The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (50 page)

The circumstances of the shooting were odd. Elwell was sitting with a letter on his lap and unopened mail lying on the floor. The mail had been delivered at 7.10 a.m., an hour before his housekeeper arrived. A .45 calibre bullet was found on a table where it had landed after passing through Elwell’s head and ricocheting from a wall. A spent cartridge case lay on the floor. Detectives examining the entry and exit wounds reasoned that the killer had fired from a crouching position.

There were no fingerprints left at the crime scene, no sign of a struggle and nothing was missing. Nor was there a murder weapon. The indications were that the murderer had been admitted to the house by Elwell and was therefore someone he knew. Working on this premise, detectives began questioning his staff, friends and family.

This proved to be quite a task particularly in light of the number of female acquaintances in Elwell’s life. He kept a card index of names and addresses relating to over fifty ladies, some married, many of whom had visited his home. There were rumours about jealous husbands and lovers, of mystery spies and fashionable matrons mad with lust, but no real suspects.

There were no clues in the letters which Elwell had received on the morning he was shot and no witnesses to the arrival at his door of his killer. All that was left was speculation and, on that score, the New York newspapers had a feast. The
renowned crime writer, Jonathan Goodman, in his book on the unsolved murder, wrote that it was a case “. . . which started with a bang heard only by the culprit and the victim”, and “ended with a whimper”.

Death Of A Twitcher

Dr Helen Davidson, a popular fifty-four-year-old doctor with a practice in Amersham, Buckinghamshire in the UK, was bludgeoned to death while bird-watching. Her murder remains unsolved but there are pointers as to the identity of the killer.

Dr Davidson was last seen alive at 3.15 p.m. on 9 November 1966. She drove her blue Hillman Minx along the Amersham to Beaconsfield Road and parked in a lay-by at Hodgemoor Wood. She locked her car with her handbag inside and, equipped with binoculars and accompanied by her dog, walked about a mile into the Forestry Commission Reserve.

The alarm was raised when she failed to return home. A search was mounted and her car was soon located. Searchers then found her body in the woods. She had been bludgeoned to death and, in an act of callous brutality, her killer had stamped her head into the ground. Her dog kept watch over her body during the night.

Police questioned walkers who had been in the vicinity but no one had seen Helen Davidson. They checked on known sexual offenders and made enquiries about mental patients. A theory that surfaced fairly quickly was that, perhaps, the doctor, using her binoculars, had observed a pair of lovers who did not wish to be seen. She was fully clothed when discovered and there were no other injuries apart from those to the head. Investigators were convinced the murderer was a local man familiar with the woods.

Motive was a key issue. Robbery was ruled out as the dead woman was still wearing her jewellery, there were no signs that a struggle had taken place and no suggestion of sexual attack. The murder weapon appeared to be a tree branch picked up at random. A new approach was the possibility of a revenge
attack by a former patient. No progress was made with any of these lines of enquiry.

In 1974, the
News of the World
published an account of the unsolved murder and offered a reward of £100,000 for information leading to the arrest of the killer. There were developments at around this time involving a suspect who had once lived in Amersham and had emigrated to Australia after Dr Davidson’s death. This unnamed man returned to the UK in 1979 and came to the attention of the police through a motoring offence.

His reaction to being questioned was to rebuke the officers for not using their time to greater effect by finding the killer of Dr Davidson. This was an unusual response, especially bearing in mind that he was referring to an event that had occurred thirteen years previously. In November 1980, he was taken into custody and questioned about the Davidson murder. He was released without charge and subsequently told a newspaper that he was a medium and was willing to help the police in that capacity.

In February 1986, the man, who it transpired was a former patient of Dr Davidson, was interviewed by a local journalist and made some enigmatic references to her death. Crime writers, Bernard Taylor and Stephen Knight, in their account of the case in 1987, speculated that Dr Davidson had come across a flasher in the woods, a person she knew who killed her to protect his identity.

Peoples’ Heroine

The execution in Singapore of Flor Contemplacion, a Filipino housemaid convicted of double murder, created a storm of protest in 1995 and bitter disagreement between two governments.

Forty-two-year-old Flor Contemplacion worked as a maid in the Huang household in Singapore. She was one among 60,000 Filipinos employed in the city state. In 1991, she was accused of drowning her employer’s four-year-old son and of strangling a fellow maid, Delia Maga. She apparently confessed to these crimes in letters written to family and friends.

Put on trial and found guilty of murder, Contemplacion was sentenced to death. On the day of her execution at Changi Prison, 17 March 1995, hundreds of protesters assembled outside the Singapore embassy in Manila. They chanted the minutes down to the time of execution and then erupted in furious outrage.

When Flor Contemplacion’s body was returned to the Philippines, Amelita Ramos, the President’s wife, was among the mourners gathered to witness her return. She spoke of the President’s regret that his pleas on behalf of the nation to Singapore for a stay of execution had not been heeded. Human rights groups described Singapore as tyrannical and the Catholic Church condemned the disregard of mercy.

The stage was set for irritable exchanges between the two governments and their respective ambassadors were recalled. The President of the Philippines, Fidel Ramos, threatened to break off diplomatic relations if an enquiry he had set up found that Contemplacion had been unjustly treated and executed. In the meantime, Filipinos intending to work in Singapore as maids were banned from travelling.

In April 1995, a commission of enquiry into the circumstances of Contemplacion’s trial convened in Manila to consider the evidence and deliver their own verdict. A new autopsy was carried out on Delia Maga and a pathologist gave it as his opinion that the injuries she had suffered resulted from a fierce struggle. In his view, Contemplacion was not strong enough to have overpowered Maga. In other words, she was innocent of the charge of murder. Suggestions gained ground that the Huang family’s son died of drowning in the bath during an epileptic attack and that family members killed Maga who they held responsible for his care. Guilt for both deaths was then shifted onto Contemplacion.

The Singapore authorities rejected the notion that the maid was innocent, especially in light of her confession, and declared that it was a “totally absurd” suggestion. They refused to reopen the case but in an attempt to defuse the situation, put forward the idea that forensic experts from Britain and the USA should examine any new evidence.

Recriminations continued to fly backwards and forwards and there were reports about squabbles involving family members and production companies over television and film rights to Contemplacion’s story. Singapore continued to occupy the moral high ground by claiming its stance on crime was the foundation of a peaceful society. In her own country, Flor Contemplacion has come to be regarded as a heroine of the people.

“A Skilled Killer”

A late-night summons from an unidentified caller asking for a doctor’s help led to the murder of Dr Richard Castillo. The caller has never been formally identified and the murder remains unsolved.

Seventy-two-year-old Dr Castillo was a highly respected doctor, working in a medical practice in Chelsea in London. On Sunday 7 May 1961, he had been out walking his dog and returned home to be greeted by his daughter with the information that there was a caller on the telephone seeking help. Dr Castillo took the call from a man called Allenby who said his wife was ill. It was after 11 p.m. but the doctor said he would visit the sick person. He got into his car and drove across the River Thames to Albert Bridge Road, looking for 3 Albert Studios.

Albert Studios was a quiet, dark passage and it was there, at about 11.40 p.m. that an artist living at number two heard someone knocking at the house next door. There was no reply because the occupants had moved out earlier in the day. Then, the neighbour heard voices and someone in distress outside in the street. He went outside and encountered Dr Castillo who had been attacked and had collapsed unconscious on the ground. He was dead before the police arrived.

Alarmed that her husband had not returned home by 2 a.m., Mrs Castillo called Dr David Craig, a colleague in the medical practice. She explained that her husband had gone out to answer an emergency call at Albert Studios and Dr Craig said he would go there immediately. When he arrived, he found police officers
standing around the body of his fellow doctor. Castillo had been killed with two knife thrusts, one in the abdomen and the other through the ribs and directly into the heart. Dr Craig’s estimation was that “The knife was put in in a skilled fashion . . . A skilled killer . . .”, he said. The murderer escaped without leaving a trace and the murder weapon was never found.

On the face of it, the murder appeared to be motiveless. Dr Castillo, who was born in Malta, had moved to England in 1921 and practised as a doctor in Chelsea since 1922. He was popular and highly respected, particularly for his willingness to answer out-of-hours calls from his patients. When he was called out on the last night of his life, he believed he was to see a Mrs Allenby, one of his colleague’s patients, at 3 Albert Studios. But the house was unoccupied and the previous tenants were not Mr and Mrs Allenby.

The curious nature of the telephone call, luring the doctor into a dark corner of London late at night, led to the idea that he had been targeted. The Coroner summarized the few known facts at the inquest; the caller knew the doctor’s habits sufficiently to understand that he would respond to a call for help and the killing ground had been ideally chosen as a place of ambush.

There was speculation that Dr Castillo had stumbled on some clandestine espionage activity involving foreign agents for which he had to be silenced. The phenomenon of the apparently motiveless murder inevitably gives rise to such theorizing. The London
Evening News
ran a story that the doctor was murdered by someone he knew and who had been interviewed by the police. This man allegedly killed out of jealousy but was able to furnish a plausible alibi, which inhibited any further investigation.

“. . . His Heart’s Blood”

When Dr Harvey Burdell, a wealthy New York dentist, was murdered in his consulting room, the chief suspects were drawn from the odd assortment of lodgers who rented rooms in the building he owned.

Forty-six-year-old Dr Burdell had built up a lucrative dental practice but his professional standing was tainted by a quarrelsome nature and a reputation for swindling. He owned a mansion in New York at 31 Bond Street and worked from his consulting room on the first floor. He sub-let ten of his rooms, providing him with healthy rents.

On 29 January 1857, the tall bearded figure of Dr Burdell was seen entering the mansion at around 10.45 p.m. The following morning, the dentist was found dead in his consulting room. He had been repeatedly stabbed, with knife thrusts in his neck, chest and abdomen. The room was heavily bloodstained, suggesting there had been a struggle.

There were no indications of forced entry and the police naturally concentrated their enquiries on the various tenants in the mansion. No one had heard any noise or disturbance, possibly because it had been a stormy night. Suspicion fell on Emma Cunningham, a lady in her late thirties, who appeared to have a special relationship with Burdell. She claimed to be his wife, although the legality of an alleged marriage was unclear.

What was not questioned was that Emma Cunningham acted for Burdell by supervising the letting of his rented rooms. Two considerations that weighed against her were that she had been overheard making threats against the dentist to the effect that she would “have his heart’s blood”. And secondly, she was left-handed, a characteristic which she apparently shared with his murderer.

Among the other boarders questioned were John J. Eckel, a dealer in animal hides, and George V. Snodgrass, the effeminate son of a preacher who had a penchant for wearing female undergarments. These two joined Emma Cunningham in a trip downtown where they were held pending the inquest into Dr Burdell’s death.

The evidence presented at the inquest by sundry maids and boarders from the Bond Street mansion can best be described as exotic and confusing. Threats allegedly issued by Emma Cunningham were repeated and there was conflicting evidence about her relationship with the dentist. Despite the lack of hard evidence, she, together with Eckel and Snodgrass, were charged with involvement in the murder and committed for trial. At this point, Cunningham lodged a claim for part of the dead man’s estate, on the grounds that they were secretly married.

The trial collapsed in farce when Cunningham declared that she was pregnant and was given a not guilty verdict. Her doctor reported that she was not pregnant and that she had offered him money to buy a baby for her. She was charged with fraud and the case against Eckel and Snodgrass was dropped. Completely undaunted, Emma Cunningham rented out her imposter child to P. T. Barnum’s circus where people could view the “Bogus Burdell Baby”.

The contents of Burdell’s mansion were sold by auction to help pay his debts. The blood-soaked carpet from his consulting room was a sought-after item. The nearest anyone came to solving the murder lay in a confession made by a man called Lewis who was executed in New York for a different murder. The likelihood is that Burdell, with his reputation for being quarrelsome, was killed by one of his creditors.