Serial Killer Doctors (2 page)

Police were baffled by the mention in the letter to the two dead prostitutes, Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell, of the murder of Lou Harvey. They had no record of anyone by that name having been murdered. Eventually, they found Lou Harvey in Brighton and her story became another vital piece of the evidence that would finally send Cream to the gallows.

At his trial that began on October 17, he was unable to provide any kind of defence against the overwhelming body of evidence that was stacked up against him. Four days later, the jury took a mere twelve minutes to find him guilty and he was sentenced to die on the gallows.

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John Bodkin Adams

The headlines were hysterical. ‘Murder Trial of the Century’, they screamed and there were whispers of drugs, homosexuality and government interference. In the dock stood Dr John Bodkin Adams, probably the wealthiest GP in Britain, who had ministered to many notable people including MP and Olympic gold medalist, Lord Burghley, society painter, Oswald Birley, Admiral Robert Prendergast, industrialist, Sir Alexander Maguire and the 10th Duke of Devonshire, amongst others. The prosecution was led by the Attorney-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, as was the custom in cases of murder by poisoning, and Geoffrey Lawrence QC, one of the most skillful advocates of his day, was acting for the defence. Adams had lost a great many of his patients in suspicious circumstances and benefitted from many of their wills. Was he ‘easing their passing’, as he euphemistically described it, or was it cold-blooded murder? The debate rages to this day.

The trial began in late March 1957 and Adams was charged with the murder of Edith Alice Morrell. Mrs Morrell was a wealthy 81 year-old widow who had a stroke on June 24, 1948. Partially paralyzed, she was admitted to hospital and two days later was visited by her GP, John Bodkin Adams. He prescribed morphine to her, instructing it be used as necessary, and nine days later took her back to Eastbourne where she lived and he practised.

On July 9, Adams increased the morphine dosage and added heroin to help Mrs Morrell sleep. The doses increased, but he called a halt to them on November 1, 1950. He then re-instated the doses on November 6. They continued in varying dosages until November 12 when he added Paraldehyde to stop involuntary jerks from which she was suffering. Paraldehyde also acted as a depressant of the lungs and given that heroin does the same thing, it was a dangerous drug to add to her pharmaceutical cocktail.

In the ten and a half months leading up to Mrs Morrell’s death, Adams gave her a total of 1,629½ grains of barbiturates; 1,928 grains of Sedormid; 16411⁄12 grains of morphine and 139½ grains of heroin. Between November 7 and 12, 1949 alone, according to prescriptions, she was given 40½ grains of morphine (2624 mg) and 39 grains of heroin (2527 mg). The prosecution alleged that this would more than likely have been enough to kill her in itself, despite any tolerance that her body may have developed during the period of her illness.

She finally died on November 13 and on her death certificate Adams ascribed her death to a stroke. He organized for her to be cremated that same day, acknowledging on the form that he had no financial interest in the death of the deceased. Importantly, this meant that there would be no necessity for a post-mortem.

It actually transpired that Edith Morrell had left several wills. In some of them, Adams was mentioned while his name was absent from others. Eventually, he was cut out of her will but still received her Rolls Royce, a Jacobean court cupboard and an antique chest containing silver cutlery worth £276.

He sent a bill for 1,100 visits to the law firm administrating her estate. This amounted to £1,674, although it was later estimated by investigators that he had actually only visited her 321 times.

The case of Edith Morrell only emerged after police had investigated the death of another of Adams’ patients. Gertrude ‘Bobby’ Hullett was a wealthy 50 year-old widow whose husband Jack had died four months previously. She had become depressed after her husband’s death and had told Adams several times that she could not live without her husband and would like to commit suicide. On July 17, 1956, Mrs Hullett wrote Adams a cheque for £1,000 to pay for an MG sports car that her husband had promised to buy him. Curiously, Adams asked the bank to put the cheque through a special clearance so that it would go into his account the following day, rather than following the usual process which would take until July 21.

On July 19, another doctor – Dr Harris – was summoned when Adams was otherwise engaged, after Mrs Hullett was found in a coma. When Adams finally arrived, the two doctors discussed the possibility that she might have suffered a cerebral hemorrhage as her pupils were contracted and her breathing was shallow. However, these are also symptoms of morphine or barbiturate poisoning, but Adams neglected to mention to Dr Harris that Mrs Hullett had been suffering from depression or that he had prescribed barbiturates to her.

A pathologist, Dr Shera, was called in and suggested they should examine the contents of Mrs Hullett’s stomach to check for narcotics poisoning but the suggestion was ignored by both Adams and Harris. Adams, meanwhile, consulted with a doctor at the Princess Alice Hospital in Eastbourne about how to treat barbiturate poisoning. He ignored the advice he was given but took away with him some Megimide, a new antidote to barbiturate poisoning.

On July 22, Adams telephoned the coroner to arrange a post mortem but when the coroner asked when the patient had died, Adams told him that she was not yet dead. That same day, Adams administered an injection of Megimide to his patient. Mrs Hullett developed broncho-pneumonia and at 7.23 on the morning of July 23 she died. After her death, it was discovered that she had twice the fatal dose of sodium barbitone in her body.

As ever, Adams did well in Mrs Hullett’s will. There was another Rolls Royce to be added to the many bequests he had received over the years from his deceased patients. Emily Louise Mortimer, for instance, had died aged 75 in 1946, leaving him £1,950. In 1950, 76 year-old Amy Ware left him £1,000. On this occasion, he again lied, claiming on the cremation form that he would not benefit from her death. Later that same year, he received £200 and a clock from the estate of 89 year-old Annabelle Kilgour. She had fallen into a coma and died shortly after he had started her on a course of sedatives.

In 1952, 85 year-old Julia Bradnum left him £661. He had thoughtfully gone to the bank with her to help her change her will. She had appeared fit and well the day before she died but after an injection from Adams the following day after she told him she felt unwell, she died. He is reported to have told her as he administered the injection, ‘it will be over in three minutes’. It was indeed, but probably not in the way she expected.

87 year-old Clara Miller left him £1,257. It is understood that he was in the habit of locking her door, throwing open her windows, removing her bedclothes, raising her nightgown above her chest and exposing her chest to the elements.

It all began to unravel for Adams when an anonymous phone call was made to Eastbourne police station, voicing concerns about the way that Mrs Hullett had died. It emerged later that the call had been made by the famous music hall performer and film producer, Leslie Henson. Henson had been performing in Dublin when he heard of the death of his close friend, ‘Bobby’ Hullett. He became suspicious because he knew that her husband had died recently and that they had both been treated by Adams, about whom there had been rumours.

John Bodkin Adams was born into a devout family of Plymouth Brethren in Randalstown, County Antrim in Northern Ireland in 1899. His father was a preacher and watchmaker, thirty-nine years older than his wife, Ellen, and when John was fifteen, his father died of a stroke. Four years later, his only brother, William, died in the post-war Spanish Flu epidemic.

In 1916, aged 17, Adams matriculated at Queen’s University, Belfast, studying to be a doctor. It was not easy for him. Socially inept and an inadequate student, he missed a year of studies due to an illness which is thought to have been tuberculosis. Despite this, however, he graduated in 1921, taking up a job as an assistant houseman at Bristol Royal Infirmary. A year later, he accepted a position at a Christian practice in Eastbourne.

In Eastbourne, Adams initially lived with his mother and his cousin, Sarah Florence Henry but in 1929, he borrowed £2,000 from William Mawhood, one of his patients, in order to purchase Kent Lodge, an 18-room house in the upmarket area of Seaside Road, now known as Trinity Trees.

Adams was already acting strangely towards patients. In the case of Mawhood, for instance, he often turned up uninvited for dinner, even, on occasion, bringing his mother and cousin. When he went shopping, he was in the habit of charging items to the Mawhoods’ accounts, without their permission.

By the mid-1930s, rumours were already circulating about Adams and how he often seemed to be so well thought-of by his patients that they wrote him into their wills shortly before they died. In 1935, for instance, Matilda Whitton bequeathed him £7,385, which in today’s terms is around £380,000. Mrs Whitton’s family contested the will but it was upheld, although the judge did overturn a codicil giving Adams’ mother £100.

During the Second World War, he remained in Eastbourne but was infuriated by the fact that the other doctors in the town rejected him as a member of a pool system that was created to cover the patients of doctors who were called up. Apart from the rumours of dishonesty that surrounded him, he was also thought not to be a very good doctor. He had gained a degree in anaesthetics in 1941 but had been known to fall asleep during operations and confuse the gasses being used.

Nonetheless, he continued to practise after the war until Leslie Henson made his fateful telephone call.

Eastbourne police handed the case over to the Metropolitan Police Murder Squad in 1956. The senior investigating officer was Detective Superintendent Herbert Hannam of Scotland Yard, the man responsible for solving the infamous 1953 Teddington Towpath Murders involving the killing and rape of two teenage girls near Teddington Lock on the River Thames. Hannam and his team examined cases between 1946 and 1956, with Home Office pathologist Francis Camps finding 163 deaths that he considered suspicious. Camps had previously done invaluable work on the case of notorious serial killer, John Christie, who strangled at least eight women in his flat at 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill, London. He noted the numerous occasions on which Adams had given patients what he termed ‘special injections’, refusing to divulge to other medical staff present what was in the syringe and asking them to leave the room before he administered the injection.

The weight of the medical establishment lined up behind Adams, however. The British Medical Association, for instance, wrote to every doctor practising in Eastbourne to remind them of their obligation of ‘Professional Secrecy’, prohibiting them from revealing anything about Adams to the police. Hannam succeeded, however, in convincing the BMA of the seriousness of the allegations and eventually the ban was rescinded.

On October 1, Hannam met Adams and Adams claimed that his inheritances were mainly in lieu of the fees he would have charged. When Hannam asked him, therefore, why he had not stated his financial interest on cremation forms, Adams replied: ‘Oh, that wasn’t done wickedly, God knows it wasn’t. We always want cremations to go off smoothly for the dear relatives. If I said I knew I was getting money under the will they might get suspicious and I like cremations and burials to go smoothly. There was nothing suspicious really. It was not deceitful.’

A search of Adams’s surgery uncovered the fact the he had not kept a dangerous Drugs’ Register since 1949. During the search he also surreptitiously slipped a couple of items into his pocket. When challenged about them, they turned out to be bottles of morphine, one for a patient named Annie Sharp who had died nine days earlier and another for a Mr Soden. When Adams’s records were examined, though, it transpired that Soden, who had died in September 1956, had never been prescribed morphine. Adams would later tell Hannam at the police station, ‘Easing the passing of a dying person isn’t all that wicked. She [Morrell] wanted to die. That can’t be murder. It is impossible to accuse a doctor’.

Allegations of homosexuality – illegal at the time – emerged when police acquired some notes belonging to a Daily Mail journalist in which Adams, Sir Ronald Gwynne, Mayor of Eastbourne and Deputy Chief Constable of Eastbourne, Alexander Seekings were implicated. Gwynne was a patient of Adams and the two frequently holidayed together. Hannam did not pursue this line of enquiry, possibly as a result of the senior positions of those involved and pressure from above.

On December 19, 1956, Dr John Bodkin Adams was arrested and charged with the murder of Edith Morrell.

It was the longest trial in British criminal history, lasting seventeen days, but on April 9, 1957, the jury found Adams not guilty. On July 26, however, he was found guilty on 8 counts of forging prescriptions, four counts of making false statements on cremation forms, and three offences under the Dangerous Drugs Act. He was fined £2,400 plus costs of £457 and in November was struck off the Medical Register by the General Medical Council.

In November 1961, after two failed applications, Adams was reinstated as a general practitioner of medicine. He died in 1983 having fallen while shooting in Battle, East Sussex. He developed a chest infection in hospital and died of ventricular failure on July 6.