Thinking Sideways: The Murder of Julia Wallace

In 1930, William Wallace found his wife beaten to death upon his return home from a wild goose chase. He was charged with the murder, as police found his alibi to be lacking at best. Wallace maintained his innocence and the court of criminal appeals agreed- clearing him of any guilt. The "real" murderer of Julia Wallace has never been caught.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Visit patreon dot com slash thinking sideways to learn more
and thanks Thinking Sideways. I don't understand you never know

(00:28):
stories of things we simply don't know the answer too.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast.
I'm Devin, joined us always by Steve, Joe and somebody
else apparently. Yeah, that's true. Here today, we're gonna talk

(00:51):
about a mystery, a pretty big mystery actually, kind of
one that's touted as one of the biggest unsolved mysteries.
This is one of those ones that you'll here referred
to on the lists on the internet of locker room
mysteries kind of style where it's the perfect perfect mystery. Yeah,
it's always ranked up in there. It is, and I

(01:12):
have to say it's it's a puzzler for sure, But
for as big a mystery it is, there's not it's
not big. Yeah, well you know, but still people have
been chewing over for a long time. A lot of
famous people like Raymond Chandler, for example, says it's his
favorite mystery of all time, or said it was like

(01:33):
he's dead, but he might still say mystery. Yet he
didn't have any knows the answer now and find out Yeah, okay,
so he was ready, Yeah, okay. In the evening of Monday,
January of nine one, sometime between sixty five and five pm,

(01:55):
Julia Wallace was beaten to death brutally. Her husband, William
Herbert Wallace seemed a really likely suspect and was arrested, tried,
and convicted. So what's the mystery. Well, uh, it turns
out the evidence was really really lacking in the case
against Mr Wallace, pretty so shoddy in fact, that the

(02:16):
Criminal Court of Appeals officially pardoned him and declared he
was innocent and totally said nope, he's not guilty at all.
He's free to go. And nobody knows who did this crime.
He knows who murdered Julia Wallace. There's a few suspects,
but yeah, it's interesting. When he was tried, I think
his demeanor kind of did him and he was kind
of another one of those those Bramber cases. Yeah, and

(02:40):
he was apparently not liked by the jury because the
judge when when he was instructing the jury all but
told them they had to let him off. Yeah, and
they convicted him anyway because the evidence was just so weak. Yeah,
and we'll talk more about that. Yeah, was actually kind
of non existent. Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah. So so let's
tell the story. Let's tell the story first, okay, okay,

(03:05):
And I want to just introduce you to the two
main characters. I guess the first character would be one
Mrs Wallace. Her maiden name was Dennis. She was Julia Dennis.
Originally she married Mr Wallace in March of nineteen fourteen.
She was significantly older than Mr Wallace. I think it

(03:27):
was seventeen years according to the dates I could find
on the wiki. There's a lot of contention over that
because for a long time people said that they were
around the same age. Everybody thought that they were they
were definitely contemporaries. And then I think somebody was able
to find her original birth certificate was in the last
decade or two. Yeah, I think so too, um, which

(03:47):
which said that she was seventeen years older than him.
So she was fifty three when they were married and
he was thirty six, which is quite reverse. It's a
reversal of roles for the time, but it's also still
that's still a big gap. But it used to be
the old man would marry the younger woman. Days, some
people kind of point to that as maybe something that

(04:09):
had to do with the murder. I think that, Yeah,
I think it's really silly, but I've seen that tossed around,
so uh, just to go ahead and throw that out. Actually,
I think that her age might have had if you
if you didn't need to killer, her age might have
had something to do with it. You want to hear
about it now? No, No, I don't know what could
you talk about that later. Julia was originally the daughter

(04:32):
of a quote ruined alcoholic farmer unquote, and there's really
like nothing about her except for that she played the
piano quite well. I think she was an accomplished pianist,
is how they describe her. And she doesn't even have
her own Wikipedia page, just bite being the victim of
this crime. No, I mean that's it's interesting that there's

(04:53):
I think there's a lot to be said about a victim.
I think that the victim really informs the crime a
lot of times. So I am sad that there's not
more information about her out there because I think it
just seems like we would be able to know more
about the crime maybe or everybody focused on her husband.
Details of her were just left behind, and that maybe
why we won't ever be able to solve it, because

(05:15):
there may be things about her that we just don't
have access to anywhere. Absolutely, I was able to find
some quote some people, some people about her. She was
described as meek and kind of uninteresting, and yeah, yeah,
there was one person who was looking in on them
for about three weeks in her name was Florence Mary Wilson,

(05:36):
and William Wallace had about a pneumonia and so this
this person was basically, you know, looking after them, and
she said that she says she thought Julie was a
poorhousekeeper who basically laid around and did nothing, and she
said she had no enthusiasm for anything. And she said
she didn't really think that they were a happy couple. Yeah,

(05:56):
and so there's a there's a little bit of insight.
Of course, you know, that's a small window. It doesn't
necessarily mean she was always that way. But there were
other people also who said that they didn't really think
it was a happy marriage. Yeah, it's interesting. They people
didn't seem to think it was a happy marriage. But
they lived in this kind of townhouse row house situation
that's pretty common in London Liverpool, I guess. But they

(06:18):
so they shared walls with their next door neighbors, and
their neighbors said they never heard them raised voices or
really talking at all, which may have been a sign.
I guess that they didn't talk that much, but it
could be they had their own but they didn't. Yeah,
but yeah, there's there's definitely loudly. There's two different ways
to go about hating each other, and we've seen and
really it's people with their relationship they or yell at

(06:40):
each other, were they say nothing. So it maybe that
that's why nobody heard anything. They just did their own
thing and ignored each other. So let's talk a little
bit about Wallace. Mr Wallace. We're just gonna call We're
going to refer to him as Wallace through the rest
of this thing, because apparently he's the only one that
really matters. And then we'll call Julia Wallace Julia Okay.

(07:02):
Wallace was born in eighteen seventy eight, and he left
school at fourteen when he started to train to be
a Draper's assistant. He got a job with the company
that outfitted Her Majesty's Armed Forces and the Colonial, Indian
and Foreign Services in Manchester. He spent five years with
the company. Company then transferred to Calcutta, India, then Shanghai

(07:22):
two years after that with the same company. His youngest
brother lived in Shanghai, so there was a familial connection.
He had a bum kidney, so he had to return
to England in nineteen oh seven. He didn't want to
have it cut out in Shanghai. Yeah, for some reason
in England. Yeah, he decided to come back to England,
so we did actually have the operation he had to

(07:43):
cut out. And then there's about a four year gap
in between there until he became an election agent in
nineteen eleven where he met Julia and then they got
married in nineteen fourteen, as we said, and then they
moved to Liverpool in nineteen fifteen because he had lost
his job. And yeah, it was because it was it

(08:07):
wasn't didn't you lose his job because the position of
elections was just basically totally eliminated in that the reason
there was some Crown rule that eliminated all of the
work that he was doing. Yeah, yeah, I was totally eliminated.
So he lost his job and he called his dad
and was like, Dad, I need a job, and he
his father helped him get a job with the Prudential

(08:28):
Insurance Company as a collections agent. And the Prudential is
an insurance life insurance company by and large, and they're
based in Liverpool. So yeah, the couple is described as meek.
Wallace had an unusually curious brain for the time I gather,
and that I guess it wasn't typical for a person,

(08:50):
particularly a man, but a person to take interest in
kind of a wide variety of topics, but Wallace did.
He supplemented his time and income by lecturing in chemist
He had an interest in botany. He was a violinist,
He was an amateur electrician, He had a lab electric
with electricity at home. And he loved chess. And he

(09:12):
was in fact a member of the Liverpool Central Chess Club.
Not to be confused with the Liverpool Chess Club or
the Central Chess Club, because those are two other things.
And this that's a very serious offense to be taken.
Apparently in my research I found I didn't know that
is this a Chess Club still in existence and they
still meet at the same place. No, No, the Central

(09:36):
Chess Club is still a thing, I think, but this
particular one, I'm pretty sure was eventually disbanded. Yeah, it
was pretty small when Wallace was going to it. It
was you know, they weren't very good chess players, and
it was a small chess club and then this whole
thing happened and it was kind of a third drink club. Yeah.
So actually, uh, our story kind of begins at a

(09:58):
meeting of this club. So we want to just transition
into that. Yeah, definitely hustling into cool. So January nineteenth,
nineteen thirty one, Wallace was meant to be competing in
a chess championship over a number of months, and so
this was one match that he was supposed to be
competing in. His game was scheduled to start at seven
forty five pm, and at seven twenty pm, I believe

(10:22):
the Chess Club received a phone call from a R M. Quality.
He was looking for Wallace um and he left a
message with the club captain, whose name was Samuel Beattie.
The message was that Mr Wallace was requested to call

(10:43):
upon Mr Qualtro that's how he's going to say from
now on Qualtro. The next evening, at about seven thirty pm,
at twenty five men Love Gardens East regarding an insurance issue,
because one of Wallace's jobs was to sell insurance as
well as collect insurance, does and things like that, and

(11:04):
so it seemed that this gentleman had some insurance business
to carry out. I think that's one thing it took
me a while to figure out, and a lot of
people aren't familiar with this now, but in those days,
you had to walk around and collect payment from your customers.
So that's one of the big things he did, is
he walked around town all day and pick up money. Yeah,

(11:25):
I got money from probably get him in good shape, probably. Yeah.
So Mr Wallace obviously wasn't there at the time, and
the caller did ask Beatie is Mr Wallace expected to
be there tonight? And he said, oh, I don't know
if I can expect him or not, because it turns
out he was fairly delinquent in his attendance. I thought
it was they said once a fortnight, so once every

(11:48):
two weeks, fourteen fourteen days. So he didn't know. Beati
didn't know if Wallace was going to show up or not.
He said he if he was going to be there,
he'd be there soon and he'd relay the message. While
said that he had never heard of Caltra, and he
also hadn't heard of Men Love, Men Loves Garden, Men
Love Gardens East, and he and a member of a

(12:10):
few other members of the chess club discussed it, and
he just I think he said, well, I've got a
Scotch tongue in my brain or in my head or
something like that, a very odd meaning that he would
find it. They all figured it was just off Men
Love Avenue somewhere and that'd be that, and that that's
the way it was. Because I did I did some

(12:32):
reading on this because I didn't understand why this guy
would just go trooping across town not knowing where he
was going. That would freak me out. But it just
turns out, you, okay, well, I know this has got
to be off of that, so I'm just gonna walk
down it until I find it. Yeah, and they, and
you know, one of the guys at the club said, well,
I know Men Love Gardens North or something, you know.
So I think they just all thought, well, it must

(12:55):
be there somewhere. There's a north south and west east. Yeah.
So despite knowing really anything about this, it just being
kind of a blind call, Wallace decides to keep the appointment.
So the next day on he arrives home from work
around six pm, and then sometime between six thirty and
sixty five, the milk boy stopped to pick up his money,

(13:17):
which he got from Julia. He said, I got it
from Julia. There's been some speculation that it was Wallace
and Drag but I'm sure it wasn't. It was definitely Julia.
And then I don't know how the milk boy would
have known what time it was. He said this other
time when a church clock and there was either right

(13:37):
before or right after, and there was one. Yeah, there's
a there's a church a few walks away that's got
three clocks on its on it, so he would have known,
so we can presume his time is about correct. Yeah.
I don't know if anybody checked at the police checked
the church to see if the clocks were correct. Yeah,
that would have something to check on the we're running
on daylight savings something like that. That would be too bad.

(13:58):
The Liverpool Police in this case that they the locals
called them the jiggery Pokey. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't have
the best reputation. Um. I think the Milk boys saw
Wallace there too. I'm not sure, but I got on
Google Maps. I pulled the Joe, got on Google Maps
and map directions from Wallaces the Wallaces rented flat to

(14:20):
men Love Gardens West, because I that's a natural address
and on today's transit it would take no less than
thirty seven minutes. And according to the train schedules at
the time, which I actually looked up, he would have
had to have been on the tram at sixty nine
pm for the whole timeline to make sense. And it's
verified that he's coming off of that tram at exactly

(14:43):
the right time. So we can assume, I think pretty
reasonably that he was definitely on the tram at six
pm that night. Yeah, and how he's done the conversations
that directly followed that, Yeah, absolutely. And how far was
the tram stop from his house? Not very far, but
it's a bit of a walk, maybe five minutes, not

(15:05):
anything now, Okay, hang on, So I remember something about
in their awesome investigations police having a young fit officer
played the part of Wallace, and I remember there was
discussions of him running, and so I was under the
impression that meant that he was running from the house
to the tram stop, which made me think the tramp

(15:27):
shop was farther the two mile running things, okay, and
that he ran to get there at seven oh six
to make this transfer. I don't remember, okay. So the
two miles thing is that he made a transfer to
a different tram and had an interaction with the conductor
of that tram, and that transfer spot was two miles away.
So I presumed that they were trying to see if

(15:48):
anybody fit could run that two miles in the allotted
time that that they would have needed and bypassed that
first train bad Kidney had recently, Yeah, I think. Yeah.
He was a heavy smoker too, wasn't Heah. Yeah, Actually,

(16:08):
it's absurd to assume that he could have kept that
page well and then nobody would have noticed this guy running,
you know, breakneck page right, or or that the conversation
he would have had with the conductor, the conductor wouldn't
have said, oh and he was super breathless by the way, sweating. Yeah. Actually,
the police actually didn't just do one detective running. They
sent out a hole like a half a dozen teams

(16:30):
at various times to try different just to see yeah,
which is only probably the most thorough job they did
on any part of it. But no, I think that's
what you're talking about. The two miles that you're thinking of.
I think the tram stop and I'm sorry to anybody
who's going to call us out on that. I don't
actually know, but I think it was a five minute
walk or something. It wasn't that far, Yeah, Because the

(16:53):
two miles that you are talking about is the transfer
he made two miles away from his home for one
tram to the other like their street cars, right, you
guys know what trams are, okay. And that was at
seven oh six pm, which you know was right on
schedule with him being on the tram right before at
the sixtine mark, and he had a conversation with the

(17:16):
conductor and he he asked him directions to men Love
Gardens East and was told to transfer trams again at
Penny Lane and he spent most of that ten minute
ride pestering the driver to not forget to call out
Penny Lane. And a lot of people think that's suspicious.
I think it's I think it's just like a nerve.

(17:37):
I would. I've done stuff like that before, not like
the entire time, because I've then gotten really awkward and
thought like, oh, I'm annoying this person. But if I
don't know where I'm going, I get really anxious, And
especially if I were trying to make a meeting and
I really didn't know where I was going and was
maybe running a little late. By my own sense, I

(17:58):
I definitely can see the like, okay, but don't forget
to call, Like, don't forget to do it. Don't have
we missed it. I really don't know where I am
right now, Like everything was lit up and easy to see.
It's January, it's you know, it's December, and it's dark
at you know, four o'clock right now, so it's it's
dark out. And also you know, he can't pull your

(18:20):
map or phone out of your back pocket. You have
no idea what's going on. Wasn't as easy back in
those days. Yeah, So I just I don't think it's
as suspicious as most people think, but some people do
think it's really suspicious. Yeah, A lot of people feel
that he tried to call people's attention to himself repeatedly.
There there's a lot of that in this story though,
But there's a lot of I gotta admit. I'll just

(18:41):
tell you right now. There's several things that I'm just
going to point out with one word, which is claim. Yea,
they claim. They make a lot of claims about certain
things that he did them. So the conductor, of course
did not forget to st Yeah, he was like, oh
my god, get off now. He's like, this is your stop,
get off, uh, And Wallace made the connection no problem.

(19:04):
He got on the next tram and he asked the
conductor promptly, Hey, where do I get off for men
Love Gardens East. The conductor said, you get off at
men Love Avenue and walk and probably was told to
just saw it off and look for it, because I guess, yeah,
just get off here. And it was only like a

(19:26):
six hundred foot ride or something like that. It was
stupid short, but I think all the conductors were just like,
you do this. I don't know, you just do this thing.
But he did. He got off at the avenue and
started to search for men Love Gardens East. There was
a men Love Gardens North, South and West but not east.
Apparently he was really determined, so he asked a number

(19:49):
of passers by, you know, where is the street? None
of them had ever heard of men Love Gardens East.
He went to men Love Gardens West to see if
they knew anything about it. They said, no, we've never
heard of anybody, and we didn't make a call. Go away.
Wallace did what you're meant to do and found a

(20:10):
local beat cop next and okay, people, there's the claim.
And I think the cops said this, so I'm willing
to say that this happened. But instead of just saying, oh,
I'm looking for this address, he apparently regaled the cop
with the entire story of the call and then the
train ride, and then the difficulty he's been asking people
all the time, and oh, do you know where this

(20:31):
address is? Finally, you know, at the end of that,
when the cops said, no, that place doesn't exist. I
got the feeling through some of the things that he's
said and done before everything happened, and then as it
was going on, he was just kind of an awkward guy.
He was just one of those ones. I think he
was and anxious and and didn't really know how to

(20:55):
interact with people. That was my sense of him. Yeah, definitely. Um,
so he was not satisfied with the copper saying no,
that's not a thing. But he did ask the cop
what time it was, and he asked it in kind
of a strange way apparently, and he said, it's not
eight o'clock yet, is it? And the cops said no,
So he checked the time and he said no, it's

(21:17):
seven forty five. And Wallace looked at his watch and
he said, oh, yeah, at seven forty five. And again
people think that's suspicious, which I don't think so, but okay, well,
fine whatever. He was still not satisfied, so he walked
over to a local newsstand and they had directories in
the news stand apparently, so he looked through the directory.

(21:37):
Still the address didn't exist. So finally he's had enough.
At this point he would have been really late, or
as some people claim, he'd made enough stink to have
a good albi. Well, and he also made a stink
with the person at the Yeah again it was saying

(22:00):
where this address is a distinct interaction and again you know,
he asked her, he said, he looked up and he said,
you know what I'm looking for and she said no,
And he told her the address and she said no,
that doesn't exist. And he said, okay, fine, I'm just
I'm gonna go home. Then fine, and he got home.
I guess it seems like he searched for about forty
five minutes all all told. He got off the trammet

(22:24):
seven fifteen, left probably about eight, got home. I guess
around you know, I think that that trip takes about
forty five minutes. I think my my math is good.
It's half an hour, half an hour. But then again
he's got to wait for stupid thing is there when

(22:44):
you're there? Right? I mean maybe it is, but rarely, rarely. Yeah,
but he based Long story short, you got home about
eight thirty or eight thirties. Probably the earliest he could
have gotten home reasonably etive is probably when he got home.
But again, the next time he's seen in his forty five,
he's standing outside of his back door and his neighbors,
the Johnston's, are just leaving. They encounter him in the

(23:07):
back alleyway and he looks, God, what's the quote, worried
and confused, worried and confused, thank you? He looks worried
and confused, and they say, okay, Mr Allis, what's up?
And he says, well, my my keys aren't working. McKy
in the front or the back door, they're not working.
And they said, well, we you know, we have a
spare key to your house. Do you want us to
try our key? And he said, oh, I don't. I've

(23:29):
never heard what he said, so I just assume he
just kind of mumbled, and then he tried his back
door key again and miraculously at open uh. And they
waited around because they were good neighbors. They thought, Okay,
he seems confused and worried and weird, and we'll just
wait till he gives us the all clear. So they
kind of waited around, and he went upstairs and he
lit the gas in the parlor, and then he came

(23:51):
back down and just very calmly said, uh, come and
see she's been killed. Strange. Strange. I think he was
in shock, like I think he is in chocked, because
I would be in shock if I walked into this. Absolutely,
But can we stop for a second and talk about
the door. So he tried, if I understood correctly, and
I just want to make sure I understand this. He

(24:13):
tried the front door and his key wouldn't work or
the door wouldn't unlock. And then he went to the
back door and he couldn't get it to unlock with
his key, and then he tried it again in front
of the Johnstones and that's when it opened. Yes, correct,
the back door open, the back door, so they were
they were apparently the dead or the latch events had
been shut on the inside. Is that what it was?

(24:35):
Because I was thinking, well, maybe there was somebody like
was there was the front door unlocked when they went
to look at it later, because it makes me wonder, Hey,
you can't maybe see in and so he's trying his
key and somebody's holding the lock. No, But you know
what I didn't actually I just thought of is maybe
the front door was unlocked when he arrived and he
accidentally locked it. It seems unlikely, but I guess it

(24:59):
seems like a I just got home and impeeved kind
of moved. But it's interesting because you know, if you
if he actually was telling the truth and say the
bolt had been shot from the inside on both the
front and the rear, then he comes home, that if
he is totally telling the truth and he wasn't just
confused not using his key. Correct, mean that must mean
the murderer was inside exactly where I was going. Yeah,

(25:21):
so he's he's been he's been rattling the front door.
And then the murderer like boogies out the back door,
and of course he can't shoot the bolt this time around.
He pulls the door shut behind him and sneaks out
down the alley. Oh that he would have tried the
back door first, and that didn't work. So he tried
the front door and that didn't work. So he came
back around, at which point they encountered him kind of

(25:44):
walking back to try the back door again. Is that
what you're saying? Yeah? Yeah, and that he said, Mike,
he's not working, and they said okay, and he tried
it again and the bolt wasn't locked. Is that what
you're saying. Yeah, Yeah, So the door was locked, but
the bolt was not had not been shot from the inside.
Interesting because that's the only way this, this whole I
can't get my key to work thing makes sense to me,

(26:06):
is if somebody else was inside, you know, manually operating
a lock that he couldn't have access to. That's true. Yeah,
that's not a bad point, although that would mean the
murderer had to key to the house, not necessarily because
you don't use a key to lock your door from
the but the I guess it's he could have left
the door unlocked and that Mr Wallace, just out of habit,

(26:27):
tried to unlock it and it worked, right, That's what
I'm saying. Okay, that's fair, that's good. Yeah, I haven't
thought about that. There's not a scrap of evidence to
support that, but well, that's that's the refrain of this
entire case. Though there's not a scrap of evidence to
support that, but we're gonna say it anyway. So what

(26:49):
did Mr Wallace find? And I guess the Johnston's when
they Johnston's Johnstones, but john Stones Johnston's either way, they
saw something they could never unsee. Yeah, uh, it was.
It was a really gruesome scene. In the parlor, Julia
had her head had been bashed in eleven times, her
brain was exposed, and the blood splatter in some places

(27:12):
was seven ft up on the walls, which is pretty high.
What happens when he beatbody definitely would Yeah, and the Johnston's,
as I mentioned, the walls were thin in between and
I think the parlor wall. They shared a wall, and
they had been home all night and they said they
hadn't heard anything, which is kind of weird, Like one
would assume that you would at least scream a little

(27:34):
the first time that the first one catches you unar
and rattles your little brain. Yeah, followed by several swift hits.
You're out. There is one other explanation for them not
hearing anything, and that is that they did it. I
found her. I found somebody out there that claims we'll

(27:55):
talk about that in theories because it's it's actually not
the worst theory out there. Um. So yeah, as we
were talking about, uh, we kind of I guess shot
our load a little early. The big whole mystery on
this thing is that all of the windows and doors
were locked ostensibly when when Mr Wallace arrived. So it's
you know, it's one of those locker room mysteries where

(28:17):
you're just like, how how did the murderer get out? Well,
they weren't. They weren't dead bolted though, were they? I don't,
I don't know. I see that's the thing that yeah,
I mean, because you can always pull the door shut
behind you, Yeah, although it's nineteen thirty one, so I
don't know. Yeah, I don't think they were. I think

(28:37):
they were mostly dead bault locks at that point. Well
I know, okay, my experience in Britain with locks has
never been good because I get locked out all the
time when I'm over there because they don't believe indoor handles.
It's all keys, and they auto locked behind you, which
is why I'm wondering if, like Joe said, they just
auto locked automatically that was the standard way to do it. Yeah,

(29:00):
but I guess I don't know. I guess the frustrating
thing in that case then, right, is that? Like then
why is that such a big mystery? Like if it's
so ubiquitous in this area, that doors which is locked
behind you, why is everybody saying and the doors were
locked like okay, cool, then the murderer left out the door.
Why are there's so many claims about the things this

(29:21):
guy could do? Like that's that's right up there with Yeah,
although if it was the old fashioned kind, like the
church key kinds, you know what kind of talking about,
if it was one of those a lot of in
those days that a lot of the times people would
leave their key on the in the lock on the inside,
and that's why that's the way to block somebody from
the outside picking your lock, and so your key is

(29:43):
blocking it. And that was very common in those days.
So there might have just been a key in one
of the front of the rear door is just there.
He just takes the key out, steps outside, pulls it
shut and takes the key and locks the door, walks
away and walks away. I'll cover with gore. Yeah. Well, yeah,
I'm super covered in blood because is that like this
person would have been just wrenched in blood, coated in blood.

(30:05):
There wasn't really anything missing. Mr Wallace said that there
were a couple of pounds maybe missing, and then they
the only other thing that was missing were to fireplace instruments,
a poker and a metal bar. I don't know what
the metal bar. I could never determine what the bar was.
Showed up that one finally, Yeah, did show up. So yeah,

(30:28):
the poker didn't show up, and actually the bar showed
up with no blood on it. Yeah. Years later it
was like in the back of the fireplace, it'd fallen
through a hole in the bottom or something. Yeah, And
then there's the whole, the macintosh, the raincoat. Oh yeah,
and then there was a partially burned Macintosh or a
raincoat underneath her body. It was supposedly his, it was

(30:50):
it was his that there was no supposed it definitely
was his, But that doesn't mean that he was involved. Really,
I would have been by the door. Okay. See that's
funny because I had heard contention that it might not
have been his, like it may have been somebody else's,
And they took his on the way out, So I

(31:11):
guess that's fair. I it matched his. I thought it
was his. I thought it was his too, But I'm
reading a lot. But the investigation into this is so
poor that I don't I guess. I can't say definitively
that it was his. It looked like his, that's all
I can say. They didn't. They also didn't know any
evidence or anything like that because it had been partially burnt.

(31:33):
It had been partially burned. Yet, so can I ask?
I'm sorry? I know I do this to you all
the time. I have a question crime scene photo. I
swear I've seen it, but I also thought it was
a recreation. Yeah, so I have seen a lot of
pictures that look like they might be crime scene photos.
I think they're all re enact re enact recreation recreations

(31:56):
because I don't because there's not enough blood in any
of them. Well, I saw a couple of photos and
I think they were the real thing. They were taken.
They were taken either by police or by reporters on
the night of Yeah, I saw those two, and I
just didn't think that there was enough blood. Yeah, So
I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell. The
kind of murky pictures. Yeah, I saw these in a book.

(32:20):
Guy who was John Gannon wrote a book called The
Killing of Julia Wallace. He did we're going to talk
about book. He's got a lot of pictures in there. Yeah,
but I don't know. I can't. I guess I can't
authenticate what the pictures, if they were real or not.
Just again, because it doesn't seem like it looks like
the crime scene was described to have been. But it's

(32:40):
also possible that the description of the crime scene is inaccurate.
What I was going to say is, that's the thing
is that I saw something that talked about when Julia
was struck and she fell. I saw something I swear
that said that the reason that the macintosh had caught
on fire was that she had fallen forward into a fireplace,

(33:00):
so that that he had fallen forward into the fire.
The person wearing the macintosh had fallen forward into the
fireplace and it had partially caught fire. Oh so they're
saying this doesn't make any freaking sense weight and that
it that it was that they put the fire out
and then pushed it under her body. Oh so killer
wearing said macintosh catches on fire, stops drops of rolls

(33:24):
and then rolls her up in it it underneath her.
Was somebody to do that, though, I don't know. It
doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any sense. It makes
I think it makes more sense that that she died
on it. Yeah, it's it's entirely you know. One theory
about the macintosh is that it was indeed Wallace's macintosh.
She hadn't taken it with him, and he had probably

(33:46):
hanging on a hook by the front door, and somebody
somebody called on her for whatever reason, rang the bell
and she put that on against the cold or whatever,
or maybe they and that she was actually wearing it
and not necessarily with her arms at the sleep was
just straped over her shoulders. Maybe you know, who knows.
Maybe she was in her pajamas and she was feeling
modest or something for some reason or you know, whatever reason,

(34:07):
probably the cold, and so I think that's probably what
it was. I agree. But fireplace, fireplace was on, you know,
I mean, you could say somebody came over for whatever
reason to murder her, obviously, but it was it would
have been somebody she knew. Yeah, let's let's save this.
So Um, Despite having a pretty solid alibi created or

(34:31):
not um and a really severe lack of forensic evidence,
the cops arrested Wallace, as we said, and it was
a couple of days later. Yeah, as we as we
talked about a little bit to this case. It's it's
another case of the jury just kind of not liken
the guy. The public they hated him, yeah, they did. Um.

(34:54):
He was definitely condemned in public for the rest of
his life. Yeah, he got constantly got hate mail. Yeah,
he did and stuff. He took the witness stand against
Earth in his defense, I guess, not against himself, but
he did kind of work against himself. Yeah, and he
he appeared detached and cold. Um. And the jury did

(35:14):
convict him. The trial lasted four days and the jury
deliberated for less than an hour, and he was sentenced
to hang for the crime. But then in March of
nineteen thirty one, the Court of Appeals did overturn the ruling.
They just said there there just wasn't enough evidence to
have convicted Wallace and um, so he was innocent. He
obviously found it hard to return to normal life in Liverpool,

(35:37):
so he moved to the country and then he died
in nineteen thirty three, just two years later, of kidney issue. No,
he didn't, he didn't move to the country right away
because I know he took he took a he tried
facing job with the insurance company, he tried to return,
he moved. I think I think he lived in Liverpool
for six months or and then he moved to the country.

(36:00):
But he was also he was pretty sick too. Yeah,
he was getting progressively worse. Yeah, he was not one
of those two was really in great healthy. So he
was fifty one at the time of the murder. Yeah,
seventeen year age difference means his wife would have been
sixty eight. I'm just I'm just thinking about Yeah, I mean,
they both would have been a rather rather slow pair.

(36:21):
And I can see her age at that time, of
being sixty eight in the thirties is to me kind
of the equivalent of being ninety today is I mean,
just because of the way that you live and the
harsh lifestyle. So I can see why she may have
been considered kind of lackluster and just old and tired
and she couldn't dig it anymore. Well, yeah, I think

(36:44):
that he didn't really have much in the way of motive,
except maybe he was just sick of her. But the
other thing about it was I was going to mention
her age as as a motivation for him, Like you said,
that was that that would have been back in those days,
the equivalent of eighty five or nine years old, and
he's starting to look at the US and thinking, you know,
I don't want to spend I don't want to spend
the rest of my life changing her diapers. You know,

(37:08):
I'm going to put her out to past year. That's
kind of the way he looked at it. That would
be a motivation, I guess. Yeah, maybe he was just
sick of her. Yeah, that's also possible. But there's some
quote actually gosh. The quote I think was that you
need no more motivation than being married. Yeah, yeah, which

(37:29):
I think is probably fair, I say to a newly
led Steve. Yeah I did, and matro side my list
of words. Yeah, I'm now going to start using around
the house. Yeah, so that it's not actually yeah, she'll
appreciate it. Yes, absolutely, So we can. We can jump
into theories. But I just want to mention two or
three things. First. One big, really big thing is that

(37:54):
the police unit that came to investigate the murder was
really really really really subpar to say the least. But yeah,
the Liverpool Police, I'm sure they're highly professional today, but
they had actually it was I think it was in
nineteen nineteen there was a huge strike and they lost
more than half of their police force. It was a
huge amount. Yeah, and so you know, I guess within

(38:15):
ten years essentially they had tried to replace everybody and
it was just it was not going very well. I
believe the term ring saw for the staff was underqualified. Yeah.
But okay, so the really fine whatever, they were unqualified.
The biggest blow to this case that happened was their
forensic expert. I guess they His name was John McFall,

(38:39):
and he operated under the pretense that his instinct was enough. Um.
He didn't take notes, he didn't run tests. He observed
Julia's body and decided, based just on the rigor of
her body, that she had to have been killed at
six pm, give or take an hour. He actually had
originally said she died somewhere around eight o'clock or so,

(39:04):
and then wound back the clock on that to match
up when they charged Wallace. Yeah, so there's a little
bit of that. That's that's hinky, that's hinky step number one. Yeah. Yeah,
the only test that was and that that was the
only test that was done on her at the time.
He didn't do body temperature, They didn't take any blood samples.

(39:24):
They didn't take any they didn't collect any forensic evidence.
They didn't try and fingerprint or anything like that. Um,
they did I guess somehow, and I don't know how,
but I guess they were able to determine that nobody
had cleaned themselves up at the house. There wasn't evidence
that somebody took a shower to clean. The drains were dry.

(39:45):
The drains were drying, So okay, that was That was
good at least they did that, so we know that
whoever killed her would have been really, really bloody and
would have had to have probably left the house pretty bloody.
And that that fact alone completely to me blow blue
their theory of what he did out of the water,

(40:07):
because you're saying, hey, we've proved that nobody took a
shower or used water in this house. But this guy,
he was buck naked and he killed his wife. Or
my favorite is he was buck naked. Yeah. The police
actually questioned him quite extensively about the practice around his
house of they totally made this up, but they decided

(40:29):
that he and Julia Julia, they he played the violin
and Julia played the piano. They had these music nights
um and they said, well, yeah, you like to do
that naked wearing just your macintosh, don't you. And he said, uh,
you know what and they said, yeah, yeah, that's how
you play the violin. When she's playing the piano, you're
just wearing your raincoat. And he said, no, what are

(40:49):
you talking about, And they said, no, no no, you you
like hanging out like that. So we're just gonna go
ahead and enter that as a matter of fact, you
would like hanging out with that, so obviously you killed
her like that. So that's the kind of detective work
that was happening around these caves. Um So I think
that that does it blows a pretty big hole, especially
because the timeline just doesn't match up right. You know,

(41:13):
we know, based on the timeline that she was seen
alive at about sixty five he left. He had at
the earliest he had to have left the house at
the latest, I would say at six forty nine, but
probably at six forty five ish. He would have had
to left the house to be on the tram to
get there in time. There's no way that he ran it,

(41:34):
No way he ran those two miles away. And when
he got home he was he didn't have any blood
on it at all. Yeah, well, he was clean as
a whistle. None of his clothes had blood on it.
He didn't have blood on it, you know, there was
there was no blood anywhere. And then the earliest he
could have come back really is eight So there could
have been a forty five minute gap there, but I
think he probably was there more like eight thirty based

(41:58):
on when people were seeing him around that it couldn't
have got back that earlier because he had the interaction
with the policeman. That's seven. So the earliest he could
have been back really is like a thirty Yeah, so
there's fifteen minutes there. So really you got fifteen minutes
on either end to commit a brutal murder for you know,
probably provoked reasons, then totally clean up. That's that's insane
to me. That's crazy to me. Clean up outside of

(42:21):
the house because he couldn't do it, because he couldn't
have done it in the house. Yeah, and so yeah,
but the only way they were able to get a
conviction here it was by impeaching the testimony of the
milk boy, whose name was Alan Close. Yeah, I don't
know that he was not I thought it was credible.
Of course I never saw that the guy I heard
him and actually speak, but yeah, there's no reason to
not believe. So anyway, that's a big thing, right, the

(42:44):
medical example that, yeah, and the drains were all dry. Yeah.
So you guys want to talk about theories because there
are only two. Yeah, I mean there's two big and
then there's like some sub theories. Well well, because really,
well really, either Mr Wallace killed his wife or he didn't.

(43:06):
And the quote you hear around. This is even Mr
Wallace killed his wife or he didn't, And if he didn't,
then we have the perfect crime. I disagree, but hey,
well yeah, if he did it was a perfect crime.
If he didn't do it, it it wasn't really the perfect crime.
That's how, you know, lots of people get lots of
people get killed and bludgeoned to death, and nobody ever
gets got So let's talk about he totally did it first,

(43:28):
as repeated over and over again, as we just talked about,
there's no more motive needed to kill your spouse than
being married to them. It sounds like their marriage wasn't
particularly happy. It didn't sound like it was horrendously unhappy, though,
it just sounded kind of yeah. But and he but
he wasn't like an adventure seeker, you know. It's not
like he was saying, oh, I wish that my wife

(43:50):
would go and take more risks with me and things
like that. He seemed totally satisfied to just do his thing.
He sat at home with chemistry, played with electricity, and
she just kind of things like doing stuff. He was
hebes and people back in those days, I don't think
we're quite as romantic about marriage either. So I don't.
While I while I'm happy to say their marriage wasn't

(44:13):
happy and passionate, I also don't think it was unhappy.
I think it was. I would I would describe it
as an ambivalent marriage, which usually you don't kill over
usually well, yeah, maybe you do. But even if you do, maybe,
like you know, chemistry, maybe you poison your wife her
to death. I mean yeah, And you know, definitely, if

(44:33):
he was really truly sick of her and wanted out,
then that was a way to avoid paying alimony. So
that was a motive. Yeah, insurance wasn't a motive. She
didn't have much in the ways was insurance policy. And
he would have known that absolutely. So there's the argument
that he made too much of a fuss over his
alibi stuff. Another factor is that phone call that he

(44:57):
originally received at the chess, you know, the message that
was left for him. Yeah, So it turns out that
Wallace wasn't that consistent, as we said, of an attendee
to these things. Beatie did say that he came about
once every two weeks, and Wallace said that he didn't
like to He didn't come that often because he didn't

(45:18):
like to leave his wife alone at night, which okay,
you know why not. She may have been um, trying
to think of the right word to say here, a
little prone to flights of fancy in terms of paranoia.
Almost she may have been hysterics, thank you. She may

(45:39):
have just been you can't leave me alone. It's dark
and scary and yeah, yeah, like he may have chess
club may have been one of those few times that
he could pry himself away from her at night. Yeah,
you know, maybe maybe she really had enemies, so my
life we didn't know about. She was a government assassin.
The reason that that that his attendance of the chess

(46:01):
club is brought up is because how would that mysterious
caller have known that he was going to be there
that night? How would you have for that matter of
how would that guy have even known that he went
to the chess club at all? Yeah? How would he
have known that there are some really are? So the

(46:22):
big claim here, to use Steve's term, is that Wallace
made the call himself. Right, We can do some debunking
on this. First of all, Beatie described the caller's voice
as strong and gruff, pretty much opposite of Wallace's demeanor.
And he he didn't think that he could have made

(46:44):
that call. He didn't think that he could have faked
the voice, which I think is probably fair. Also, there
there was a posting of the Chess Championships that he
was taking part in stuff and what day they were Well,
the time was the same, the time was assistant, but
it was what days they were showing up. And then
it was actually posted on a bulletin board next to

(47:06):
the phone booth that the phone call was received too
that had the phone number of the phone booth on it,
so one could have looked at that list and gotten
the phone number simultaneously. And actually this was not a
dedicated chess club. It was it was Caddle's City Cafe,
and a lot of different clubs met there, so it
was a totally public space. Yeah yeah. And one of

(47:28):
and one of these, the one of the persons who's
been named as either a suspect or a person of interest,
who we'll talk about a little later, was seeing at
least once at this club. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So
that we'll talk about that a little bit. But you know,
the question is how would that person know that he
would show up? Well, they had no reason to believe
that he wouldn't show up. There's some discussion around the

(47:50):
fact that he actually hadn't been there in a couple
of weeks, because you can see that it was recorded
that he lost his first game on the first night
of the championship on the sheet of paper there's pictures
it all over him, and then the next two games
he missed, and then he played that night the nineteen
He didn't actually play the game he was meant to
play in the championship. He played somebody else because his

(48:12):
partner didn't show up again. Reasons this chess club was
probably disbanded is that nobody seemed to take it very seriously. Yeah,
so while there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't
show up, there's also no reason to believe that he
would show up. I think that it's it's pretty easy
to see how that person knew that he was going

(48:32):
to show up based on where the phone call was
placed from, and it was placed from a phone booth
that was about three yards from Wallace's house, and a
lot of people again point to oh, well, then Wallace
obviously placed the call himself, but no, because he the
tram that he was on, he would have had to
have been on the tram about that time. You would

(48:54):
have had to be at the same time if not,
the phone was being yeah, that the phone calls being placed.
How many how many tram rides to take to get
to the chess club A couple? I don't remember. I
don't remember seeing that specifically listed. I just remember the
times being called out and that was it. Yeah, So
I think it would have been really easy for somebody

(49:16):
to kind of watch him, see that he was leaving
and no probably where he was going, because it seems
like that would be the place that he would be
going at that time, and call and say, oh, is
he coming tonight? Oh you don't know. Okay, well I'm
gonna leave this message for him anyway because I know
he's on the tram and uh. It actually became very
important to Wallace after he was questioned by the police
once and then let go, and it became really really

(49:38):
important to him to know what time, And he asked Beattie, Okay,
what time exactly? You kind of asked him a lot
actually did, and Beatie kept saying, I don't know. That's
the exact same behavior though that we saw him exhibiting
with the tram drive, right, and so that's the true
is you there? There's two sides to his claim, right.

(49:59):
Either he was trying to make sure that Beattie said
it's this time, It's definitely this time, and that he
would have been able to say, well, I had to
have been on the tram that time, you know, to
establish a further alibi. Or he was trying to recall, okay,
around that time, where would I have been. Can I
prove that I'm wasn't there? Oh? And also was there
anybody kind of like, did I see anybody I knew

(50:21):
hanging around? Because if I saw somebody I knew hanging around,
they placed the phone call, they were responsible for me
being gone when my wife was murdered, and they were
probably responsible for murdering my wife. He's trying to figure
it out. So either on either side of that, I
think um and Beatty said he couldn't recall what time
the phone call had been placed, But it turned out
that the Anfield Telephone Exchange somehow by the way that

(50:43):
the call was placed, and I don't know what that means.
I thought maybe through an operator, but they had it
recorded and it wasn't exactly seven pm, so that's the
time the call was placed. I think that I'm pretty
sure that Wallace would have had to have been on
the tram by that point. But yeah, it's just everything
that I've seen about the guy doesn't show me that

(51:06):
he has it any Yeah. I don't think he had
the guile. I don't think he was smart enough either,
And I really don't. I don't think there was any motive,
and I don't think at the time. Yeah, even if
it didn't like his wife, you know, I mean, beating
somebody to death, I would imagine this. You know, he
didn't seem to have that kind of character. He didn't. Again,
he knew chemistry, why not just poisoner. Okay, so let's

(51:28):
move on to the theory heading not just the theory,
the theory heading that he totally did not do it
and new end at the time? Right. The time is
such a huge problem for me in this is like,
where did he have the time to commit this murder? Yeah?
Where and clean up after himself? Yeah, that's the whole
problem is even if say the milk Boy was totally off,

(51:49):
totally wrong about the time, there's still the whole question
of how he managed to do it and go somewhere
and get all cleaned up and change and not be
seen and not be seen. Of course this was like
probably would have been pretty dark in Liverpool, six pm
at the most. At the most, he had forty nine minutes,
because it's the somebody saw him coming home at six thirty.

(52:11):
So it's substantiated that are at six. Sorry that he
didn't get home any earlier than six, and he had
to have left at six before probably, But you know, again,
the most unaccounted time that we can give him is
forty nine minutes. And that's not still not a lot
of time, not really, it's still not And I'm not

(52:32):
willing to say that the milk boy was wrong. I
think he. I think he. There's every reason to believe
that he knew exactly what time it was when he
picked up the milk money. Yeah, he saw that there
was a church nearby and it was invisible actually from
the house. But but it was about that time, but
from not far away. That's why there's that little you know,
it was either six thirty or sixty five. I don't know.

(52:53):
I just the time is such a big problem for me.
I interrupt, absolutely awesome, So I just I don't know.
I hadn't really thought about this, and I've never actually
seen this given much credence at all. But if he
has such an ironclad alibi, well maybe he did do it,
but he hired it out, like he may have hired

(53:14):
somebody and said, Hey, I'm gonna go get on the tram,
go call me and then okay, I'm going to my appointment.
Wink wink. Go do your job and you'll get your
twenty pounds in a couple of days when the heat
dies down, because everybody's gonna you know, people do this
all the time, and they they get somebody killed and

(53:35):
they expect all of the sympathy to be thrown at
them and they're the poor sad widower now and then
it all backfires. Just doesn't seem Again, there are toldly
Guet that it doesn't make sense for him because that's
not the way he seems. There are there there are
people out there who say that he did actually hire

(53:56):
somebody to do it. Um. There are there are people
out there who's said that aliens did it too. So
I mean that hated her. They just hated her for
because she knew too much. I guess I don't know
she insulted their big eyes. Well. Another thing is that,
like everybody talks about this case being perfect and there
they admire it because it's like this mastermind chess game,

(54:20):
which okay, one of the things that Wallace liked was chess.
But he was horrible at it. He was so bad
at it. I probably could have beat him. And I'm like,
can't play chess at all. I mean, he was okay,
he won everyone something. I thought it was kind of
mediocre rather than actually terrible. He was a mediocre player.
I'm gonna say mediocre at best. But he was not

(54:40):
this like chess mastermind. Chess wasn't his whole life. He
liked it, sure, but he liked chemistry too. He liked
botany too. He liked playing with electrics too. He liked
playing the violin. He was awful of the violin. He
liked me he wasn't really very good at He hadn't
actually been playing the violin very long, really late in
life for sure. But I'm just saying that, like, it

(55:04):
seems like it was a thing that he liked and
it happened that, Yeah, the call was placed when he
was at this chess club. But he didn't go that often.
It also appears that the media at the time really
drove home the idea that he was some kind of
chess mastermind, because they're spreads from the time that you

(55:24):
can see and they may look his long, spindly, pointy fingers.
He obviously has a genius brain. All this really weird
claims you could get away with at the time. But
I'm pretty sure the whole chess thing it's the media's fault. Yeah, yeah,
But I just think it's it's interesting and I just

(55:45):
want to make sure everybody knows he wasn't some like
mastermind chess player. He was a mediocre at best player.
I think it was an intelligent guy. Your smarts and
your your gamesmanship are two. Yeah, you can, you can
be very smart, but allows you chess player. I'm very
smart and I'm a terrible chess player. Oh you're very smart. Yeah,

(56:08):
that's that's what I'm saying. No, I mean it's yes,
that's true. You don't have to be smart to be
a good chess player and vice versa. But I just don't.
I don't I don't see it. I don't see him
as this like calculate. I mean, he lost his job
so many times, and he kind of like, he seemed
kind of like this meek little I want to use

(56:29):
the term bumbling. I don't think that's right, but he
just kind of seems like, you know, criminal masterminds want
you to believe that. But didn't you see the usual suspects. Yeah,
that's true, except for that he would have if he
but if he had been taking that personality on, he
would have appeared that way in his trial to right,

(56:50):
he wouldn't have appeared detached and cold, right, which makes
makes me think it's more authentic. You know, all of
the interactions to hear about before his wife's murder, I
think he's kind of awkward and weird and you know,
again bumbly, even though it's not the right word. And
then after he sees his wife having been bludgeoned to death,
he detaches and goes cold. And that seems like a

(57:12):
normal human behavior to me, but apparently everybody else that
seems like a criminal mastermind. So there you go. Yeah,
So if it's not him, then who That's the big
question right there. There are a couple other suspects, actually,
and one of them is a young man by the
well he was young at the time. Excuse me, he's
dead now he's not. He wasn't young. Uh. Yeah. His

(57:35):
name is Richard Perry and he was twenty two years old,
and he had very recently left or been fired from
his job with the Prudential. I didn't see anything they
indicated that he had been fired that indicated that he
had been less sort of let go, because apparently he
had a similar job as as Lawless And I know,
I know where you're going with that. But the things

(57:56):
that I had read all indicated that he was there
for a while after everything happened. But nothing that did
I read indicated that he was fired. It just he
left a job similar company. I heard that there was
a little bit of a little bit of embarrassment over
money not turned in, and then his parents came forward
and paid basically the thirty poundfference. Then then then you

(58:19):
found something he didn't get Okay, I did not get
fired exactly, but he did leave the job, and there's
that he was he was asked kindly to leave, and
that then there was a rumor that Wallace had played
a part in that. Yeah, there was that rumor that
that Wallace knew because he was he had taken over
some of Wallace's account when Wallace had about of meningitis, pneumonia.

(58:42):
I think it was bronchitischitis, one of those meningitis is
you're right, yeah, bronchitis, right. I think it was brons
So Perry had been collecting and uh, somebody I think said, oh,
you know, this account didn't pay and bowl and and
and Wallace thought that's odd. I'm sure they did. And

(59:04):
it turned out that Perry had stolen some money and
Wallace reported him or didn't report. You can read some
accounts that say like and Perry just didn't report him
and just but oh no, I'm sorry that Wallace didn't
report Perry, but that Perry knew that Wallace knew, and
or I believe more than probably Wallace reported Perry because

(59:24):
he might have reported him, or he might have got
to Perry and say, hey, dude, you either cough up
this money or I'm turning you in. And so that's
when he went to his parents and got some money
and paid it off and then left. Eventually left anycause
he really fancied himself as a bit of a playboy,
but he was always broke. Yeah, I've got all this money.
Just not right now? Yeah? Yeah, speaking of Perry, he

(59:48):
is he isn't He is a suspect for some people.
And then there's other people who say that P. D. James,
for example, that the mystery writer. We're gonna talk about this,
talk about that lay Yeah, no, no, no no, sorry, just
keep your hat on. There's another did you did you
hear anything about Joseph Caleb mars Marsden. Yeah, but we'll
talk about that too, Okay. So it seems that actually

(01:00:10):
collection agents at the time, would you know, walk around,
like Steve was saying, and collect their money, their dues
and keep them in a lock box, often overnight at
their homes and then go in the next morning and
turn all the money in. And that's what that's what
Wallace tended to do, although I don't think it was
even a lock box. I think it was more like
a cigar box a box. Yeah. Yeah, Perry apparently being

(01:00:31):
the jerk that he was, um and he knew Julia.
They because I guess Perry and Wallace had been mildly
friendly at least when when Perry was doing Wallace's collections. Yeah,
because he had to stop by at the end of
the day and turn the money over. Yeah, so the
theory goes that he made the fake call in order

(01:00:52):
to rob Wallace because he thought Wallace would have all
all of these collections at the end of the next night.
And he knocked on the door and Julia said, oh,
it's you, Mr Perry, come in, and so he came
in and bludgeoned her to death and tried to rob
Mr Wallace of all of his takings for the day.
But it turned out that it was just like a
couple of pounds. It was four pounds something like that,

(01:01:13):
you know, some some tiny, tiny amount, and so it was,
you know, that sucked for him, and he left, and
I don't know, never came forward, obviously obviously understanding about
the way that the way it worked is. And I'm
not sure exactly what the timing was, but it's like
there were some people who paid like once a week
and other people paid like once a month. So on

(01:01:34):
those days when the once a month payers are paying,
there's a lot of money. That's go be a lot
of money, right, Yeah, So he miscalculated, maybe he misfigured,
which was that all these people were going to be
paying making their monthly payment or not. Yeah, so, um,
there's a little evidence. I guess. I don't know how
reliable it is, but that's going to say this, this

(01:01:54):
is circumstantial to Yes, yeah, he did have a car.
Perry did. And apparently a mechanic either saw a bloody
glove in Perry's car or saw Perry hosing the interior
of his car out with a high pressured hose while
his gloves were covered in blood. I'm not totally sure.
And then um, Perry's alibi when the police questioned him

(01:02:15):
was given by his then fiance, who later jilted, adacted
the statement and offered a new statement saying that Perry
had not been with her that night. Yeah what did
I say? I'm oh, I yeah, retracted is what I meant. Yeah, sorry,
that kind of same thing, crossed out the same thing. Yeah,

(01:02:36):
So lesson to all of your gentlemen out there. If
you're in a relationship and you murder someone and your
significant other is your alibi, do not jilt that person?
What that person? Forever? Haven't you guys learned your lesson?
Come on, guys. Yeah, anyway, she said, you know, Perry
asked me to provide this alibi. I have no idea

(01:02:58):
where he was that night. I mean, you know, he
had time, he had a kind of possible motive. He
had a shoddy alibi, shoddier alibi than Wallace had. To
be fair, there's actually more evidence for Perry to have
done this than there is Wallace. Definitely, well there's not
much in the way of evidence, but definitely it's it's

(01:03:19):
possible where it doesn't appear to be really possible that
Wallace could have done it. Yeah. So the only other
thing to like add to this is there were a
couple journalists at the time who were pretty convinced that
Perry had done it, and they questioned him, and he
kept saying no, no, I didn't do it, No, I
didn't do it. But they finally questioned him on his

(01:03:39):
doorstep in nineteen sixty six. No, no, no, on Perry's doorstep. Sorry,
in nineteen sixty six, excuse me, And reportedly he had
a shockingly in depth understanding of the case and including
the fact that he knew lots of details that were
like way unknown by the lay person and d tales

(01:04:00):
on lower level witnesses like when they died or how
they died, um and basically basically knowledge that somebody shouldn't
have necessarily. It seems that he took a very keen
interest in the case. Yeah, although you know what, he
was questioned by the police at the time, right, Yeah,
I mean I don't think this is that unusual because

(01:04:20):
number one, that was a very famous case. He was
perfectly involved, So you know, I don't think as much
as he can but to continue to learn about, like
he tracked those witnesses and knew about their lives after
the case. Maybe he was trying to solve it. Maybe
he was. Yeah, maybe he was. Yeah. So that's the
evidence for Perry. And then there's one of the things

(01:04:41):
we were that Joe was about to talk about and
now we're going to actually talk about it is Pete
James's claim that Perry made the prank phone call but
then Wallace committed the murder anyway, and that they were
totally unconnected. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she said, because Perry, because
Perry apparently was a little a little angry over his
the whole incident at the Prudential. Yeah, so just for

(01:05:03):
funny thought, he play a mean little prank and send
him on a wild goose chase, and so that so
it might have been him, and that would explain why
the phone call was made from that particular phone booth,
because he's gonna like observe him leaving for his chess
club thing. Perry was the one Perry, by the way,
I was involved with an acting club and they actually
met at the same place that the chess club did,

(01:05:24):
and so he would have he would have known if
he had seen him there. He had seen Wallace at
the chess club at that place before, so he would
have had an idea. So it's Monday night, he sort
of stakes at the place on Wolverton Street where they lived,
and then season leaving assume it's for the chess club,
goes to the goes to the phone booth, makes that
phone call and leaves that message sending on a wild

(01:05:44):
goose goose chase. But it was just a mean, practical
joke more than anything else. It wasn't the whole thing
about that street sounds so much like just a practical joke.
It was a snipe hunt. H Yeah. But then so
I read and I read an article or two about
Pete james Is claims that she had solved it and

(01:06:05):
that she you know, she knew it was Wallace that
had done. And I still don't quite get her argument.
I don't either, Yeah, yeah, I mean I really don't.
Actually I think her theory about Perry making the phone
call is reasonable, but as far as Wallace still not convinced,
I'm not either. And then we have one more theory
with Marsden, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joseph Caleb Marsden, Yeah, yeah,

(01:06:27):
he had. And this is a game from John Gannon's
book The Killing of Julia Wallace. Uh and he says,
he alleges that Wallace hired he hired Joseph Caleb Marsden
to do it through through Richard Gordon Perry because actually
Perry new Marsden, and and so Marsden actually did the
dirty work. And that's theory, yeah, yeah, or the other theory.

(01:06:50):
I also heard that Marsden did the dirty work for Perry,
not for wall I mean, you know, there's you know,
one of the things that is troubling about this case.
For instance, is there a lot of books written about
this case, and and some of the information in there
is shoddy at best. I would say, um, like one
of them says that it's unknown if Wallace won the

(01:07:13):
prize for the Chess Championship which he was competing, which
is absurd because he played in one official maybe two
maybe I don't know if that one on January nineteen
counted or not towards the championship, but there were like
seven games, eight games. He played in one and lost,
played in another one and one, but it was it

(01:07:34):
was different than he was in jail, so he definitely
didn't win. So I don't know why this book is
saying we don't know if he's a series that ran through.
I think that was March, March, very March, somewhere in
there and it ended, so there's no way. Yeah, he couldn't.
But it just goes to show you that even before
the Internet existed, there there was the bills getting out

(01:07:57):
there in the public spaces. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, you know
what I just remembered while we were talking about this.
That second match that he played that night. He played
against a friend who was ranked like a couple of
ranks higher than him, so they were ineligible to play
against each other in the championship. So he did win
that game on the internet. Okay, he won the game,

(01:08:18):
but officially he only played one game in the championship,
and he lost, So he definitely and he was super
proud of winning that match, which he should have been.
He should have been because this guy was really good
chess player, actually a really good chess player. Yeah, but
I guess you know. My final thoughts on this is, um,

(01:08:40):
there's I'm just going to quote Gerald Abrams. He uh,
he's a barrister who lived in Liverpool at the time.
He's written a lot about the Wallace case, and he says,
um quote. Journalists have agitated their readers for many years
with the question was Wallace guilty? There are three approaches
to this question. One Legally, it's academic, there was no
evan against him. To personally, his acquaintances, excluding those who

(01:09:04):
revel in the troubles of their quote friends, seemed convinced
of his innocence. The author takes the view that to
vest Wallace with guilt in the circumstances to credit him
with a mental power, a skill and agility, and a
cold blooded nervelessness, nerveless efficiency of which he seemed utterly incapable.

(01:09:25):
And three scientifically, it is a much easier hypothesis to
assume another person as a murderer whose task would have
been easier mental effortless by the principle of simple explanation,
Wallace was innocent, unquote. I especially like him saying it's
crediting Wallas this with a lot of stuff that he
was just not capable of, which is the most most

(01:09:46):
of us, frankly, are not capable of. UM. So, yeah,
I think he's entirely correct. I think either that or
he's he's a mad genius. Yeah, maybe, but I don't.
I just don't think Wallace did it. But I don't
know who did well. Again and again, I we said
this in the very beginning, because we don't know anything
about Julia. I mean, really, there's very little on record

(01:10:09):
that we know about her. We don't know if there
was something in her past. They the police were able
to rule out. Neither of them had any lovers, you know,
neither of them had any debts really that anybody could find.
So it seemed unlikely that it was wrapped up in Julia.

(01:10:31):
I guess, but maybe it was the the amount of
anger that was in the murder, because it was ethan brutal.
It really means that somebody had a personal stake that
they were taking out on her, whether it be a
past jilted lover or a wrong family member or hell,

(01:10:55):
I don't know, maybe she had a kid and she
gave that kid up and that kid tracked her down
all these years later her and said, you made me
an orphan. I'm going to take it out on you.
I mean, I don't know what it is, or could
be a bazillion things, or there could truly still be nothing. Yeah,
it could actually it could actually be somebody who didn't
even know her and just a serial killer who just
weren't who needed money and he had money. Yeah. Again,

(01:11:20):
maybe this is where Perry comes into. You know, he
like he like knows this guy who's a real skuts
bag and says, hey, I know these people aren't going
to be home, and I know he keeps a buttload
of money. You know, then you run into the there.
As far as I can tell, there was no sign
of a struggle. I've never seen anything that there was
a sign of a struggle. And she let the person in. Yeah,

(01:11:42):
so you assume that she knew them and that it
started out totally peacefully or at least mildly comfortable, and
they surprised her with the hit over the head. Yeah,
and that leads to our last series and this this
has actually been put out there, which is said, what's
the Johnston's Yeah, yeah, which at least one, and it
could have been really realistically, it could have been they

(01:12:03):
had a key, they had a key, she knew them.
They could have said, we're just going to come around
for They would have known about the money. That she
could have been cheating with the Johnston I mean, really
cheating with one of them, cheating with both of them. Really.
I don't know if I wanted to cheat with Julie myself,
I don't know if I wouldn't there, but hey, some
people are into stuff like that. Yeah, anyway, see you

(01:12:26):
have anything, I don't. This one just it's baffling. It's
baffling because of the amount of build as Joe put
it's out there, and the total lack of evidence for
anything other than the fact that the only thing that
we can confirm is that she died, most likely by

(01:12:47):
being beaten to death with the fire poker. The only
thing pretty confident that she died by being beaten. But
that's really the only only solid fact we have this
entire case. Yeah, that's somebody somebody being into death on
left with the poker. I'm not sure what the poker
was never found, so yeah, but yeah, other than that,

(01:13:10):
I can't say it's uh, you know, it's entirely possible
to that somebody set Wallace up. You know, they made
the phone call to the chess club deliberately from a
phone near his house to to you know, suspicion upon him. Yeah,
it's totally possible, although it doesn't seem like he had
any really enemies, I mean other than Perry. Yeah, I mean,

(01:13:33):
it could have been somebody trying to create the actually
commit the perfect crime. It's just a hobby sort of thing.
And so here's what we're Hols and the area. So yeah,
but but think about that. I mean, so he makes
the phone call, no, I mean that that's gonna it's
gonna be recorded. It's going to cast suspicion upon him

(01:13:53):
that he made to call himself, not realizing that Wallace
is going to go out there and he's gonna like
totally badger everybody sees along the way. I'm not realizing
that and picking that. Yeah, I thought, yeah, he was
gonna disappear, he murders the wife, he's gonna come back
with no alibi, he's going to go off to the
pokey and instead he comes back with a great alibi.

(01:14:16):
That's true. Yeah, it's possible. This was a listener's suggestion.
Oh that's right. I'll say at the end instead of
the beginning, we forgot. I totally forgot. Yeah. Mike b
Uh suggested it in like September two thousand and fourteen.
It's been a while, yeah, and then the artful Dodger

(01:14:37):
on Reddit also suggested it recently. Um, and I think
we've had a couple of there's been a couple over time. Yeah. Um,
so thank you guys. If you want to suggest a
topic for us, you can do that on our website
in the about the show. It's probably the best place
to do it, but you can. Well that's where everybody
goes to do it. I don't know why, but that's

(01:14:58):
where they go. Yeah. Um. That website is thinking Sideways
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(01:15:21):
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(01:15:47):
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(01:16:09):
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(01:16:29):
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(01:16:50):
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and we'll see you next week, folks. Bye bye, bitter guys.

(01:17:21):
I guess we'll hear them next week. We won't see them, yeah,
well they'll hear us. Yeah that's true.