The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (103 page)

There were, though, many complications. This particular estate had developed piecemeal over the years, so that during the period of the murders some buildings had been pulled down and others had taken their place.

By a strange coincidence, Christie, the Rillington Place mass murderer, had been employed on the estate at one time.

We held press conferences twice daily and at one of them we got a girl who resembled Bridie O’Hara to pose and walk in clothes similar to those she was known to have been wearing when last seen alive. We hoped someone who might have seen her would come forward with information.

Countless inquiries of all kinds were made. A 50,000 word report was prepared and a vast number of statements taken even at a late stage. In spite of all this, the killer remained unidentified, but I was now conscious that we were at last closing in on the man I was sure I would eventually arrest.

We decided that there was one way in which we could reach him. We could “talk” to him via the radio, press and television in the hope that we would harass him into making a blunder. It is inconceivable that anybody who commits a serious crime can avoid reading or listening about what the police are doing to effect an arrest. He had to be told that the murders had got to stop and that the entire strength of the Metropolitan Police had been mobilised to ensure his capture. I organized the release of a small but steady stream of hints that we were getting close to him.

In this war of nerves important clues were leaked in day-to-day bulletins covering our activities in many areas. The original number of suspects was given at twenty but these were gradually scaled down until it was revealed that of the three that remained one was known to be the killer.

We could never forget the fact that no woman was safe until the killer was in our hands, but it was not to be and within a month of the murder of Bridie O’Hara the man I wanted to arrest took his own life. Without a shadow of doubt the weight of our investigation and the enquiries that we had made about him led to the killer committing suicide.

We had done all we possibly could but faced with his death no positive evidence was available to prove or disprove our belief that he was in fact the man we had been seeking. Because he was never arrested, or stood trial, he must be considered innocent and will therefore never be named.

Often, since this massive inquiry, I have tried to decide what I felt for this twisted—or inhuman—being.

Did I feel pity, sympathy, revulsion, hatred? Or did I possess a sense of vengeance? I discovered that I was unable to answer any of these questions. I knew then, as I know now, that I was just a detective dedicated to the hunting down of a killer.

The sightless eyes of the victims had asked
me
to provide the explanations for their deaths; as when I saw that young girl on the slab in the mortuary all those years ago. The fact that the victims were prostitutes did not make the crimes any less horrible. No one was entitled to rob even prostitutes of their lives.

Without doubt, the killer’s wife and relatives could have known nothing of the double life of the man who was normal by day and Jack the Stripper by night.

And their feelings count . . .

The editor would like to thank the following people and organizations for their kind permission to reprint the following:

Mrs Betty Allsop for Kenneth Allsop,
The Short, Sweet Martyrdom of Jake Lingle
from
The Bootleggers
(Hutchinson 1961); Campbell Thomson & McLaughlin for Eric Ambler,
Dr John Bodkin Adams
© 1999 Eric Ambler from
The Ability to Kill
(Bodley Head 1961); John Austin for
Colonel Hogan’s Unsolved Murder
© John Austin 1991, 1994; The Estate of the late Christianna Brand and A. M. Heath for Christianna Brand,
Murder Hath Charms
from
Brand X
(Michael Joseph 1974, © Christianna Brand); Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., for Angela Carter, The
Fall River Axe Murders
, copyright © 1985 Angela Carter. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN; Solo Syndication Ltd. for John Edwards,
Fools and Horses
(
Daily Mail
, 12 March 1994); Orbis Publishing for Daniel Farson,
The Case of the Salmon Sandwiches
from
Unsolved
(1984); Patricia Hobson and Lawrence Hughes for
The Case of the Movie Murder
copyright © 1946 by Erle Stanley Gardner, copyright renewed 1972 by Jean Bethel Gardner and Grace Naso, first published in
TRUE
, June 1946, and here published by arrangement with Hobson & Hughes LLC; Jonathan Goodman for
A Coincidence of Corpses
from
The Railway Murders
(Allison & Busby 1984); J.A. Harding and David Evans for F. Tennyson Jesse,
Checkmate
; Noel Hynd for Alan Hynd,
The Built-in Lover
from
Murder, Mayhem and Mystery
(A. S. Barnes and Co. 1958); Brian Masters for
Evidence by Entrapment
; Russell Miller for
The Obsession with the Black Dahlia
from Black Dahlia Website; Mrs Sheena Ellis for William Roughead,
The Secret of Ireland’s Eye
from
Famous Crimes
(Faber 1935); David James Smith for
The Secret Janet Took to the Grave
© 2004 David James Smith. A version of this article first appeared in 1995 in the
Sunday Times Magazine
; Tom Smith-Hughes for Jack Smith-Hughes,
Temptation and the Elder
from
Eight Studies in Justice
(Cassell 1953); Philip Sugden for
Jack the Ripper
; Mrs Kathleen Symons for Julian Symons,
Death of a Millionaire
from
A Reasonable Doubt
(Cresset Press 1960); Viking-Penguin for James Thurber,
A Sort of Genius
from
Vintage Thurber
(Hamish Hamilton 1963); David Wallechinsky for Irving Wallace,
The Real Marie Roget
from
The Fabulous Originals
(Longmans 1955); Express Syndication for Rebecca West,
The Man Who Contracted Out of Humanity
, from the
Evening Standard
(27 January 1950); Orbis Publishing for Colin Wilson,
The Zodiac Murders
from
Unsolved
(1984); Robinson Publishing for Kirk Wilson,
The Dumb Blonde Who Knew Too Much
from
Investigating Murder
(1993); Viking-Penguin, a division of Penguin Putman Inc. for Alexander Woollcott,
The Mystery of the Hansom Cab
from
While Rome Burns
© 1943, renewed by Joseph P. Hennessey 1962.

Every effort has been made to trace the original copyright holders of the following, without success; the editor and publishers would be pleased to hear from any claimant to legal copyright of:

Douglas G. Browne and E. V. Tullett,
The Murder of Margery Wren
from
Bernard Spilsbury: His Life and Cases
(Harrap 1952); Dorothy Dunbar,
And to Hell with Burgundy
from
Blood in the Parlor
(A. S. Barnes 1962); Nina Warner Hooke and Gil Thomas,
The Camden Town Murder
from
Marshall Hall
(Arthur Barker 1966); Sydney Horler,
The Hoop-la Murder Trial
from
Malefactors’ Row
(Robert Hale 1940); Morris Markey,
The Mysterious Death of Starr Faithfull
from
The Aspirin Age 1919–1941
(Touchstone, nd); Maurice Moiseiwitsch,
Florence Maybrick
from
Five Famous Trials
(Heinemann 1962); Elliott O’Donnell,
What Became of Martin Guerre
from
Strange Disappearances
(The Bodley Head 1927); Edmund Pearson,
The Death of Bella Wright
from
More Studies in Murder
(Smith & Haas 1936); John du Rose for
Jack the Stripper
from
Murder Was My Business
(W. H. Allen 1971); Damon Runyon,
Arnold Rothstein’s Final Payoff
from
New York American
(1929); Louis Stark,
A Case that Rocked the World
from
We Saw It Happen
(Simon & Schuster 1938); and C. J. S. Thompson,
The Mystery of the Poisoned Partridges
from
Poison Mysteries Unsolved
(Hutchinson 1937).

1
. W. H. Auden,
The Guilty Vicarage
, reprinted in
The Dyer’s Hand
(Faber and Faber, London, 1948)

2
. Wendy Lesser,
Pictures at an Execution
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1993)

3
. Thomas de Quincey,
On Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts
(
Blackwood’s Magazine
, London, 1827)

4
. Thomas de Quincey, ibid.

5
. J. B. Atlay (ed.),
The Trial of the Stauntons
(Wm. Hodge, Edinburgh, 1911)

6
. John Dryden (1631–1700),
Mac Flecknoe
(1684)

7
. Rebecca West,
Mr Setty and Mr Hume
in
A Train of Powder
(Macmillan, London, 1955)

8
. Educated at Charterhouse and Oxford, Vickers (18881–1965) was a journalist and author of more than seventy novels.

9
. Who wrote the lyrics of Thompson’s campaign song “Big Bill the Builder”.

10
. In some areas of the US and overseas it was called
Super Dad
. We will refer to it by its shorter title.

11
. I discovered this myself by experiment.

12
. During the Eastbourne hearing Superintendent Hannam reported that he had mentioned his concern over the number of legacies received from patients to the doctor. The reply had been: “A lot of these were instead of fees. I don’t want money. What use is it? I paid
£
1,100 super-tax last year.”

13
. The Crown cannot have been entirely satisfied with its case. After the doctor’s arrest, they exhumed two more of his former patients about whose deaths suspicions had been entertained. The deaths were found to have been entirely natural. Of course, this fact was never brought out in evidence.

14
. There was a further indictment, for the murder of Mrs Hullett. However, no attempt was made (as there had been at the Eastbourne hearing) to introduce it. Evidently the Crown had no wish to burden itself with the obligation of proving “system”.

15
. See
All the Year Round
, 29 June 1867, and
Celebrated Crimes
, by Alexandre Dumas.

16
. Bassardus Visontius (ant Philos) commends to one troubled with heart-melancholy “Hypericon or St John’s Wort” gathered on a Friday in the hour of Jupiter, “When it comes to his effectual operation (that is about the full moon in July); so gathered, and borne or hung about the neck, it mightily helps this affection and drives away all phantastical spirits.” (Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy
, Part II., sec. 5.)

17
. Bertrande was now just twenty years old.

18
. Arnold Tilh had mysteriously disappeared about the same time as Martin Guerre.

19
. In addition to this rather damning testimony, it was known that the youthful Martin Guerre had been a good swordsman and could speak Basque, his father’s native tongue, whereas the accused had been proved to be a poor swordsman and to be utterly ignorant of Basque.

20
. This statement is important as disposing of one of the defence theories as to the cries, namely, that they were those of the boatman and Mr Kirwan, calling for his wife during their search for the missing lady.

21
. So cries from one end of the island were audible at the other.

22
. The case of Dr Pritchard in 1865 affords a sufficient answer to this argument. During the four months in which he was torturing his wife to death the doctor habitually slept with her, and she died in his arms. At the funeral he caused the coffin to be opened that he might kiss her for the last time.

23
. In fact the Court was the Court of Crown Cases Reserved which had jurisdiction under the provisions of the Statute 11 & 12 Victoria, c. 78.

24
. These gentlemen had not the advantage of inspecting the body or of hearing the evidence. The “testimony” on which they rely was, as we shall see, not “sworn”. It is also to be noted that Mrs Crowe says nothing about the manner of her husband’s death.

25
. This is the “sworn testimony” which weighed with the ten physicians. It is remarkable that Mr Kirwan omitted at the inquest to mention these seizures, and that he did not instruct his counsel to adduce at the trial evidence of such importance.

26
. See his
Rogues Walk Here
, pp. 259-85 (Cassell, 1934).

27
. So called because it was built on the land of Dr Lay: his son succeeded him as village doctor and gave evidence at the trial. The chapel was subsequently disused for religious purposes and was used as a schoolroom for the doctor’s children.

28
. It does not appear who Bob was and no witness at the trial possessed this Christian name. It appears from my own inquiries, half a century later, that he was not one of Rose’s five brothers.