76 | Who Killed Kent Reeks? A Murder Mystery in Wolverhampton

In January 1914, the industrial town of Wolverhampton became the backdrop to a baffling mystery when 24-year-old ship’s engineer Kent Reeks was found shot dead near a disused mine shaft — 90 miles from the Liverpool hotel where he had been staying. Just days earlier, he had arrived from Canada, carrying a large sum of money and travelling in the company of a mysterious man. This little-known true crime case follows Kent’s journey from Australia to England, the cryptic clues left in his wake, and the strange trail of money, ammunition, and unanswered questions that still surround his death.

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Sources:
Ancestry
UK and Ireland Incoming Passenger Lists 1914
The Birmingham Post Mon, 26 Jan 1914
Dundee Evening Telegraph - Monday 26 January 1914
Western Daily Press - Monday 02 February 1914
Evening Sentinel Tue, 10 Feb 1914
Lancashire Evening Post - Tuesday 10 February 1914
The Birmingham Post Wed, 11 Feb 1914
Liverpool Echo - Saturday 21 March 1914
Westerham Herald Sat, 28 Mar 1914
Manchester Courier - Wednesday 28 January 1914
Evening News (London) - Monday 16 February 1914
Detroit Free Press, 5 December 1916
Walter Reeks – Naval Architect, Yachtsman and Entrepreneur by Nicole Mays & David Payne

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Kent Reeks stood on the deck of the Empress of Ireland,
watching the Canadian shoreline fade into the distance as the
ships themed towards Liverpool, England. It was the start of
a new year, one full of hope and opportunity, and
he would celebrate his twenty fourth birthday during the crossing.

(00:24):
But as he gazed out at the horizon, Kent had
no way of knowing that nineteen fourteen would bring a
war that would kill millions and reshape the world forever,
nor that he wouldn't live long enough to witness it.
Kent Reeks was born in Australia on eighth of January

(00:47):
eighteen ninety. He was named after his mother's maiden name.
His father, Walter, was Australia's first naval architect, a successful
man originally from Liverpool who emigrated to Sydney to work
in ship design. Kent had a younger sister, Thelma, born

(01:09):
in eighteen ninety two, and their mother died just three
years later from a heart condition brought on by acute rheumatism.
Walter eventually remarried and went on to design and build
a family home overlooking the deep blue waters of Mosman Bay.

(01:29):
From an early age, Kent was bright, cheerful and determined
to follow in his father's footsteps. He studied engineering at
Sydney Technical College, and by the age of twenty one
he had secured a position as assistant engineer on the
White Star Liner Georgic, whose sailing routes included Liverpool to Australia,

(01:51):
retracing the same route his father had once taken. More recently,
Kent had obtained a new job as forfeitl engineer a
board a steamship owned by the United Fruit Company of
New Orleans, which traded between the United States and Central America.
Now he was en route to Liverpool to sit the

(02:14):
Board of Trade exam and engineering qualification required to advance
in his field. He had written to his father to
tell him of his plans for revealing his mix of
excitement and nerves about the upcoming exam. While in England,
he also planned to visit his maternal uncle Thomas Kent,

(02:35):
and aunt May who lived in Manchester, as well as
his seventy five year old grandmother Sarah in Stoke on Trent.
The ship Kent Reeks were sailing on carried around eight
hundred passengers, including farmers, laborers, picture framers, bookkeepers, musicians, merchants, families,

(02:57):
and domestic servants. Some were visiting England, while others were
relocating permanently. During the voyage, Kent struck up a conversation
with two young english women on board. One of them,
twenty one year old Ella Rawlinson, was a stenographer who

(03:17):
had been working in Canada and was now returning to
her hometown of Liverpool for a holiday. The night before
the ship was due to doc Kent carefully mounted a
half inch Brazilian green beetle bought during a previous trip
onto a small silver plate, which he pinned to his tie.

(03:40):
On Friday, sixteenth January, he collected his money from the purser,
who safeguarded passengers valuables during the crossing. Ella Rawlinson was
with him at the time and noticed how carefully he
counted the cash inside the envelope the purser handed over.
It totaled an enormous five hundred dollars equivalent to around

(04:02):
sixteen thousand dollars today or twelve thousand pounds. He then
tucked the money into a dark green wallet. On the
morning of Saturday, seventeenth January, the ship docked at Liverpool,
a bustling industrial hub known for importing raw cotton that

(04:24):
would be woven into cloth by thousands of workers in
the mills of Lancashire. As he disembarked, Kent took out
his wallet and checked his money again in full view
of several other passengers. He left his suitcase at a
storage office, then helped carry Ella Rawlinson's luggage, walking with

(04:44):
her to Saint George's Crescent, where he saw her into
a taxi. Kent then took a taxi himself to the
Empire Hotel in Lord Nelson Street, a temperance hotel that
served no alcohol and was popular with performers from a
nearby theater. He inquired about rooms, and, finding one available,

(05:07):
booked it for three weeks before heading out to collect
his suitcase. While he was out, another guest arrived at
the Empire Hotel, signing the register as J. H. Ramsden
of Chicago, Illinois. The mysterious traveler would play a key

(05:27):
role in the unfolding events, though his true origins and
intentions would remain unclear. Ninety minutes later, Kent returned with
his luggage, then traveled to Manchester to visit his uncle
Thomas and aunt May, returning to the hotel at around
eleven pm. The following morning, he breakfasted at eight am

(05:52):
and passed the rest of the day uneventfully. On Monday,
nineteenth January, Kent left the hotel in a hurry at
two pm, carrying a brown paper parcel attached to a
leather strap. He left his luggage behind and told the
hotel manager he'd be back in a couple of days,

(06:14):
but after he stepped out of the doors of the
Empire Hotel, Kent Reeks never returned. The following morning, Tuesday,
twentieth of January, was crisp and cold. A little girl
named Elizabeth Hutt was making her way across a disused

(06:36):
mining area in Ettingshaw, in the market town of Bilston
and the city of Wolverhampton, which was then in the
County of Staffordshire but now falls within the West Midlands
Metropolitan County. Old mining shafts were dotted around the rough,
desolate landscape, scarred and pock marked by industry, and Elizabeth

(06:59):
clambered over mounds of frost covered tussicky grass, carrying some
breakfast for her father, a laborer who had started work
much earlier. That morning, on her way, she noticed a
man lying on the ground near a mine shaft about
eighty yards from the road. At first she thought he

(07:21):
was asleep, but as she got closer she realized he
was lying in a pool of blood. She ran the
rest of the way to her father's workplace and one
of his colleagues went to fetch the police. Police Constable
George Felmingham of Staffordshire Police was first on the scene.

(07:45):
He found the man lying on his right side, with
the collar of his overcoat partially covering his head. When
the constable adjusted the collar, he saw that the victim's
face was caked in dried blood. Man's left hand was
partially inside the left pocket of his coat, and his
hat was missing. Rigormortis had already set in. Next to

(08:11):
the body, officers found four spent thirty two caliber cartridge cases.
A few feet away on the ground lay a distinctive
green beetle typin. It appeared the man had been killed
on the spot, as there was nothing to indicate he
had been dragged or dumped and no evidence of a struggle.

(08:36):
The post mortem revealed the victim had been shot three
times in the head with two bullets penetrating the forehead
and one at the back of the skull. The upper
part of the eye sockets had been destroyed, and the
absence of powder burns or scorch marks, indicating the shots
were fired from a distance, likely as he was either

(08:58):
falling or already on the ground. In the man's right
trouser pocket was nine pounds, two shillings and sevenpence worth
about one two hundred pounds to day, and in his
left were three American cents. Elsewhere on his person or

(09:19):
a gold watch, a silver chain, a fountain pen, several
English and foreign postcards, and a photograph of himself in
naval uniform. There was also a letter addressed to mister
Kent Reeks from his grandmother, Sarah Kent. Now investigators had
a name, but even more questions. How and why had

(09:44):
he ended up ninety miles from his hotel in Liverpool.
Why had he left in such a hurry the day before?
Who would want to kill the cheerful twenty four year
old ship's engineer who was just days away from taking
the board of tradings ZAM that could have propelled his
career forward. And what was in the brown paper parcel

(10:07):
he had been carrying when he left the hotel, which
was never found. Police considered whether the nearby pit shaft
might hold any clues, so with the help of an expert,
they erected a scaffold over the mouth of the shaft.
The specialist determined that the water at the bottom was

(10:29):
around eighty feet deep and the air was unfit for breathing.
Investigators loaded an electric lamp by cable to just above
the water level and used grappling hooks to drag through
the flooded shaft, but no clues were found. Draining the
shaft was deemed too costly and time consuming, but officers

(10:53):
remarked on the oddity of the body being left so
close to it. The brick structure now stood well over
six feet in height, but had only recently been extended
upwards to prevent people from accidentally falling in. This led
detectives to wonder had the killer somehow lured kent Reeks

(11:15):
to the site with the intention of disposing of his
body down the shaft. Perhaps he hadn't been to the
area in some time and was surprised to find it
taller than he remembered, giving him no choice but to
leave The body beside it, rather than throwing it in

(11:35):
the next day, kent Reeks uncle Thomas, traveled to Bilston
to officially identify the body. He told police about his
nephew's visit on Saturday evening, noting that Kent had spoken
about the two young British women he had met aboard
the ship. Kent had also mentioned he was staying at
the Empire Hotel and was excited about his upcoming exam,

(12:00):
after which he intended to return to Australia. He made
no mention of visiting Wolverhampton or any other parts of
the Black Country, a region colloquially named for the black
smog and fumes of its industrial activity. Kent had shown
his aunt, uncle and cousin Muriel the five hundred dollars

(12:22):
in his wallet. None of his money nor the wallet
itself were found on or near the body. Several other
relatives were contacted, but none had heard from Kent or
expected a visit. The tragic news took two days to
reach Australia, devastating the Reek's family, who could not understand

(12:45):
why any one would have wanted to harm him. Police
checked the Empress of Ireland passenger manifest and began trying
to trace any one Kent might have spoken to after
disembarking At the Empire. Hotel, manager Catherine Stanton showed officers
to his room, where his suitcase still sat, waiting to

(13:09):
be collected by an owner who would never return. Strangely,
they also found a piece of paper bearing the hotel
insignia with the name J. G. Parsons written eight times
in Kent Reek's handwriting, or at least handwriting very similar
to his. There was no J. G. Parsons traveling aboard

(13:33):
the ship with Reeks, nor in the period prior to
his arrival or following his disappearance. The only real lead
was J. H. Ramsden, the traveler from Chicago who had
checked into the hotel on the same day as Kent.
Staff described him as a seafaring man between five foot

(13:56):
ten and six feet tall, clean shaven, with dark hea,
dark eyes, broad shoulders, eyeglasses, a bowler hat, and a
distinctive swaying walk, described as a sailor's role. Although he
claimed to be from Illinois, none of the staff could
say for certain whether he had an American accent. Manager

(14:21):
Catherine Stanton recalled that Ramsden and Reeks first met over
breakfast on Sunday eighteenth of January, and had sat at
the same table talking about the docks. Later that morning,
around ten thirty am, the two men had left the
hotel together and returned at three pm that evening. They

(14:44):
were seen reading together and said they planned to meet
again for breakfast the following morning at eight am. No
one knew where they had gone during the day. On
Monday nineteenth, for January, they had breakfast as planned, then
Ramsden left the hotel, while Kent returned briefly to his

(15:05):
room before heading to an appointment had the Engineering Academy
on Castle Street. There he met with an official named
mister Parry to arrange his exam, presenting his references and
discharge papers. Afterwards, he went to a solicitor's office to
swear an affid David as required by the Board of

(15:27):
Trade Regulations. Kent told the solicitor he was going to
the Midlands with a friend, then sent a similar note
to mister Parry, stating he would be back on Thursday,
twenty second of January. At midday, J. H. Ramsden returned

(15:47):
to the Empire Hotel, settled his bill, and told the
manager he was going to Leeds about seventy miles to
the northeast. An hour later, Kent Reeks also came back
to the hotel and remarked, neither mister Ramsden nor I
will be back for tea. When Catherine Stanton informed him

(16:12):
that his acquaintance had already left, Kent seemed surprised. He
told her, I may be back tonight, but I'm not
sure how long my business will take me. It might
be two or three days. He hurried upstairs, packed a
brown paper parcel attached to a leather strap, and departed.

(16:36):
It was the last time hotel staff ever saw him.
The conversation implied that Ramsden and Reeks had made plans
to go somewhere together that evening, and that Reeks hadn't
expected Ramsden to leave without him, But Leeds lay in
the opposite direction from where his body would be found

(16:58):
the next day in Shaw, near Wolverhampton. What had induced
him to travel there was a mystery. Police issued a
public appeal and a reward of one hundred pounds was
offered for information leading to a conviction. They scrutinized all

(17:21):
telegrams and phone messages sent to Wolverhampton and Birmingham between
nineteenth and twenty first of January, and tried to trace
the missing money in case it had been exchanged for sterling.
A description of J. H. Ramsden was circulated extensively and
ports were monitored in case he tried to flee the country,

(17:43):
but there was no trace of him anywhere. It was
as if the Secretive Traveler had vanished, or perhaps he'd
never existed at all, at least not under that name.
One witness reporter seeing two men alike from a train
at Ettingshaws station on Monday night, one of whom match

(18:07):
kent Reek's description. The station was less than half a
mile from where his body was later found, strongly suggesting
his companion had been the killer. More leads soon materialized.
That same night, two seafaring men with strong American accents

(18:28):
had entered the Lime Street Telegraph Office in Liverpool, close
to the Empire Hotel, and sent telegrams to Wolverhampton stating
that they would be arriving with a friend. Meanwhile, three
live revolver rounds were discovered a little further from the body,
apparently misfired. These rounds were marked with the letters U

(18:51):
and L and were a different type. From the spent
cartridges found near the victim Staffordshire, Rease learned that two
men had recently purchased thirty two caliber ammunition from a
Liverpool dealer. The sale included fifty soft nose bullets and
fifty solid projectiles, both suitable for a semi automatic pistol.

(19:18):
The dealer described the rounds as unusually powerful for their caliber,
explaining that soft nose bullets are designed to expand on impact,
inflicting more serious injuries. One of the men had reportedly
joked they would tickle a cat, wouldn't they, a chilling remark.
In retrospect, he matched the description of the elusive J. H. Ramsden.

(19:47):
The American accents and the use of high powered rounds
suggested that at least one of the suspects was American.
After all, shootings were rare in England and few British
crip criminals, especially common street thugs, had knowledge of such
specialized ammunition. The circumstances felt almost like a planned execution.

(20:13):
Had these men specifically targeted kent Reeks and followed him
off the ship to his hotel, or had it been
a chance encounter triggered by the discovery he was carrying
a large sum of money. The fact that his five
hundred dollars had been stolen while his stirling was left
untouched seemed to support the theory that the killers were

(20:34):
American and they intended to sail back home imminently. Nine
pounds was a significant sum and would have paid for
approximately fifty nights at the Empire Hotel, including breakfast, surely
attempting amount for any thief. The inquest was held on

(20:56):
tenth February nineteen fourteen at Bilston Town Hall. In his
summing up, the coroner said that this is a most
mysterious case that the police are unable to find any
firm trace either of the man being in company with
anyone here or being here at all. They know nothing

(21:18):
about him from the time he left Liverpool till the
body was found. You can have no doubt, of course,
that it was a case of very cruel murder. He
was shot three times, either when he was on the
ground or when he was falling. The jury returned a
verdict of wilful murder by person or persons unknown. Sadly,

(21:43):
Kent's father and sister were unable to reach England from
Australia In time to attend the funeral. The press speculated
that the murder might have been the work of a
gang of sharpers card sheets, who could have spotted Kent
display saying his banknotes and decided to follow him. Such

(22:04):
a gang had been operating in the Leeds area, consisting
of four or five well dressed men. One member, skilled
at profiling potential targets, would select a passenger boarding a
train from hol to Leeds, then signal his confederates, who
would board the same carriage posing as strangers, and engage

(22:25):
their mark in card games designed to fleece them of
their money. But card sharpers were fraudsters who lured their
victims into gambling scams, and they rarely led them to
remote places or resorted to violence. The case inevitably grew cold,

(22:47):
and police never traced the missing dollar bills or the
enigmatic J. H. Ramsden. No one by that name appeared
on the Empress of Ireland's passenger manifest nor on any
ship arriving at Liverpool in the previous year or sailing
shortly after the murder. One J. H. Ramsen of Chicago

(23:09):
was mentioned in the Detroit Free Press in nineteen sixteen
as the manager of the Oakland Car Company attending a
meeting at the Pontiac factory, but there's no indication this
was the same man. Could the killer have deliberately adopted
the name of a real, respectable person he knew back home.

(23:31):
Other theories grew wilder, with some suggesting that Ramsden had
remained silent because he was gay and had tried to
initiate a sexual relationship with Kent Reeks, which was illegal
at the time. Others wondered if the green beetle type
in Kent war was meant to identify himself to someone

(23:51):
he had arranged to meet in England who had never
seen him before. Some may even wonder about links to
organized crime, particularly given Ramsden's apparent connection to Chicago, known
for gangsters and gun crime. Or could the fame and
wealth of Kent's ship designer father be in any way

(24:13):
connected to the killing. Each offers a tantalizing possibility, yet
we remain none the wiser. It was also unclear where
Kent had obtained his five hundred dollars and what he
intended to do with it. The mystery was soon overshadowed

(24:35):
by the outbreak of World War I. In an interesting coincidence,
The ill fated Lusitania was torpedoed by a U boat
in nineteen fifteen, an event which helped bring the United
States into the conflict. Kent Reeks had sailed on the
Lusitania a few years earlier in nineteen twelve. The Empress

(24:59):
of Ireland, the ship that had brought him to England,
would also sink in nineteen fourteen, with the loss of
over a thousand lives, in one of history's worst maritime disasters. Intriguingly,
Captain Henry Kendall, who commanded the Empress at the time,
had previously been involved in the arrest of murderer Dr

(25:20):
Crippen in nineteen ten, when he spotted him behaving suspiciously
on board and alerted the police. In January nineteen fifteen,
Kent's sister Thelma gave birth to a son, whom she
named Kent in honour of her brother. Thereek's family home

(25:43):
has since been replaced by a block of flats, but
several of Walter Reek's yachts still survive, including the Boomerang
built in nineteen o three. By the end of his career,
Water had designed and built around three hundred vessels, though
Kent never had the chance to surpass that legacy and

(26:04):
become a world renowned naval engineer like his father. It's
important that his short life is remembered, despite the fact
that the true story of his final days may never
be known. You've been listening to Prasha's Murder Map. Thank

(26:25):
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(26:45):
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