Dorset Murders (21 page)

They had gone less than 100 yards when they spotted Frank Burdett sitting on a bank at the side of a narrow country track, known locally as Muddy Lane. As the search party drew nearer, they could see that the shotgun was between his legs, barrel upwards and that the left side of Burdett's face had been completely shot away.

Amazingly, Burdett was still alive and conscious, trying desperately to speak but unable to form intelligible words. Realising that there was little that he could do to help, Dr Thompson gave him an injection of morphine for the pain and, while they waited for an ambulance to arrive, the police searched Burdett's pockets, finding four more live cartridges. Burdett had come prepared to completely eliminate the Holloway family, with a cartridge for each of the four boys.

Burdett was taken by ambulance to the Wimborne Workhouse Infirmary, where he died only hours later from a combination of blood loss and shock. The police and doctor went back to Walsford Farm to deal with the bodies of Mr and Mrs Holloway. By now, Trixie had reached the farm and met up with two of her brothers, who were aware that their parents had been shot dead, but were not aware that their killer had been found. On hearing the news of her parents' death, Trixie collapsed in a dead faint and her two brothers carried her to a neighbour's house.

As there was no doubt in anyone's mind as to who had killed Frank and Louise Holloway; there was no real police investigation, only an inquest into their deaths. There, the jury were read letters written by Frank Burdett that indicated that he was insane at the time of the shootings. The jury predictably gave their verdict that Frank Hawkeswood Burdett had committed premeditated and wilful murder and suicide, donating their fees to the Wimborne Cottage Hospital.

All that was left was to bury the dead. Burdett's funeral took place at St John's Church, Wimborne. As the Revd B. Herklots prepared to conduct the service, he was interrupted by the arrival of Mr Taylor, the clerk to the Burial Board, who informed him that, as a suicide, Burdett could not be buried in consecrated ground. Both the undertaker, Mr Elcock, and the vicar objected, the undertaker reminding Taylor that the plot had been paid for and the vicar pointing out that other suicide victims had been buried there in the recent past and stating that Burdett had the right to a Christian funeral, but Taylor was adamant – Burdett could not be buried in his freshly dug grave.

The vicar was keen to continue to argue the case, calling Taylor's decision bloody-minded but, aware of a crowd of interested spectators gathering around the outside of the cemetery, Elcock eventually backed down, instructing his men to dig a new grave in unconsecrated ground. However, this decision raised still more problems, since Herklots was now unable to conduct the burial. Watched by Burdett's only mourner, his devoted wife Trixie, Elcock lowered Burdett's coffin into the new grave, improvising a few words of the burial service as he did so.

In sharp contrast, the funeral for Frank and Louise Holloway was a massive affair and extra police had to be drafted into Wimborne to control the crowds who lined the streets on the route to Wimborne Minster where the service was held. Local businesses closed their doors as a mark of respect and the cemetery was packed to capacity.

Nothing is recorded of the subsequent fate of Trixie who, in one terrible day of appalling violence, lost her husband and both parents. It is to be hoped that she somehow found happiness in later life.

[Note: In some cotemporary accounts of the shootings, Burdett's name is alternatively spelled Frank Hawkswood Burdett. Walsford Farm is also referred to as Walford Farm.]

O
n 1 October 1931, Frederick George Deamen reported for work as usual at the Coverdale Kennels in Tarrant Keynston. A local businessman, Ethelbert Frampton, had opened the kennels two years earlier and there were normally between forty and fifty dogs housed there while being trained to become gun dogs.

On that Thursday morning, kennel manager Ted Welham asked eighteen-year-old Deamen to locate Peter, a blind spaniel, who had wandered into a kale field across the road from the kennels. As Deamen searched for the dog, he heard the sound of a gunshot but, knowing that his boss often took pot shots at the pigeons or jackdaws that flew near his office, Deamen paid little attention to the noise.

Having finally located Peter, Deamen walked back to the kennels with the dog, noticing as he approached that the door to the corrugated iron hut used as Welham's office was slightly ajar, exactly as it had been when he had left it. However, when Deamen went into the office, things were far from normal. To his horror, the young kennel assistant found his boss sprawled unconscious on the floor of the hut with gunshot wounds to his head.

Deamen ran the 300 yards to the home of the Hathaway family where Welham lodged. Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the house, who also worked part-time as a kennel assistant, answered his frantic knocking at the door. ‘Oh, Miss Hathaway, Teddy's shot!' gasped Deamen breathlessly.

Mary, her mother Edith and Deamen rushed back towards the kennels, joined on their way by Mary's father, Tom. Deamen was sent to telephone for a doctor and, just as he was leaving, Mary's two brothers, Harold and William, arrived to see what all the commotion was about.

Welham was lying on his back in his office, his shotgun on the floor beneath him. His fountain pen lay on the floor nearby and his jacket was unbuttoned, exposing his wallet, which protruded from his inside pocket. He was taken to Blandford Cottage hospital but died the following day without ever regaining consciousness.

The first police officer to arrive on the scene, PC Head, quickly reached the conclusion that Welham had committed suicide. Yet, strangely, Welham had only been appointed kennel manager after the previous manager, William Steer, had died by shooting in December 1929. Steer's body had been found in a badger sett in nearby Ashley Wood and, like his successor, a recently discharged shotgun lay close to his body with a live cartridge still in one barrel.

The inquest into Steer's death had recorded a verdict of accidental death, the shotgun having been in close contact with his clothing when the trigger was pulled. It later emerged that Steer had financial difficulties and may even have committed suicide. Yet the same could not be said about Welham, a popular man who was described as being happy and having a particularly cheery disposition. On the day prior to his death, Welham had written several business letters and their content indicated that he fully expected to deal with the replies.

Only when the inquest into Welham's death opened two days later was it pointed out that the gunshot wounds were to the back of his head and neck and also his left shoulder blade. The distribution of shotgun pellets illustrated on an X-ray seemed to show that he had been shot from behind. Dr Kenneth Wilson, who carried out the post-mortem examination, surmised that Welham had been leaning forwards when the gun was fired and stated that it was doubtful whether he would have been able to reach to pull the trigger himself.

The coroner, Mr W.H. Creech, was not entirely convinced by Dr Wilson's arguments. There seemed to be no evidence to indicate the presence of any third party at the scene of the crime and the gun, which belonged to the dead man, had been found underneath his body. PC Head was still firmly convinced that Welham had committed suicide and the coroner appeared to agree with him, but eventually erred on the side of caution by adjourning the inquest to allow further enquiries to be made.

The local police force immediately called in reinforcements in the form of Detective Chief Inspector Walter Hambrook and Detective Sergeant Bell from Scotland Yard and Home Office pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Their first action was to order the postponement of Welham's funeral so that Spilsbury could conduct a second postmortem. During this examination, Spilsbury placed the body in a sitting position on the mortuary table, with the head bent forward and was thus able to show that Welham had been shot from behind, while he was bending forwards either over or near his desk. It was possible, said Spilsbury, that Welham had realised what was happening and had ducked to try and avoid the shot. However, since he felt that the gun had been fired from a distance of several feet away, Spilsbury also stated that it would have been impossible for Welham to pull the trigger himself.

The police then called in two gunsmiths who conducted some experiments using Welham's gun. By firing the gun at a target from various distances and comparing the pattern of shot holes with those found on the walls of Welham's office, the experts reached the conclusion that the gun had been fired from the direction of the office door, at a distance of between 12ft and 15ft, most probably from around 12ft 6in.

Next, the police concentrated their efforts on trying to find out if there was any link between the deaths of Welham and the previous kennel manager, William Steer. Steer had died from gunshot wounds to the abdomen and the inquest jury had retuned a verdict of accidental death. It appeared from the way that Steer's body had been discovered that the trigger of his shot gun might have caught on a twig, causing the gun to fire accidentally. Hambrook could find no reason to doubt this scenario, thus deciding that the two deaths were unconnected and any similarities between them completely coincidental.

The investigating officers then focused their attention on events leading up to the shooting. They established that, as he often did, Welham had gone shooting with eighteen-year-old Harold Hathaway the evening before his death. Hathaway had cleaned both the twelve-bore shotgun that the men had taken with them and Welham's sixteen-bore gun, which was usually kept in a cupboard near his desk. On returning from their evening's shooting, Hathaway had replaced the twelve-bore gun in the cupboard next to Welham's gun. Welham had behaved normally all evening and had been in good spirits.

On the morning of the shooting, Welham had arrived for work as usual at around 7.15 a.m. At 8 a.m., he had returned to his lodgings for breakfast, going back to the kennels an hour later, when he then sent his assistant off to look for the blind spaniel. The shot had been heard by Deamen and other villagers at about 9.30 a.m. and, at 9.40 a.m., Deaman had arrived at the Hathaway's cottage with the news of the tragedy.

Members of the local community were interviewed and the police soon realised that, while most people firmly believed that Welham had committed suicide, tongues were wagging and a number of rumours about his death were circulating. The first of these was that Welham – and indeed Steer – had been murdered by someone with a personal grudge against the kennels. Then there was gossip about Welham's love life. The thirty-one-year-old kennel manager had broken off an engagement some time previously and was now supposedly keeping company with a young woman who lived near to the kennels. He had also allegedly been seen with another woman who lived at nearby Wimborne. Had he been murdered by a jealous love rival or even a spurned woman?