Dorset Murders (31 page)

About forty yards from Doreen's body, police also found a pile of permed head hair, obviously from a woman. As Heath had made a statement in which he had admitted meeting a woman called Peggy at the same time as he had met Doreen, it was feared that they might be investigating a double murder. They intensified their search of the area, even calling in a bloodhound, but were unable to discover any further information about either the hair or the identity of the mysterious Peggy.

Heath was charged with the murders of Margery Gardner and Doreen Marshall but tried only for Gardner's murder. He was a habitual criminal who had a string of convictions for petty crimes, which began at an early age. Born in Ilford, Essex, in 1917, he was a precocious child who grew up into a self-confident, even arrogant, young man.

Having joined the RAF on a short service commission in 1936, less than a year later he faced a court martial for stealing a car belonging to an NCO, being absent without leave and escaping while under arrest. This was sufficient to earn his dismissal from the RAF in September 1937 and, two months later, he was arrested for fraudulently obtaining credit at a hotel in Nottingham, stealing a car and passing himself off as the Earl of Dudley. Eight more offences were taken into consideration and he was eventually put on probation.

Having taken a job in a shop in Oxford Street, which he kept for two weeks before being sacked, he was sentenced to three years Borstal training in July 1938 for passing a forged cheque, housebreaking and stealing from his fiancé. The onset of the Second World War precipitated his release and he was conscripted into the Army and posted to the Middle East. By 1941, he had gone absent without leave and had also obtained a second pay book in order to draw double pay. He was again court-martialled and sent home to England aboard the troopship
Mooltan
. He jumped ship at Durban, South Africa, and, by the time he reached Johannesburg, he had become ‘Captain Selway MC' of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

Having passed several forged cheques, he thought it prudent to reinvent himself yet again and thus it was ‘Robert Armstrong' who enlisted in the South African Air Force, eventually rising to the rank of Captain. During his time in South Africa, ‘Robert Armstrong' met and married Elizabeth Pitt-Rivers, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a prominent South African businessman. In due course Elizabeth gave birth to Robert Armstrong junior.

In 1944, Armstrong was seconded to the RAF and served with 180 Squadron, baling out of his damaged aircraft on his first flight over enemy territory. He returned to South Africa after the war's end to find that his wife had instigated divorce proceedings against him. He was cashiered from the South African Air Force, having committed a string of serious offences and returned to Britain, where, in April 1946, he was fined for impersonating an officer and wearing a uniform and medals that he was not entitled to wear. Now, just months later, he was facing the most serious charge of all.

His trial for the murder of Margery Gardner opened at the Old Bailey on 24 September 1946, before Mr Justice Morris. Mr E.A. Hawke prosecuted, with J.D. Casswell acted in Heath's defence. Heath stood rigidly to attention in the dock to enter his plea of ‘Not Guilty'.

One of the first witnesses to be called against him was Yvonne Mary Symonds. The slight, dark-haired young woman was at several points close to fainting as she told of meeting Heath at a dance in Chelsea on 15 June. At the end of the following day, which they spent together, Heath proposed marriage and Yvonne accepted. That evening, they had slept together in the very hotel room in which Margery Gardner was to meet her death less than a week later.

Yvonne returned home to Worthing the following morning and, that week, received several telephone calls from her fiancé, who she met again in Worthing on 21 and 22 June. On their second meeting, Heath had asked her if she had read about a murder in the newspapers and, when she replied that she hadn't, told her that it had occurred in ‘their' room at the Pembridge Court Hotel. Heath had told her that he had seen the body, describing it as a ‘very gruesome sight'.

Miss Symonds testified that Heath had told her that he had lent his key to the room to another man and slept elsewhere that night, but had been contacted by the police and taken to see the body. He had told her that a poker had been ‘stuck up' Margery Gardner and theorised that only a ‘sexual maniac' could have done such a thing.

The following day, Yvonne Symonds had read an account of the murder in the papers and learned that the police wished to interview her fiancé. She had telephoned Heath and told him that her parents were very worried. Heath had promised to ring her that evening, but she had never spoken to him again.

Throughout the first day of the trial, the prosecution carefully avoided mentioning the murder of Doreen Marshall, since to do so would have prejudiced the case. Yet Casswell, for the defence, introduced the second murder himself as part of a preconceived plan to show that Heath was insane. He reasoned that the worse he could make Heath appear to the jury, the more likely they would be to believe that no sane man could possibly have committed such heinous acts.

The counsel for the defence had been convinced of his client's insanity since their very first meeting while Heath was incarcerated in Brixton Prison. Heath had indicated that he would probably plead guilty and Casswell had told him to think of his parents and his brother. Having considered briefly, Heath had nonchalantly conceded All right. Put me down as not guilty, old boy.' Life obviously meant little to Heath, and Casswell was convinced that, prior to his arrest, it had been his intention to commit suicide. He had specifically asked to be moved to a room with a gas fire at the Tollard Royal Hotel – hardly a necessity, given the summer weather – and an un-posted note to his parents had been found, written on hotel stationery, in which he talked of ending his life.

Casswell had arranged for Heath to be examined by Dr William Hubert, a doctor who not only had an impressive list of qualifications, but also a wealth of experience in working in prisons and the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, as it was then known. After visiting Heath several times in prison, Hubert came to the conclusion that he was not an ordinary sexual pervert who gained pleasure from unconventional sexual practices, but a person who suffered from moral insanity and was quite unaware that what he was doing was wrong. Casswell intended to show that Heath fell within the McNaghten Rules, named after Daniel McNaghten who shot and killed the prime minister's private secretary in 1843, having meant to shoot the prime minister himself. McNaghten was subsequently acquitted when a jury found that his mental state was such that he did not know the difference between right and wrong.

Accordingly, Casswell did not call Heath to the witness stand, telling the jury that they would probably not believe a word he said. Casswell was actually afraid that Heath would appear too intelligent, calm and rational – hardly the best attributes for convincing a jury of his insanity.

Instead, Casswell's main witness was Dr Hubert. Unfortunately, Casswell was unaware that the doctor was a drug addict. Hubert gave his evidence satisfactorily, but when it came to his cross-examination by the prosecution, Hawke managed to tie him up in knots to the point where, according to Hubert, it almost seemed that any criminal could claim to be insane and therefore free from responsibility for his crimes. To make matters worse, following Hubert's testimony, the prosecution immediately called two very believable medical witnesses who countered almost every point of his evidence.

In his summing up for the jury, Casswell tried valiantly to rescue his insanity defence, pointing out that, when viewed together, the two murders were evidence of insanity, as were Heath's lack of remorse, his inadequate steps to cover his tracks after the killings and his foolhardy voluntary contacts with the police after each murder. The jury retired on the third day of the trial, returning an hour later to pronounce Heath guilty.

When asked if he had anything to say as to why he should not receive sentence of death, Heath replied simply ‘Nothing'. In the run-up to his execution, he decided not to allow his defence lawyers to appeal his sentence and refused all visitors, with the exception of his solicitor.

On 14 October 1946, the then Home Secretary, Mr Chuter Ede, declined to interfere with the death sentence imposed on Heath, in spite of a last-minute campaign by well-known death penalty abolitionist Mrs Violet Van der Elst, who claimed to have new evidence on the case. Mrs Van der Elst had spoken to Heath's mother and had learned that Heath had been brain damaged at birth – calling Heath a ‘possessed madman'; Mrs Van der Elst insisted that he should have been sent to Broadmoor rather than the gallows. She was later arrested and charged with causing an obstruction, for distributing leaflets outside the prison at the time of Heath's execution, for which she was fined £2.

Her protests were in vain. On 16 October 1946, Heath kept his appointment with executioner Albert Pierrepoint at Pentonville Prison. While waiting to enter the execution chamber, an unconcerned Heath asked the prison governor for a whisky, immediately adding, ‘You might as well make that a double.'

 

 

BOOKS

Browne, Douglas G. and Tullett, E.V.,
Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases,
George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd, 1951

Casswell QC, J.D.,
A Lance for Liberty,
George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd, London, 1961

Eddleston, John J.,
The Encyclopaedia of Executions,
John Blake, London, 2004

Guttridge, Roger,
Dorset Murders,
Roy Gasson Associates, 1986

Murphy, Theresa,
Murder in Dorset,
Robert Hale Ltd, 1988

NEWSPAPERS

Bournemouth Daily Echo

Dorset County Chronicle

Dorset County Chronicle & Somersetshire Gazette

Poole and East Dorset Herald

The Telegram

The Times

 

Certain websites have also been consulted in the compilation of this book, but since they have a habit of disappearing, to avoid frustration they have not been cited.