Medical Detectives (40 page)

Keith Simpson examined Gregston’s body at Bedford Mortuary, confirming that he had died between 3 and 4 a.m. from gunshot wounds consisting of two .32 calibre shots fired at close range. A few days later, he visited Valerie Storie in hospital and examined her wounds, five in all, also from a .32 weapon. He found her remarkably clear and lucid in the account she gave of the incident which he found entirely consistent with the medical evidence. Although badly injured, Storie was able to describe the gunman to the police and an Identikit picture was published seeking information from the public. This was followed by a second Identikit based on a description of a man seen driving Gregston’s car which was later found abandoned. The murder weapon was found on a London bus and two cartridge cases linked to it were discovered in a London hotel room that had been occupied on the night before the murder by James Hanratty using an alias. On the night of the murder, the room was occupied by Peter Alphon, a commercial traveller.

Hanratty was arrested in Blackpool on 9 October and, despite his lack of resemblance to either of the Identikit pictures, was identified as the A6 gunman. He claimed an alibi which placed him in Liverpool at the crucial time but, later, changed his story. He was charged with murder and subsequently found guilty. Hanratty was hanged on 4 April 1962, but public disquiet prompted the Home Office to re-open the case in 1967 after Alphon made a confession, claiming he had been asked to end the relationship between Gregston and Storie. The idea was to frighten the couple but the gun discharged accidentally and Hanratty was framed for the murder.

Simpson was in no doubt about the validity of the original verdict which he said had not been shaken by subsequent claims. This was borne out by events in 2002 when the case went to the Court of Appeal. Hanratty’s body had been exhumed in order to obtain a DNA sample that could be compared with DNA found on garments relating to the case which had previously been mislaid. The results of these tests ruled out Alphon as a suspect and the appeal judges upheld the original conviction of James Hanratty.

When, in a social context, Keith Simpson might be asked what was currently engaging his attention, he would often reply, ‘Oh! You know, scribble, scribble.’ As much as he enjoyed lecturing, he also liked putting pen to paper. This was evident early in his career when he wrote his textbook,
Forensic Medicine
, first published in 1947. It ran to many editions and earned an accolade from
The Criminologist
for containing ‘… a phenomenal range of knowledge and information’. In 1958, the book won professional recognition when the Royal Society of Arts awarded it the Swiney Prize. After Sir Sydney Smith’s retirement, Simpson took on the editorship of
Taylor’s Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence
. This was a prodigious task, refreshing and updating a textbook regarded by many as the bible of the forensic practitioner. Alfred Swaine Taylor first published the book in 1836 and it has run to many editions since. Professor Simpson also wrote what was, arguably, the first textbook intended for crime scene investigators.
Police: The Investigation of Violence
, published in 1978, was written in forthright language and used explicit illustrations. The book was well received by police training establishments. He also found time to write novels and other books using the pseudonym Guy Bailey.
The Fatal Chance
, published in 1969, included a number of his cases such as Haigh and Sangret, in which chance played a major role in crime investigation.

Estimating time of death is a constant challenge for the forensic pathologist with many environmental factors to be taken into consideration. It is made to look easy in televised crime dramas but, in practice, requires a great deal of skill and experience. Occasionally, nature gives a helping hand and such was the case when two boys went out searching in Bracknell Woods, Berkshire for maggots to use as fish bait. Their practice was to find an animal carcass from which they could retrieve a few maggots as it decomposed and the flesh provided a breeding ground for bluebottle flies.

On 28 June 1964, the two lads found a treasure trove of heaving maggots on a mound of earth and leaves. But, as they began retrieving the larvae to put in their collecting jars, they uncovered a human forearm and lost no time in reporting their discovery to the police. A telephone call to Professor Simpson was not long delayed and he was quickly at the scene. His first task was carefully to disinter the body of which the exposed forearm was the only visible part. He found the corpse of a fully-clothed man, lying face uppermost with a towel wrapped around the head.

The pathologist knew it was a waste of time taking body temperatures in view of the extent of decomposition and realised that the maggots represented the best chance of establishing how long the man had been dead. One of the police officers observing Simpson at work suggested the body had been dead for six or eight weeks and was astonished when the pathologist told him that it was more likely to have been nine or ten days. He picked off some of the maggots which he thought were a species of bluebottle and put them into a specimen jar for later study. The maggots were third-stage larvae hatched from eggs which he estimated had been laid nine or ten days previously. By adding extra time, allowing for the flies to seek out the corpse, Simpson calculated that death had occurred around 16 or 17 June.

Examining the rotting remains of the head and neck
in situ
, Simpson found that the bones of the larynx were broken on the left side, indicating some kind of blow to the throat. Later, in the mortuary, he found signs of asphyxia in the heart muscle and there was blood in the windpipe. His conclusion, in the absence of any other indicators, was that the injuries to the man’s throat had led to inhalation of blood with death ensuing very quickly. The height of the body was calculated at five feet three inches and X-rays showed a mended fracture of the left forearm. Fingerprints were obtained from the decomposing skin left on the hands which unequivocally identified the dead man as Peter Thomas, an individual whose fingerprints were in police records. CID officers had been combing through missing persons files and established that forty-two-year-old Thomas had disappeared from his home in Gloucestershire on 16 June.

Detectives from the West Country now put their heads together with colleagues from Berkshire to consider how and why Peter Thomas’s body had ended up in woodlands a hundred miles from his home. It seemed that he lived alone with only his dog as a companion in a dilapidated bungalow at Lydney. His day-to-day existence depended on social welfare payments. A search of his home turned up a letter referring to a loan of £2,000 which had been made to one William Brittle, and which was due to be repaid in mid-June. Brittle, a salesman for heating systems, lived at Hook in Hampshire. When interviewed by detectives, he said he had driven to Lydney to see Thomas in order to repay the loan. To corroborate his story, he said he had given a lift to a hitch-hiker on his return journey to Hampshire. This individual was traced by the police and he confirmed that Brittle had indeed given him a lift.

Meanwhile forensic technicians were taking a close look at Brittle’s car but found nothing of significance. The enquiry was beginning to run out of steam when a man came forward with the information that he had seen Peter Thomas, a former acquaintance, at Gloucester bus station on 20 June, four days after he was presumed to be dead. This obviously jeopardised the case the police were building up against William Brittle, but Simpson stuck to his original estimate that death had occurred on 16 or 17 June. There was some vacillation in high places and the Director of Public Prosecutions decided the evidence against Brittle was insufficiently strong to warrant a trial.

Although they may have been disappointed by this turn of events, the Gloucestershire police decided on a different strategy and referred the case against Brittle to the coroner at Bracknell in Berkshire. The inquest jury’s verdict there was that Peter Thomas had been murdered and Brittle was named as the perpetrator. To the surprise of the medico-legal fraternity, the coroner’s jury had gone against the ruling made earlier by the Director of Public Prosecutions and Brittle was committed to stand trial. He was due to appear at the Spring Assizes in Gloucester in 1965. The defence team called on Dr David Bowen, a colleague of Donald Teare at St George’s Hospital, to advise them and also a leading entomologist, Professor McKenny-Hughes. During the trial, the prosecutor, Ralph Cusack QC, argued that Brittle had murdered Peter Thomas, put his body in his car boot and driven from Gloucestershire to Berkshire where he buried it in woods near Bracknell. His motive was to be rid of a creditor who was pressing him for repayment of a loan.

There was general agreement that Thomas had died following a blow to the throat which caused haemorrhaging into the air passages and led to death by asphyxia. The nature of the blow to the throat had echoes of the Emmett-Dunne case twelve years earlier when a senior army NCO was found to have killed a fellow Sergeant with a chopping blow to the throat and then faked his suicide. The pathologist involved at the time was Francis Camps, Simpson’s old adversary, who, quite possibly, was reading the press reports about the trial at Gloucester with special interest. In the course of their enquiries, the police learned that Brittle had served in the army and attended a course where he was trained in the use of unarmed combat techniques. He had been discharged from the service for passing himself off as an officer.

The proceedings against Brittle hinged on the behaviour of maggots. The father of forensic entomology was Professor Jean-Pierre Mégnin, a French military veterinarian. He published his research on the life cycle of blowflies in 1894 and showed that insect activity on a corpse could provide accurate indications of the post-mortem interval. He thereby established the foundations of modern forensic entomology. The larvae in question at Brittle’s trial were
Calliphora erythrocephalus
hatched from eggs laid by bluebottle flies. Eggs are customarily laid in warm weather in daylight hours and hatch out on the same day. The first development (instar) occurs after eight to fourteen hours, the second instar (two to three days) and the third, fully grown instar, after five to six days, before the maggot pupates with a hard shell. Hence, as estimated by Keith Simpson, making an allowance for the flies to find the body, some eleven to twelve days might have elapsed, thereby placing Thomas’s death on 16 or 17 June.

Simpson gave his evidence, supported by sketches he had made at the scene and by photographs. Next came Professor McKenny-Hughes, who had seen the maggots which the pathologist had taken as specimens from the body in the woods and confirmed that they were indeed larvae of the bluebottle. Asked how his views on the habits and life cycle differed from Simpson’s, the professor declined to criticise his colleague, so, moving swiftly on, the prosecutor, Quinton Hogg QC, posed a theoretical question as to what might result when, ‘… the bluebottle lays its eggs on the dead body at midnight … ’. The professor recoiled in horror at the thought and replied, ‘No self-respecting bluebottle lays eggs at midnight.’ The sniggers around the court heralded a triumph for Keith Simpson whose evidence regarding time of death was accepted by the jury in preference to the evidence of the witness who claimed to have seen Peter Thomas after he was presumed to be dead. The pathologist had won the day and expressed pleasure that his reputation for calculating time of death had been vindicated. The trial jury found William Brittle guilty and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.