The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (102 page)

Already the manpower engaged on these murders was affecting the work of the Metropolitan Police, and particularly the CID. Sir Ranulph Bacon, the Assistant Commissioner for Crime, had allocated a far larger number of men and women to the investigation than is customary in a murder enquiry.

On 2 November 1964, the adjourned inquests on Helen Bathelemy and Mary Fleming were held jointly and the jury often men returned verdicts in each case of murder by a person or persons unknown. The West Middlesex Coroner, Mr Harold Broadbridge, commented that the cases were “strangely similar” but, so far as was known at that time, unconnected.

Detective Superintendent Bill Marchant (today Commander of No. 3 District Metropolitan Police) joined Superintendent Osborne and they were still investigating Mary Fleming’s death three months later when the fifth woman died.

She was Margaret McGowan who, like the others, was a prostitute from the Notting Hill area. She was actually soliciting in the company of another prostitute when last seen alive on 23 October 1964. A month later her nude body, somewhat decomposed, was found in a shallow grave of wood, foliage and debris in a car park at Hornton Street, Kensington, W.8. She was easily identified by her tattoo marks—three floral designs and the words “Helen, Mum and Dad”—on her left arm.
One tooth was missing.

There was no sign of the clothes she had been wearing—a furtrimmed green suit, blue blouse, blue and white check slip, blue bra, black and pink panties and black suède shoes.

This slight, dark-haired girl had come to London from Glasgow. She was the mother of three illegitimate children, and lived in Shepherd’s Bush. She used a number of aliases and it was under the names of Frances Brown that she had given evidence at the vice trial of society osteopath Stephen Ward, who committed suicide on the last morning of the ten-day hearing in 1963. At the trial she said that Ward had sketched her on one of the two visits she had made to his flat.

Every person connected with the Stephen Ward scandal was traced and questioned by the police, but all inquiries proved fruitless.

Margaret McGowan had been in the company of a girl called Kim Taylor for twenty-four hours before she disappeared, and had drunk about nineteen whiskies before they went out soliciting together in Portobello Road. She and Kim were picked up by two men in separate cars and it was arranged that all four should meet at Chiswick Green, but Kim and her male partner lost the other car in the Bayswater Road and Margaret was not seen alive again.

On the basis of Kim’s descriptions we produced identikit pictures of both men and these were published in the newspapers with an appeal for the men to come forward. Neither did so. The man who drove off with McGowan was probably not responsible for her death, but the secrecy under which most men in these circumstances must shelter usually prevents them from making any contact with the police.

The unflagging efforts of Bill Marchant and the rest of his team were now whipped into frenzied activity. Things had reached such a pitch that not only were the prostitutes and their ponces extremely disturbed, but the public was beginning to ask if everything possible was being done to stop the slaughter.

Finally, nearly a year after Hannah Tailford disappeared, the last victim of the Stripper, Bridget (Bridie) O’Hara vanished from her usual haunts and her home in Agate Road, W.6.

On 11 January 1965, she visited the Shepherd’s Bush Hotel and was recognized by several men who spoke to her during the evening until the public house closed at 11 p.m. What happened to her then is not clear, but it is certain that she died not very long afterwards and that her body was kept in some place until about 16 February, when it was found behind a small workshop alongside a very busy factory estate railway line. The discovery was made by Mr Ernest Beauchamp, working at the Heron Trading Estate, who saw two feet protruding from the undergrowth behind a shed on the estate. At first he thought it was a tailor’s dummy, but soon realised that the feet were human.

Within minutes of him reporting, Detective Superintendent William Baldock and Detective Inspector Crabb, of T Division, which covers that area, were on the spot.

I was driving to St. Mary’s Bay for a holiday with my wife when I heard the news flash on my car radio. Five hours later a uniformed sergeant from Dymchurch police station knocked on the door of my bungalow to tell me I was wanted in London to lead the murder hunt.

The Assistant Commissioner wanted me to take over murder headquarters at Shepherd’s Bush and lead the senior officers there—Detective Inspector Frank Ridge, Detective Superintendent Frank Davies, Detective Superintendent Bill Marchant and Detective Superintendent Bill Baldock.

This type of summons was nothing new. When I was a superintendent serving with the Murder Squad I had become accustomed to being called from my bed at a moment’s notice, prepared to go anywhere in the world. On this occasion I was furious because my holiday was long overdue and my wife, particularly, had been looking forward to a break. But I had no choice. I returned to London—and started work during the early hours of the morning.

Like the Stripper’s other victims, Bridie O’Hara died from asphyxia and suffocation and had lost some of her teeth. She was married to a man called Michael O’Hara and one of the identifying features on the body was a tattoo with the name “Mick” in a heart on her arm. Her clothing, of course, had disappeared.

Born in Dublin, she was one of a family of thirteen, several of whom attended the inquest at Ealing in March, 1965, to hear the verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown. Her mother, fifty-two-year-old Mrs Mary Moore, who flew to London from Dublin as soon as she heard of her daughter’s death, broke down when she went to the flat in Agate Road. I don’t know how much she knew of her daughter’s life in London, but she kept asking: “How could this have happened to her?” She described Bridie as “the most beautiful of all my family and a really kind, good girl”.

A curious feature of this murder was the remarkably preserved state of the body. It had been kept in some kind of storage and was partly mummified. There were clear indications that the body had been dumped and had not long lain in the grass.

Subsequently a witness came forward to testify that suspicious noises had been heard on the site in the early hours of 12 February. Once again forensic experts found dust and paint spray marks similar to those previously discovered.

It was assumed from the manner in which all these girls had died that their killer was a man of some strength and virility. He certainly wasn’t satisfied with normal intercourse and in every instance the victims had slight marks on the neck apparently made by fingernails, either by the murderer, or by the victim in an attempt at self-defence. Some had injuries and very slight bruising as though pressure had been directed in the region of the nose and mouth.

One thing is quite certain, the girls died extremely quickly and another certainty is that some time or other they had all suffered from venereal disease. It would have been easy to assume that the man we were hunting was a man carrying out a personal vendetta against prostitutes because he had caught the disease. That was never my view. Early in the inquiry I became convinced that the killer was a man in his forties with extremely strong sexual urges which, perhaps because of his age, were not easily satisfied normally. It was probably this physical difficulty that took him away from his wife and into the twilight world of the prostitutes.

He knew that these women set no limits to the sexual acts in which they would allow their clients to indulge. In obtaining satisfaction he became utterly frenzied and at the moment of his orgasm, the girls died. In his encounter with Hannah Tailford, he might not have realized that she was dead and for this reason pushed the gag into her mouth. With the other victims he knew that the girls had died and made no attempt to gag them. What he did was to dispose of their clothing to avoid identification.

One could postulate a theory that had this man been caught after the death of the first prostitute, and the circumstances of the sexual act had been revealed in court, the jury might have brought in a verdict of manslaughter or even accidental death. But when he continued to indulge in his particular perversion, well knowing that the girl concerned would die, then he must have recognized that he was fulfilling himself as a murderer.

In investigating kerb-crawlers we had to exercise the utmost caution and, usually, interviews were arranged over business telephones and the suspects questioned at various police stations.

On the rare occasions our detectives were compelled to visit the actual homes of these men, they were often astonished to find themselves confronted by extremely attractive and sometimes beautiful wives living in sumptuous circumstances. In one such instance the officers told the wife that they were checking on a hit-and-run accident and asked to see her car. Great tact and discretion had to be used, otherwise hundreds of marriages might well have foundered as the result of our activities.

In an effort to trap the killer, policewomen were dressed up as flash prostitutes whose job it was to walk the streets of Notting Hill after dark. They did their job so effectively that any one of them would have as many as a dozen cars lined up with drivers waiting to make a bid for their favours. It was a dangerous mission for these girls, despite the plain clothes officers posing as ponces near at hand, and they were subjected to some pretty unpleasant experiences, but nobody asked to be taken off this duty. Each girl was equipped with a small tape recorder, the microphone being concealed in their cuffs or scarves, so that a recording of the conversation was available.

Until then few of them had realized what odd demands men could make upon women. One “client” wanted to watch a woman as she took a bath and was willing to pay a fiver for the privilege. Another was anxious to undress while a nude woman in high-heeled shoes paraded before him. Flagellation, beating the girl or being beaten by her, was another mode of sexual excitement frequently asked for and there were others interested in witnessing love-making between two women.

Yet another prime target of the investigation was to discover the paint-spraying site where, undoubtedly, some of the bodies had lain for varying periods before being dumped. It was decided to start a big sweep of the territory from the Paddington end of this huge West London area. Three squads, each of twelve men under a detective sergeant, were formed to search three different sectors, working across twenty-four square miles running parallel with the Thames.

It was a terribly frustrating task because house after house emptied as the occupants went off to work each day, and often it meant going back to the same place again and again. Some people were away on holiday or business or for other reasons. It was the same with business premises. Some were closed and the occupants and employees had to be found.

I wanted to know about every male in every building in this area and details of the car he owned or used. I wanted to know if he sprayed his own car, or sprayed cars for friends, or even if he owned a spray gun. I asked for particulars of every small business where spray guns were used and I wanted samples of the pattern of spray that was left at the scene of the spraying.

It was necessary for samples to be taken from inside the bodies and boots of all cars so that comparisons could be made with samples taken from the bodies of the girls. Many times patterns of paint similar to those found on the girls were uncovered, but in every instance except one there was some difference either in the dust content or colouring. However, each one had to be thoroughly examined and an enormous amount of time was spent on this aspect of the inquiry.

In addition to the 200-strong CID murder force under my command, I had received maximum cooperation from senior uniformed officers and was able to supplement the squad of detectives with about a hundred men and women from the uniformed branch. When I suggested to Sir John Waldron that I needed even more help and asked if he would allow the 300-strong Special Patrol Group he had recently formed to move in, he agreed at once.

I wanted the whole of West London to be flooded with policemen—and it was.

Finally, and strangely enough at the remotest end of the search area, we came up with the paint pattern we were seeking. This was found a short distance from where Bridie O’Hara’s body had probably lain for two weeks before being moved. It appeared to have been hidden at the site of a transformer at the rear of a factory on the Heron Factory Estate, Acton, W.4. It faced a paint spray shop! All the globules of paint matched and the substances that made up the dust on Bridie’s body were in the right proportions. When the area was tested it was found that the spray pattern became fainter as one moved further from this spot and eventually disappeared after a few hundred yards, so it was clear that the bodies on which the pattern was shown had been kept within close range of this particular paint shop.

There were various chimneys on the Heron Factory Estate and samples taken from a spot close to the transformer clearly pinpointed the place where O’Hara’s body must have been for some time. The smoke and debris from the various chimneys produced a pattern identical to that found on the dead girl.

It transpired eventually that the paint shop was purely incidental to the killing. It did not lead us to the killer, although he must have had some association with the factory estate. Over 7,000 people on the estate were questioned because the dumping of the body pointed to the killer possessing a very special knowledge of the small area. Although it was technically private property, strangers could cross the estate. Our inquiries showed that the killer must have had legitimate access. Knowing this, we posted police officers there day and night to observe and note the index numbers of cars entering and leaving.