Medical Detectives

by Robin Odell

  The police were informed of the turn of events and arranged for the offending pie’s contents to be analysed at Scotland Yard’s laboratory. The analyst found over 3 grains of potassium arsenite in the pie and immediately reported his discovery to detectives. On the same day, 12 April 1949, Margery Radford died. Keith Simpson carried out the post-mortem examination supported by Scotland Yard’s analyst. He confirmed the advanced state of the dead woman’s tuberculosis and found that her frail body was riddled with poison. From the arsenic present in her hair roots it was possible to estimate that she had been systematically poisoned over a period of twelve weeks. As the pathologist observed, Margery Radford’s deterioration was put down to her tuberculosis and none of the medical staff at the sanatorium suspected, or had any reason to suspect, that she was also being poisoned.

  When he was interviewed by detectives, Frederick Radford asked, ‘Why should I want to kill my wife? I knew she was going to die anyway.’ He pointed out that as a laboratory technician he knew how easy it was to detect arsenic and would not have been so foolish to use it. He challenged the police to charge him and let the jury decide the outcome. He attended the opening of the inquest into his wife’s death and was driven home afterwards in a police car. Keith Simpson said in his memoirs that Radford invited the officers into his home for a cup of tea but, as he put it, ‘they understandably declined.’ On the following day, Radford was found dead in bed, having taken his own life with poison. He knew that arsenic was for the long haul so he chose cyanide as the fastest means of procuring his own death.

  But for Margery Radford’s suspicions, it is likely that her own death would have been recorded as due to the tuberculosis from which she was suffering and her husband would have got away with murder. The assumption was that Radford grew tired of looking after his chronically sick wife and decided to assist her departure from a tormented life.

  Simpson noted that general medical practitioners as a rule do not include the possibility of murder in their considerations of cause of death. The symptoms of poisoning may masquerade as genuine illness and the sick bed environment of the chronically ill provides ready cover for the intending poisoner, as in the case of Frederick Radford. Writing in 1972, Keith Simpson noted that only 0.2 per cent of all deaths from poison were attributable to arsenic.

  Determining the distinction between accident, murder and suicide is among the judgements a pathologist makes on a daily basis and it is not always straightforward. In 1959, Simpson managed to solve the riddle of two deaths in Portugal despite having been prevented from examining the circumstances at first hand. In February of that year, a family of four set out from England for a motoring holiday in Portugal which ended tragically when Arthur and Patricia Trist were found dead in their motel chalet, leaving their two children as survivors. The family had settled into their accommodation near Lisbon and, after putting the two children to bed, the couple went out for a meal. The alarm was raised the next day when the maid reported that after three attempts, she had failed to get a response from the occupants of the chalet. The manager decided to force the door and found Arthur and Patricia dead and two very confused children who could not get their parents to wake up. Police were called to the scene but found nothing that might indicate foul play.

  The two bodies were examined by a local police surgeon who found no injuries on either. The knowledge that the dead couple had dined out on shell food the previous evening, linked to vomit stains on their clothing, led the Portuguese authorities to conclude that the cause of death was food poisoning. This diagnosis did not hold up too well when enquiries showed that other diners at the restaurant who had also eaten shell fish suffered no ill-effects. Nevertheless, the authorities were adamant that the cause of death of the two English visitors was food poisoning. Requests that a pathologist from Britain should be allowed to examine the bodies were indignantly refused.

  By this time, Keith Simpson had been asked to review the post-mortem findings and he quickly identified several shortcomings. The poor quality of the examination carried out by local doctors was highlighted when their report mentioned the condition of both lungs in Patricia Trist’s body. As her medical records confirmed, she only had one lung following surgery several years earlier. Simpson noted that blood and muscle samples needed to test for carbon monoxide poisoning had not been taken. This was especially significant in view of reports from representatives of the family who had been permitted to enter the chalet and take stock of the surroundings in which the Trists had died. Their attention focussed on the bathroom which was very small and fitted with a gas water heater. The ventilation was poor and there was no flue to conduct combustion fumes to the outside of the building.

  The pathologist suspected carbon monoxide poisoning was the likely cause of death and the indications of vomiting were consistent with this. These conclusions were put to the Portuguese authorities but were promptly rejected on the grounds that the matter had already been resolved. The importance of establishing an accurate cause of death lay in any claims made by the two surviving children of the tragedy and the accident insurance which had been taken out by their father. Having been denied the opportunity to carry out independent post-mortem examinations, Simpson played what he later described as his ‘trump card’. The Trist family’s request to the Portuguese for the return of the bodies to their homeland could hardly be refused and was duly acted upon. As soon as he viewed the returned corpses in his laboratory at Guy’s Hospital and saw the tell-tale cherry-pink colour of their skin, he knew that carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause of their deaths. The mystery, as he later described it, was that the Portuguese medical examiners had missed the obvious.

  The source of the carbon monoxide was the gas water heater in the holiday chalet which subsequent tests showed was of a type that could build up a fatal concentration of gas in a confined and ill-ventilated space. The Portuguese authorities were notified of these latest findings but continued to hold firm to their original line that the English couple had died of food poisoning. The family’s insurance company honoured the policy which Arthur Trist had taken out before the ill-fated family holiday.

  There was some diplomatic fall-out following this case, when Portugal complained to the Foreign Office about the British pathologist’s involvement in the enquiry. This was to rebound some twenty years later with headlines in the British press about deaths in the Algarve from carbon monoxide poisoning arising from faulty gas water heaters. The Sunday Times, on 23 January 1983, reported the deaths of ten British tourists in Portugal holiday resorts, claiming that death certificates were issued with incorrect causes of death, including natural causes and food poisoning, when the classic indications of carbon monoxide poisoning evident on post-mortem examination should have alerted local doctors to the real cause. Interviewed by the newspaper, Professor Simpson was quoted as saying, ‘It’s disgraceful’ and observing that the cases discovered were ‘the tip of the iceberg’. The press reports provoked concerns about the safety of British tourists and raised questions regarding the quality of Portuguese investigation of unexpected deaths.

  Some murder cases, although apparently closed, seem to rumble on in the public conscience for years. One such was the A6 Murder, for which James Hanratty was judged guilty and hanged. Keith Simpson was called to the scene of a fatal shooting on a stretch of road known as Deadman’s Hill on 23 August 1961. A double shooting had occurred in the early hours of the morning which left Michael Gregston dead and his lover, Valerie Storie, badly wounded. The couple had been sitting in their parked car near Slough when they were threatened by a man with a gun. He sat in the rear seat and ordered them to drive away. After travelling north for about thirty miles, he told Gregston to pull into a lay-by on the A6. There, he shot Gregston twice in the head and, after raping Valerie Storie, fired five shots at her, leaving her paralysed. The assailant then drove away in their car.

  Keith Simpson examined Gregston’s body at Bedford Mortuary, confirming that he had died b
etween 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.