Read The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Online
Authors: Roger Wilkes
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (59 page)
Islands would seem to have exercised a baleful influence upon Mr Kirwan’s fortunes. Fatal, in any view of his behaviour, were the hours spent by him upon Ireland’s Eye; and now his Excellency the Earl of Eglinton, the Lord Lieutenant, whether dissenting from the verdict, or impressed by these declarations, or yielding merely to popular clamour, commuted the sentence to penal servitude for life, and the convict was immured accordingly on Spike Island in Queenstown harbour.
In the other pamphlet, Mr Boswell discusses the controversial points of the case, and publishes among certain statements a declaration by Teresa Kenny. But the second “Mrs Kirwan” is disappointing: she was plainly in no mood for revelations. She very handsomely accepts sole responsibility for the liaison, of which she alleges the wife was all along aware, and says that in 1847 Mr Kirwan urged her to go to her brother in America, a proposition declined by her in the spirit of Ruth’s refusal to forsake Naomi. She was unable to bear witness at the trial, having cut her thumb. Since her protector’s arrest she and her children had suffered much persecution at the hands of the righteous. But what the testimony of Teresa lacks in sensation is amply atoned for by the statement that on 6th September there was upon the island another man, one John Gorman, who avouched “that Kirwan was as innocent of the murder as the child unborn”! Unfortunately, this person, having unbosomed himself to Mr Malet, absconded, alleging, with some show of reason, that “he was afraid of being implicated himself,” and no trace of him could be found. So the pamphlet is not enriched by his declaration which, like “an affidavit from a thunderstorm or a few words on oath from a heavy shower”, desiderated by a certain chancellor, was not forthcoming. Mr Boswell has a stronger hand to play in Dr Taylor. That forensic autocrat had contributed to the medical press an article, reprinted at length in the pamphlet. As this is not a medical journal and not all my readers are medical jurists, I do not propose to accompany Dr Taylor in his pathological excursus. Those professionally interested may read him for themselves. His conclusions are as follows:
“I assert as my opinion, from a full and unbiased examination of the medical evidence in this case, that so far as the appearances of the body are concerned, there is an entire absence of proof that death was the result of violence at the hands of another. Persons while bathing, or exposed to the chance of drowning, are often seized with fits which may prove suddenly fatal, although they may allow of a short struggle; the fit may arise from syncope, apoplexy, or epilepsy. Either of the last conditions would, in my opinion, reconcile all the medical circumstances of this remarkable case.”
While admitting the force of the moral and circumstantial evidence against the accused, Dr Taylor holds that, “looking at the unsatisfactory nature of the medical evidence of violent death, it would certainly have justified a verdict of Not Proven”.
The doctor, however, was not to have it all his own way. There was published by Professor Geoghegan the result of his examination of the same facts, which led him to a very different conclusion. The copy of this pamphlet now before me is interesting as having been presented by the author to Mr Smyly, QC, who conducted the prosecution. Why that learned counsel did not put the Professor in the box is an additional mystery. To me, a layman in such matters, Dr Geoghegan’s arguments upon the medical evidence seem much more cogent and convincing than those of Dr Taylor. His summing up is as follows:
“The preceding considerations, I think, suffice to indicate that the entire series of medical facts leads to the following conclusions:
1.
That the death of Mrs Kirwan was not the result of apoplexy, or of epilepsy, nor yet of epileptic or of suicidal drowning.
2.
That the combined conditions of the body (both external and internal) were incompatible with drowning, unattended by other violence.
3.
That the appearances observed may have been produced by strangulation alone, or combined with compression of the chest, or with partial smothering.
4.
That they are also consistent with a combination of the preceding mixed or simple process of strangulation, with drowning; the submersion not having been continuous from its commencement.”
That Dr Geoghegan was in the better position to form a judgement would appear in the following circumstances: he had been consulted by the Crown at an early stage of the case, had personally inspected the
locus
, and heard the whole trial, none of which advantages was enjoyed by Dr Taylor. Further, he ascertained from witnesses who had seen the body certain conditions not elicited in evidence. From observations made by him at the Long Hole, Dr Geoghegan believed that the deed was done at the landward side of the “body” rock, in shallow water; the presence of seaweed and gravel in the hair favoured that view, and there would be less chance of detection from wetting of the perpetrator’s clothes. “The arrangement of the deceased’s bathing-dress, and of the sheet beneath her, with the orderly position of the body, seem clearly to show that wherever death may have occurred, the corpse was placed subsequently on the rock.”
Actuated as I always am by a laudable desire to give the reader full value for his money, and believing that the opinion of a modern authority on forensic medicine might prove helpful, I consulted, unprofessionally, my friend Dr Devon, who was so good as to make a careful study of the whole phenomena, and to favour me with his conclusions. Of the competency of Dr Devon to pronounce upon the question, it would be impertinent to speak. His report is too long for quotation here, and I must be content to quote one pregnant paragraph:
“In this case it was suggested that deceased had an apoplectic stroke; but there was no evidence in the brain of any haemorrhage. Syncope was also put forward as a cause of death; but the appearances found pointed to death from asphyxia. Epilepsy was also advanced as a cause, with as little evidence to support it. Granting, however, that deceased fell into the water either from an epileptic or a fainting fit, and there was drowned, how could she have sustained the injuries she had received and be found lying on her back? Had she fallen forward against projecting rocks or stones, might she not have cut her face and breast and bruised her right side? Possibly; but if she fell
forward
and got injured and drowned, how did she fall
backward
on a sheet, with her clothes up under her armpits? I am unable to imagine any accidental or suicidal drowning in which the deceased would be found in the position and with the injuries of Mrs Kirwan. And how might it have occurred? If the sheet on which she was found lying had been put round her when she was alive, in some such way as it was put round her dead body before it was removed, she could easily have been submerged in shallow water. If she had been shoved in from behind, the injuries might have been received from the rocks or stones in the bed of the water. There was no evidence of throttling and there were no injuries on her back. The body seems to have been taken to the place in which it was found, and in the process the clothes might have been drawn up to the armpits. It was a simple murder, clumsily carried out. If the body had been left in the water there would have been less room for suspicion, but it is a common thing for people under emotional stress to get exhausted mentally and to behave with a degree of stupidity that is amazing.”
Who shall decide when the doctors disagree? Dr Taylor asks “Whether any amount of moral evidence can compensate for a deficiency of proof of the cause of death?” But though medical opinion be thus divided, some weight must surely attach to other facts and circumstances indicating foul play, hardly to be reconciled with death from natural causes. If so, the secret of the island would seem to be rather an open one after all, and like the song the Syrens sang, not beyond all conjecture.
A quarter of a century after the trial the following paragraph appeared in the
Freeman’s Journal
(3 February 1879):
AN OLD TRAGEDY REVIVED
More than twenty-five years ago, a man named Kirwan, who lived in Upper Merrion Street, and had official employment as a draughtsman, was convicted in the Courthouse, Green Street, of the murder of his wife at Ireland’s Eye, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity and horror. Sentence of death was pronounced; the gallows was prepared, the hangman retained, and the rope ready for its work; but at the last moment powerful influence of a very special character was successfully exerted, to rescue the culprit from the grasp of the executioner. Kirwan’s death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and after a short stay at Mountjoy Prison he was sent to Spike Island, where he spent nearly twenty-four years as a convict. Last week he was liberated, on condition that he should leave the country, and he has sailed,
via
Queenstown, for America. One who saw him just before his departure describes him as an aged and very respectable-looking gentleman, white-haired, bent, and feeble, and with nothing in his aspect or manner to suggest that he was guilty of the awful tragedy on Ireland’s Eye.
Some further particulars are furnished by Mr M’Donnell Bodkin, K C, in his recent account of the case, on the authority of the late Dr O’Keeffe, formerly prison doctor at Spike Island, who “accompanied Kirwan when, on his release, as the last prisoner on Spike Island (before it was turned to its present use), he proceeded to Liverpool, whence he sailed to America, with the intention of joining and marrying the mother of his children, whose name figured so prominently at his trial”. A reunion sufficiently remarkable, whatever view you take of the mystery. The local tradition that a venerable and flowing-bearded stranger, who some years afterwards visited Ireland’s Eye and remained wrapped in contemplation of the Long Hole, was Mr Kirwan, surveying the scene of his adventure, may be dismissed as legendary.
(William Desmond Taylor, 1922)
Erle Stanley Gardner
Hollywood was rocked in 1922 when the film director William Desmond Taylor was shot dead in his bungalow. High-profile figures in the entertainment industry were implicated, and the newspapers printed a swirl of wild and unsubstantiated “facts”. Amid all the hoopla, the case was never definitively brought to a close. Taylor’s mysterious murder sent tremors through the Hollywood community and continues to intrigue movie and mystery buffs to this day. The tale caught the attention of the American detective-story writer Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970), who wrote this account for one of the pulp magazines that flourished in the 1940s. Gardner sold more than 700 works of fiction, including 127 novels (82 of them featuring his fighting lawyer, the global icon Perry Mason). It is estimated that some 325 million of Gardner’s books have been distributed globally, making him one of history’s all-time best-selling mystery writers. At the height of his popularity (in the mid-1960s), his novels were being sold at an average of 26,000 copies a day.
To those who are familiar with the psychology of Southern California, it will come as no surprise that when this section came to make its contribution to classic murder mysteries, it should bring forth a case which Hollywood itself could only label “super-colossal.”
The William Desmond Taylor case runs true to form throughout. Not only is the main thread of the plot so weird and bizarre as to challenge the credulity of the reader, but it is to be noted that it had its inception at a time when at least one of the witnesses described the weather as “unusual.”
On the night of 1 February 1922, William Desmond Taylor was seated in a rather modest, two-storey, bungalow-court residence eating dinner. The hour was approximately 6:30.
At this particular time, there was much in vogue in Los Angeles the type of construction known as the “bungalow court.” Bungalows were constructed side by side, not fronting on the street but on a walk or driveway which ran the length of a deep lot. In this way it was possible to crowd productive rentals on every inch of a relatively deep lot.
The bungalows in the court where William Desmond Taylor lived had been largely rented by people who were connected with the motion-picture industry. While newspaper accounts present some conflict as to the exact location of some of the neighbouring tenants, it would seem from a reading at this late date that Taylor’s bungalow was a double, and in the other side of this bungalow lived Edna Purviance, at the time Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady. The bungalow opposite was occupied by Mr and Mrs Douglas MacLean.
It was a period of transition in the picture industry. The early days, when pictures floundered around with train robbers and bandits, had given way to the adaptation of drama. It was the era of increasing salaries, of the silent film with its dramatic subtitles. One of those most frequently used at the time has become immortalized,
Came the Dawn of a New Day
. This subtitle was usually shown with a background of drifting clouds, gradually lighting up, and accompanied by appropriate inspirational music on piano or organ.
William Desmond Taylor, while an important director, was working for what would today be considered a mere stipend in the industry; but at that time, he was in the big-money group.