The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (41 page)

Pascoe and Whitty were charged with murder and sent for trial. Much of the evidence involved expert medical testimony as to which weapon, the crowbar or the knife, had caused the fatal injuries. Pascoe had armed himself on the night of
the attack with a crowbar while Whitty had the knife. In any event, as the law stood, if the two had acted together, each was equally guilty. This was the view of the jury, which returned a guilty verdict. Both men were sentenced to death; Pascoe was hanged at Bristol and Whitty at Winchester.

After the trial, it emerged that William Rowe, probably prompted by the first robbery, had carefully hidden his money. But among the papers on his desk was a note written in Spanish, giving details of where to find his treasure. He had also left another clue in the form of a
Teach Yourself
Spanish book. When his instructions were followed, a safe buried in concrete came to light, which contained £1,500. The wily farmer had protected his savings but at the cost of his life.

The Alias Man

The chance recognition of a face seen on “America’s Most Wanted” television programme revealed the alias of a man sought as a murder suspect.

Thirty-five-year-old Rosalyn Goodman disappeared during a hiking trip to the Great Smoky Mountain Park in the US in 1984. She left home in Memphis, Tennessee, driving her Volkswagen car on 23 September. She was heading for a popular scenic spot called Cades Cove where she intended to spend a few days before returning home.

When Rosalyn failed to return from her trip and did not call home, she was reported missing. The police asked for information from the public that might enable them to reconstruct her movements. There were reports that she had been seen with a man in the vicinity of Cades Cove at the end of September.

Three months later, deer hunters found a partly concealed body near a cabin at Cades Cove. The body had been reduced to a skeleton and there was evidence that it had been attacked by animals but no other obvious signs of violence. There was no identity on the body and initial examination showed that the remains were of a female aged around thirty. The possibility that the body was that of Rosalyn Goodman was confirmed by dental evidence.

Forensic examination failed to establish with certainty how the woman had died, although death by strangulation was strongly suspected. Her car was found in a parking lot near Cades Cove and it had evidently been thoroughly cleaned both inside and out. With no forensic traces to help them, investigators once again appealed to the public for information.

Four years elapsed with no progress in the investigation of Rosalyn’s death but then, in June 1988, the breakthrough came due to the alertness of an FBI agent. While watching the television programme, “America’s Most Wanted”, in Knoxville, the agent saw a face on screen that he recognized. The programme featured William Hewlett who was wanted for rape and assault in two states. While recognizing the face, the agent knew the man by another name. He made the connection to Harry Steven Mercer who was wanted for questioning by the FBI in connection with the Cades Cove investigation.

At that time, the FBI did not realize that Hewlett and Mercer were the same individual. Forty-four-year-old Hewlett and his wife were an itinerant couple who worked in the restaurant trade. They moved from place to place and it was believed they had been seen in the Cades Cove area in September 1984. Investigators were keen to interview them.

Hewlett/Mercer had form as a bank robber and he was wanted for sexual assault. While on several “most wanted” lists, he had managed to avoid arrest by constantly keeping on the move. He liked to think of himself and his wife as a kind of latterday Bonnie and Clyde.

Eventually, Hewlett, a man with many aliases, was traced to Gulfport, Mississippi, where he was arrested. He confessed to raping and strangling Rosalyn Goodman, a crime for which he was tried, convicted and given a life sentence.

“Crimewatch” Points The Way

Fleeing to another continent, changing his name and adopting a new lifestyle did not prevent the British forces of justice catching up with a rapist and murderer.

On the evening of 14 March 2003, seventeen-year-old Hannah Foster was returning home in Southampton in the UK when she was abducted. Her parents reported her missing and, two days later, her body was found in bushes by the roadside in the West End of the city. She had been raped and strangled. DNA on her clothing offered some prospect of identifying her murderer. The young woman had made an emergency 999 call on the evening she disappeared but the call was cut off.

On 17 March, the victim’s handbag and mobile phone were found at a recycling plant in Portsmouth. They had been discarded in a bottle bank. On 26 March, the murder featured on the BBC television programme, “Crimewatch”. An appeal was made for information that might help crime investigators. One of those who responded was an employee at a food supplier in Southampton. He reported his suspicions regarding a man named Kohli who drove a sandwich delivery van for the firm.

Kohli was not at his home but an examination of his van revealed possibly incriminating forensic traces. Using the latest technology for automatic number plate recognition and analysing the dead girl’s mobile phone data enabled investigators to place both Kohli and the victim on the motorway between Southampton and Portsmouth on 15 March.

It was evident that Kohli had taken evasive action and it was discovered that he had left Heathrow airport on a flight to India on 18 March. He had tried to borrow money to buy a plane ticket from a friend saying he wanted to visit his mother who was ill. When the friend declined, he approached his father-in-law who lent him the money.

An arrest warrant for Maninder Pal Singh Kohli was issued on 13 April 2003 and the tortuous process began of locating him and bringing him back to Britain. Hannah Foster’s parents travelled to India and helped to generate public interest in their quest for justice. Intense media coverage resulted in the location of Kohli who was living in West Bengal under an assumed name. Having deserted his wife and family in Britain he had married an Indian girl as part of the new life he planned to lead.

On 15 July 2004, Kohli was taken into custody by Indian police and the slow business of extraditing him to Britain began. It would take over three years. A month after he was arrested, Kohli appeared on Indian television and admitted that he had killed Hannah Foster. “I did it. I raped her. I strangled her . . .” he said. He later withdrew his confession.

He was finally extradited to Britain on 28 July 2007. His DNA was shown to match that found on the victim’s clothing. Kohli was tried at Winchester Crown Court in October 2008. The prosecution case was that he had accosted his victim, forced her into his van and later raped her. He strangled her to avoid being identified as a rapist, dumped her body and returned home to his family.

Kohli’s bizarre defence was that he had been set up by the supervisor at his workplace and forced into sexual relations with a woman who happened to be Hannah Foster. The jury convicted the forty-one-year-old deliveryman of murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mr Justice Keith told him, “It took a long time for you to be brought to justice, but the law finally caught up with you . . . you took her life so she would not be able to point the finger of guilt at you.”

Case Of The Yellow String Bag

A replica knitted yellow string bag proved to be an inspired piece of lateral thinking by a detective, which solved a murder case.

Forty-eight-year-old Dagmar Peters, a lady of modest means, lived on her own in a hut at Kingsdown in Kent in the UK. Her elderly mother lived nearby. On 31 October 1946, Peters’ body was found at a place called Labour-in-vain Hill on the Downs close to the A20 Maidstone to London road. She had been strangled. It was evident that she had been killed elsewhere and then dragged to the place where she was found.

It was learned that she was in the habit of visiting her brother in London by hitching lifts on the A20. Her mother mentioned that when she left home she had with her a brown attaché case and a yellow string bag. Both items were missing.
The pathological condition of the body indicated that she had remained in a seated position for some time after she was killed. Everything pointed to a roadside pick-up that had gone wrong. Police began the task of checking vehicles using the A20.

Chief Inspector Robert Fabian took charge of the investigation. He had an idea that the missing string bag held the key to the case. He learnt that the bag had been knitted by Dagmar Peters’ sister-in-law. Would she make another one, asked Fabian? A new, distinctive yellow string bag was made and photographs of it were published in the press.

The photograph of the bag brought an immediate response from a fifteen-year-old boy who said he had found a bag like it in Clare Park Lake three days after Peters’ body was discovered. He had given it away and the bag passed through several pairs of hands before it was retrieved. Forensic examination revealed traces of hair similar to that of the murder victim.

Detectives guessed that the bag had been thrown into a stream which fed through a culvert under a factory and into Clare Park Lake. Narrowing their search, they found fragments of the missing attaché case. The next focus was the factory, which had taken a recent delivery of bricks from a supplier in Cambridge. With the instinct for which he was renowned, Fabian now homed in on the driver.

The company supplying the bricks said the driver for that particular delivery was Sydney Sinclair who had since left their employ. His real name was Harold Hagger, a man with several convictions including assault. He confessed to strangling Dagmar Peters, who he alleged had tried to steal his wallet. He didn’t mean to kill her he said, he just pulled her scarf too tight around her neck.

The man with a string of convictions had been trapped by a string bag. Hagger was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Wandsworth on 18 March 1947.

“. . . It Looks Like Murder”

A nineteen-year-old literary poseur called a Sunday newspaper to report his discovery of a body. He believed he had uncovered
a murder and wanted payment to tell the story. His written account proved to be a confession.

Forty-eight-year-old Mabel Tattershaw was married with two daughters. Her husband worked away from home. To help the family budget, she took in lodgers. On 2 August 1951, Mabel watched a film showing at the Roxy Cinema in Nottingham. She found herself sitting next to a young man who chatted her up. They agreed to meet the next day and he took her to a quiet spot in Sherwood Vale.

Later that day the
News of the World
received a telephone call from Herbert Mills to report his discovery of a woman’s body. “. . . It looks like murder,” he said. The newspaper alerted the police and the body was found in a quiet wooded area. The dead woman, later identified as Mabel Tattershaw, had been bludgeoned and strangled.

Mills was questioned and he gave an account of finding the body and reading poetry before he called the newspaper. He explained his literary aspirations and how walking in Sherwood Vale inspired his poetic imagination. Once he had left the police station, he was free to talk to the press. He made several statements for which he requested payment.

On 24 August, following an interview with a journalist, he made a remarkable confession. This was handwritten and took an hour to complete. He began by stating that he had considered the possibility of committing the perfect murder. When he found himself in the cinema sat next to Mabel Tattershaw, whom he claimed responded to his approaches, he saw the possibility of putting his theory into practice.

His assignation with the middle-aged lady who was conceivably flattered by the young man’s attention, was easy. He led her to a quiet corner in the woods and carried out his experiment. He wrote that, “The strangling itself was quite easily accomplished.”

Mills was charged with murder and put on trial at Nottingham Assizes in November 1951. The defence offered on his behalf was that he had stumbled across the body when he was walking in the woods and saw an opportunity to make some money and gain public recognition by inventing stories
for the newspapers. However, the forensic evidence irrefutably linked him to his victim. There had been transfers of contact evidence, including hair and fibres. Most incriminating were the fibres from Mills’ suit which had been retrieved from beneath the victim’s fingernails.

Mills was found guilty and sentenced to death. He responded by smiling at both the judge and the jury. Ironically, Shelley, whose poetry Mills claimed to have read at the crime scene, wrote the line, “I met Murder on the way . . .”. He also met the hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, who despatched him on the gallows at Lincoln on 11 December 1951.

The Man In Black

Peter Moore ran a small chain of cinemas in north Wales, working as a businessman by day and turning into a monster at night. He bought a combat knife to celebrate his forty-ninth birthday and used it to kill a retired railway worker outside his home at Anglesey in September 1995. Henry Roberts was stabbed fourteen times.

His second victim was Keith Randles, a night security guard at a road works site. The man begged for his life and asked Moore why he was attacking him, “I just said, ‘Fun’,” he later told detectives. After stabbing Randles fourteen times, he drove home but returned to the scene to retrieve his bow tie, which had come adrift during the attack.

Two other killings followed, accompanied by multiple stabbing. Moore had lived with his mother at Kinmel Bay and the neighbours regarded him as “a nice lad” who preferred to stay at home. He later told detectives that his mother’s death in 1994 and the loss of family pets had turned him into a serial killer. He said, “Death literally seemed to start following me around.”

When detectives searched his home they found a collection of sex toys, handcuffs, gags, vibrators and military style clothing. His bedtime reading included a book about the world’s most evil men.