Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (44 page)

I cannot explain what has happened – you will undoubtedly know as much as I do about it – and the South African newspapers have printed many (untrue) reports and covered themselves with the word ‘alleged’.

In the face of the evidence I cannot deny these two offences, but to me it still seems fantastically unbelievable. By the time you get this letter it will all be over and I do sincerely hope that I am awarded the maximum sentence.

It was originally my intention of forwarding no defence, but now it has been impressed upon me that I should tell the true story for my family’s sake, if nothing else. I am assisted by the finest counsel obtainable in the country.

I am certain in my mind what the sentence will be, but my object in offering a defence against the charges is not to get a lighter sentence – I should hate that – but to make it abundantly clear, for the sake of the few people for whom I have a deep regard, that I did not set out to cold bloodedly commit two vile murders. That I am responsible, I shall never deny and I’m quite prepared to pay the piper.

A letter or word from you whilst I have been here, would have meant more than anything else to me, but I can quite understand your point of view in not writing.

I have reason to believe that the current opinion in Johannesburg is that I deserted you and then blackmailed your father into a divorce for sums varying from £2,000 upwards. All of this as you well know is complete and absolute nonsense and I shall never believe that
you
started this vile rumour. I have my own views as to the source, but have asked my solicitors, through their Johannesburg agents, to make a thorough enquiry. I, personally, can find a great deal of ironic humour in the report, when I think of those days when I begged you not to leave me. One thing is certain, and it is that had I not left Training Command in South Africa to go on ‘ops’ none of this last eighteen months of hell would have occurred. Anyway, what is done is done and nothing can repair the harm now. I blame nobody except myself.

Liz, my dear, do you remember the last time I saw Rob? I don’t think you ever realized – or will ever realize, just what that moment meant to me. I always had some hope that you would not go through with the divorce and that you would return to me. On that day I must have realized that you were so completely under your family’s domination, that nothing would change your mind or alter your decision. From that time onwards, nothing was clear to me and I could view nothing in its true perspective. Hate, animosity, revenge, a hundred and one feelings completely alien to my real self consumed my entire being. Life without you and Robby was just empty. Now, thank God, it is almost over. Since we parted, I know I’ve laughed a lot and been on parties etc, but the whole time there was that terrible feeling of hollow mockery in the background which made my entire existence miserably unbearable.

Always, across my mind, there has been a vision of you, or a blurred picture of Robby playing so happily in the garden with the dogs and then that frightening feeling of emptiness and frustration when I realized I should never see either of you again.

Life for me during the last eighteen months has been plain hell and I shall be glad when it’s over.

Now, at last, I can look back upon those years of perfect happiness with you. Bloemfontein at
[Central Flying School]
with that awful cold hotel – Greystones – the ‘Rambles’, with those enormous teas – The Bloemfontein Hotel and those early morning drives to the Aerodrome in that little open car which we both froze in so regularly – Randfontein and our house there. The chaps who used to come and stay with us – the parties we had there and at the Aerodrome – The way you cried the night before you first went to Yvonne Kotze’s to meet the other officers’ wives – the day we were invaded by all those puppies and chose Baron – all these memories and countless others are indelibly printed upon my mind and will stay with me whatever happens.

Lastly let me say this, very simply but sincerely. You are the only person with whom I have ever been in love – I still am, and shall remain so until the end. Nothing can change that. It is just an established fact which in recent months has given rise to a great deal of wishful thinking, but even now, that very simple fact, has given me a sense of happiness, and it is just about the one thing nobody can take away. That is the reason why, although pressed to do so by several doctors, I have never discussed you or our marriage in any way.

Goodbye now, my dear, and I wish you the very best of luck and all the happiness in the world.

I’ll end this letter with the familiar style which may help to bring back a few of those memories for you.

With all my love, darling, always,

Forever your own,

Jimmy

Should your mother commandeer this letter I ask her to pass it on without comment, with respect for my last wishes, if nothing else.
¹

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Old Bailey

24–26 SEPTEMBER 1946

Nowadays the thrill has gone out of most murder trials . . . The normal cut and thrust of advocacy takes on an added significance when one knows that a man’s life is at stake.

J. D. Casswell
, A Lance for Liberty
, 1961

I
n spite of warnings from the police that all-night queues were banned, crowds gathered outside the Old Bailey at 8 p.m. on the evening of Monday 23 September in order to get a chance of sitting in one of the thirty seats in the public gallery of Court No. 1 the next day.
¹
Many brought blankets to keep out the autumnal chill and slept outside the building overnight. One smartly dressed woman from Bristol refused to give her name to the press: ‘I wouldn’t want my friends to know I was doing such a silly thing.’
²
Extra police were on duty overnight to deal with the anticipated crowds for the opening day of the trial. The next morning, a young couple, both students at London University, successfully secured seats in the gallery of the oak-panelled and glass-roofed courtroom. Once settled in their seats the girl took out twelve rounds of toast, marmalade, a knife and a teapot from a shopping basket. The young man took the teapot, pushing his way through the crowds and asked a court usher, ‘Can I get some boiling water in the building?’
³

At 10.32 a.m., Heath made his appearance into the glass-panelled dock, smartly dressed in his new chalk-stripe grey suit, a shirt, pullover, brown suede shoes and his RAF tie – a new white handkerchief in his breast pocket. His blond hair was pomaded and his nails were said to have been manicured for the occasion.

The judge, Mr Justice Morris, wore a grey wig and scarlet robe finished with a black sash. He sat in a chair to the left of the Sword of State which pointed upwards on the wall behind him. Morris was fifty years old and this was his first big murder trial, having only been appointed as a high court judge the previous December.
⁴
A Welshman by birth, he had been educated at the Liverpool Institute and Cambridge. During the First World War he had served as an officer in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and had been awarded the Military Cross for bravery.
⁵
When he spoke, he had a soft, ‘almost apologetic’ voice.
⁶
The jury of ten men and two women – Rosemary Tyndale-Briscoe and Emma Selling – were then sworn in.

Given the extremity of the evidence in the case and the dramatic countrywide hunt for Heath, the three-day trial was very considered – as if deliberately distanced from the violent and emotive material. In meticulous longhand, ‘which slowed the pace of the proceeding almost to dullness’,
⁷
Mr Justice Morris took precise notes of the evidence. One newspaper reported that ‘only the facts – the bruised, slashed, beaten, suffocated body of the girl – defied the scrupulous understatement of the presentation’.
⁸
On this first day, Anthony Hawke opened with one of the shortest speeches on record for a major trial. For thirty minutes, Hawke addressed the court conversationally, as if he was ‘leaning over a garden fence explaining how to bud a rose’. He was precise, quiet and clear, quickly establishing that he intended to dismiss any possible defence of ‘partial insanity’.

Hawke then called the witnesses for the prosecution, including several police officers who had investigated the Notting Hill murder. Harold Harter, Solomon Joseph and Dr Keith Simpson were also called. Tension mounted in the courtroom on only a couple of occasions – when the leather riding whip was held aloft by the court usher and again when a grimy pillowcase, spotted with dried blood, was presented to the jury. The dramatic highlight of the day was the appearance of Yvonne Symonds, who had come to court accompanied by her father. She wore a dark pin-striped suit and close-fitting multi-coloured hat, carrying with her a brown leather handbag. When she was called, there was a sudden hush in the courtroom.
⁹
Anthony Hawke said he would have liked to spare her the ordeal of reliving her experiences with Heath so publicly, but her evidence was crucial to the case. Throughout the questioning, she spoke with long pauses between her muted replies. Concerned that she might be feeling unwell, Mr Justice Morris gallantly offered her a chair and a glass of water.
¹⁰
She looked at Heath only once. ‘You have met this man, here?’ Hawke asked her, with a gesture towards the dock. Yvonne raised her eyes to the man whom she had introduced to her parents as her future husband. ‘Yes,’ she murmured and turned her head away.
¹¹

After being cross-examined, Yvonne was released from the courtroom. She didn’t give any interviews to the press, though a couple of snatched photographs of her were taken. Her family left their home in Warren Road in 1947. Yvonne left the country, not wanting her association with Heath to colour the rest of her life. She settled abroad and never returned to England again.

The first day of the trial ended with Detective Inspector Gates of Bournemouth police telling of the discovery of Heath’s suitcase at Bournemouth West Station and how he told Heath that he was to be detained for the murder of Margery Gardner. He confirmed Heath’s casual, careless answer, ‘Oh, all right.’

On Wednesday 25 September, Casswell opened the case for the defence. He began by telling the jury that a few days earlier he had received an anonymous letter from a woman who had noted that three ‘gentlemen’ (she had stressed the inverted commas) were prepared to defend ‘that inhuman monster Heath’. She placed Casswell and the defence team in the same category as Hitler and hoped that their consciences would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Casswell discussed the letter because he wanted to draw attention to the fact that despite the many ‘unusual, disgusting [and] morbid details’ of the case that had been discussed in the press at great length and in great detail, Heath was entitled to a defence and was entitled to be tried on the evidence put before the jury and not what they had read in the newspapers.
¹²
Many of the jurors, if not all of them, would already have read of the details of both murders in the newspapers in the preceding two months and must surely have already formed preconceived ideas about the case.

Why have the press taken such an interest in [this case]? They have taken an interest in it because they think it will appeal to the public who are their readers. Why then have the public taken such an interest in this case? Why? Is not it because two terrible and apparently motiveless crimes have been committed by the same man within the short space of a fortnight? Not a man, you know, who is unintelligent, but a man who has seen a good deal of the world, a man who has been commissioned three times. That is the sort of man with whom you have to deal; and yet you find that within the short space of a fortnight, these two astonishing and apparently motiveless crimes have been committed by him . . . Is it not almost unimaginable?
¹³

Casswell explained to the jury that he would not be calling Heath to give evidence, as they would not believe a word he said. He was concerned that Heath might seem too intelligent and that he seemed so composed that the jury would never believe that he could be the victim of a mental disease.

Casswell’s personal view was that Heath had committed both murders as the result of an irresistible sexually inspired impulse to kill, but he could not concede that in court, as to do so would have automatically taken Heath out of the protection of the M’Naghten
¹⁴
rules, the statute that was to dominate the debate at the trial.

In 1843 Daniel M’Naghten had attempted to assassinate the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, but by mistake, shot dead Peel’s secretary, Edward Drummond. M’Naghten was clearly mentally unstable, but was his mental condition such that he was not responsible in law for his actions? Lord Chief Justice Tindal directed the jury that if M’Naghten was in such a mental state as to have been incapable of knowing the difference between right and wrong, then he was not culpable for his actions. Guided by Tindal, the jury brought a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’. As there was no provision for mentally ill criminals, such as Broadmoor, in this period, M’Naghten was released.