Couples Who Kill

by Carol Anne Davis

  He, in turn, said that he’d been told by Jessie that she’d sent the babies to orphanages and that he believed her. He denied any prior knowledge of the corpses in the basement. He was let go by the court as they simply could not prove his guilt, but they believed him to be as culpable as she.

  It took the jury only four minutes to find Jessie King guilty and she was carried, crying and then half fainting, from the dock. Over the next few days she tried to commit suicide several times, tearing strips of cloth from her skirt and winding it tightly around her neck. She was a Roman Catholic, so the authorities found her a priest and two nuns to talk to, and after that she appeared to settle down. She was hanged on 11th March 1889 clutching a crucifix.

  Ada & William Chard-Williams

  William Chard-Williams was a respectable schoolteacher age forty-six who worked in a private school. He married the dark-eyed, small-framed Ada who was only half his age. She persuaded him to adopt two children but treated them abysmally, often hitting and neglecting them. Neighbours heard her husband pleading with her to stop hurting the children – but she merely threatened to hit him too. He often fed and changed the half-starved youngsters and was horrified by the weals he found on their backs. But for some unfathomable reason he didn’t take the children from the house and he remained deeply in love with his young wife.

  Given that she clearly despised children, it’s unclear why she decided to adopt more, taking in an illegitimate baby girl for a small amount of money. One day she picked the infant up by its feet and swung it against the wall, smashing its head before strangling it.

  In September 1899 a brown paper parcel containing the infant’s body was recovered from the Thames. The knots tied in the blind cord used to bind the parcel were unusual and would help link her to the crime.

  When a description of the body was published, the baby’s mother went to the police and explained that she’d answered an advert from a couple asking to adopt a baby. She’d given the woman – who was using the pseudonym Mrs Hewerson – three pounds and promised to pay her the two pounds balance later. But when she went to the woman’s home she found that it was merely a shop used as an accommodation address.

  Strangely, Ada – still posing as Mrs Hewerson – now wrote to the police explaining that she’d given the baby to someone else and had played no part in its demise. Police went to her last known address but she and her husband had fled, leaving the rent unpaid. However, they found pieces of blind cord tied with the exact same knots that they’d found around the parcel containing the dead child.

  The Chard-Williams had by now left the area (Barnet) but they were found that December working in a coffee shop in Hackney. Their little foster son was still with them and neighbours admitted they’d often heard him screaming. Mr Chard-Williams looked equally overwhelmed by life.

  The couple were arrested but it soon became clear that William Chard-Williams had played no active part in the baby girl’s death. (Though, like all adults who do nothing whilst their spouse hits the children, he was culpable by remaining silent. Worse, it was admitted that two other foster children had died whilst his wife was ostensibly caring for them and he hadn’t informed the authorities.) The judge reluctantly ordered the jury to acquit him. That same jury soon determined that Mrs Ada Chard-Williams should hang.

  On hearing the death sentence she lashed out at the wardens and screamed abuse at them. She was the last women to be executed at Newgate, going to the gallows on 6th March 1900.

  It’s likely that Ada Chard-Williams took a sadistic pleasure in hurting her foster children. Perhaps she also derived excitement from their deaths – after all, she killed three of them. She had married a man almost twice her age so perhaps he was impotent or, at best, an infrequent lover, and she took her pleasure from inflicting pain on her helpless brood.

  Annie Walters & Amelia Sach

  Amelia Sach trained as a midwife, married and had children whom she appeared devoted to. Whilst still in her twenties, she set up a nursing home in East Finchley. She later hired a woman called Annie Walters.

  Annie was in her fifties, poorly educated and much more worn-down by life than the attractive and intelligent Amelia. But they had one thing in common – a desire to make money and a callous indifference to the babies entrusted to their care.

  Amelia placed adverts in local newspapers offering birthing facilities and adding ‘baby can remain.’ As this was the start of the twentieth century, when illegitimacy was still frowned upon, she had many requests for such long-term baby care. Amelia took a minimum of fifteen pounds from each mother or father and told them that their baby had been adopted by wealthy families. But no one ever traced these families and the babies simply disappeared…

  We don’t know where Annie was living when she first began working for Amelia Sach but by 1902 she’d become the lodger of a policeman and his wife. They were concerned when the middle-aged woman brought a baby to the house, only for the child to quickly disappear. A few days later she brought another child to the house, saying it was a little girl who was to be adopted. But the policeman’s wife checked on the infant and found that it was actually a little boy. Later she heard the boy give a strange cry so she asked after his health and Annie said that she’d given him a strong sleeping medicine and that he must not be disturbed.

  The couple reported these events to the authorities and Annie was intercepted carrying a brown paper parcel which held the corpse of the baby boy. She immediately said ‘I didn’t poison it’ and added that she’d planned to commit suicide that very night, having been jilted by a man.

  The police found documents in her handbag which led them to her partner in crime, Amelia Sach. She refused to give a statement. Both women were tried at the Old Bailey on 15th and 16th January 1903. Annie Walters was charged with murdering the baby whilst Amelia Sach was charged as an accessory after the fact. But it was clear that Amelia was the mastermind and Annie the pawn, albeit a ruthless pawn.

  At the trial, one unmarried woman testified that she’d given Amelia Sach thirty pounds to care for her baby. Annie Walters had taken the child away. Later she was seen in a café holding a baby completely swathed in a shawl. But when the shawl slipped a waitress saw a face so waxen that she thought it was a doll. Annie said that she’d given the baby sleeping medicine as it had been ill – but the unfortunate child was never seen again.

  A doctor testified that he’d helped out at some of the births and had afterwards asked Amelia Sach where the babies were, only to be told that they’d been taken away by various relatives. These relatives were traced but they hadn’t been given the children. The baby boy found in the brown paper parcel had by now been autopsied and death was due to asphyxia, possibly provoked by the sleeping draught which Annie Walters said she’d administered.

  Amelia Sach remained silent to the end, but the amount of money in her savings account – and the fact that she had stored away over three hundred baby clothes – spoke volumes. Witnesses spoke of giving her thirty pounds per child.

  Both women were found guilty and hanged at Holloway on 3rd February 1903. They were also buried there.

  15 DOUBLE JEOPARDY

  BRITISH COUPLES WHO KILL SERIALLY

  Ask the general public about couples who kill and they’ll invariably name the Moors Murderers who killed five victims. But some of the British couples in the case studies which follow were responsible for several murders yet haven’t remained as firmly in the public consciousness.

  Archibald Thompson Hall (aka Roy Fontaine) & Michael Anthony Kitto

  Acting alone, Archibald Hall was responsible for one murder, that of his male lover. Then he teamed up with Michael Kitto and killed two women and two men…

  Archibald was born on 17th July 1924 to Marian and Archibald Thompson Hall. The family lived in an impoverished part of Glasgow, Scotland, though they were considered better off than many of their neighbours. His father was a post office clerk who sorted the mail.

  Young Archiba
ld’s father was very religious, a lay preacher and member of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, who had a difficult relationship with his wife, Marian. She’d been brought up by a domineering mother and was now equally imperious. She was subject to terrible fits of depression and black moods which must have affected her little son though he would later say that he loved her dearly and that they were always close.

  But visitors to the house witnessed terrible rows between herself and young Archie (and later with her other children), rows that his father tried to keep out of. There were also arguments between husband and wife because Marian spent money freely. After an argument she’d sulk for hours.

  Crime writers would later describe the household as law-abiding but, in truth, Marion received stolen goods and her younger son Donald would do prison time for burglary.

  Archie did well at school but he hated his forename and by ten was telling friends to call him Roy, the name that’s used for him in this case study from now on.

  In his tenth year Roy didn’t just acquire a new forename – he acquired a new sister, as his parents adopted a baby girl. Roy adored her. But he loved the expensive jewellery and clothes he saw in high street shops even more and already knew that he wanted a less ordinary life.

  By thirteen he was sent before the local justice of the peace on a charge of malicious mischief. Presumably seeing the incident as a boyhood prank, the JP admonished him. But seven months later he was back in court on a theft charge, where he was admonished again. Perhaps believing that he was invincible, he started going around the richer parts of Glasgow with a charity box, keeping a percentage of the proceeds for himself.

  Early sex

  With his dark hair, full lips and large dark eyes, Roy was a good-looking youth who was having regular sex by his mid-teens. At sixteen his sex education increased markedly when he was seduced by a female shopkeeper in her early thirties. He did casual work at her shop but she was soon taking him out for expensive meals, after which he shared her bed.

  Most young men would have fallen in love with her – but Roy was already more interested in her worldly goods. He started to steal regularly from the shop till, using the money to buy tailored clothes which allowed him to patronise upmarket restaurants and mingle with the rich.

  She gave him an expensive jacket, a gesture which angered his father. The man shouted in the youth’s face, demanding that he return the gift. Sixteen-year-old Roy produced a knife to counter this verbal violence. His father backed off, never threatening him again.

  A life of crime

  Roy Hall left school at the earliest opportunity and started to steal for a living, taking cash or jewellery from shops and houses. When the family moved to Catterick Army Camp in Yorkshire during the war, he stole from the soldiers there too. His mother began an affair with a major and was soon pregnant, giving birth to a son, Donald, upon the family’s return to Glasgow. Roy would never like this half-brother and would eventually murder him.

  Bisexuality

  The Halls now took in a Polish Freedom Fighter as a lodger, and when he made a pass at Roy, the teenager enjoyed the experience. The young captain fellated him and they formed a close friendship which involved visiting museums and classy restaurants. From now on, Roy would be bisexual, enjoying what he called the best of both worlds – though he was the first to admit that he preferred men to women, that only a man could give him what he truly desired. He was equally enamoured of stealing, and would later write that ‘just holding jewels made my cock hard.’

  He eventually took a post as a trainee receptionist in a four-star hotel in Rothesay, using his time there to study the rich patrons. Sexually voracious, he also slept with several of the guests. After giving up the hotel job he ran a second-hand shop and made good, legitimate profits. But he was bored and soon returned to crime.

  Eventually these crimes caught up with him and he was sent to prison, released and soon recaught and resentenced, doing time in Barlinnie, Wandsworth and Pentonville. His combined prison sentences would eventually add up to over forty years. He would later say that ‘prison hardens a man, providing justification for the crimes he is going to commit.’ But that didn’t explain how he could steal from his shopkeeper lover who had shown him nothing but kindness when he was sixteen.

  Whilst still in his teens he was diagnosed by a psychiatrist as being ‘maladjusted…an exhibitionist, always anxious to be the centre of attention.’ He was possibly mirroring his mother’s histrionic behaviour. By age twenty-two his psychiatric assessment had worsened and he was certified as insane. Sent to a Glasgow mental hospital, he soon escaped and headed for London. But in December 1944 he was detained indefinitely at Perth Criminal Lunatic Asylum, being released in February 1946. No further information is available on his early diagnosis – but given his subsequent failure to learn from his mistakes and his ability to ill-treat people who were good to him, he probably had psychopathic traits.

  He was clearly a compulsive liar, sometimes telling friends that he’d landed an exclusive butlering job when he was really working in a school kitchen. One of his girlfriends would later say that he lived in a fantasy world and that he’d sometimes leave her bed in the middle of the night and drive hundreds of miles, having had a premonition that he was in danger. His magnetic personality helped him get away with those frequent lies and sudden absences, most of which glamorised every aspect of his life.

  He continued to reinvent himself, even using the surname Fontaine as an act of homage to his favourite film star, Joan Fontaine. He spent the proceeds of his many thefts on living in the finest hotels, dressed and spoke like a gentleman and educated himself about etiquette and antiques. No one meeting the handsome cultured man in a London or Edinburgh hotel lounge would have believed he came from one of the poorest areas of Glasgow, that he was the son of a post-office clerk.

  Separated

  By now, Roy’s mother had left Roy’s father, running away with Roy’s best friend John Wootton. Archibald Hall senior refused to give her a divorce so the couple lived together until his death. (Prior to which, he hadn’t seen Roy for years.) Thereafter they married so that Roy’s friend became his stepfather. All three would remain close, though Marian’s moods remained and she once walked out on her second husband for two weeks. She also ordered her adopted daughter (by then an adult) out of her house one night at midnight, knowing that the girl would have to spend hours on a freezing coach to get home.

  The love object

  The former son of a post office clerk continued to seduce both men and women, sometimes being paid by famous gay men to attend parties where he was openly admired and fondled. But at the end of the Sixties, during one of his many prison sentences, he fell in love for the first time. His lover was called Dave Barnard and he was doing eighteen years for shooting a policeman and for armed robbery. He was in his twenties whilst Roy was forty-six.

  By 1970, Roy had been released on parole and Dave still had years to serve. Determined to have a go-between, Roy seduced a barmaid and single-mother-of-eight called Mary Coggle. Thereafter she cheerfully smuggled letters and gifts to Dave Barnard when she visited him in jail.

  Roy had been staying in a prison-approved hostel, but when he got to know a shopowner called Hazel, he moved in to her apartment. She adored him but he merely saw her as a means of support and only slept with her because he believed she expected it. During this period he also slept with a young male chef and with his half-brother’s girlfriend.

  Surprisingly – given that he still professed to love Dave Barnard – he now married a woman he met at a party, Ruth Holmes. He’d later tell a reporter that he merely liked her and had fun with her – but years later he’d write that he loved her for her independent streak and her intellect and that she was incredibly special to him.

  Unfortunately, during sex with her one night he called out Dave’s name and had to admit to his continuing bisexuality. Ruth tried to come to terms with this but when he was sent back to prison the marriage
floundered, with Roy admitting that he preferred men. Ironically, the love of his life, Dave Barnard, was at last out of prison – but, of course, it was now Roy who was in jail.

  The forty-nine-year-old arranged for his lover to have a Jaguar but Dave Barnard lost control of the car and was killed outright. Roy would later try to excuse his homicides by writing that the killing of innocent people would never have happened if the car had reached its destination – in other words, he only killed because he no longer loved life, his reason for caring having died in the car wreck. He also said ‘I had waited all my life for love, only to have it shown to me and then be snatched away.’ But this simply isn’t true – many of his girlfriends and his wife loved him but he stole their life savings or was repeatedly unfaithful to them.

  The first murder

  Roy continued to kick his heels in prison, taking various lovers including a beautiful young bisexual convict called David Wright. The meeting took place in 1973 and continued after Roy was released. By 1977 Roy was working as a butler for a Lady Peggy Hudson and suggested that she hire David Wright as a live-in handyman. Unfortunately Wright (who was on the run after killing a man in a public toilet) soon stole an expensive ring from the lady of the house. Angered, Roy Fontaine told his lover to give it back but David Wright refused and threatened to tell Roy’s employer that Roy was a lifelong professional thief.

  Wright stormed out of the house and Fontaine eventually went to bed, only to be woken in the early hours when a bullet whistled past him and lodged in the headboard. The two men struggled with the rifle which the drunken Wright was wielding and it battered into Roy’s face, splitting open his cheek. The younger man eventually broke down in tears and helped bandage his lover’s wound so Roy Fontaine pretended to forgive him, but he’d already decided to kill him the following day.