Untold Motives

On today’s episode, Kate and Paul head to post WWI Liverpool, where a husband returns home to find his wife murdered. After a very involved crime scene investigation and a dramatic trial, a shocking verdict is handed down. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm fine? Happy post holidays.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
I know, you know, it's time just as flying the
older I get it seems like these holidays come faster
and faster.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
You and a milestone on this holiday, right.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Kind of you know, this is the first year for
me in thirty three years that I haven't had children
in the house.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Oh my gosh. They came home for Thanksgiving and for
the holidays, right for Christmas.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Right. So I have two kids that are in college,
two different colleges in the Midwest, and they both came
home at the same time, so we were empty nesters
leading up to the holiday season. But now you know
they're going back to college and won't see them again. Well,
chances are won't see them again until they're spring break.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Oh my gosh. So I'm asking for a friend here.
Do they have certain expectations when they come home from college.
I've got two kids getting ready to go in a
couple of years, Like, what do they think? Do they
think things are frozen in time? Is that what happens?

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yeah, you know, And we just treat when they come back,
they get back into their routine, you know, and they
get well, they have to do their own baundry, but
they just do their normal routine. Sometimes they have some assignments,
you know, and my daughter as a trumpet player, so
she has to continue to practice even though she's home.

(02:23):
But we just want them to be comfortable. And you know,
I considered moving this where I'm podcasting from up into
their space where they have their computers, but then I
thought about it, and then that would be such a
disruption for them when they do get the chance to
come home. So I think I'm going to be in
this space for our podcast into the foreseeable future.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Well, this is a good space, so I approve of it,
and I think that's fine. I remember wanting to come
home and just the shrine that it was my room
stays exactly the same, and I think my mom and
my dad both kept it that way. I wanted everything.
I missed the dog, I missed my car, I missed
because I was going to school in Boston. I just
wanted everything sort of frozen. And I was unaccepting that

(03:08):
things change when you're gone. So I wonder if your
kids feel like.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
That too, I think so, you know, like for me,
I was a military brat, so I was used to
moving around. In fact, I needed to have different spaces.
If I was in one location that didn't change for
a period of time, I'd start going nuts, you know.
So I would drive my first wife nuts because I
would constantly rearrange the house.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Did you break that somehow? Therapy?

Speaker 2 (03:35):
What had changed not so much from therapy. It was
just as as I got older, that urge started to fade,
because now I'm living in one location for my career,
well not one location, but generally I was staying in
places longer. And then that just that urge to be
in a new place started to go away.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah. Well, when one of my girls goes to camp,
she laments missing these dogs, both of our dogs, and
it's not usually us, it's mostly the dogs. And I
was like that too. I'm upset. You always said I
miss the dog so much, So I understand that because
the dog didn't ask me to do stuff like my
laundry things like that. Sure, sure, Well, I'm glad you

(04:19):
guys had good holidays and the empty nester thing, I know,
takes a little bit of time to get used to.
It's nice when they came home and it sounds like
everything went really well.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
It did. Thanks for asking.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well, we're gonna get to story located in a place
that feels like home for me, my second home, which
is England. And this is a really interesting story. Now,
I've never been to Liverpool, and I'm not even gonna ask.
I'm pretty sure you've never been to Liverpool already, I
have not.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, I think I've met some people from Liverpool. They
have very different accents than the people in London.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Right, equally as lovely, yes, equally as lovely. And I
am not a soccer slash football fan, but I know
what a big deal that is. Has nothing to do
with our story, but we've never done something in Liverpool,
so this will be interesting, all right, looking forward to it. Okay,
let's set the scene. Okay, we are in Liverpool, like

(05:12):
I mentioned, and it is January twentieth, nineteen thirty one,
which means we are smack in the middle of the
almost twelve years between World War One ending and then
World War Two beginning.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
We are at a street called twenty nine Wolverton Street.
It's a very nice home. So we are focusing on
William and Julia Wallace and I'll tell you more about
them in a little bit. I wanted to show you
an interesting photos, so I sent you your photos. I bet
you haven't downloaded them yet, but maybe you have.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
I have not, but let me Okay, so I've got
it up and I'm seeing I'm assuming William and Julius
side by side in this first frame.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Correct. I wanted you to see the photo of William
and Julia because I think it illustrates sort of their
their level of their social stature in life. So William
at the time when all of the starts to happen
is fifty two and Julia is sixty nine. Now, I
don't think that is the case in these photos necessarily.
Maybe William is fifty two, but Julia, I don't think

(06:16):
in this photo is sixty nine. There's quite a big
age difference here, No.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
For sure. You know, at least in the photo William
looks to me to be approaching mid seventies. I'm shocked
that he's fifty two in that photo. Now the the
photo of Julia, she looks younger there than sixty nine
for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Okay, So William comes home. He's a collections agent for
Prudential Assurance, so he makes pretty good money. He just
got home from a day of rounds collecting, and he's
having trouble getting inside. The front door seems to be locked,
and Julia, who is inside, is not responding to his knock. Okay,

(06:55):
So he sees that the back gate is closed, but
it's unbolted, which is unusual, and he tries the back door.
He can't get in there either, it's also locked. So
there are two neighbors, John and Florence Johnston. They hear
him knocking, and I think his knocking is getting a
little more frantic, probably because he's annoyed. He can't get
inside and they come in help, so they try the

(07:19):
front door, in the back door again. They finally get
through the back door. This is when they make the discovery.
You know, a lot of times I try to lead
this up to a big mystery of who the victim
might be. The victim in this case is Julia. I
mentioned she's sixty nine, and the Johnson's see. Fairly quickly,
I would say that Julia is lying on the floor

(07:40):
and she's dead, and she is face down on her
right side, and there is a nine inch diameter pool
of her own blood. We will assume under her face
there's also brain matter, and there's bone on the left
hand side of her face. Above in the front of
her ear is a two inch wound that penetrates three

(08:01):
inches deep. You can tell that we're going to have
a medical examiner coming up here pretty soon, because we
have some pretty precise things. Florence is very upset, as
is understandable, and she rushes to Julia. Her body is
still warm, Florence says, And as an investigator on the scene,
what would this immediately tell you? So far fairly straightforward,

(08:22):
they get in, they see her dead, on the floor.
She's got gashes on her face and there's blood.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well, it sounds like she's you know, she's received a
devastating blow to the left side of her head that's
penetrated into her skull. This is why you have the blood, brain,
and bone matter that is surrounding her body there. One
of the observations that I would be making would be
the blood flows out of that wound. Do they change direction,

(08:48):
indicating that after she starts bleeding, did she reposition like
she starts bleeding while she's upright, and then she goes
and is laying a face down. I'd also be paying
attention to the blood pool. You know, they're saying that
her body is still warm. That tends to suggest that
this is a relatively recent death. But the blood also

(09:11):
is indicative of time because as the blood pools outside
the body, eventually it starts to separate, it starts to coagulate,
And so if she's been laying there for a period
of time, then I might expect to see the separation
within the blood pool to indicate, oh, there's a little
bit more time that's past than just what the temperature

(09:33):
of the body is indicating, you know. But the environment
is also something that is significant. It's you know, eight
p forty at night in January in Liverpool, I imagine
it's pretty cold outside. You know, is it warm inside
the house or is it pretty cool inside the house?
That would have an impact on the assessment of how
long prior to the discovery of the body she was killed.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I wanted to do a little bit of quick research
for you to kind of get an indication of those
two things. So the average temperature in January and Liverpool,
I would say it looks like it's between thirty six
and thirty nine degrees fahrenheit. And I also wanted to
double check it would indeed be very dark at eight
forty pm in January in Liverpool. So those are two things.

(10:18):
Usually you want to know more about the autopsy, and
we're going to have a medical examiner show up here
pretty soon. I have photos also of the front and
back door. I do not have photos of Julia's body
laying there, but I have a pretty big description from
the medical examiner. So you want me to continue on
with what the neighbors initially see and until the police

(10:39):
come in or where do you want ahead?

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Do you think, Yeah, let's get the observation, the initial
observations and then flow into the autopsy.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Okay, I'm going to tell you about Julia and William
in just a little bit about their interests, which will
probably explain some of the things in their room. This
is their parlor, so it could be the equivalent of
their living room. There is a piano that Julia plays.
It's undisturbed. It doesn't seem like there's anything that's been displaced.
The blinds are drawn and the mantlepiece gas light is lit,

(11:11):
so we have a lot of gaslights happening around the house.
Julia sells her wedding ring on and a large brooch,
and there is a rain jacket they'll call a macintosh
that is Williams, and it's crumpled underneath Julia's body. It's
blood drenched, according to everybody there, including the medical examiner
who will come in a little bit. It's also burnt

(11:33):
and there's a fireplace that's going and there are charred
fragments of it near the fireplace. But it's crumpled under
her body.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
And this is William's jacket underneath her body. But it
appears that part of the jacket got close enough to
the fire to where it either caught fire itself or
was charred because of the heat. Now the fire is
significant because even though it's cold outside, it's going to
be warm warmer where her body is located. So that

(12:01):
could potentially speed up aspects of time change with you know,
her death, and what we would be looking for the
jacket being blood drenched. Is it underneath you know, her
head or does she have other bleeding injuries or was
the blood on this jacket prior to her falling down

(12:23):
on it or coming to rest on it. You know,
I would start looking at did somebody use this jacket
to try to stem the flow of blood from her
head and then gave up and just left it in place.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Well, I'll give you some more information, especially when the
Emmy shows up, and then maybe that'll explain some things.
This is what the initial observations from the neighbors and
from Williams say. They say there is blood splattered at
an average they said about four feet and in some
places seven feet up the wall. One other little note,

(12:58):
Julia plays the piano, William plays of violin his case
is on an easy chair to the left of the fireplace,
and there's kind of just blood everywhere, but nothing is displaced,
which I think they think is going to be key
coming up here too.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, the blood spatter is significant, So if she just
received a single blow, devastating blow that crushed in her skull,
there wouldn't be this blood spatter. So what that tells
me is that she received multiple blows and some of
those blows were to what we call a pooled blood source,

(13:35):
probably her head. And then when whatever the weapon is
is impacting that pooled blood source, that's when you get
the spatter. When you say it's ranging from like four
feet up to seven feet up. Now I would be
assessing those patterns. Is she receiving some blows while she's
upright or does a spatter indicate that the blows were

(14:00):
curring while she's actually down on the floor. But some
of I imagine some of what this spatter is is potentially
cast off. So if you have a weapon that is
now getting bloodied and on the upswing, some of that
blood gets flung off and it can go a significant
distance vertically, even up on the ceiling or behind the offender.

(14:22):
So that's kind of how I'm envisioning what you just
told me about the observations of the blood patterns in
that room. It sounds like she's receiving multiple blows unless
it's you know, it's a gunshot, and now the spatter
would look completely different.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
And the Johnsons don't know yet they certainly call the
police quickly. Okay, now we're at a fork in the
road regarding information. We can talk about the Walls's their relationship,
you know, what they were like, or we can get
the police there sooner and the medical examiner and get
to the autopsy. So what do you want to do. Do
you want to do victimology first or do you want

(14:56):
to to get to the medical stuff?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Now? I think at this point I want the medical
stuff so I can kind of assess what the offender
did to the victim and then start hearing about the
victimology and go from there.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Okay, here's another fork. When the police come, they start
talking about what's been stolen, some weird things are going
on in the house. Or do we go straight to
them and he shows up and says these are or
the wounds still going right to emmy?

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Please, Okay, there's a cop. We don't care about him
right now, but he'll be important to. His name's Fred Williams,
and he's a constable, so this is not a police
detective right now. He's the initial person who shows up,
and then they call the medical examiner, and the medical
examiner is a professor named John Edward McFall, and he

(15:41):
gets there at nine point fifty, which is about an
hour after she's discovered by William and by the Johnstons.
He's also the one who's going to oversee the post
warnem examination and also all the blood patterns that are
on the walls and the floor and everywhere else. Okay,
this is what mcfall's initial impression is. He said that,

(16:03):
you know, of course there's no indication of a struggle.
And there's an author named Joe Nichol who does a
really great job summarizing, you know, all of this, including
mcfall's initial description of the forensics. So I'm gonna this
is from Joe's article, but also you know, this is
stuff from McFall directly. Almost all of the blood was

(16:25):
concentrated into the corner of the room where William's violin
case sits. The violin is on an easy chair to
the left of the fireplace, so close to the fireplace,
close to where her body was. The forensic says almost
all the spatter was concentrated in the corner of the
room where William's violin case sits on the armchair, with

(16:49):
very scant amounts anywhere else in the entire house except
small amounts of spray on some papers on a chair,
and there's a key thing on the toilet rim upstairs,
in the water closet upstairs, and there is blood on
a pound treasury note in the middle bedroom, so not

(17:10):
in the parlor. The rest is entirely concentrated into the
corner of the room with the violin case. And this
is one more interesting thing that McFall says. He says
that the blood spatter in the parlor creates a soda
water bottle effect, So he said round spots and partly
diagonal spots concentrated in front of the parlor chair. He

(17:34):
wonders that if she was sitting there right before she
was attacked and her head was turned to the right,
as if she were talking to somebody. So these are
the initial just you know, observations he made. And then
he has some initial observations of her body while she's
lying there.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Well, the description of the blood spatter where you have
a concentration of circular droplets as well as some diagonal droplets.
Where are those circular droplets located will be a result
of the blood droplets striking the wall straight on. So
that's an indication of the height of I'm assuming the

(18:10):
only bleeding injury is her head, the height her head
was at at the time it received a blow to
a pooled blood source. When you have droplets now that
are spraying out, they start striking that wall surface at
angles and so they form these diagonal stains. So we

(18:30):
can use that as part of a blood pattern interpretation
to an essence determined roughly in space where her head
was at the time she received that blow. The critical
information for me is, okay, what height does McFall seeing this?
Is this down near the floor or is this up higher?
As if she received a blow while she was sitting

(18:51):
in the chair. His conclusion about her head being turned
a certain direction as if she were talking to somebody.
The problem with you know, the human bodies is it's
very dynamic, you know. So she may have been sitting
in the chair and recognized offender coming up on her,
and now she's moving as the offender is attacking, and

(19:13):
so that always that dynamic aspect of the offender victim
interaction always impacts our ability to truly reconstruct what's going on.
So I would have to hear more about his observations
and the actual medical findings to see if I agree
with that. But it's it really does sound. With all
the blood and you have the blood spatter concentrated in

(19:35):
the corner near this chair, then that that appears to
where at least you know, the fatal aspect of the
attack occurred. The other items that you talked about having
some blood on them are transportable items, and so the
question is are these items that could have been placed
there by the offender after Julia was killed or is

(19:56):
there any indication that Julia had an earlier bleeding in
injury somewhere else in the house and then ultimately ended
up where she was killed.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
And what you're talking about there is, you know the
violin case which we talked about. There are papers, and
there's that one pound treasury note that you know is
found in the middle bedroom, right, and then we have
one other blood that I think is a little confusing, and.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
That's in the bathroom, right.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Wasn't that Yeah, and I have photos of that too.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Okay, good, because you know that that could be the
offender cleaning up after he's killed Julia.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Let me get to what they say with the at
least the autopsy part of this. So he says that
there are ten diagonal, apparently incized wounds on the left
side of the back of her head. The left frontal
bone has pierced the front of her brain. The whole
of the left side of the back of the skull

(20:52):
was driven in and broken into pieces. These wounds were
the result of being struck three or four times with
terrific force by a hard, large headed instrument. First of all,
I mean, can you tell that from those wounds?

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Oftentimes yes, you know. So this is when you start
assessing the damage to the skull. Let's say somebody is
being hit in the head with it just a typical hammer,
you know, one inch round diameter. You can literally see
the skull get circular punches punched out of it, or
if the hammer hits it off, you know, kind of

(21:27):
on this on the edge. You know. Now you get
like a half moon effect. When you start dealing with
something more massive, let's say a sledgehammer. I mean, now
you have that crushing type of injury, so you can
a pathologist can assess, you know, certain characteristics of the weapon,
both its size as well as features of the weapon sometimes.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Okay, well let's continue on. He talks about time of death,
and he said that her hands are cold, but her
body still warm. And he says, based on the presence
of rigamortis in her neck and her upper part of
the left arm, as well as the congealment of the
blood that had pooled around her head, he thinks the

(22:14):
time of death was about six point fifty so this
would have been two hours before William tried to get
into the house. I don't know if we've had details
about rigamoris that detailed like this is where she's stiff,
and this is why I think it. What do you
think about his assessment?

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Well, it's a rough assessment, you know, but you know,
she's she's been dead long enough to where now you're
starting to see the rigor form. She's been dead long
enough to wear that blood as I talked about before
starting to congeal. That's what he is observing. The complexity
is is she's near the fire, you know, so things
are going to speed up, so I would use that

(22:49):
time of death as just a rough estimate, you know,
I could not like, let's say, if I find a
suspect and he's got an alibi up until he does
a six point fifty, I would be how I can't
use that alibi to eliminate him. She could have been killed,
you know, at five o'clock, and you'd still see these

(23:11):
same types of characteristics.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Okay, I'm gonna jump down big time, something I didn't
anticipate doing. Because we have a forensics person who comes
in the day after this happens, and he is the
city analyst. His name is William Henry Roberts, and I
feel like I should go ahead and bring this in
now so maybe we can close out, you know, the

(23:37):
forensics and the blood and the autopsy stuff before we
move into more stuff that's going to be speculative. So
William Henry Roberts comes in and he looks at fifteen
articles from the crime scene. The raincoat McIntosh on which
Julia's body has been found is extensively and heavily stained
with human blood on the right side, both inside and

(23:59):
out side, and on the upper inner side of the
right sleeve. The outside of the left cuff and a
large area near the left pocket were similarly stained. The
bottom right side of the coat is also burned off.
Blood is found splashed and smeared on two photographs, So

(24:20):
now we're outside of the We're finally done with the jacket.
So blood is splashed and smeared on two photographs, and
the wide end of the violin case, the cover of
sheet music, a cushion, the corner of a hearth rug,
and the front of Julia's skirt are all splattered in blood.
In the primary bedroom, blood is smeared on one of

(24:42):
the one pound notes in a glasser. It appears that
a blood stained thumb has been run across this note.
There is no blood though, on a cash box that
appears to have been looted, and I have to go
back up for that, and on any of William's clothing,
even though they used a sensitive benzendine test, because William

(25:02):
is going to be on the list of suspects obviously,
Or there's a sledgehammer that they found in William's chemistry lab.
He's a chemist at a local university. So they've tested
what they think are the murder weapons. They've tested suspects clothing,
and that's where the rest of the blood is found.
Once you get a forensic s guy in there.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
The amount of blood on the jacket, you know, what
I would be looking at is how this blood stating
is occurring on the jacket. Is that entirely consistent with
her just laying on top of the jacket after she's
been killed, or is there blood stating that indicates that
potentially her body has been moved or there was other

(25:41):
interactions between the offender and the victim that costs additional
stating on this jacket. Why is the jacket even there
in the first place, and then of course why is
it charred? Now some of these other items that have
blood on it, again it comes down to, well, how
are they positioned in the crimes with where the blood
spatter is, where the victim ultimately is found. Is there

(26:04):
any indication that, you know, the victim, let's say she's upright,
and she's she's receiving blows as she's trying to fight
off the offender, and now you have some blood stating
occurring on some of these other objects. So this analyst,
you know, his observations of the blood patterns, you know,
it's not giving me enough information of the evidence in

(26:25):
sits you at the crime scene for me to kind
of get a better feel of what's going on with Julia.
You know, the fact that her ring is still on,
she's got a broach on, there's light ransacking. You know.
Does this sound like it's a financially motivated crime right now?
It really doesn't. And the prior observations of what he

(26:46):
called ten incisive you know, wounds to the you know,
left back side of her head, that's the wrong use
of that term. Incisive wounds are created by a sharp
edged weapon. Now if it's something like a hatch or
an axe, sure, but chances are those are what would
technically today be called lacerations where the skin has been

(27:08):
split because of the result of blows. And everything else
about how he's describing her injuries indicate that I believe
all her injuries to her head are a result of
multiple blows.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Okay, let's get to one other piece of blood evidence,
which is the toilet rim upstairs. So I have a
wide shot, a close up shot of this blood, which
they say has been congealed. There is also a map
of the whole house, which is sprawling I would say, so,

(27:39):
I guess once we start talking about the entry and
who has accessed, you can look at the map, or
you want to just get done with blood.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, let's just get done with the blood, all right.
So I'm looking at the toilet and there is a
bright red circular drop that is on the right front
top surface of the rim of the toy toilet. The
seat is up, you know, the toilet itself, the water
is you know, you could see where there's like staining

(28:07):
as a result of algae and stuff. And then there's
a close up shot which is again just showing what
appears to be a mostly circular drop of blood. And
what this tells me is that this is just a
single drop of blood that struck the toilet straight on.

(28:28):
There's an object that has blood on it, could be
a person, and a single drop of blood just dropped
down onto that toilet, and not from a great height,
because I'm not seeing scalloping around the edge of this.
It looks like almost a perfect circular drop. So that's
all it is. It's just one droplet of dripped blood.

(28:48):
I mean, there's just no way that you would use
the term congealed with with a droplet like this. Basically,
this blood would dry very quickly.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Okay, So later on, when we do end up having
a trial, the professor will get on the stand and
he'll say that, aside from the fact that he's not
sure if his assessment of the rigor mortis was one
hundred percent accurate on the time frame, he said that
he and the detectives walked freely from the parlor to
other rooms of the house. So I think the insinuation

(29:19):
here is that it's possible that they transported some of
this blood to different areas, and they can't be specific
about that. But he talks a little bit about the
toilet rim and he gives some details about how much
blood that is. I remember reading somewhere maybe it's menstrual blood.
Julia was sixty nine. I don't think so, but you know,

(29:39):
who knows. There's just sort of looking at all of
these different options. But you're right, I mean, this isn't
you're saying that this is not a sign of a
big cleanup or something in this bathroom necessarily, No.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
You know, this is in fact, you really can't even
draw any type of conclusion outside it's a single droplet
of dripped blood, and there's this, you know, whose is it?
You know, today we would be able to determine that
and is it coming from Julia or is it coming
from somebody else? You know, something that you just brought
up is a significant thing. There's a reason why we

(30:10):
freeze crime scenes and prevent people from wandering around. It's
because there can be contamination that can throw off an
interpretation of what happened. So, given what you just told me,
is it possible that one of the responders dealing with
the crime scene had to go use the bathroom and
is now leaving that little bit of dripped blood off

(30:31):
of I doubt if they were using gloves and off
of the hand or whatever, you know. But it's also
possible that you have the offender, you know, going into
this bathroom to clean up, and whether it comes off
of his hand or a weapon, you know, you have
a drop of blood from Julia that gets transferred into
the bathroom.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Okay, let's talk about the strange circumstances that the police
constable notes when he gets there, which is around nine
to ten, so he got there twenty five minutes, it
sounds like after this initial discovery. So here are the
things where where we start putting together a motive, I think,
and then I'll tell you about Julia and William in

(31:08):
a little bit. So, as I said before, no signs
of forced entry, no other indicators of burglary, but some
kind of weird stuff. There's a cabinet door in the
living room that's broken, and a half crown and two
shilling pieces are on the floor, okay, which is not
very much money. William keeps his insurance collection box, so

(31:29):
you know I told you before that was his job
as he would go and collect insurance money. He keeps
his insurance collection box stowed on the top shelf of
a seven foot tall bookcase. He says that it's been
looted for four pounds, which is almost five hundred dollars today,
but there are no bloodied marks on it, and Constable

(31:50):
Williams is thinking to himself, why would a robber kill
a woman try to loot the house, and then put
the cash box back on the top shelf. And so
if you look at that photo that you had pointed
out earlier, you'll see it doesn't sound they're saying that
this is not in disarray. This looks like a pretty
messy room. But you know this is this is the

(32:12):
state of the room where the cash box was kept.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Sure the idea that this this cash box, which is
very nondescript, that the offender recognized it was something that
would have some money in it and so takes it down,
takes a little bit of money out, and then puts
it back. And then you have a cabinet door that
you know has been broken and a few coins scattered

(32:37):
on the floor. This is, you know, like, in my
experience processing burglary scenes, this seems inconsistent with an offender
who is now trying, you know, desperately trying to find
you know, valuables. It almost sounds more like the offender
knows exactly where the money's at the fact that you
don't have a lot taken suggests to me that possibly

(33:02):
this is a staged crime scene where now somebody like
William is trying to make it look like an intruder
came in and was a financially motivated crime, but he
doesn't want to lose all that money. So I'm starting
to get suspicious of William.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
Okay, well, let's continue on. Keep your suspicions to yourself,
pull holes, Not really, you can say it if you want. Okay.
They go upstairs and the gaslights are on, which would
be normal. They find Julia's purse. The purse has not
been taken or looted. There are pound notes that are
stuffed in a glass jar in the bedroom. They're still there.

(33:42):
I mentioned there's like a blood, a little bit of
blood I think on the outside of the jar of that,
but that's about it. So this is what I think
was interesting, A good observation from the police constable. He
said there is a clean but recently used nail brush
in the bathroom, so it's one of those brush with
the bristles where you would clean your nails off, and

(34:03):
you know it's wet. He said that in the front
spare bedroom, the bed sheets are totally disordered. There are
pillows and clothes that are strewn all over the floor,
but nobody opened any drawers. And Julia's jewelry is tucked
away in a cabinet. So this is even more suspicious.
And you can look at the layout if you want to.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
At some point this is not a ransacked crime scene
at all, and with such focus, you know the damage
to the cabinet door, the cash box being put back
and nothing else is being taken or other drawers being opened,
entirely inconsistent with an offender who's going to go throughout

(34:46):
a house. And you know, experienced burglars can size up
really quickly. Okay, where most likely am I going to
find things that are worth taking? You know? And oftentimes
they'll go into the master bedroom. They into the master
bathroom today, you know, the master closet. This is where
you'll find the jewelry, you know. So this is not

(35:08):
a financially motivated crime, even though it appears that there
was a an attempt to make it look that way,
and the homicide occurred in that you know, where Julia's
body was found, and it's just did did violence start
somewhere else and then it did during her attempt? Did
she run to that room? You know that in that

(35:30):
front room is looks like it's right next to the
front door of the house, So you have to walk
it down. You have to go through the vestibule, walk
down the hallway, and then go to the right to
get into that front room. I would consider the possibility
that somebody knocked on the front door and you know,
Julia opened it and now he rushes in and kills Julia.

(35:54):
But then why this is where I think, you know,
learning the victimology becomes important because because this appears that
the offender's intent was to kill Julia and wasn't coming
in to burgerize, you know, to basically take items of value,
it's not a financially motivated crime in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Okay, let's keep moving through this. Okay, Now, I think
we might be through all of the forensics and the
things that are missing and not missing, and let's go
ahead and get to the couple. Since you're suspicious of
William already, we'll see if you are rightly. So it
seems like they're a happy couple. Of course we hear
that all of the time they were happy and they

(36:37):
kept to themselves. They were married sixteen years. William I
showed you the photo. He's lanky, he's eccentric, he's worldly,
you know, in a lot of different disciplines. In nineteen
oh seven, he developed a severe kidney issue, which impeded
his ability to move around quickly and compelled him to
come back to London after they had been doing a

(36:58):
lot of traveling. Then he became a lecturer in chemistry
at the Liverpool Technical Institute, and then he was doing
what he currently does also, which is being a collector
for an insurance company. Julia was an accomplished pianist. She
sounds so interesting. She was a painter, needle point craftswoman.
She was a you know, just sort of like an interesting,

(37:21):
well rounded person overall. Once we get into the circumstances
of the police are starting to suspect William and what
he says happens. So that night William goes down to
the station with the constable at the station, he describes
some of the things that have been happening. He says,
over the past two days. You tell me what makes

(37:41):
sense here. This is sort of convoluted. The day before
the murder, which is January nineteenth, he was in a
chess tournament because he's into chess and he plays the violin,
and he has all these different interests. When he gets
to the chess tournament, which is about seven forty five
or so, there's a guy there named Captain Samuel Betty,

(38:03):
and he says, somebody gave you a message. Somebody named R. M.
Quol True had called for William at this cafe where
this tournament was being held. About seven fifteen, thirty minutes earlier.
According to the guy, the captain who gave him this note,
this guy R. M. Qualtrow wanted to schedule a meeting

(38:24):
and regarding a new insurance policy for his daughter, and
this would not have been unusual at the time. He
requested William meet him at a particular spot the next
day at seven thirty pm. So this would have been
when Julia was murdered, at about an hour and twenty
minutes before she was discovered by William and the neighbors. Okay,

(38:45):
so he says, meet me at this place. This is
what the note says. So the day that the murder happens,
William collected his insurance payments. He has dinner with Julia
about six o'clock, and then he heads out to go
meet this guy. And according to him, he left the
about six forty five. He was wearing a raincoat and
walked a third of a mile to a church. He

(39:07):
probably gets lost, but there are tram operators at two
different locations that help him. So he's actually out there,
you know, trying to catch these different trams to get
to this location. He gets lost, he asks a lot
of people for directions, and he's looking, you know, treet signs,
he's at local post offices. He's kind of all over

(39:27):
the place, and he wonders if this guy had written
down the wrong address for the appointment. He gives up
at about eight ten. He gets on a tram and
he heads home. So police take down the statement and
they examine his clothing and his boots and his hands
for blood. They can't find anything. He is still their

(39:48):
prime suspect, and over the next nine days he gives
them three more statements. So what do you think about
this alibi? A mystery man says, meet me at this
myster replace far away on the night that his wife
is murdered.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
So just a little bit of a statement analysis. He
has dinner with the victim at six o'clock, claims that
he leaves at six forty five in the evening, and
now he's going out to try to find this this
man and is lost and is now interacting with a
bunch of people. Sounds like he's trying to set up

(40:26):
witnesses to support this alibi. You know, you have to
you have to dig into this. From an investigator standpoint is,
can you track down who this RM coteur is and
verify that there was actually an arrangement. Also this note,
you know it's the Captain Betty who's the one that

(40:49):
is passing this message on from couture to William. You know,
youve got to get his statements. And then the next
three statements, how can assistant are they relative to this
initial statement? You know, William is now giving three more statements.
How are those details changing? And are those details changing

(41:10):
as William is assessing, you know, what the circumstances of
the case are, and he's trying to, you know, come
up with something to cover himself. And right now I
can't say, you know, William's responsible or not, but this
initial statement is sounding suspicious to me, where he's just
trying to set up an alibi. And I think Julia

(41:33):
is killed between six and six forty five roughly, because
you know the time the time of death estimates by
the pathologists and stuff again, as I mentioned before, are
really rough.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Estimates, absolutely, and the medical examiner will clarify that later
on and say, you know, this is my best guess,
but he does revise it back to six o'clock essentially,
so the day after the murder two witnesses come forward.
One is a woman named Sarah Jane Draper. She is
the housekeeper. And there's a kid named Alan Close. He's

(42:07):
fourteen and he's the milk boy. Remember those. So this
is what the housekeeper says because they're wondering about the weapon.
She says that a foot long piece of iron that
generally leaned against the fireplace in the parlor where Julia
was killed is gone, and there is also a nine
inch poker that is missing from the kitchen fireplace. You know.

(42:32):
She also says that the front bedroom where I described
all of the bedding was out of place, that this
would have never happened under Julia's watch. Everything was neat
and proper. So, you know, again, we're in a time
period where there's fireplaces in every room, and there are
weapons in every room, and there's axes, and in this case,

(42:53):
we've got pokers, so you know, and we've had just
decades worth of cases where you have things that people
per zoom or the weapons and they've gone missing, and
they go, wait, where is that wrench, fireplace poker butcher knife?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Well, and those two potential weapons, the fireplace poker which
is only nine inches long and then you have this
length of iron, and there doesn't appear that there's more
description to what it is. But the ten linear wounds
that the pathologist notes on Julia entirely consistent with being

(43:27):
hit multiple times with a relatively narrow and potentially lightweight
weapon like the poker. And then you potentially have with
this piece of iron, which sounds like it's a more
massive and longer weapon that could have been used to
finish her off, and that would be very much in
line with the damage done to her skull, where now

(43:48):
you have the brain and skull fragments, you know, being
scattered around her head or at least where the blows
were occurring, and you know, two inches wide, three inches deep.
It could also be the end of something like that
piece of iron just being thrust into her head.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Mm hmm. Well, we'll come back to the weapons in
a little bit. They are anxious to try to find
these weapons, the milk boy. So this is what the
milk boy says, And then you're gonna have to tell
me about the reliability of witnesses regarding time. I don't
doubt that Alan knows the circumstances in the right order.

(44:27):
I wonder about the time he says he saw Julia
the day of the murder, at six forty five pm.
He says he dropped off milk at the house and
then he stopped by the Johnson's house next door at
thirty one Wolverton Street to give them milk. He comes
back and he collects the empty jugs from Julia, and

(44:50):
she told him that she had been ill with wronchitis.
So that's the thing that the milk boy contributes. So
if we believe his time, then she's alive, you know,
at six forty five to seven o'clock. I don't know
how long that route was, but we might find out
more when we get into trial.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
And I guess I just, you know, need to know
how Alan knows what time he's at Julia's house. Is
that does he have a watch on? You know, is
this or is he just estimating because you know, he
knows his route and how you know what time he
left to start delivering milk, and he would have been
at Julia's house at six forty five. So it's really

(45:31):
kind of drilling down on the veracity of Alan's recollection
of that time that he saw Julia live.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
The information I have is that there will be a
defense and they will question poor fourteen year old kid
on the stand. He says he might have seen Julia
live between six thirty and six forty five, So either
he had a watch and he just wasn't sure of
the time, or you're right, he was estimating. He's done

(46:02):
this route of gazillion times and he knows what time
he was supposed to be done, So you know, I mean,
this plays kind of into William's alibi because the police
start running some practice runs on could he have done
all of this? Because there were witnesses who saw him
on trams, so the timing is important, and eventually Alan

(46:24):
will say, well, I know it was between six thirty
and six forty five, but still, you know, you've got
people who say Alan said definitely six forty five, so
he must have been wearing a watch. But you've got
the defense eventually will shake him a little bit.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Sure, and if there's are there witnesses of Allan that
can corroborate his movements during that timeframe.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Well, presumably the Johnstons because he dropped off milk. However,
I don't see whether or not they answered the door,
so he might have left the milk on the stupid.
They were home at eight fifty when William comes knocking.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, and so let's say we know that Julia is
found dead at eight fifty, So now we have a
window of six forty five to eight fifty. The homicide
itself will not take long, that's a matter of a
few minutes, you know. So now it is reconstructing William's

(47:21):
movements per these other witnesses and seeing, well, how could
he have done all all these movements after killing Julia
around six forty five.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Well before the police get to that, they have a complication,
which is William's second statement where he has an idea
about who actually did this. There are two people that
he knows that he feels like, you know, had the
potential here and they get drawn into this too. So
on his second statement he says that there is a

(47:54):
twenty two year old named Richard Gordon, so we go
by Gordon Perry, and then another one who is a
thirty year old named Joseph Caleb Marsden, so we kind
of go by Perry and Marsden here. Both men are
former colleagues of Williams at the insurance company. So in
nineteen twenty eight, so this is about three years ago.

(48:16):
William says he discovered that Perry Gordon Perry had been
skimming money from clients. He also knows that Joseph Marsden
was let go for financial irregularities, so probably petty thieving.
And he says that they are viable suspects because number one,
they're bad people. Sounds like, you know, there's people who

(48:40):
would take money. But also because they knew William's schedule
because they knew the collecting schedule kind of like with
the milk boy. They know the collecting schedule of his company,
so they know the layout of the house because they
had been to the house before. They also knew where
he had stored those payments on that really tall shelf

(49:02):
in the cash box. So he said, I think that
they went there to score money and you know, ran
into Julia, ended up having to kill her. And then
I have an explanation for the guy, and I have
to keep looking at his pronunciation. I have an explanation
for who Qualtrow is. Also, do you think about these
two guys.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Maybe I'm demonstrating a bias against William right now, but
these these are just two individuals that he's pulling out
of his past that have some criminal element to him,
you know, and understands, you know, the job, but what
happened inside this crime scene doesn't add up with these

(49:43):
two guys coming in looking to financially profit from it.
You know, there's just too much focus on the homicide
of Julia for me to buy that these two guys
are there initially for financial purposes and then just abandon
it because Julia ends up confronting them. I don't know,
I'm skeptical of that.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Okay, let me explain Qualtrow and this is a real person.
His name was Richard James Qualtrow. He has an alibi,
he's not involved with this. The implication is that these
two guys, Perry and Marsden, had used this client's name
as a ruse, you know, to draw away William so

(50:26):
that they could go and rob him and then presumably
kill his wife. But William knew this guy too, so
it's not like, you know, a random name that William
wouldn't have known. If William's guilty, like you believe, then
he is trying to set potentially these two guys up
also because he comes up with these names pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
So this Qualtro is our w Qualtrow, who's the one
that supposedly gave the message to captain through that captain
in order to meet with William the next day, the
next evening.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Right, so the same guy who didn't show up because
this wasn't a real meeting and it was a ruse
to draw William out. And you know, my point with
this is that, yes, these two guys knew who that
person was because he was a client at the insurance company,
but so did William because William also worked there.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Sure, and so they're trying to draw William out to
meet with this you know, set up this fake meeting.
So now William's not at home and they're going to
go in and take everything they possibly can, but they don't,
and then they killed Julia in the process.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah, and you know it's so interesting because we really
could go on and on about Gordon and Marsden and
what their motives could be. Neither of them, I mean,
both of them are kind of into petty crimes. Nobody's
really had anything serious. Marsden was home at the flu
by himself, which is a great alibi or a terrible one.
And you know, Gordon said he was with his girlfriend

(51:51):
and she backed him up, and that he visited somebody
else in relatives and they backed him up. So over
the last one hundred year years, less than one hundred years,
fewer than one hundred years, you've had people who have said,
maybe these guys are the ones who did it, but
the police really never thought so. They really felt like
this was Marsden had no motivation, and neither did Gordon.

(52:14):
Exactly what you're saying, based on what they saw taken
or not taken, especially Paul, if they knew his route,
wouldn't they know that he was going to be back home,
you know, at a certain time, and especially if they
sent him someplace far flung, they would have to know
it was going to take him this long to get

(52:34):
home from a meeting once he realized this meeting wasn't
going to happen. I mean, I would just think that
they would have thought they'd have all the time in
the world if they planned it, to take whatever they wanted,
and yet they didn't, right.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Well, and also, if they're planning this far ahead and
they knew William, they most certainly must have expected that
Julia would be home. Yeah, you know, so there was
an inconsistency, and that's where anytime you see an inconsistency
that is a red flag. You would think that to

(53:06):
commit to this crime, they would have chosen a time
in which they knew that both William and Julia would
be gone.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yeah, you would think so. Yeah, I think most people
now know, you know that that whole thing around them
is falling apart. Let me tell you about weapons that
were one that was discovered around the time of the murder,
and then one that was discovered just decades later. And
this probably won't help William's case with you at all,
but they find a small axe in a basket under

(53:35):
the stairs. It was covered or hidden, I don't know
what we want to even think about that under old clothing,
but it is determined not to be the murder weapon.
They must have tested for blood and you know it
came out negative. But on top of that, he does
have an insurance policy on Julia. But it's maybe about

(53:58):
thirteen thousand dollars, not very.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Much at all, you know, sure, you know, well, it
doesn't sound like the small as is probative at all. Right,
and then of course you know he's profiting from his
wife's death as a result of the insurance. You know, Now,
it's well, what's going on in William's life? Is he,
you know, so desperate for money that he's willing to

(54:21):
kill his wife or what is a relatively small insurance policy?
Or is there something else going on in William's life
that is maybe better motivation for him to kill Julia.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Let me draw you back to one more weapon theory
and then we can talk a little bit more about that.
So the author that I told you about, Joe Nickel,
he found out that in about the nineteen mid nineteen thirties,
a few years after this happened, that new tenants moved
in and they wanted to install electricity, so they removed

(54:53):
the stove that was there in the kitchen. When they did,
they found an iron bar wedge between the wall and
the hearth. Now we don't know anything about it, but
Joe Nichol and I think rightly so, believes this must
have been the murder weapon. The missing iron bar, which
I'm picturing as sort of like a crowbar. Maybe I

(55:13):
don't know if there was a curved in or anything,
but that's what I was sort of picturing. This foot
long that was missing from the fireplace according to the housekeeper.
So Joe Nichol says he shoved it behind the stove
and that's you know, where it stayed.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Did they turn that into law enforcement? It seems strange
to me that somebody remodeling is going, oh, we found
this iron bar and it becomes aware that potentially is
suspicious because a homicide had occurred in the house. Is
that what's going on?

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Well, this is about probably about four or five years
later after all of this happened, So this is quite
a bit of time afterward and the case comes to
a conclusion. So no, I mean that doesn't show up.
That showed up specifically in Joe's research, not in our research.
So I think this was, you know, a story that

(56:02):
just sort of they said this seems likely because it
just ultimately it doesn't sound like they ever found the
fireplace poker.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
I've seen you know, bludgeonings with you know, similar type
of weapons in which the offender fails to penetrate the
skull or fracture of the skull, you know, and basically
it's causing bleeding injuries because when this type of weapon
strikes the scalp, the skin splits, it creates those lacerations
and there could be a lot of blood. And in

(56:32):
something like the Golden State killer case and one of
the homicides, actually a couple of the homicides, he switches
from a lightweight, narrow weapon to a much more massive
weapon to finish the victims off. That's what I think
is potentially going on here with Julia, where the maybe
initial blows those ten incisive injuries that the pathologists noted
on her head, It's probably consistent with this this fireplace poker.

(56:56):
But then he goes to the more massive iron bar. Now,
the one that is discovered behind the stove, is it
the one that was used to kill Julia? At this point,
it's just absolute speculation unless it still exists and you know,
blood is on it and we could do DNA testing
to show it.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Well, let's get to the timeline, because this is what
leads to his arrest. The police retrace what he says
his root was, and we do have people who witnessed him,
you know, on these different trams. And what's interesting is
they are disagreeing with you on one point. They said,
if we believe Alan the milk Boy, and he was

(57:35):
seen at six forty five when you add in the
walk to the tram station, the first tram station, all
the tram operators when they say they saw him when
he returned back home. They do this special math, and
it turns out that William only has five minutes to
kill his wife and then clean all traces of the
blood from himself off. But then we have that jacket,

(57:59):
and then you've already said that you can kill somebody
in five seconds, let alone five minutes is not that
big of a thing.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
I'm not overly concerned about that space of time at all,
you know, especially if he's let's say he's wearing that
blood stained jacket that is found underneath Julia, then that
jacket in essence is a shield. Most people think that
when you have these types of homicides that the offender
must just be covered in blood. No, they might have
a few drops of blood, or there may be some

(58:28):
spat or low down on their pants, legs if they're
bludgeting somebody whose head is down on the floor. But typically,
you know, the offenders walk away from these types of
crimes with minimal amount of blood evidence on them. That
jacket may have been a perfect shield. And now he's
leaving it behind, you know, and because he recognizes it's

(58:48):
got blood on it. So that just adds up from
my perspective, you know, And I have to rely upon
these original investigators for how they, you know, calculated out
his move. But if he has five or ten minutes
he could commit this homicide, he could generally get cleaned up,
and then that he's on the he's on the road,

(59:08):
and he's already thought of how he's going to establish
his alibi, you know. So that would suggest that there's
a level of pre planning, you know, and he's also
taking the time to stage the crime scene to make
it look like there was some modest financial gain that
the offender got the intruder got. So no, I mean

(59:29):
they found a block of time in which they can't
account for, and so it's possible that, you know, the
timeline still fits with William being able to commit this crime.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
And you know, we already were questioning the milk boy,
and then you've got to question all of these tram operators,
you know, the people who have seen him. If everybody's
one minute off, that buys him an extra seven minutes.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yeah, I think you know this timeline where you have
the milk boy, you have tram operators, you have William
giving certain statements. You know, I think it's all just
it's very loose. I just don't see where you're going
to get things down to the minute. You know, it's
probably going to be down to ten minutes or fifteen

(01:00:10):
minutes one way or the other.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Yep, And I think that's what we kind of come
down to. There's debate over the locks. The locks on
the front and the back are bad. On the doors.
Could anybody have gotten in there unless you had a key?
Was Julia able to there's so much debate over that
that it doesn't matter because she could have just opened
the door absolutely. I mean, you know, if these are strangers.

(01:00:32):
So that's a little silly to a certain extent. And
then you know there is Professor McFall who goes, listen,
I mean, I can't give you an exact time of death.
And there is the other issues. So you're talking about
a tight timeline. According to William, that gives him a
lot of wiggle room. And the prosecutor doesn't have any
other real evidence. And also Paul, they don't have a motive,

(01:00:54):
which you know, jurys want a motive. There just does
not seem to be a big motive here. The defense says, William,
as I said, doesn't have a motive. He is very proper.
I mean, he is a professor. He is not a
frenzied person. There's no evidence that he made the phone call.
You know, that was the beginning of this ruse. You

(01:01:17):
said that he believed that there were witnesses who said
the person who made the phone call to the captain
who took the note down for William was not William.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
I mean, I don't know how you can testify to that,
but that's what they say. And they said because of
William's kidney condition, he was basically not able to do
all of this physically able to do all of this stuff.
I don't know if that's actually true or not, but
that's the defens's theory.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Yeah, but that I don't buy at all. You know,
he's a fifty two year old man. He can most
certainly swing a fireplace poker or this iron bar. You know,
the victim is sixty nine year old woman. And you know,
motive it could be as simple as they got into
an argument.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Yeah, absolutely, and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
He flies off the handle as as you know, I
always go back, you know, to the core of the case,
which is the crime scene and what happened to the victim.
And as I'm hearing about the case, I think I'm
stronger than ever thinking that you know, William killed Julia,
and you know there's this isn't a sexually motivated crime,

(01:02:31):
this is not a financially motivated crime. You know, bludgeoning
often is a result of a kind of like an
angry type of anger, retaliatory type of offender, and William's
statements and and all that just I'm just not buying it.
I I right now am kind of really you know,
tunnel vision on William at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Okay, what do you think the jury's verdict is going
to be, Because we're at that point.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
It's it's it's it's almost like a coin toss with
these types of cases, because I know, you know, with
the lack of good forensic evidence that we would have today,
you know, it's the circumstances you could see where a
jurors would just quit going there isn't a case here,
there's lack of probable cause even for a rest. But

(01:03:20):
then we're also dealing with this timeframe and we're dealing
with you know, England and the Liverpool area, and you know,
and you know better than I in terms of you know,
how jurors you know, would be thinking about, you know,
a case such as this in that region.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Well, if you pretend that none of our forensics really
exists today except perhaps like if you go back to
nineteen thirty one fingerprinting, there were no fingerprints. It sounds
like for them to compare to there were no witnesses,
there's no murder weapon that they can identify, there's no
blood on him, and he has what could be or

(01:03:57):
could not be a good alibi, then this should be
what a non guilty you know, should he be acquitted
or no?

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
I would just say he's a suspect and they haven't
developed probable cause for a rest. Okay, That's that's where
you know I would be. And so you know, if this,
if I were a juror sitting on and this is
all that they're presenting, I'd go, well, yeah, I think
there's a there's enough reason to suspect that he's responsible,
but I can't vote guilty. And now I think this.

(01:04:26):
You know, here in the United States, you know, the
people run the risk of an acquittal and William could
never be retried for murder.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Okay, the jury comes back and they find him guilty
any sentenced to hang.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Oh good god, Okay, I guess I expected that that
was going to be. You know where this is going.
It's it's just as much as I suspect William, I
just don't think they have a strong enough case to
take his life.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Well, it turns out that the Court of Criminal Appeals
agrees with you and overturned the verdict.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
They said the evidence cannot support a guilty verdict. This
is the only this is only the third time in
the history of the English Court of Criminal Appeal that
they've completely overturned a death sentence and a guilty verdict.
So so here's what's interesting about William moving forward. He
tries to go back to his normal life, but he has,

(01:05:23):
you know, people hounding him all the time. He's described
in the newspapers, and to his face it sounds like
as a sex maniac, a vampire, a sadist, a mad
scientist who preferred human beings to guinea pigs. Of course,
the customers don't want to have anything to do with him.
He gets hate mail, he gets death threats, he ends up,

(01:05:43):
you know, initially taking a clerical job, and then he
ends up moving out of Liverpool. And I would think
that he would sort of fade off into the darkness.
He does not. So. In May of nineteen thirty two
he publishes article in a magazine called John Bull and

(01:06:03):
it is titled I Know the Murderer and this is
what he says. The murderer followed my wife into the
sitting room, and as she bent down and lit the
gas fire, he struck her, possibly with a spanner, which
is a wrench. He had now to kill her. To
strike her again while she lay on the floor and

(01:06:25):
him standing over her would mean the upward spurting of blood.
Two strides took him into the lobby where he had
observed my macintosh hanging, and he held it as a
shield between him and her body while he belabored her
to death. She must have been felled as soon as

(01:06:48):
she lit the fire, and before she could regulate the
flow of gas, it would have been at full blaze.
And as he bent at the fireplace, the flame set
light to the macintosh. Then he would see that the
bottom edge of her skirt was burning and throwing the
Macintosh down. He must have dragged her away from the

(01:07:09):
fire and on to part of the coat, leaving her
in the position that I found her.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
I believe what he's saying.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Oh why would you do that? Though, I mean, why
would you say all that in a magazine.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
He can claim that he's reconstructing how this crime occurred
based on the details he heard at trial or what
he was fed during the investigation. But I also believe
that he's I mean, he's accounting for a lot of
the evidence and how it was found and the reason
for it. And I'm going, you know what, I bet
there's a lot of truth. But he's just saying somebody

(01:07:45):
else did it. Yeah, he knows the murderer. It's because
he's the murderer.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
And he says one last thing. This is how he
closes out this piece. I know the murderer as readily
as I can identify a volume on my shelves, So
can I put my hand on the murderer. Only one
name have I kept locked in my mind, the name
of the man who killed my wife dot dot dot.

(01:08:12):
And that is the end of the article.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
It's that that's an interesting thing. How he's you know
he is being vilified in in very bizarre ways. It's
it's interesting how the public you know he's a vampire
or he's a sex fiend and all that. Well, this
crime isn't that right, So obviously he's now getting this

(01:08:36):
this attention that is really bad. He goes to the
point moving out, and yet he feels compelled to write
an article saying I know who the murderer is. And
it's almost a tease. This is this seems like he's
he's getting back at the people who are vilifying him, saying, oh,
I know who did it. I'm assuming over there in

(01:08:58):
England he can't. He couldn't have been tried again once
it was overturned. He's basically acquitted, right, sort of like
what we've had with other episodes. For me, I don't
think the case was strong against William to a point
where you could go and convict him, but I think
they went after the right guy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Well, I want to get to a tiny point that
I think fascinates people. So at trial, the prosecutors had
said they believe that William took all of his clothes
off and wore this macintosh so that he wouldn't get
any blood on himself. Okay, the author Joe Nicol thinks
that probably he just threw the jacket the macintosh on

(01:09:38):
top of Julia to block the blood. What I heard
you say was people don't know about the lack of
blood that can happen at a crime scene like this,
that maybe he isn't going to be covered with blood
at all. And then he gives you this explanation. So
what makes sense to you out of all of this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
First you have to understand that William probably has never
killed anybody else in this manner, so he doesn't really
know exactly what's going to happen, and especially if this
is he's flying off in a fit of rage, where
now he's just, you know, striking Julia with a weapon.
The macintosh may simply have been he had killed Julia

(01:10:22):
and she's laying there. And because this is a this
is a behavioral thing that offenders do when they are
they are close to their victims, is they cover their
victims up in terms of they don't want to look
at what they've done to somebody that they care about.
And then the coach catches fire and now he's having
to move Julia, and the macintosh gets kind of balled

(01:10:44):
up underneath her and more blood staining is transferred. I mean,
it could be something as simple as that. I know
I talked about him using this macintosh as a shield.
You know, I'm not backing away from that, but I
think the macintosh could have inadverted if he had it on,
was going to wear it out to go meet up
with you know whoever. He's just coincidentally had that on

(01:11:05):
and then he took it off to cover Julie up.
But it's very possible that he wasn't wearing anything and
got very little blood on himself, and just you know,
the macintosh was an easy thing to throw over her
because it was something that was readily available.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Okay, well, the ending of this to me is some
modicum of justice. I suppose he has kidney disease and
he dies two years after he kills his wife. Okay,
he is buried next to her, which is unfortunate. But
you know, the theory that I think a lot of
people kind of go with is that for some reason
he wanted his freedom, or you're right, he got into
an argument with her and then this is how it

(01:11:44):
all happened. But isn't this too much pre planning for
it to be an argument, do you think.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Well, you know, I know, when his establishment of this
alibi would possibly indicate that there was some pre planning
element to this. And then why would he kill Julia?
You know, was this where he did want to move
on with his life and didn't want her to? You know,
I don't know how the divorce process would be out there,
you know, as he tried to maintain you know, his

(01:12:11):
financial assets that she possibly could could benefit from, you know,
and that's why he's killing her. But there's also a
possibility that this was all done on the fly, you know,
and this whole yeah, going out and trying to find,
you know, track down this guy. You know, he just
took advantage that that arrangement was there and purposely got

(01:12:35):
lost and tried to talk to a bunch of people
so they all saw him out there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
Well, that is the end of that story. A lot
of twist and turns. I think we both suspected William
from the beginning. I think we're right about that. But
the lack of forensics and just you know, everything shows
the struggles that investigators had back then to someone who
was so clearly guilty. But they just couldn't prove it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
No, that's it, you know, and that's where we have
progressed fortunately, you know, and as technology, you know, gets better,
we're seeing where just cases that were made on circumstantial evidence,
well they found innocent people guilty. Yeah, you know, but
I think there's enough indication here where William is responsible.

(01:13:20):
They just didn't have enough to prove the case.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
All right, next week, different time period, I promise, and
I'm looking forward.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
To it, all right. As always, Kate, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Thank you. This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
For our sources and show notes go to exactly rightmedia
dot com slash Buried Bones sources.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
Research by Alison Trubble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hart Stark and Daniel Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones Pod.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder, and the Race to Decode the
Criminal Mind is available now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
cold cases is also available now.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
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