occurred next was even stranger. Instead of berating him, fleeing from him or calling the police, Bessie succumbed again to his charm. She left her lodgings to spend the night with him without even taking her nightdress, and her relatives were shocked when they heard of the reconciliation.

Reunited, the couple moved to Herne Bay in the following month, and Smith consulted a solicitor to ascertain how he would stand if he and Bessie made mutual wills, leaving everything to each other.

He was advised that the settlement Bessie had made with her trustees meant 26 truecrime

Bessie Mundy and George Joseph Smith on their “wedding” day. Unknown to her, Smith already had a wife.

Below right, Smith listens intently as his fate is decided

that the wills would not be irrevocable. If Bessie made a later will, bequeathing her capital elsewhere, Smith would have no claim against her estate. Furthermore, the trustees could nullify the mutual wills by buying Bessie an annuity.

From this Smith realised that there was no way he could be sure of securing his wife’s capital, unless she died after making a will in his favour and before her trustees had time to purchase an annuity for her.

Such a sequence of events was highly unlikely, but that was what happened.

A few days after Bessie’s funeral Smith went to see the house agent’s secretary, to inform her of his wife’s death and his imminent departure from Herne Bay. He appeared upset and began to weep, but then brightened and said, “Was it not a jolly good job I got her to make a will?” He also had made a will in Bessie’s favour, he added.

“I thought you told me

when you came here first that you had not anything,” the secretary replied suspiciously.

After giving Bessie a pauper’s funeral, Smith received her fortune in September 1912.

He invested the money in property, then sold at a loss, and finally paid £1,300 for an annuity of £76 a year.

Unknown to Bessie, her marriage had been bigamous. It was later revealed that Smith already had a wife: Caroline Beatrice Thornhill, who he married in 1898 when she was 19. They had separated in 1903, and she was still alive. Five years later he had “married” Edith Pegler, with whom he had lived off

and on ever since, always returning to her.

After Bessie’s death he had moved to Southsea, where on November 4th, 1913, he “married” Alice Burnham, a 25-year-old nurse. She was insured for £500, and they went to Blackpool.

Like Bessie, Alice was taken to a doctor by Smith, and on December 12th she was found dead in the bath at the couple’s lodgings. A misadventure verdict was returned at the inquest, and Smith collected the insurance, his suspicious landlady yelling “Crippen!” after him when he departed.

One year later in Bath on December 17th, 1914, Margaret Elizabeth Lofty, 38, a clergyman’s daughter, became Smith’s next “wife” after she insured her life for £700. They went to London, took lodgings in Highgate, and Smith once again took his bride to see a doctor. She died in the bath at their lodgings the day after her “marriage,” and again the inquest verdict was misadventure.

Newspaper reports of Margaret’s fate were read by Alice Burnham’s father and the Blackpool landlady. Both were struck by the similarities between Margaret Lofty’s death and that of Alice, and they went to the police.

On February 1st, 1915, Smith – now 43 and calling himself John Lloyd – was arrested in north London

Alice Burnham, Bessie Mundy, and Margaret Lofty For the prosecution Archibald Bodkin (left) itemised the similarities in the deaths of the three women. “In each case,” he said, “you get the simulated marriage...

In each case the woman made a will in the prisoner’s favour...In each case there were, we submit, unnecessary visits to a doctor...In each case letters were written the night before death in which the prisoner’s kindness as a husband is extolled...In each case there were enquiries about a bathroom.” And so he continued, listing 12 damning instances

The trial began at the Old Bailey (above) on June 22nd, 1915, with Marshall Hall defending Smith for just three guineas a day

for bigamy. After further investigation he was charged with Bessie Mundy’s murder and at Bow Street magistrates’ court committed for trial.

He had spent all his capital on annuities, and the police confiscated the rest of his money, leaving him with nothing to pay for his defence. But the case was so sensational that several newspapers approached his solicitor, wanting to buy the rights to Smith’s own Trial judge Mr. Justice Scrutton story. The lawyer took (above) ruled that evidence of the counsel’s advice, and deaths of Alice Burnham was assured that there and Margaret Lofty could be could be no objection told to the jury to this. So he drew up a contract, making a deal that would enable Smith to Having accepted the have one of the best – and brief, Marshall Hall was one of the most expensive – honour-bound to persevere defence advocates, Edward with it for a paltry three Marshall Hall. guineas a day, the maximum It was a daunting brief, allowed counsel under the and Marshall Hall accepted Poor Prisoners’ Defence it with great reluctance. His Act. clerk was assured that the In a letter to the Home defence would be funded Secretary, he protested: by the proceeds of Smith’s “In spite of your expressed solicitor’s deal with the opinion, I regret to say that newspaper.

I cannot see your objection.

As Smith was in prison, ‘A’ is charged with murder, his signing of the contract and protesting his innocence had to be sanctioned by the (and moreover by our law Home Secretary, Sir John presumed to be innocent), Simon, who until recently has arrayed against him had been Attorney-General. all the resources of the No difficulty was anticipated Treasury and the Public

by Smith’s solicitor, but just Prosecutor, who propose three days before the trial to call some 120 witnesses the Home Secretary vetoed against him at his trial, the newspaper’s funding which will probably last 14 of the defence, ruling that days. it was “contrary to public “‘A’ has been deprived of policy.” all funds in his possession

by the action of the police, and he is anxious to be defended. He is told that the particular counsel whose services he desires to secure insists on payment of a fee which he cannot provide.

“An offer is made to ‘A’ to provide sufficient money for this purpose (note, please, nothing for the accused himself) if he will write the history of his life and assign the copyright to the person finding the money. ‘A’ agrees, but the Home Office authorities decline to allow him to sign the document, and go on to say that the late Attorney-General is of opinion that no counsel at the bar would accept fees coming from such a source.

“For the life of me, I cannot follow this. I was quite prepared to accept fees so provided, and cannot see the objection to my so doing. If ‘A’ had been on bail, he could have executed the assignment at his free volition, and the fact that he is detained in custody cannot affect the proposition. “‘A’ is entitled to be defended by counsel, and counsel are entitled to be paid reasonable fees. ‘A’ is entitled to procure funds for this purpose by any legitimate means, and he

Sir Edward Marshall Hall

can for this purpose sell anything that belongs to him which is marketable, e.g. he could execute the necessary conveyance to enable him to sell house property in his possession. Surely he can sell the product of his brain and pen in the same way.”

The proposed arrangement, Marshall Hall maintained, had been “in no way against public morality or public interest, and was within the rights of any accused person.”

Having let off steam, he concluded his letter by saying he accepted the Home Secretary’s ruling, although “from every point

truecrime 27

of view, pecuniary, physical and professional, I cannot help suffering from being concerned in such a case.”

He could have added that as he was in his mid-50s and unfit for active service in the war, he had received many briefs returned by fellow-barristers because they had joined the colours.

Far from being grasping, he had sent those barristers half of the fees of their briefs. He was one of only two leading counsel known to have done this.

When Smith’s trial for the murder of Bessie Mundy began at the Old Bailey on June 22nd, 1915, the case for the prosecution was opened by Archibald Bodkin. Shortly afterwards, the Mr. Justice Scrutton asked the jury to retire while the admissibility of additional evidence was argued.

It is a basic principle of British criminal law that a prisoner’s trial shall not be prejudiced by the allegation of other offences, whether he has been convicted of them or not, or by an attack on his character. But there are exceptions to this rule, and one of them is that if the prisoner claims his offence was an accident, a mistake or committed through ignorance, the evidence of other incidents may be introduced to counter this defence or to show a sequence of behaviour which makes the defendant’s claim unlikely.

Illustrating this, Marshall Hall’s biographer Edward Marjoribanks noted: “A schoolmaster may beat a child to death once, and be innocent of cruelty – the child’s physique may be abnormal and peculiarly sensitive, or the master may plead accident and ignorance. But if three children die under his cane, his nature will naturally be thought cruel and violent and he will rightly be convicted of manslaughter.”

So would Smith’s jury be told of the other “brides in the bath” left dead in his wake?

So far the court had heard evidence of motive in Bessie Mundy’s will, and the curious history of her “marriage.” The jury had also been told that the bath in which Bessie died 28 truecrime

Home Office pathologist Bernard Spilsbury (above) testified that the size of Bessie Mundy’s bath (top left) would not permit accidental drowning. To illustrate this a young woman got into the bath while Detective Inspector Neill (below) pulled on her legs, very nearly drowning her. Left, a diagram of the Herne Bay murder bath used in evidence at the trial

was very small, and one in which it would be difficult to drown accidentally.

They had heard nothing of any act by Smith or of his presence in the bathroom, and on the evidence given so far his conviction was highly unlikely. As one of the prosecutors was later to say, “The prosecution not proving any act at all of the prisoner, it would have been very difficult indeed to have satisfied the jury beyond reasonable doubt that he was responsible for the death. If we had gone on, it would have been hopeless for the prosecution,

and there can be no doubt that he would have been acquitted.”

But as both the prosecution and the defence knew, there was evidence that Smith had “married” two other women, and they too had died in their baths, leaving Smith as their wills’ sole beneficiary.

And Marshall Hall knew that once that evidence was given in court, his client was as good as hanged. The jury would be convinced he had drowned his brides as surely as if he had done it in front of them.

Marshall Hall argued that the whole principle of the presumption of innocence was at stake. The evidence the prosecution wanted to introduce was admissible only when a defence denying intent was to be set up, he said, but no defence was necessary as there was no prima facie case to answer.

Also at stake, he argued, was the principle that a man

home: “My husband does all he can for me. In fact, I have the best husband in the world.”

A few nights later she took a bath, and the landlady saw water coming through the ceiling. Shortly afterwards, Smith knocked at the landlady’s door, saying he had gone out to buy eggs and had returned to find his wife dead in the bath.

As with Bessie, he gave Alice a pauper’s funeral.

“When they are dead, they are done with,” he told the shocked landlady when she protested. But in contrast, he wrote to tell Alice’s mother that he’d had “the greatest and most cruel shock that ever a man could have suffered.”

The inquest was held before the Burnhams were

Just weeks after her marriage to George Smith (left) in Southsea, Alice Burnham was drowned in her bath in Blackpool.

Right, a court exhibit illustrates her death

should not be embarrassed in his trial for one offence by the allegation of others.

It was better that one guilty criminal should escape justice, utterly worthless and a danger to society though he might be, than that the necessity for his conviction should impair the law.

Mr. Justice Scrutton, however, ruled against Marshall Hall, and the evidence was admitted.

The prosecutor then told the jury how Smith had met Alice Burnham at a chapel where he had gone not to pray, but to prey on vulnerable young women.

Alice had soon succumbed

to his charm, writing to her sister: “I am so happy, Rose dear. My heart and soul thank God continually for joining me to the love of so good a man – a perfect gentleman, very homely.

You cannot fail to like him, so genuine, kind... I am the most fortunate and happiest girl in the world.”

The “marriage” was arranged, and when Smith learned that his bride’s father had been keeping £104 for her, he made a formal demand for it. Mr. Burnham asked about his son-in-law’s background, and in response Smith sent him an extraordinary letter making it clear that he resented the question.

“Sir,” he wrote, “In answer to your application regarding my particulars, my mother was a bus-horse, my father a cabdriver, my sister a roughrider over the Arctic Regions. My brothers were all gallant sailors on a steam-roller. This is the only information I can give to those not entitled to ask such questions contained

in the letter I received on the 24th inst. Your despised son-in-law, G. Smith.”

Alice made a will leaving everything to him, and on their arrival in Blackpool he rejected the first lodgings they inspected because there was no bath.

The court heard how Alice’s fate then mirrored Bessie Mundy’s. Smith took her to a doctor, saying she was suffering from headaches, and she wrote

able to get to Blackpool, but Smith’s story and the misadventure verdict didn’t fool his landlady. “Wife died in bath. We shall see him again,” she wrote on the back of the card on which he left his address.

The jury were then told of the remarkably similar fate suffered by Smith’s next “bride,” Margaret Lofty.

This time he had said he’d found his wife dead in the bath on his return from truecrime 29

going out to buy tomatoes.

The couple’s landlady had earlier heard the sound of splashing coming from the bathroom, followed by the strains of the hymn “Nearer, my God, to Thee” being played by Smith on the harmonium in the couple’s sitting-room.

The previous inquests had been reported only by local newspapers, but Margaret’s death was featured by the News of the World under the headline “Bride’s Tragic Fate on Day after Wedding.”

It was this account that caught the eye of Alice’s father and the Blackpool landlady. Scotland Yard was alerted, and Smith was arrested as he went to consult a solicitor about the probate of his latest “bride’s” will.

Concluding his opening address to the jury, the prosecutor itemised the damning evidence against the prisoner. “In each case,” he said, “you get the simulated marriage.

In each case all the ready money the woman had is realised. In each case the woman made a will in the prisoner’s favour. In each case the property could only be got at through the woman’s death. In each case there were, we submit, unnecessary visits to a doctor. In each case letters were written the night before death in which the prisoner’s kindness as a husband is extolled.

“In each case there were enquiries about a bathroom.

In each case the prisoner is the first to discover the death. In each case the

through weak hearts and fainting in a bath.”

When Marshall Hall and his co-defender Montague Shearman had gone to interview Smith at Brixton Prison, Marshall Hall was so repelled by his client’s eyes that he broke off the consultation, convinced that the defendant was trying to hypnotise him. And Shearman later recalled that Smith had “a horrible way of looking at one. It gave me a most unpleasant feeling, and we certainly formed the opinion that he had a curious way of influencing people.”

But whatever influence Smith might have had on the jury, it was not in his favour. From the dock he berated one police witness after another. “He is a scoundrel!” he shouted when Inspector Neill began

prisoner is the person in immediate association with each woman before her death. In each case the bathroom doors are either unfastenable or unfastened.

In each case he pretends to do something which shall take him away from the scene where the particular tragedy has been enacted.

In each case there is the immediate disappearance of the prisoner.”

And in each case, Bodkin could have added, the “bride” died either on a Friday night or a Saturday morning, so that the inquest

Above, a note written

by Smith and handed to Marshall Hall regarding Margaret Lofty (right). She died at their lodgings in Highgate the day after her “marriage”

could be held during the weekend before her relatives could arrive.

The only “bride” to give evidence was Edith Pegler, who recalled something Smith said to her shortly before he “married” Margaret Lofty. Warning her of the dangers of bathrooms, he told her: “It is known that women often lose their lives

to testify. “He ought to be in this dock! He will be one day!”

“Sit down,” the judge

Two further notes written by Smith and given to Marshall Hall during the trial

30 truecrime

The exhumation of one of Smith’s victims, probably Bessie Mundy, and below, an official photograph of Smith taken in Brixton Prison

ordered. “You are doing yourself no good.”

But when the next policeman went to the witness box Smith yelled: “He is another scoundrel!

He has been doing nothing but bribery for the last five years!”

And when Shearman tried to calm him Smith shouted at the judge: “I don’t care tuppence what you say, you can’t sentence me to death. I have done no murder.”

The Home Office pathologist Bernard Spilsbury, however, demonstrated that the size of Bessie Mundy’s bath would not permit accidental drowning. She was probably drowned, he said, by her knees being raised and her head pressed down, causing her to slide along the bath, her head going under the water.

To display this, the bath was brought into the court and a young woman in a bathing costume stepped into it. Then Inspector Neill pulled up her legs from the foot of the bath so that her head was submerged beneath the water. This rendered her helpless, she lost consciousness, and court officials had difficulty reviving her.

By the time Marshall Hall rose to present the defence his client’s case seemed hopeless. But would the advocate pull something

out of the hat, springing some surprise as he had at earlier trials?

His sole line of defence so far had been that the prosecution had not proved Smith guilty of any act which could have caused the death of any of the three women. But that was not enough to counter the prosecutor’s devastating indictment, so was there anything further?

Apparently, there wasn’t.

For Marshall Hall told the court, “I do not call any evidence.”

He argued that no act of violence had been proved, and Smith couldn’t have committed the crime without leaving marks of violence and evidence of a struggle.

“If you tried to drown a kitten it would scratch you,” he told the jury, “and do you think a woman would not scratch?”

Summing-up, Mr. Justice Scrutton suggested more

theories as to how the women might have died. He said their killer might have filled the bath for them, and then offered to put them in it, picking them up and lowering them into the water.

The judge then demonstrated how it was possible to lift a woman and put her in a bath, forcing her head down with one hand while holding her knees up with the other.

The demonstration was “so vivid,” one of the prosecutors said later, “that I think it contributed largely

towards the conviction of the prisoner.”

Marshall Hall rose to object that it was not open to the jury to consider any theory other than the one submitted by the prosecution.

“I will give you another cause for complaint if you wish it,” the judge retorted.

“If another theory occurs to the jury better than those already suggested, in my view they are quite entitled to consider it.”

He also suggested that the women might have been drugged. There was no evidence of this, he said, but the jury must consider it as a possibility.

“You may as well hang me at once, the way you are going on,” Smith interrupted. In a further interjection, he said, “Get on, hang me at once and have done with it.”

The judge’s summing-up occupied a whole day, prompting Smith to tell him: “You can go on for ever, but you cannot make me into a murderer. I have done no murder.” And in a later outburst he shouted, “It is a disgrace to a Christian country, this is! I am not a murderer, though I may be a bit peculiar.”

Ever since the deaths of the other two women had been admitted as evidence, the trial’s outcome had been a foregone conclusion.

On the ninth day the jury retired for only 22 minutes before they returned to find George Joseph Smith guilty.

Sentencing him to death, Mr. Justice Scrutton told him: “Judges sometimes use this occasion to warn the public against the repetition of such crimes.

They sometimes use such occasions to exhort the prisoner to repentance.

I propose to take neither of those courses. I do not believe there is another man in England who needs to be warned against the commission of such a crime, and I think that exhortation to repentance would be wasted on you.”

The sentence’s effect on Smith was dramatic.

His face went livid and he seemed about to collapse, but when asked if he had anything to say he replied, “I can only say I am not guilty.” truecrime 31

Then, pulling himself together, he turned to his counsel. “I thank you, Mr. Marshall Hall,” he said, “for what you have done for me.

I have great confidence, great confidence, in you. I shall bear up.”

But not even Edward Marshall Hall could work miracles. He had an impossible case, and when it went to appeal his argument that the other two deaths should not have been admitted as evidence was rejected.

It emerged that Smith had been an habitual criminal for

20 years before he turned to murder. But he was not without qualities. He loved poetry, was devoted to the works of Shakespeare, and was an accomplished pianist and not a bad artist.

Two more “brides” surfaced. One was a Miss Faulkner who he had “married” at Southampton in October 1909. He took her to the National Gallery, left her there on some pretext, rushed home and then went off with all her possessions, including all her clothes and the £300 he had acquired as her “husband.”

But at least she lived to tell her story.

Then there was Alice Reavill, a servant girl Smith met in Bournemouth, “marrying” her in September 1914 and promptly disappearing with her savings of £78.

While awaiting execution at Maidstone Prison, he convinced the chaplain of his innocence and asked to be confirmed. When the Bishop of Croydon went to the prison to perform this service he too became convinced of Smith’s innocence.

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On the eve of his execution the “Brides in the Bath” killer wrote to Edith Pegler: “You are the last person in the world to whom I shall write, inasmuch as this is my last letter. I could write volumes of pathos prompted by the cruel position wherein I am now placed, but I have too much respect and love for your feelings to do so. I have not asked for a reprieve, nor made a petition, and do not intend doing so. Since we have failed to obtain justice from the earthly judges, I prefer death rather than imprisonment.”

He went stoically to the gallows on Friday, August 13th, 1915. His hair had turned almost white since he was sentenced, but he retained his composure on the scaffold. And as the noose was placed round his neck and the trap-door fell he repeated, “I am innocent.”

The bishop wrote to Marshall Hall: “He told me that for 20 years he had been a most wicked and abandoned man, that he had been steeped in every villainy, but never murder.

He knew that there was no chance of a reprieve, nor did he desire it. But again he asserted, with tears coursing down his cheeks, that he had not had anything to do with the murder of these three women.”

Marshall Hall replied: “I have most reluctantly come to the conclusion that Smith was responsible for the deaths of all three women, directly or indirectly. That he did not drown them in any of the ways suggested by the evidence or the judge, I am convinced; but I am equally convinced that it was brought about by hypnotic suggestion. I had a long interview with Smith, and I was convinced that he was a hypnotist.

“Once accepted this theory, and the whole thing, including the unbolted doors, is to my mind satisfactorily explained. It also accounts for his very firm assertion of innocence of murder, he having satisfied his conscience that the act was induced by his will, and became to all intents a voluntary act on the part of the woman.”

CHRONICLES OF CRIME SUSAN’S EVIL KILLER JAILED FOR 27 YEARS April 6th GRIEVING FAMILY members pleaded with “evil” killer Alan Edwards to let them know where he disposed of his victim Susan Waring’s body after he was found guilty of her murder, following a trial at Preston Crown Court.

The court heard that vulnerable Susan, 45, who had learning difficulties, was briefly in a relationship with dominating 48-year-old Edwards. She was last seen shopping with him in Darwen, Lancashire, on January 29th, 2019.

Edwards, who denied being violent, claimed he last saw Susan the following day.

Her whereabouts are still unknown.

Jurors were told that a forensic examination of Edwards’s flat in Blackburn

Left to right, killer Alan Edwards and victim Susan Waring

Road found blood in numerous locations. More than 100 spots of blood and traces of Susan’s DNA were found on a rubber Halloween mask which prosecutors claimed Edwards was wearing when he attacked her.

Edwards was jailed for

life for murder and told that he would serve a minimum sentence of 27 years.

A member of Susan’s family said in a statement: “We make one final request for Alan Edwards to tell us where our beloved Susan is, so we can have closure.”

REMORSELESS KNIFEMAN LOCKED UP April 8th MOSES CHRISTENSEN, the 22-year-old who stabbed an innocent stranger to death in a brutal and random attack at a Shropshire beauty spot, has been locked up for a minimum of 28 years.

Stafford Crown Court heard that Christensen murdered 70-year-old Richard Hall, of Perton, Staffordshire, at Brown Clee Hill on August 13th, 2020, in what the judge Mr. Justice

Left to right, killer Moses Christensen and his victim Richard Hall

Pepperall described as an atttack of “great savagery.”

Mr. Hall sustained 26 wounds to his neck, chest and head, including one

which penetrated his skull.

“You showed Mr. Hall no mercy and you were later to tell police that you felt no real remorse,” the judge added.

Christensen, of Stourbridge, had denied murder by reason of diminished responsibility.

During the trial the court heard that the killer, armed with a combatstyle knife, had roamed the hillside looking for someone to kill.

KREMLIN CRITIC’S “SUICIDE” WAS MURDER April 9th NIKOLAI GLUSHKOV, who was a prominent critic of the Kremlin, was murdered in his own home before his killer made a crude attempt to make it look like suicide, an inquest at West London Coroner’s Court heard.

Strangled Mr. Glushkov’s

Left, Nikolai Glushkov. Above, police outside his home

body was found face-down in the hallway of his home in New Malden, south-west London, on March 12th,

2018. A dog-lead had been wrapped around his neck and a small step-ladder was found next to the body, the inquest heard.

Fractures to Mr. Glushkov’s larynx and hyoid bones and superficial facial injuries indicated that he had been murdered.

Mr. Glushkov was a close friend of the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. A verdict of unlawful killing was recorded.

l continued from page 13

April 9th SCHOOLGIRL’S RAPE-KILLER DEAD A NOTORIOUS prisoner who raped and murdered Leicestershire schoolgirl Kayleigh Haywood has died in hospital.

HMP Wakefield prisoner Stephen Beadman, 34, was serving a minimum 35-year life sentence for the November 2015 killing.

The prison service has informed the prison ombudsman over Above, Beadman’s Stephen death but Beadman. would not Below, reveal the Kayleigh cause of Haywood death.

Kayleigh, 15, of Measham, had been groomed online by Beadman’s next-door neighbour Luke Harlow, 23. She spent the night of November 13th at Harlow’s flat in Ibstock.

On the following day Beadman and Harlow

The field where Kayleigh’s body was found

plied her with drink.

When Kayleigh fled, Beadman chased her and raped her. He then battered her to death and dumped her body in a field. Her body was found five days later.

Harlow, who was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment, remains behind bars.

Beadman was likely to have remained behind bars until at least 2050. l more Chronicles on page 50

truecrime 33

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LI MYERS was bewildered. A 50-year-old market trader, he was a bachelor workaholic whose only social life was his evenings at the Jewish Jubilee Hall near his home in the Roundhay district of Leeds.

The hall was a lively haven, always buzzing with conversation, but when he entered it on the Saturday evening of December 17th, 1960, he sensed straight away that something was wrong.

All around him he saw nothing but glum faces, and the hall was strangely silent. Had someone died?

Eli asked one friend after another what had happened, but nobody would tell him.

Then he was shocked to hear someone laugh. In such an atmosphere this seemed grossly out of place.

But more laughter followed, and suddenly everyone was crowding round him, slapping him on the back and congratulating him.

With his friends at the hall

he had formed a football pool syndicate, and they told him they had won £15,000.

Each member would collect £1,275, a substantial sum in 1960.

Nobody was to know that for Eli Myers the pools windfall would be his death warrant. What many did know was the news of the small fortune he and his fellow-members of the syndicate had received. It was in the local papers.

Eli Myers had a shop as well as the van he took

around to various markets.

Someone who did casual work for him tipped off a friend that the market trader’s home would be a good target for burglary, as Myers was prosperous, was often out until the late evening, especially on Fridays, and had recently come up on the pools.

The casual worker’s friend listened carefully and decided to act on the tip.

Eli Myers’ battered body lies dead on his living-room floor

Send your questions and updates to: Ask True Crime, PO Box 735, London SE26 5NQ • truecrime@truecrimelibrary.com

DEADLY WIN ON THE FOOTBALL POOLS

asktruecrime

Reader Don Weller asked:“I can just remember relatives discussing the last execution at Leeds Prison when I was a local child and have long wondered about Zsiga Pankotai, the prisoner in question. Have you covered the case, or is there a chance of a full report?”

Your luck is in, Mr. Weller. Here’s the complete story, courtesy of Matthew Spicer...

The Yorkshireman won a small fortune – but his good luck immediately ran out... truecrime 35

hortly after 6 p.m. on S Friday, February 24th, 1961, Eli Myers counted the day’s takings with his brother Louis, who managed the shop for him. Then he went to Louis’s home with him for a meal, leaving at around 9.30 to visit another shop where he did some business.

He arrived home around 10 p.m., and it was about that time that his neighbour Mrs. Hilda Harris heard a rumpus next door. She heard shouting, swearing and a general commotion which lasted for about 20 minutes. When the police asked her later why she had done nothing about this, she said such rows were not unusual in the neighbourhood and it was none of her business.

Eli Myers usually began his working day by calling at his shop before he went to a market. When he didn’t turn up on the Saturday morning his brother Louis became anxious, and at lunchtime he went to Eli’s home in Chelwood Avenue, fearing he might have had a heart attack.

Police photographs showing the front (above) and rear (below) of Eli Myers’ his ransacked Chelwood Avenue home in the Roundhay district of Leeds

scene began a murder investigation, and they didn’t have to wait long for developments. Eli Myers’ van had contained a large quantity of new clothes. It was missing from his home, and within hours of the discovery of his body some of the stolen clothes were found in a derelict garage on

Pankotai had approached him in a Chapeltown pub, asking him if he knew anyone who might wish to buy 250 pairs of trousers

When he received no response to his knocks on the front door he went round to the back of the house, where he saw that a pane of glass in a French window 36 truecrime

was broken and the door stood open. Stepping inside, he saw at a glance that the house had been ransacked.

His brother lay dead on the living-room floor, his body

bruised and bloodstained.

Eli’s wallet lay empty beside him, and there was a bloodstained bread-knife on the kitchen table.

Police called to the

the city’s outskirts.

Some worn, bloodstained clothes were also found at the garage, and one of these items bore the name of Zsiga Pankotai, a 31-year-old Hungarian miner. A hunt was launched for him, and he was arrested in Chapeltown Road in the early hours of the following morning.

He might as well have left his visiting card at the

had contacted the police on hearing of Eli Myers’ murder.

Under interrogation Pankotai admitted breaking into Eli Myers’ home and stealing his van, but he denied murder, claiming he had acted in self-defence and had only punched the victim in the face.

seemed to be an Ihetopen-and-shut case when stepped into the dock at Leeds Assizes in April, but it emerged that it was not so simple as the trial proceeded.

First, however, the court heard that Pankotai had arrived in England in 1949 as a teenager fleeing the Communist regime in his

Crime scene view of disarray at the dining recess, looking towards French windows where the intruder gained entry crime scene. Blood on the strap of his wrist-watch was of the same group as Eli Myers’, and a new jacket found at Pankotai’s home in Woodland Lane, Chapel Allerton, was identical with new jackets which had been in the stolen van, which was found abandoned the next day on the outskirts of

the city.

Furthermore, a man in the clothing trade had informed the police that on the night of February 25th, the day after the murder, Pankotai had approached him in a Chapeltown pub, asking him if he knew anyone who might wish to buy 250 pairs of trousers. The witness

Above, post-mortem photograph of the deceased Eli Myers and below, a view of the dining recess looking towards the living-room – with annotations pointing out the victim’s wallet and “Much blood under here”

truecrime 37

native Hungary. He had settled in Leeds three years later.

On his arrest for Eli Myers’ murder he had at first denied any involvement, but on being confronted with the evidence against him he had changed his story.

He told detectives that he had learned of Mr. Myers’ pools win from a Hungarian friend who did occasional work for the market trader.

The friend said he thought that Mr. Myers might have

bought a television set and a record-player, and had suggested burgling the house on a Friday night, and overpowering and robbing the market trader, who would be carrying his week’s takings of two or three hundred pounds. The friend added that he would do the job himself but for the fact that Mr. Myers would recognise him.

Pankotai admitted removing the light bulb from the kitchen at the house and

MASTER DETECTIVE’S

putting it in the sink, so that if Mr. Myers came home unexpectedly he would be unable to switch on the light.

He claimed he attacked the market trader only when threatened by him, and had not struck him with any weapon.

But Mr. Alastair Sharp QC, prosecuting, said that Eli Myers had suffered knife wounds and was also believed to have been struck with a kitchen chair.

The struggle had lasted for

JULY

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Why Louise Killed Little Manfred A UNIQUE CASE IN THE ANNALS OF SCOTTISH HOMICIDE

MURDER IN THE LIGHTHOUSE PERVERT RAPED AND KILLED TEENAGER IN CHURCH Fetishist’s victim lay hidden above the altar for 16 years

HORROR IN SUTTON The Man Who Begged To Be Murdered

AFTER SAWING THROUGH COUSIN LUCY’S THROAT… ...He Sat Down To Await The Police

THE SHORT LIFE AND VIRAL DEATH OF INSTAGRAM STAR BIANCA Shooting Death In Knightsbridge...

THE ELVIRA ENIGMA

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38 truecrime

“In my opinion the injuries neither singly nor collectively were sufficient to have killed a healthy man, but in the presence of heart disease they caused his death” at least 20 minutes, resulting in Mr. Myers’ death, and as he was attacked in the course or furtherance of theft it was a case of capital murder.

The victim had received multiple injuries to his scalp and face, inflicted by a blunt instrument, in addition to wounds inflicted by a bread knife. His nose was broken, his top teeth displaced, and the medical evidence was that his death was caused by shock, haemorrhage and a blocked nasal air passage.

But when Professor Cyril J. Polson stepped into the witness-box it transpired that the victim’s death was not quite as clear-cut as the prosecution had led the jury to believe.

Professor Polson, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Leeds University, had conducted the post-mortem examination, and he told the court that Eli Myers had diseased arteries.

“In my opinion,” he testified, “the injuries neither singly nor collectively were sufficient to have killed a healthy man, but in the presence of heart disease they caused his death.” r. Henry Scott QC told M the jury that the crucial issue was: Why did Mr. Myers die? He said it was not disputed that Pankotai entered Mr. Myers’ house to commit robbery and that after he left, Mr. Myers died.

If Professor Polson had said Eli Myers’ death was from the blows received, there would be no defence.

But although the professor’s opinion was that the death was probably the result of the blows, the pathologist’s evidence raised the possibility of another

cause of death. This was shock, quite apart from the blows.

Mr. Scott submitted that if Mr. Myers died from the shock he received on finding a burglar in his house, Pankotai could not be guilty of murder or manslaughter, and in view of this possibility there was no case to answer.

But Mr. Justice Ashworth said he would direct the jury on this, and the trial continued. Summing-up on April 26th, he told the jury that to convict Pankotai of murder they must be satisfied that Mr. Myers died as a result of the blows.

If the jury concluded that death was caused by a heart attack suffered independently of the blows, Pankotai could be convicted of manslaughter, in that his actions could have precipitated the heart attack.

And if the jury believed that Pankotai had acted in

self-defence, he should be acquitted.

After 45 minutes’ deliberation the jury convicted Pankotai of capital murder, and he was sentenced to death.

When his appeal was heard on June 5th the defence

Hangman Harry Allen gave the five-foot-six, 10-stone killer a drop of seven feet six inches, and Zsiga Pankotai became the last man to be hanged at Leeds Prison

Above, the front view of Eli Myers’ abandoned van which was driven away loaded with new clothes

Above, the derelict garage in Fletcher’s Yard, Fink Hill, Horsforth, where the stolen clothes were tracked down by police (below) within hours argued that the trial judge had wrongly rejected their submission that on Professor Polson’s evidence there was a remote possibility that Eli Myers could have died from heart disease independently of his wounds. The defence claimed that Mr. Justice Ashworth had therefore wrongly allowed the case to go to the jury.

The defence also submitted that the judge had misdirected the jury in telling them that on the evidence of Professor Polson it was open to them to find beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Myers’ death had been caused, contributed to or precipitated by his injuries.

Rejecting these arguments,

however, the appeal judges ruled that there was abundant evidence on which the jury could find that Mr. Myers’ injuries had caused, contributed to or precipitated his death.

The judges accepted that Pankotai had intended only to inflict grievous bodily harm and not to kill, but they ruled that Mr. Myers’ death was nevertheless capital murder committed in the course or furtherance of theft.

There was no reprieve, the Home Secretary, Mr. R.A. Butler, taking the view that people were entitled to feel safe in their homes and should be protected from violent burglars.

On Wednesday, June 28th, 1961, Pankotai was received into the Church of England by the Bishop of Ripon, and at eight o’clock the next morning he walked to the scaffold.

The hangman Harry Allen gave the five-foot-six, 10-stone killer a drop of seven feet six inches, and Zsiga Pankotai became the last man to be hanged at Leeds Prison.

The laughter that had followed the show of glum faces in the Jewish Jubilee Hall was now long in the past. The innocuous win on the football pools had had deadly consequences for both victim and killer. truecrime 39

French novelist Hera Mirtel could tell a good story – and desperately needed a jury to believe one of them

MARIE-LOUISE’S T A

S A NOVELIST Marie-Louise was good at making up stories. Readers knew her by her pen-name Hera Mirtel. What they didn’t know was that her powers of investigation were not confined to writing books.

They also came in handy when her first husband was shot. And when husband number two disappeared.

There were conflicting accounts of what happened to Marie-Louise’s first .husband. One had it that Paul Jacques shot himself at the couple’s flat in Paris; another claimed he was gunned down in Mexico.

Whatever the location, 40 truecrime

subsequent events were to leave little doubt about whose finger had pressed the trigger.

Born in Lyons in 1868, Marie-Louise Victorine Grônes was the beautiful daughter of a local tradesman who ensured that she had a convent education – which was just as well, because the family money later ran out and Marie-Louise had to work for a living.

She was 26 when she went to Mexico on business and came back with a husband.

Paul Jacques was 20 years her senior, a comfortably-off traveller in silks.

At this point the accounts of Jacques’s fate diverged.

According to one story, the

couple settled in Paris, where Marie-Louise presided over a literary salon attended by young writers and artists from whom she chose her lovers, while her husband absorbed himself in his business.

If what the couple’s maid told the concierge at 107 Rue de Sevres is to be believed, Paul Jacques was a remarkably tolerant husband.

The maid said that after she saw Marie-Louise put some white powder in her master’s soup she warned him of what she had seen. He did not take any of the soup, but had it analysed by a chemist, who found it contained poison. Nevertheless, Jacques

continued to live with his wife and their daughter Paulette.

Then on March 5th, 1914, Marie-Louise sent her maid to tell the concierge that Monsieur Jacques had committed suicide. Police called to the flat found Jacques’ body in his study.

There was a bullet in his head and a gun at his feet.

The authorities accepted the widow’s statement that Jacques had shot himself, and she departed for Mexico, where she settled his business affairs…and met the man who was to become her second husband.

The other story, one probably invented by

Whoever opened this trunk, found at Nancy, was in for a shock. Inside was the decomposing body of Charles Weissman-Bessarabo (right). Or that was who police said it was...

TERRIBLE SECRETS Like his predecessor, her husband was merely the one who paid the bills. While Marie-Louise and Paulette dined with their chosen lovers, Charles Bessarabo took his meals alone.

Finding himself an outsider in his own home, he devoted himself increasingly to his business…and to his pretty secretary.

It wasn’t long before Marie-Louise got wind of this. Although she wanted her husband only for his money, she took exception to his preferring a younger woman to herself. The couple’s frequent rows became increasingly violent.

One night in

Ca A l se fr re ed c M a l le or d ai b n y

none more than Charles Bessarabo, a French timber merchant of Romanian extraction whose surname was originally Weissmann.

He was determined to marry the beautiful, talented widow – despite a friend’s warning that she was trouble, and had even bewitched her own daughter.

A year later Marie-Louise became Bessarabo’s bride and the couple returned to France, making their home in Paris in a large apartment in the Place de la Bruyere. There Marie-Louise resumed her salon, establishing a circle with which her husband had nothing in common. From this court she took many lovers in succession, but that did not prevent her being described by one of her admirers as “the priestess of a feminist cult.”

M FR UR EN DE CH R W THE AY

Marie-Louise herself, of what happened to Jacques was totally different. This version had the couple living at his ranch in Mexico. One day in 1915, Marie-Louise dashed into Mexico City on horseback with the news that her husband had been shot. Police accompanied her back to her home, where they found Jacques on the veranda with a bullet in his brain. Footprints and hoof-marks where horses had been tethered to the veranda rail seemed to support the widow’s claim that four masked raiders had suddenly appeared just as she and her husband were retiring for the night.

She said that one of the men leapt from his horse, drew a pistol and shouted, “Jacques – this settles the account!” Then he shot Paul Jacques dead.

There was no trace of the four horsemen, and it was rumoured that Marie-Louise had become a rich woman upon inheriting her husband’s estate. For lack of evidence, suspicions never amounted - to more than gossip.

Of the two accounts the second is doubtless the one the widow preferred, and whenever she was asked what had happened to her first husband this story was the one she told.

She then moved to Mexico City with 14-year-old Paulette and hosted musical evenings featuring her own songs and poetry. The ranchers adored her, and

truecrime 41

1918 he woke to find his wife trying to strangle him. Two years later she fired a pistol at him. He dived to the floor just in time, and she missed.

But Bessarabo wasn’t another Jacques.

Marie-Louise’s first husband had stayed with her, it seemed, because he couldn’t face the upheaval of moving out. Bessarabo remained because his wife had a hold over him. He was going to leave her, it later transpired, after the attempted strangling. Marie-Louise blackmailed him into staying, threatening to reveal irregularities in his business if he left.

Unlike Jacques, Bessarabo wasn’t blind to the danger of his situation. He confided to a friend that he hoped Marie-Louise would not “deal with me as she has with the other.” For consolation, he turned to a second mistress – another of his typists.

Matters came to a head early in 1920 when the concierge of the apartment building where the Bessarabos lived handed Marie-Louise a letter from Mexico. She opened it in his presence…and fainted.

When Bessarabo returned from his office that evening the concierge heard the couple quarrelling furiously.

He was then called upon to help carry various items including locked boxes down to the hall of the building, where Bessarabo asked him to take them by taxi to the railway cloakroom at the Gare du Nord. It seemed that the long-suffering husband was at last moving out.

A month later Bessarabo

else about the mother and daughter.

Coincidentally, Bessarabo called that evening. After chatting with the concierge he went upstairs to see Marie-Louise. It wasn’t long before the caretaker heard another heated row in progress, with Mme. Bessarabo shouting hysterically.

On the morning of July 30th, Marie-Louise came down and told the concierge

With mother and daughter helping, the concierge got the heavy trunk down the stairs to the waiting cab bought a house at Montmorency, 12 miles north of Paris, and the couple separated.

Shortly afterwards another letter arrived for Marie-Louise. As the concierge delivered it he heard Paulette crying excitedly, “I saw him, Mother! I’m sure it was him!

Oh, my daddy! Why did you tell me he was dead?”

This outburst about Paulette’s father, Paul Jacques, was to remain a mystery, like so much

that they were all going away to live in the country.

An hour later he was called upstairs to help lift a large trunk. With mother and daughter assisting him, he got it downstairs to a waiting cab. Marie-Louise and Paulette then drove away, but returned again in the evening, this time on foot.

Later that night they left, and did not return till the next day, but Bessarabo’s associates inquired as to his whereabouts. “Travelling abroad,” said Marie-Louise.

Mug-shots of Marie-Louise.

She denied that the body in the trunk was that of her missing husband, but Paulette could not keep quiet about the events of “that dreadful night in July”

42 truecrime

On August 2nd, 1920, M. Bessarabo’s chauffeur, a man named Decroix, called at Montmartre police station to report that he hadn’t seen him for four days. He wasn’t satisfied with Mme. Bessarabo’s “gone abroad” story, for M. Bessarabo always informed him of his movements. Decroix had dropped the businessman at the Place de la Bruyere on the evening of July 30th, and Bessarabo had told him to call for him at his office at 9 a.m. the next day, but had failed to keep the appointment.

M. Thierry, the police chief, decided to investigate.

Mme. Bessarabo told him a complicated, confused story which began with a violent quarrel when a letter from a woman fell from her husband’s jacket. There was talk of divorce, which they agreed to discuss further the next day at the Montmorency villa. M. Bessarabo left in the morning, making an appointment for his wife and daughter to meet him later at the Gare du Nord. He had particularly told her to put “certain documents” in the trunk, “so that they could be destroyed.” She wouldn’t

tell M. Thierry what the documents were.

She and her daughter went, she continued, to the Gare du Nord. M. Bessarabo wasn’t there. She suspected that he had gone with his mistress to Evian-les-Bains.

They hurried to the Gare de Lyon. No trace of him there, so back they went to the Gare du Nord, where they put the trunk in the luggage office.

Just after they got home an unknown cabman arrived with a note from M. Bessarabo telling them to send the trunk to Nancy.

They were also to go to Montmorency, where he would join them. The cabman mysteriously brought the trunk back with him, she said, and back it went to the Gare du Nord.

The suspicions of the police had meanwhile been heightened by the strange story told by a man who hired out boats on the lake at Enghien, near Montmorency.

He said that a middle-aged woman and her daughter arrived at daybreak on August 1st. The mother said they wanted to hire a boat and spend some time rowing, “as Paris had become so unbearably hot.”

He had noted how nervous they seemed, and that they spoke together in Spanish.

After letting them have the boat, he hid in some bushes to watch them. The older woman rowed to the centre of the lake and then across to the other bank, where through the mist he saw them dragging a heavy package into the boat. They rowed back to the middle of the lake again and were lost to sight in the mist – but he distinctly heard a loud splash.

The women returned while he was having breakfast.

The older one was trembling violently; the other said she would have to take her to a doctor. He persuaded her to have some brandy, and got her to lie down. Then he went to examine the boat.

The thwarts on one side were wet, as though a heavy weight had been perched on the side – and there was a pool of water in the bottom of the boat.

Suspecting that some crime was involved, the man hurried back to lock the women in a room until he could fetch the police, but they had left.

February 15th, 1921. Crowds gather outside the Parisian court to see Paulette (centre) and her mother arrive for the trial

The police went to Marie-Louise’s flat, to learn from the concierge that mother and daughter had indeed gone away with a large trunk, as if they intended to travel. Instead, however, they had come back to Paris after only a short absence.

But was the trunk, or other belongings, or perhaps even some weapon, taken on the journey to Enghien? The police drew a blank until a detective at the Gare du Nord learned that a young

with a bullet in his brain.

The face was so disfigured that identification was almost impossible, but they had no doubt that it was the missing Charles Bessarabo. The waterproof cloth wrapping the body had prevented any tell-tale blood seeping out.

Back at the Gare du Nord a porter remembered carrying the trunk from a cab at the request of a girl whom he later identified as Paulette.

When he’d remarked how heavy it was she had said that it was full of books and

At Enghien the women hired a boat and rowed to the centre of the lake.

Then came a loud splash... woman had dispatched a trunk to Nancy to be left till called for. The form had been signed “Bessarabo,” but the signature was not Charles’s.

It was found that on August 1st Paulette had purchased several yards of waterproof cloth and a long rope. The next day Mme. Bessarabo called on her lawyer, produced a power of attorney and took steps to obtain 600,000 francs. It was subsequently learned that she had booked passages for herself and her daughter on a ship bound for Mexico…

It was some days before the trunk was traced to Nancy. When the police opened it they found the naked, decomposing and doubled-up body of a man

papers.

Mme. Bessarabo and Paulette were arrested and confronted with the body in the trunk. Mme Bessarabo insisted it was not that of her husband.

At first she refused to answer the questions of the examining magistrate, but then she claimed that her husband had received two letters from Mexico, dispatched by a secret society to which he had belonged, and which he had offended.

Both letters were death warrants, she said. Charles Bessarabo was so frightened that he had packed his private papers and all the documents dealing with the society in the trunk, and had taken it to the Gare du Nord,

where it was arranged that they should meet him.

According to her story, he arrived with the trunk, did not get out of the cab, but said that he had an unexpected appointment and that he would return.

The cab came back with the trunk, but minus Bessarabo.

Then came the strange request to send the trunk to Nancy. Mme Bessarabo claimed that the women went to Montmorency as instructed, but M. Bessarabo did not turn up there either.

She said she imagined that her husband had either fled abroad with his mistress or had gone into hiding for fear of the secret society.

She said that she had never been to the Enghien lake. When the boatman confronted her he was unable to say positively if she was the woman he had seen. But he thought he recognised the daughter. The Enghien story was therefore to remain a mystery. If it was Marie-Louise and Paulette whom the boatman saw on the lake, what was it he heard them tip in? This was never explained.

Paulette broke an obstinate silence before the examining magistrate when she declared: “If I told the true story of what happened, it would cause a commotion throughout France. But it is not my secret, it concerns my father.” The police found that she had forged her stepfather’s signature to the truecrime 43

completely…”

“Well, tell us now,” said the president.

Paulette sobbed, then went on: “I’ve kept that secret for two years. I’ll still keep it, but I beg you, spare my mother, she didn’t kill–” Mme. Bessarabo cut in: “Be quiet! Shut up! Now!” After the prosecution’s evidence had been heard the president asked what the women had to add in their defence.

Mme. Bessarabo fainted, but Paulette sprang to her feet, flung out her arms and cried between sobs: “The truth! I will, I must, tell the truth!”

There was a moment of silence · while her mother was revived by a doctor.

Left, Paulette after her arrest. She claimed that her stepfather was a callous brute who persecuted her with “unpleasant attentions”

power of attorney and the railway baggage form.

They had no doubt that Bessarabo had been shot from a few feet away when he was asleep, that he was alone in the apartment with his wife and stepdaughter, and that it was his body in the trunk. The murder motive was almost certainly to obtain the 600,000-franc cheque payable to Bessarabo on August 31st. And that cheque had vanished from his wallet.

Moreover, Marie-Louise was known to be extremely jealous of her husband’s mistress. She was a user of hashish and other drugs, which boosted an already excitable temperament.

So the evidence looked like being circumstantial, especially as the lake at Enghien had been dragged without success.

The investigation was to last nearly two years, and it 44 truecrime

was not until February 15th, 1922, that the two women went on trial in Paris – Marie-Louise tall, emaciated, and dressed in black, with hard eyes burning in a lined face; Paulette plump but well-dressed, almost elegant.

Maitre Moro-Giafferi, one of the great lawyers of his time, defended Mme. Bessarabo, Maitre Raymond Hubert the

Then Paulette declared: “My stepfather was a brute, a callous, sensual brute who made us very unhappy.

He persecuted me with unpleasant attentions, and he took no pains to hide his numerous intrigues. Mlle.

Nollet, his secretary, was only one of them.

“On that dreadful night in July, I went to bed early.

Confronted with the body, Mme. Bessarabo insisted it was not that of her husband but that of his enemy daughter.

Paulette wanted to speak, but whenever she tried to do so her mother yelled, “Shut up! Shut up!” At one point Paulette told the president of the court: “Yes, there is a secret. I can’t say what it is now – and it isn’t my secret. It’s my mother’s, and it will change the case

A letter had arrived which caused my mother and stepfather to quarrel even more than usual. From my room I heard them talking in loud voices for a long time. Finally, I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened abruptly by a loud report.

Frightened at what this might mean, I sprang from the bed

to go to my mother. To my surprise, the door was locked on the outside. Never before had I been locked in my room. I was terrified.

“I called out, ‘Mother, Mother, what has happened?’

For a moment there was no answer. Then I heard a sound, as though someone was rinsing his throat. I felt somewhat reassured, and a moment later my mother cried, ‘Go to bed, Paulette.

The water-heater for the bath must have been leaking, and the gas went off with a bang when I tried to light it.’

“But her voice was so shrill and agitated that all my fears returned.

“I pounded with both fists on the door, until at last my mother turned the key.

There was a large mirror just opposite, and in it I could see a rigid, motionless shape on the bed, covered with a sheet, and the sheet had a crimson stain.

“Horrified at the whole awful vision, I demanded, ‘Mother, what have you done?’ She replied, ‘Be quiet, Paulette. It’s nothing: justice has been done. It was my life or his, you must understand.

So I fired, for the sake of justice.’ Then she asked me to go up to the sixth floor to see about the trunk.

“But I couldn’t take my eyes from that dreadful form on the bed. I wanted to tell the police, but my mother became very angry and declared that we must have no scandal in our house.

“I have always obeyed my mother. I asked her who was under the sheet, and tried to pull it away. She grasped my hand and cried, ‘Paulette, you must never know who it is! Believe me, it is not your stepfather. I cannot reveal the terrible secret of what has passed here tonight, not even to you. But, believe me, I did not kill him.’

“I could not understand this, for she had said, ‘It was my life or his!’ I remembered, however, that for a long time, when already half asleep, it had seemed to me that there were two voices speaking, and I recalled vague memories of the days in Mexico. One of the male voices was certainly not that of my stepfather. A wild intuition caused me to cry, ‘Mother, Mother, it was Daddy I saw!”

Marie-Louise had recovered and sat crumpled

Paulette (centre) and her mother (far left) at their murder trial.

There was drama in court when Paulette sprang to her feet, flung out her arms and cried between sobs: “The truth! I will, I must, tell the truth!”

up in the dock as the confession continued. Then she suddenly sprang to her feet and shouted angrily to Paulette in Spanish: “Calme te!” (Be quiet!).

For a moment Paulette paused, pale and wide-eyed.

She sobbed afresh, then her expression hardened and she went on: “I believed that some fearsome tragedy quite beyond my understanding had occurred. I only desired to help my mother.

“At her request I dragged an old trunk from the attic and emptied it of some papers. Yet I felt an irresistible urge to see the face under the sheet, and offered to help place the body in the trunk, but my mother stopped me. “‘Go back to bed, child,’ she told me. ‘It is nearly dawn. You must go out early and buy some ropes and rubber sheeting, but I shall not let you touch it.’ I could not sleep, of course. My heart felt as though it would burst. Then at nine o’clock I hurried to the Place Clichy and bought the necessary materials.

“When I returned I imagined I heard a man’s voice for a second just as I opened the door. I gave the waterproof cloth and the coil of rope to my mother, who locked me in my room.

When I came out the trunk was shut and corded, and the dreadful shape had gone.

“We had lunch, for such emotions make one hungry.

Afterwards my mother bought me several sheets

of paper and told me to type a power of attorney at her dictation. When it was done she said, ‘Now sign it Bessarabo – you know you can imitate his signature.’

“I shrank back and pointed out that I should be committing a forgery, but my mother said, ‘Nonsense, his

obey? It was a power of attorney, giving us the right to my stepfather’s money.

When I again expressed a dislike for this my mother said, ‘You know well that he has no money. It is all mine.

He owes it to us, and now he has gone away with that woman.’

“Justice has been done. It was my life or his...So I fired for the sake of justice” real name was Weissman. The name Bessarabo in itself is a fraud. It is a fictitious name which anyone may use. Sign!’

“What could I do but

“Then, later in the day, we called the concierge to carry the trunk to a cab. But it was so heavy that we both had to help, and I explained that

The scene of Charles Bessarabo’s murder. In the mirror over the washbasin Paulette could see a rigid motionless shape in the bed, covered with a bloodstained sheet

it contained books. At first I shrank from having anything further to do with the whole dreadful business, but what could I do? If I am telling the truth now, against my mother’s wishes, it is because I know she did not commit a crime – for when everyone in prison thought I was dying she came and swore to me that she was innocent. That belief helped me to get well.

“But although I can tell you all that I saw and heard, I cannot say what I suspect – nay, what I know – for it is not my secret. Well, at first we had thought to take and bury the body at Montmorency.

Then my mother said, ‘Fill in a form in your stepfather’s name and send the trunk to Nancy, to be kept until called for.’”

Once more Mme. Bessarabo shouted hysterically: “Be quiet!”

“If you interrupt again, madame, you will be taken to a cell whilst your daughter speaks,” the president told her.

“Never fear, Mother, I will only tell what I saw,” cried Paulette. “I must, I cannot face the dreadful years of prison which will be our lot if I remain silent.”

She turned to the jury and said quietly, “I filled in a form and saw the loathsome trunk taken to the station depot. Then we went to a restaurant for dinner.”

Paulette stopped. The court was silent. Maitre Hubert began to whisper to Paulette, but she collapsed.

Her mother stood looking defiant. The president asked if she had anything to say.

Mme. Bessarabo slowly shook her head. “No, nothing,” she replied.

“Except that I beseech you to acquit Paulette: she only obeyed my orders.”

The jury filed out and were back in 45 minutes.

They found the mother guilty, “with extenuating circumstances,” but the daughter not guilty.

The president sentenced Marie-Louise Bessarabo to 20 years’ hard labour.

Turning to the jury, she said: “Thank you gentlemen, for acquitting little Paulette. I swear to you that I too am guiltless. Bessarabo is alive, in America. The man in the trunk was his enemy.”

It was a twist in the tail of the story worthy of the novelist she was. truecrime 45

EAST END MYSTERY OF THE FRONT DOOR KEY M

RS. FLORENCE WRIGHT rushed out to see the short, shadowy figure of a young man come out of her neighbour’s home and walk away, disappearing into the swirling smog.

She noticed that he wore a cloth cap, white scarf and light-coloured raincoat, and she wondered why he had been to Percy Busby’s home at that late hour.

Percy was a 55-year-old

When a London watchmaker was murdered in his own home, robbery appeared to be the motive. But was the suspect with the cash definitely the killer?

CCase report by

by Giles Water watchmaker, and Mrs. Wright was used to seeing people call at his home in King Edward Road, Barking, for he was well known in his trade in that part of London.

But those screams on the night of November 14th, 1947, told her something was wrong, and she called a neighbour, Mr. Chaplin, who hurried to the nearest police station and returned with Constable L. Walker.

She had heard the shuffling of feet, Mrs. Wright told the officer, and this had been followed by three piercing screams and then the sound of someone groaning.

Thinking he would have to break into the house, the constable was surprised to see a key in Mr. Busby’s front door. He stepped inside and entered the front room which was in darkness – Mr. Busby still used candles.

Walker switched on his torch, surveyed the scene for a moment, and then 46 truecrime

The body of strangled watchmaker Percy Busby was discovered in the front-room of the house after screams were heard by a neighbour

called Mr. Chaplin. Percy Busby lay dead on the floor.

He had been strangled, and his wallet, lying open and empty on the table, suggested robbery as the killer’s motive.

It wasn’t long before the police had a lead. A decorator named Walter Bull who lived in Barking came forward the next day and told them of a man who he said had spoken to him of

burgling the watchmaker’s home.

This tip led officers to Orchard Road in nearby Dagenham, where Walter Cross, 21, lived with his in-laws and his pregnant wife. He was an unemployed lorry-driver, short and stocky, and he admitted robbing Mr. Busby but denied killing him, claiming he had left the house an hour and 20 minutes before

screams were heard and a man was seen leaving.

As a result of what the suspect told them, the police also took Walter Bull into custody for further questioning, but it was Walter Cross who appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey on January 14th, 1948, charged with the watchmaker’s murder. He pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Anthony Hawke,

prosecuting, said that on the day after the murder Cross was questioned by Detective Inspector Bellamy. During this first interview he admitted knowing Walter Bull, who had gone to the police, and in a statement he said they had both been out of work and he had twice accompanied Bull to Mr. Busby’s home.

The last visit had been two days before the watchmaker’s death, and on that occasion Bull had sold Mr. Busby a plastic table-cloth, a scarf and a white shirt and collar for 12s. 6d.

Asked if he owned a raincoat, Cross had replied, “No.” And asked where he got scratches on his face from, he said they had been caused by his cat.

Taken again to the police station a few hours later, he admitted lying when he said he did not possess a raincoat. He was then asked if he had seen Mr. Busby’s wallet when he visited the watchmaker with Bull, and whether anything was said about it. He replied that Bull had told him that “the old man was a bit deaf and would not hear us get in if we picked a night when his lodger was at work. He told me we could easily shove him over and get the dough.

We were both short of money, so we said we’d do him. Bull could not go at the last minute, so I went.”

After being cautioned, Cross said, “I will tell you everything if you like. My raincoat has got blood on it.” In a written statement he then said that Walter Bull had told him he had noticed that Mr. Busby had a lot of money which he kept in a wallet in his trouser pocket.

“He suggested that we went there and that while he held Busby I was to get the wallet.”

Cross said that Bull was to go in first and then let him in. “We agreed to meet at The Chequers and then do it. That night he did not turn up so I went home.

On the Friday afternoon I went to his house. We spoke about the job and he suggested I should take a key he had to get into Percy’s house by myself.

He gave me the key. It was agreed that I should go and do the job and meet him at 10 o’clock at The

The kitchen of victim Mr. Busby’s home in King Edward Road, Barking

Chequers. I left his house about 7.50 and went straight to Busby’s. I put the key in Busby’s door and when it opened I went in and saw Busby coming towards me from the other room.

“He just hollered. I didn’t say anything. He collapsed on the floor and I caught hold of him by the chest and took his wallet from his trouser pocket. I saw it was full of notes. I took the notes out and threw the wallet away. I don’t know what I

did with the key. I think I left it in the door. I then ran down Ripple Road.”

He said he had gone to The Chequers, but Bull did not turn up. “This morning I roughly counted the money, and I have spent some of it on clothes for my expected baby. I told my wife I had won the money on the football pools.”

The statement concluded with Cross saying that when Bull gave him the key, “he took it out of his own back

Barking where the victim was a well known watchmaker

door and said, ‘I put the lock on Busby’s door and that should fit it.”’

Meanwhile, the prosecutor said, a detective had found £15 10s. in Cross’s bed.

Informed of this, Cross had said: “That’s right. It’s some of the money I took from

“This morning I roughly counted the money, and I have spent some of it on clothes for my expected baby. I told my wife I had won the money on the football pools” the old ’un before I slung the wallet.”

Told that he was to be charged, Cross had replied: “All right, but I don’t remember hitting him.”

On the following day, said Mr. Hawke, Cross told Inspector Bellamy that he hoped the police had got Bull as well, saying: “It truecrime 47

is his fault I am here. He put the job up to me and we were going to share the money. He said we’d get a hundred and fifty pounds.”

The prosecution then called Walter Bull to give evidence. He told the court that he had known Cross for five or six weeks. When they visited Mr. Busby he had noticed that the watchmaker had £60 or £70 in his wallet, and after they left Cross had said: “He has a lot of money with him. I could do with some of it.”

Later that day Cross had said he thought it would be easy to get the cash. “He suggested that I should go into Busby’s house and as

“Busby was kneeling against a marble-topped table. When he saw me he let go of the table and fell, and I shone a torch on him.

I saw a wallet sticking out of his trouser pocket” I came out I should leave the front door open and let him in. I saw Cross again on November 14th and he said he had been thinking about Busby’s money. I told him I could not help him. He then said he had got to have his keep, otherwise his in-laws would turn him out. He asked me if I had a skeleton key and I told him I hadn’t.

“The next morning [the day after the murder] I met him again and he told me his brother-in-law had won a fight and had lent him five pounds.”

Cross-examined by Mr. Richard O’Sullivan KC, defending, Walter Bull said he was not desperately short of money because £6 10s. was coming into his home from his wife’s earnings and from a lodger and a relative.

“Cross alleges that you made certain suggestions – how he could get money easily from Busby,” said Mr. O’Sullivan.

“I deny that,” Bull replied.

“Busby was a good friend of mine.”

An hour into the cross-examination, the 48 truecrime

During the trial at the Old Bailey (above) it was learned that the front door key also fitted the back door of the prosecution’s main witness

witness fainted. Three members of the jury went to his assistance and the court adjourned for a few minutes while he recovered.

Then his cross-examination continued.

“It is suggested,” said Mr. O’Sullivan, “that the key found in the front door at the dead man’s house came from your back door, and that you knew your key

February.

Describing what happened when he went alone to the watchmaker’s home, he said: “Busby was kneeling against a marbletopped table. When he saw me he let go of the table and fell, and I shone a torch on him. I saw a wallet sticking out of his trouser pocket.

I leaned over and took the wallet and took some of the

The list of exhibits shown to the Old Bailey court.

Number 14 is the key to Walter Bull’s back door

would fit his lock.”

“That is not true. I have never seen that key before.”

But Detective Inspector Warren then testified that the key found in Mr. Busby’s front door did in fact fit the lock on the back door at Walter Bull’s address.

The key, exhibit 14, was then shown to the jury.

Cross then returned to the witness-box and told the court that he had been discharged from the army in 1944 with spinal trouble.

He was married, and his wife was expecting a baby in

notes and threw the rest on the table and went out.”

He denied striking the watchmaker and said he left the house at 8.10 p.m.

Cross-examined by Mr. Hawke, he agreed that Mr. Busby had shouted on seeing him. He also admitted needing to raise £11 4s. to pay maternity hospital fees. The National Health Service did not come into operation until the following year.

Addressing the jury, defence counsel Mr. O’Sullivan suggested that

someone else had gone to the watchmaker’s house after Cross left. If Cross had departed just after 8 o’clock, as he had testified, this meant that the key had been in Mr. Busby’s front door for 80 minutes.

The watchmaker was well known for keeping money in his house, and anyone could have entered, said Mr. O’Sullivan.

The jury were unimpressed. After retiring for 25 minutes they found Walter Cross guilty, and Mr. Justice Cassels sentenced him to death.

Cross’s pregnant wife, waiting outside the court, broke down on being told of the verdict. Becoming hysterical, she rushed towards the courtroom as if trying to reach her husband.

Her screams could still be heard long after Cross had been led away by three prison warders.

His appeal was dismissed, and shortly before his execution he insisted that he had no idea how Mr. Busby had been strangled. He also claimed that the police had tricked him into making a statement by implying that Walter Bull who had shopped him would also be charged in connection with the robbery.

On the scaffold at Pentonville Prison on Thursday, February 19th, 1948, Walter Cross continued to protest his innocence as the hangman Albert Pierrepoint placed the hood over his head.

Seconds later it was all over.

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Left, killer Brandon Hole

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“SEVEN REASONS WHY MY HUSBAND SHOULDN’T BE HANGED”

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MOTHER’S DEATH WAS MURDER April 21st CHILD-KILLERS Zak Bolland and David Worrall – already serving life sentences for the murders of four children – must serve even longer behind bars. The pair, who launched a devastating petrol-bomb attack on a home in Walkden, Greater Manchester, in December 2017, have now been

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Above, the scene of the crime in Walkden. Below, top to bottom, killers Zak Bolland and David Worrall

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