The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes (61 page)

Public enquiries identified six other members of the chapter and, along with Creighton, they were charged with the murder of Tobin. Creighton appeared to have been the instigator of a plan to kill a Hell’s Angel biker after the festival held at Long Marston, which the Outlaws regarded as their territory.

When the festival closed on 12 August, Tobin set off home, riding his Harley-Davidson, in convoy with two other bikers. Creighton, together with Dave Garside and Simon Turner, waited in the Rover at a lay-by on the A46. They were looking for a passing biker wearing the Hell’s Angels’ insignia. Karl Garside and two others waited as back-up in another vehicle and a third vehicle driven by Malcolm Bull. Tobin was targeted as he drove past for no better reason than that he was a Hell’s Angel biker and a member of a rival group.

Charges were brought against seven of the Outlaws and they were sent for trial at Birmingham Crown Court in October 2008. Creighton pleaded guilty to murder at the outset and did not give evidence. Dave Garside said he drove the car on the day of the shooting but was unaware that violence was planned. Simon Turner from Nuneaton, Malcolm Bull, Karl Garside, Dean Taylor and Ian Cameron, all from Coventry, were in the other cars. They pleaded not guilty to murder.

The prosecutor described the killing of Tobin as “a thoroughly cold-blooded business” which had been planned in considerable detail. The victim had been targeted, selected and, he suggested, some might say, executed. Tobin was hit in
the neck by a shot which penetrated his skull. Bearing in mind that the car containing the gunman, and Tobin on his Harley-Davidson, were all travelling at around 80 mph, indicated that the shooting was carried out with skill and precision.

The jury at Birmingham Crown Court deliberated for eight days and gave their judgment in stages. When all the verdicts were in, the outcome was that six members of the Outlaws were found guilty of murder and Creighton, who admitted guilt at the outset, made it seven convictions. Mr Justice Treacy, who described the Outlaws as having “murder in their hearts”, sentenced all seven accused to life imprisonment with varying terms to be served.

Private Eye Gets His Man

When the German freighter,
Gertrude Schultz
, encountered a storm in the Atlantic, high winds damaged one of the oil tanks that were part of the deck cargo. A seaman sent to inspect the damage found more than an oil spill. The leaking oil tank contained the naked bodies of two young women who had evidently been shot.

The vessel had been at sea for six days, sailing from Galveston, Texas, and heading for the German port of Hamburg. The year was 1914 and the USA was still exporting oil to the country that was about to precipitate a world war. The captain of the
Gertrude Schultz
decided to continue his journey to Europe.

On reaching his destination, the captain reported the discovery of the two bodies on his ship. The owners of the vessel decided on the unorthodox step of not pursuing an enquiry through usual channels but to hire a private investigator in the United States. When the ship next traversed the Atlantic, heading for Houston, the services of Joe Hunter were obtained to enquire into the curious affair of the two corpses found on the previous voyage.

He contacted the authorities in Hamburg and established that there were no reports of missing twenty-year-old women at the time in question. Next, he turned his attention to
Chicago where the rail tanker cars had originated. There were no reports of missing women there either. Hunter was nothing if not doggedly determined in his enquiries. His next move was to check the stations on the route that the rail cars had taken from Chicago to Galveston. Here he found something positive; a report of a woman who had gone missing two weeks before the
Gertrude Schultz
left port. She was twenty-three-year-old Adele Drucker whose disappearance had been reported by her aunt, Ella Abington. The young woman was the daughter of Hans Drucker who with his brother, Oscar, were the sons of a wealthy German steel producer. Hans had died and Oscar emigrated to America where he married Ella.

After Hans died, his two daughters, Adele and Ida went to America to stay with Abington who, by this time, was divorced from Oscar. He had remarried and gone to live in Chicago. Adele and Ida went to see him but he claimed they never arrived.

With this new information, private detective Hunter traced Adele to an address in St Louis. There he located a house which had been rented by Oscar Drucker in a false name. By the time Hunter called, the bird had flown but crucial evidence was found among the rubbish he left behind. This consisted of half-burned letters indicating that Adele and Ida had been invited to visit him.

Hunter eventually caught up with Oscar Drucker and confronted him with his suspicions. Drucker explained that he had been the victim of a family grievance whereby his brother left everything to his daughters. He resolved to lure the two young women into his sphere of influence in order to gain access to their inheritance. Adele suspected her uncle’s motives so he shot her and Ida suffered the same fate. He put their bodies into the rail tanker carrying oil en route to the docks at Galveston.

The private detective arrested Drucker but his suspect escaped while they were travelling to St Louis by train to report to the authorities. But, in the end, Hunter got his man. A year later, he tracked him down to Tijuana in Mexico. Accompanied by a US Marshal, he confronted his quarry in
a bar. Drucker pulled a gun, shot at Hunter and missed. The private eye then carried out rough justice by shooting Oscar Drucker dead.

Trail Of Blood

A farmer and his wife preparing to bale hay in their fields near Dunstable in Bedfordshire in August 1960, made a grisly discovery. In a shed on their property, they found the body of a man who had been shot dead. He was readily identified as Keith Arthur from the Army pay book in his jacket pocket.

It was apparent that Arthur had been killed elsewhere and his murderer had dumped the body in the farm shed hidden under some sacks. Keith Arthur was a local man, an ex-soldier, who worked as a factory machinist and dealt in secondhand cars. He had a reputation as a drinker and an idle boaster.

A murder investigation was mounted and local officers were put on alert. A woman police officer in the centre of Dunstable drew her colleagues’ attention to a trail of blood which she had spotted in the street leading to a public WC. While the significance of this was being discussed, a woman from a nearby house explained that she was a dentist and it was quite common for her patients to spit out blood after an extraction. She advised the officers not to waste their time.

Shortly afterwards, the same policewoman spotted another trail of what looked like blood leading in an entirely different direction. The trail of what proved to be red paint led to a house in Edward Street and to some startling developments. A householder came forward to ask if the officers were investigating the recent murder. She told them that her daughter had witnessed the killing and pointed out the house where it had taken place.

The house indicated was occupied by Jack Day and his family. The neighbour’s daughter, Patricia, babysat for them and played with the children. She told the police that on her last visit Mrs Day sent her on an errand and when she returned there was a strange man in the house. He was talking about a gold bracelet when Jack Day appeared on the scene. He asked
the man what he was doing. The atmosphere was tense and Patricia prepared to leave when Day produced a gun, there was a shot and the man collapsed.

Other witnesses talked of seeing two men in the street, one of whom was injured and bleeding. His companion was supporting him. All attention was now focussed on Jack Day who owned an unlicensed .38 revolver.

When Day was questioned, he said, “You’ve got the wrong man.” But forensic traces on his shoes and clothes confirmed his contact with the dead man. A search of the garage where he worked turned up a .38 revolver and a spent bullet. It came out that he had told a neighbour that he believed his wife was seeing another man and had vowed to kill him.

He made a statement to the effect that he had encountered Keith Arthur in his home and that his gun, which he made a practice of carrying with him at all times, discharged accidentally. When he realized that Arthur was wounded, he tried to get him to a doctor but he died before he could get him into his car. He panicked and decided to dump the body in the farm shed.

Jack Day was tried at Bedford Assizes in January 1961 and found guilty of murder. Sentenced to death he declined to seek a reprieve on the grounds that he did not commit the murder. He was duly executed.

Cowboys And Indians

Twenty-one-year-old Drummer James Ellis served with the Leicestershire Regiment and was based in barracks at Aldershot. In May 1923, he went missing and was believed to have deserted. Several months later, on 23 September, his body was found lying in bushes at Long Valley near Aldershot.

The body had been reduced to a skeleton but the manner of the young man’s death was apparent. His wrists and ankles were bound with a drum-rope. There was a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth and an army greatcoat covered his head and face. This was held tightly in place with a belt secured
around the head. Doctors had little difficulty determining that he had suffocated.

One of the dead man’s friends, Albert Dearnley, made it known that Ellis had talked about emigrating to Australia. When questioned by the police, he was more forthcoming and admitted that the two had quarrelled over a girl. When he came to make a written statement, he accepted responsibility for Ellis’ death.

His story was that he and Ellis had walked together on the common close to their barracks and decided to play a game of “Cowboys and Indians”. This involved tying up Ellis with a drum-rope at his own request. The idea was supposed to be that he would wriggle free of his bonds and they would meet up later at their barracks. When Ellis failed to re-appear, Dearnley kept quiet, believing his friend had gone back to his home in Yorkshire.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury examined the remains and took the view that the binding and gagging had been done at the request of the victim but had been done so effectively as to ensure suffocation resulted. Dearnley was arrested and charged with murder.

The trial took place at Winchester Assizes. A great deal emerged about the relationship between Ellis and Dearnley. It seemed that although they were friends, there was also a history of quarrels. On the day of the “Cowboys and Indians” episode, Dearnley admitted that once he had trussed up Ellis, he gagged him as punishment for having insulted his girlfriend. He did not intend to kill him though, and his defence was one of manslaughter and of a game that got out of hand.

The jury took only thirty minutes to find Dearnley guilty of murder and he was sentenced to death. A public petition containing over 20,000 signatures failed but the emergence of new information led to the execution being halted. What had apparently been common knowledge at the Aldershot barracks was drawn to the attention of the Home Office. This concerned homosexual activities involving Ellis, Dearnley and a non-commissioned officer. The view was that Ellis had made Dearnley’s life a misery with his sexual demands and threats of blackmail regarding the third man.

A reprieve was granted and Dearnley served nine years in prison before being released on parole in 1932.

A Callous And Evil Act

Victor Farrant was a man with a past when he met forty-five-year-old Glenda Hoskins, an accountant, at Haddy’s nightclub in Portsmouth in the UK in August 1993. They began an intense affair, which was interrupted when he explained that he was due to go abroad to work in Belgium. In fact, he returned to Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight to resume his prison sentence.

Glenda Hoskins did not know when she met her silver-haired charmer that he was a convicted rapist whose attack on a woman in 1987 had earned him twelve years in prison. They kept up their relationship and, in due course, he confided in her the real reason for his absences. This resulted in a parting of the ways when Glenda said she would have no more to do with him.

Farrant served his time and achieved his release on 7 November 1995. His first instinct was to re-visit some of his old haunts and, by coincidence, he saw Glenda Hoskins. They renewed their affair, which proved to be somewhat stormy and short-lived. On Christmas Day, they split up once more.

Farrant reacted angrily and took out his rage on a forty-three-year-old prostitute. Working as a casual builder and armed with a chisel he made an assignation with Ann Fidler at her home in Eastleigh. When she declined some of his sexual demands, he subjected her to a savage beating, causing severe injuries that left her brain-damaged.

He was drawn again to Glenda Hoskins and insisted that he wanted to pick up where they had left off. She took the easy option of acquiescing to avoid confrontation. Their relationship followed the previous pattern; he was abusive, plaguing her with telephone calls and harassing behaviour.

Glenda made it plain to him that enough was enough and at this point their affair had completely broken down. On the
evening of 7 February 1996, Farrant visited her at her home in Portsmouth and gave her letters in which he threatened to use violence if she did not comply with his wishes. The encounter ended with Glenda being drowned in her bath. Her body was found the next day by her daughter.

Farrant escaped to Belgium and a year passed before he was brought back to Britain to face charges. He was sent for trial at Winchester Crown Court in January 1998. Questions were asked why a convicted rapist, known to be a danger to the public, had been given his freedom with no supervision. The law in the UK has now been changed to ensure that this loophole could not be exploited in future.

The judge, sentencing Farrant after the jury returned its guilty verdict, referred to his “mercilous assault” on Ann Fidler which left her permanently damaged. Of the murder of Glenda Hoskins, he said, “It was a ruthless, callous and evil act, committed by a highly dangerous man,” who showed “not a shred of remorse, compassion or pity.” He sentenced Farrant to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he should never be released.