Medical Detectives (37 page)

Writing about the case in his book,
The Mind of the Murderer
, published in 1957, Dr W.L. Neustatter, a leading forensic psychiatrist, referred to Haigh as a malingerer and ‘simulator of insanity’, suggesting he was either insane, psychopathic or simply plausible, clever and wicked. Whatever his state of mind, he clearly established a place for himself in the annals of crime as the ‘Acid Bath Murderer’. But for the astute observations of Keith Simpson, Haigh’s crimes might have remained unsolved. There were also some interesting parallels with the Luton Sack Murder, notably the important part played by dental evidence, and the tell-tale significance of a dry-cleaning ticket.

By the time that the Haigh case came to trial, Spilsbury had departed the stage. The commanding influence which he had exerted for over thirty years died with him, for above all else, he was a loner. His death opened the way for a new approach to forensic medicine and ‘The Three Musketeers’ began to think about a collective approach to forensic work. To that end, in 1950 they established the Association in Forensic Medicine and Sir Sydney Smith accepted the invitation to become its first President. There was also a new emphasis on teaching, and professorships in forensic medicine were set up by London University. Keith Simpson became the first Professor of Forensic Medicine at Guy’s in 1962 and Francis Camps occupied the chair at the London Hospital Medical College in 1963. This show of unity was to prove short-lived, though, as Camps had a tendency to break ranks by appearing in court giving expert testimony in opposition to his colleagues.

The only occasion ‘The Three Musketeers’ appeared together on the same case was during the investigation of the murders at 10 Rillington Place. The exhumation of Timothy Evan’s wife and daughter in 1953 brought the trio together under the roof of Kensington Mortuary. Donald Teare had conducted the original post-mortem examinations eight years previously but the re-examination of the exhumed bodies was undertaken by Camps, acting on instructions from the Attorney-General, while Simpson represented the interests of John Christie, who was the self-confessed murderer. Christie’s trial was the third post-war headline-grabbing criminal case after Heath and Haigh. An account of the proceedings is given in Chapter Four, suffice it to say here that the meeting of the country’s three most eminent pathologists was marred by an unseemly squabble about taking tissues for laboratory tests from the exhumed corpses. Camps resented Simpson’s insistence on testing Geraldine Evans’s body for traces of carbon monoxide poisoning. Relations between Simpson and Camps had reached a turning point and their dealings became increasingly fractured after this incident. In 1958, Camps broke with the wartime triumvirate and set up his British Academy of Forensic Sciences.

A case which quickly acquired newspaper headlines was ‘The Chalkpit Murder’ and it inspired what Keith Simpson described as ‘one of the mysteries of medico-legal history’. Late in the afternoon of 30 November 1946, a man walking past an old chalk pit near Woldingham in Surrey saw a body lying in a shallow, open trench which was a relic of wartime military manoeuvres. He called the police who were soon at the scene, followed by Dr Eric Gardner, consultant pathologist at Weybridge Hospital, who examined the corpse with the aid of a torch. He noted a noose around the neck and ascertained that the man had been dead for forty-eight hours. The following morning, with the benefit of daylight, Dr Gardner, in the company of Keith Simpson, who was acting as a consultant to the Surrey Police, took a more detailed look at the body. Simpson’s immediate reaction was that it looked like an ‘… open-and-shut case of murder. The dead man’s face was plum-coloured and he had a noose around his neck.’ He observed that, despite recent heavy rain which had turned the ground into mud, the dead man’s shoes were completely clean. The clothes on the upper part of the body were bunched up, suggesting that the body might have been dragged by the feet and placed in the trench. There were indications that an attempt had been made to bury the body with loose soil and a pickaxe was found nearby.

The corpse was taken to Oxted Mortuary where Dr Gardner carried out a post-mortem examination under the observant scrutiny of Keith Simpson. Evidence of asphyxia was apparent in small petechial haemorrhages in the eyes and face. Internal examination showed congestion in all the organs. Particular attention was focussed on the neck which was encircled by a marked groove. Two pieces of rope and a piece of green cloth were fixed loosely around the neck in a half-hitch with several feet of rope to spare. As Simpson recorded later, if the rope mark had been horizontal, it would have suggested strangulation with a ligature. But the mark was most evident low on the right side and high on the left part of the neck where it came up under the ear. His conclusion was that this was a death by hanging. The experienced pathologist knew that hanging rarely meant murder; it was invariably indicative of suicide. There were no indications of a struggle having taken place which led the two doctors to agree, at that stage, the likely scenario was of a man who had hanged himself.

The circumstances in which self-suspension might have occurred raised a different set of questions. Post-mortem lividity and rigor mortis indicated that the body had entered the trench where it was found soon after death. But how did it get there? One possibility was that the man had hanged himself from a nearby tree and fallen, or slid down, into the trench where he died. The police looked in vain for marks on any trees close by which might have served as a suspension point and, of course, there was also the matter of the clean shoes to be taken into account.

The dead man had been identified as thirty-five-year-old John McBain Mudie, a hotel barman from Reigate, who had been missing for two days. A trawl through Mudie’s personal effects produced a letter requesting the return of some cheques to a property company. This opened up a complex trail of investigation, starting with the Chairman of Connaught Properties Limited, Thomas John Ley. He was interviewed by a detective on 8 December at his house in Kensington. Sixty-six-year-old Ley had emigrated to Australia as a boy where he eventually entered politics and became Minister of Justice in 1922. He returned to England in 1929 and he pursued various business interests. Ley explained the background to the letter sent to John Mudie and the detective went away satisfied that his enquiries had been adequately answered.

Following press reports that a body had been found near Woldingham, two men informed the police that, on their way home from work on 30 November, they had seen a man standing by the chalk pit. When he spotted them, he ran off towards a parked car and drove away. They remembered that ‘101’ was part of the car’s registration number. The next episode in this rapidly developing investigation occurred when an ex-boxer, John William Buckingham, came forward with information. He told the police that he operated a car for hire and had been asked to get in contact with a Mr Ley who was prepared to pay a large sum to a driver who could keep his mouth shut. Buckingham did as he was asked and Ley explained that in his role as a solicitor he was protecting two women who were being blackmailed by a man named Jack Mudie. He wanted Mudie brought to his London home so that he could deal with the matter. Also present during this discussion was Lawrence John Smith who acted as Ley’s odd-job man.

The story unfolded that, on 28 November, Mudie was delivered to Ley’s home where a blanket was put over his head and Smith tied him up. Buckingham, his part in this incident completed, departed with an envelope containing £200. He saw Smith a few days later who told him that Mr Ley was very satisfied with the way things had gone and that Mudie had been paid to leave the country. Scotland Yard officers interviewed Smith on 17 December when he made a voluntary statement admitting the part he had played in helping Buckingham to kidnap Mudie. When he was questioned, Ley simply denied everything.

By now, the police had located the car, registration number FGP 101, which Smith had hired and he was identified by the two men who had seen someone standing near the chalk pit. On 28 December, Ley, Buckingham and Smith were arrested and charged with murder. The conundrum of how precisely Mudie had met his death deepened at this point, because Keith Simpson felt there was a drift towards defining the medical evidence in a way that supported a murder charge. In taking this view, he was at odds with his friend and colleague, Eric Gardner, who, in due course, would give expert testimony for the prosecution. Simpson feared that a miscarriage of justice might result if Gardner’s evidence went unchallenged. The scene was thus set for confrontation and a further development ensued when Buckingham agreed to give evidence for the prosecution against the other two defendants.

Dr Gardner’s evidence given at the magistrates’ court was confined to the serious injuries which he believed Mudie had sustained in a struggle, chief of which he believed was a blow to the head. In his later recollections, Keith Simpson mentioned that he was not called upon to present his findings at the committal proceedings, although defence lawyers were fully aware of his views. He added, drily, that after they had read his post-mortem report, ‘they audaciously invited me to change sides’. Ley and Smith, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, were committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Simpson did not normally offer his services to the defence in criminal trials but, in this instance, he was prepared to make an exception. As it turned out, he found himself on the same side as Francis Camps who had already been enrolled by the defence team.

The trial opened on 19 March 1947 before Lord Chief Justice Goddard. In his account of the trial, the editor of the
Medico-Legal Journal
mentioned the appearance of the two men in the dock; ‘Ley, prosperous and well-dressed, portly, square headed with a bulbous nose, looked almost as if he were presiding at a company meeting.’ By contrast, Smith was, ‘obviously a working man’ and ‘ill at ease’. While Camps did little more than describe the post-mortem effects of asphyxia, Simpson was given a hard time under cross-examination and not least by Lord Goddard. He was insistent that the rope around the victim’s neck which caused the asphyxia was drawn and lifted. In answer to prosecuting counsel, he said, that lifting ‘was the significant thing … ’.

‘Why?’ asked counsel.

‘Because,’ replied Simpson, ‘… it wouldn’t necessarily cause death; it was the lifting that did it.’

Badgered by Lord Goddard, Simpson refused to give ground on his interpretation of the facts as he understood them. He reiterated that the dead man had been found with a rope around his neck which had been pulled tight and lifted, killing him in the process. He refused to speculate on the circumstances beyond agreeing that the victim had been suspended in some way, adding, ‘we have no evidence.’ Lord Goddard commented acidly, ‘Well, at any rate, we have got as far as that.’ In his biography of Lord Goddard, published in 1977, Fenton Bresler remarked on Simpson’s ‘remarkable stand for scientific integrity, committing himself solely within the confines of his own specific knowledge.’

Dr Gardner was examined in considerable detail about the pathological appearances of asphyxia, and the textbook opinions of both Spilsbury and Glaister were cited. His position, in essence, was that Mudie was strangled by a rope placed around his neck which caused slow strangulation. He contended that the mark left by the rope indicated some form of suspension not involving a drop. His view was that the rope might have been pulled up when the unconscious victim was in a sagging position. His precise words were, ‘I mean, if the loop of that rope were over the knob of the chair, you have got the ideal position.’ In his summing up, Lord Goddard told the jury that he did not propose to discuss which of the two doctors’ opinions was correct, stating that the victim was killed by being strangled by a rope with some upward movement of suspension. The Lord Chief Justice drew a picture of how a man might be sitting in a chair with someone behind him pulling on a rope around his neck and strangling him. That, he said, ‘would be a degree of suspension’. He sent the jury out to consider their verdict at 4.35 p.m. and they were back in the courtroom within an hour to deliver guilty verdicts on both Ley and Smith. The pair were sentenced to death after Ley complained about what he termed the judge’s biased summing up. It might be said that the former Minister of Justice had his day in court.