by Dick Kirby
Only when Smithson was dead would Caruana report this matter to the police; but that was in the future. Right now, with Caruana tremblingly handing over a wad of currency, a book was produced and instructions were given to start a collection for Fay’s defence and to record in it the details of the benefactors and their donations. It was handed to one of the café’s clientele, Philip Louis Ellul, known variously as ‘The Malt’, Philip Gatt or Philip Buhagian. Ellul had convictions for possessing a gun and living on immoral earnings and ran a string of what were referred to as ‘second- or third-rate prostitutes’. He was a tough, stocky man, twenty-nine years of age. Presenting someone like Ellul with such a menial, book-keeping task was not just a mistake, it was nothing short of lèse-majesté, rather like asking the Queen to clean up after her corgis.
Ellul was well known to Smithson; the men had previously been engaged together in various kinds of dirty work. In fact, only the previous week, when the two had been the best of friends, they had taken breakfast together. However, that friendship was about to change, quite dramatically.
*
On the evening of 25 June, with Fay Richardson still lingering in her cell at Holloway Prison, Smithson arrived at 88 Carlton Vale, NW6 at 7.30 and asked to see the landlord, whose name happened to be George Caruana. When he discovered that Caruana was not there, he asked two occupants, Marlene Marian ‘Blondie’ Bates and Margaret Turnbull, who shared a room, if he could wait; they agreed, and he accompanied them to their room on the third floor. Within half an hour there was a knock on the front door, and a woman in the basement flat admitted Philip Ellul, together with Victor George Sebastian Alfred Spampinato, aged twenty-two, a doorkeeper of Chicksand Street, E1 and Joseph Zammit, aged twenty-six, a cook from Christian Street, Aldgate. Spampinato, like Ellul, was a friend of Caruana, and it appeared that these two had also come to see him.
There were angry words between Ellul and Smithson, and Ellul (allegedly) said, ‘You’ve wanted me for a long time, haven’t you, Tommy?’ Ellul then pulled out a .38 automatic, and as Smithson came towards him he fired; the bullet hit Smithson in the arm and as Ellul ran out of the room, Smithson shouted, ‘I’ll get you in the East End for this, tonight!’
He tried to open the door but was unable to do so; someone was probably hanging on to the handle outside. But then Spampinato got up, went over to the door and murmured a few words in Maltese. The door opened, and Margaret Turnbull, who had ascended the stairs, saw Spampinato holding a knife and appearing to be helping Ellul to do something with a gun. She entered the room, and as Smithson was showing his wound to her the door burst open and Ellul rushed in. Smithson pushed Miss Turnbull out of the way and she fell on to a couch; Smithson again went for Ellul, who shot him in the neck.
The three men fled in a car which had been parked thirty yards away from the house, driven by a fourth man, and Smithson staggered down the stairs and into the roadway, where he collapsed in the gutter and, according to East End folklore, said to a passing child, ‘Good morning, I’m dying.’ He was taken to Paddington Hospital, where he did just that.
A murder investigation commenced under the control of Detective Superintendent Albert Webb, a veteran CID officer now at the end of his service. In 1945, as a detective sergeant, he had accompanied Detective Chief Inspector Bob Fabian KPM (‘Fabian of the Yard’) to Warwickshire to investigate what became known as ‘The Witchcraft Murder’, and four years later, as a detective inspector, he had recorded the astonishing admissions from the acid bath murderer, John George Haigh, which had sent him to the gallows.
The newspapers were full of the murder – even the 27 June edition of the faraway Sarasota Herald Tribune excitedly (if inaccurately) informed its readers that this was ‘England’s first gangland killing since the 1920s’ but went a little too far when they added that Smithson ‘had been a friend of Jack Spot’s’.
Details of the suspects were quickly circulated; at six o’clock in the morning of 27 June, Ellul and Spampinato walked into New Scotland Yard, where two hours later they were seen by Webb. Telling them he was making enquiries into the death of Smithson, Webb said, ‘I believe you two men were present at the time. Would you be prepared to tell me if that is so?’
Surprisingly, senior detectives really did talk to suspects like that in those days, and just as unusually, Ellul replied, ‘Sure, it was me that shot him. He was going to do me if I didn’t get out of London and I don’t stand for that.’
For good measure, Spampinato added, ‘I was with him when he shot him. He’s my friend and what he says is OK by me.’
Ellul then said, ‘I’ll tell you the whole set-up, if you like’, and proceeded to do so in a written statement, which in part read:
I backed into a corner by the door and pulled out a gun which I was carrying inside the top of my trousers. I pulled the trigger and it clicked. Then he came towards me with the scissors and I hit him with my hand. He fell on the bed, then he flew back at me. I pulled the trigger again, and I shot him. He was still standing up and I walked out of the door . . . I didn’t intend to kill him. I didn’t even know I was going to see him that day.
The same evening, a Flying Squad team pulled up outside an address in Berners Street, W1, and collected Zammit, who was taken to Harrow Road police station. At 7.30 pm, he was seen by Webb, who told him that he believed that he was present during the shooting of Smithson, and Zammit replied, ‘Yes, I was with Philip and Victor.’
The driver of the getaway car, Louis Magri, was traced and questioned. He was not charged, but Ellul, Spampinato and Zammit were – with the capital murder of Tommy Smithson.
An inquest at St Pancras Coroner’s Court was opened and adjourned on 28 June; three weeks went by, and then at Willesden Magistrates’ Court Mr E.C. Jones outlined the case for the prosecution to the magistrate, saying that Ellul had told the police that after the shooting, he had thrown the gun over a fence in Camden Town. He had also stated, said Mr Jones, that he and Spampinato had gone by train to Manchester and thence by taxi to Salford. Seeing in the newspapers that Smithson was dead, they had decided to return to London and go to Scotland Yard.
Marlene Bates gave evidence, telling the magistrate, ‘Philip pulled out a gun and as he pulled it out, Tommy went towards him. There was a shot. After he fired, Philip ran straight out of the room.’ After relating how Smithson had tried unsuccessfully to open the door and Margaret Turnbull came in, Miss Bates described how when the door burst open again Smithson pushed Miss Turnbull out of the way:
As he did so, Ellul came bursting into the room. Smithson put his arms out in front of him and made to go at Philip. Then Philip shot him. I saw nothing in Smithson’s hands. I covered my face with my hand. It was terrifying. The next thing I saw was Philip going out of the room.
She was then shown a pair of scissors but stated she was not sure if they were in the room at the time.
Margaret Turnbull – she had now changed her address to Queen’s Gardens, Bayswater – told the court that she had seen Ellul shoot Smithson.
Wishing to paint a complete picture of the murder victim, James Burge for the defence asked Superintendent Webb, ‘Is it right that Smithson was a bully with a reputation for ruthless violence?’
Webb replied that he had looked through Smithson’s record and could see no evidence that he had ever used a weapon: ‘When he committed violence, when he was convicted, he did the damage with his hands and feet.’
This provided an opening which all defence lawyers love, because it enabled Burge to sneer, ‘I’m sure he would be grateful for that tribute.’
A submission that Zammit had no case to answer was rejected by the magistrate, the three men pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering Smithson, reserved their defence and were committed for trial at the Old Bailey.
*
With the three prisoners remanded in custody, Billy Hill and the Kray twins attended the showbiz-style funeral of Tommy Smithson on 4 July 1956. Hundreds of spectators – not all of
them necessarily mourners – assembled outside the house of Smithson’s mother, in London Fields, Hackney an hour before the procession set out for St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cemetery, Langthorne Road, Leytonstone. Women carrying babies, schoolchildren carrying their satchels, old men in macintoshes and cloth caps and young men with hard faces watched as the funeral cortège passed by. Unfortunately, the hearse suffered a flat rear offside tyre, which had to be hastily changed, but then the procession recommenced with six more Rolls-Royces containing family and friends following the hearse; behind the cortège were fifty more private cars and tradesmen’s vans. There were over a hundred bouquets, wreaths and tributes: ‘Tommy from neighbours’, one read; another simply ‘From a friend’; a third one said enigmatically: ‘Memories from Porkie’. This was a prescient memento from one Arthur ‘Porkie’ Bennett, recently released from eight years’ preventative detention for razor-slashing. There were two floral dice composed of white daisies and cornflowers, one showing four spots, the other three – a gambler’s lucky seven. Not so lucky was Fay Richardson; her application for bail was refused, so she remained in Holloway prison. Instead, she sent a wreath with the words, ‘Till we meet again. Love, Fay’. In contrast to Fay Richardson’s desire to be present, a firm decision not to attend was made by Tommy Smithson’s pretty blonde widow, Jessie. They had parted in 1945, and both she and their daughter were conspicuous by their absence.
There were huge crowds around the graveside, and workers from the nearby Central Line railway tracks looked on as the priest intoned the words, ‘Is this a lesson to us? No matter how we spend our lives, whether for good or evil, death always awaits us . . . ’
East End sentimentality went beyond mawkishness when the bookmaker Sammy Samuels, who had clashed with members of ‘The Brummagem Hammers’ racetrack gang in 1922, offered the opinion that Smithson ‘was as harmless as a day-old chick’. Smithson’s mother had the words ‘No one so true and kind’ engraved on her son’s memorial. However, seeing as how they were referring to the man whose watchword was ‘pay up, or get cut’ it is fairly certain that there were some – George Caruana amongst them – who might have disagreed with those sentiments.
*
One month later, on 3 August, Fay Richardson appeared before Mr A.W. Cockburn QC, the Chairman of the London Sessions, and pleaded guilty to the three charges of theft and false pretences; in fact, she cleared out the entire chequebook because she asked the Chairman to take a further nineteen offences into consideration when he placed her on probation for three years. However, a condition was imposed on the probation order: that she return to live with her mother in Stockport and not return to London during the next three years.
And so Fay Richardson left, saying farewell to her prostitute employer and pausing at the graveside of her former lover to silently bid him adieu – ‘Till we meet again’. Then she was gone. When she next reappeared in London, there would be a short-lived marriage to Alec Sadler, another to Stan Davies, a receiver and Kray associate, a slightly longer liaison with a man who, like Smithson, had been a boxer and whose murder she would witness – he, too, was shot. She also took up with Ray Rosa, a South London hardman of Turkish extraction who had been flogged in prison; he died in a car crash. It appeared that Mrs Davies, formerly Sadler, née Richardson, was accompanied by the angel of death.
*
The trial of the Ellul and Spampinato – no evidence was offered against Zammit and he was discharged – commenced at the Old Bailey on 18 September 1956 before Mr Justice Ashworth, who eight years later would be the last judge in England to send two murderers to the gallows. The Crown’s case was conducted by Mr R.E. Seaton QC. ‘Reggie’ Seaton was a tremendously keen prosecutor and was much admired – by the police, that is.
Another competent barrister (who would go on to become a judge) was Edward Clarke QC, who appeared as defence counsel for Ellul and who told the jury that during the attack upon Caruana by Smithson and his two associates, Caruana had told Smithson, ‘I haven’t any money coming in. You’ve had £1,500 from the club since coming out of prison’.
According to Ellul, Smithson had replied, ‘I could get money from Billy Hill but I don’t want anything to do with him. The only difference between me and him is that he takes ten shillings in the pound and I only take five shillings. I don’t ask you people for money, I demand it.’
In addition, Ellul told the court that a day or two before the killing, Smithson had told him, ‘If you don’t get out of London, I’ll do you’, and consequently, Ellul moved his address. On the day of the killing he had bought an automatic pistol and nine rounds of ammunition from ‘a coloured man in Poplar’.
‘I thought I’d be safer with a gun,’ Ellul told the court. ‘Smithson and his gang had threatened me with a gun.’ Describing how he went to 88 Carlton Terrace on the evening of 25 June to wait to see Caruana, Ellul told the court that he had entered ‘Blondie’ Bates’ room to find Smithson there:
While talking to Miss Bates, I saw her looking at something and turning round, I saw Smithson with a pair of scissors in his hand. He said, ‘I’m going to have you now.’ He made a swing at me and I pulled out the gun. I ducked and hit him on the chin with my fist and he fell on the bed. He jumped up in no time and was after me. I thought he was going to hit me and I shot him. I walked out of the room but I returned after Spampinato had told me that Smithson had been hit. I said I would try and reason with him and help him. Smithson jumped at me with the scissors. I raised my right hand and a shot was fired by me. I rushed out. The last I saw of Smithson was him following me down the stairs. I had no idea he was injured. Spampinato had nothing to do with the firing of the shots.
The following day, Spampinato gave evidence and told the court that he had no quarrel with Smithson (‘a rough fellow, who had beaten up people in a club’) whom he had known for four years, and ‘had never got in his way’.
Referring to the time of the shooting, Spampinato’s barrister, Mr E. St George, asked him, ‘Did you interfere in any way with what was going on between Ellul and Smithson?’
‘I tried to help Smithson when he was hurt’, replied his client.
In cross-examination and referring to when Ellul returned to Miss Bates’ room and fired the second and fatal shot, Reggie Seaton (who a few years later would become the Chairman of the Inner London Sessions) tore into Spampinato: ‘That was a visit to finish off Smithson, who was being a perfect nuisance to you, was it not?’
‘No, sir’, replied the prisoner.
‘And when the first shot was fired, you urged your friend to go back and do it again’, insisted Seaton.
‘That is what you are saying’, replied Spampinato sulkily.
‘And in case it misfired, you had got a knife?’
‘No, sir. I never had a knife in my life’, replied Spampinato.
Louis Magri had been called as a prosecution witness, to prove that he had conveyed the three men to the flat prior to the shooting and had driven them away afterwards. However, he was a better witness for the defence, because he told the jury that Smithson had visited several clubs and was an expert in obtaining money by threats: ‘Smithson was proud of his reputation of being violent and boasted of the beatings-up he had given.’
The next day, 21 September, Mr Justice Ashworth summed up the evidence and told the jury:
Before you can convict Spampinato, you have to be satisfied that he was a party to the firing of the shot by Ellul. You might think that Spampinato was there just trying to help but not wanting to injure anybody. Unless you can find in him any intention to be a party to the killing of Smithson, he is entitled to be acquitted.
And he was; he walked off into the sunset with his girlfriend, ‘Blondie’ Bates. It was a different verdict for Ellul, for whom the judge donned the black cap and issued the death sentence. However, the jury had added a recommendation for mercy and this was heeded by the Home Secretary, Major Gwilym Lloyd-George TD, PC (later 1st Viscount Tenby), who just over a fo
rtnight later, on 8 October, recommended a reprieve. He had refused to commute the death penalty for Ruth Ellis in 1955 (the last woman to be hanged in England), but the Labour politician Samuel Sidney Silverman, who was a passionate opponent of the death penalty, had introduced a private member’s bill to abolish it which was passed by 200 votes to 98 on a free vote in the House of Commons on 28 June 1956. Although the bill would be later defeated in the House of Lords, it was probably sufficient to influence the Home Secretary’s decision.
Ellul had escaped the hangman’s noose by just forty-eight hours; but he would spend the next eleven years in prison.
*
On the day that Ellul was sentenced to death, another trial got underway at the Old Bailey. Almost as soon as removing the black cap, Mr Justice Ashworth commenced presiding over the trial of Walter Edward Downs and Christopher John Thomas, who were charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on George Caruana and with possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. Thomas pleaded not guilty to both charges; Downs pleaded guilty to the first charge but not the second, a plea which was immediately accepted by the utterly incompetent Christmas Humphreys QC, so the case was considerably weakened from the start.
Downs therefore left the dock and the trial commenced against Thomas, who told the jury that when he entered the room at the café in Berners Street, Caruana, whose hands, he noticed, were bleeding, was sitting in a corner. He also noticed that Downs had a knife in his hands. ‘I took the knife from him and put it in my pocket’, he virtuously told the jury. ‘I accompanied Caruana to hospital and later returned with him to the café. I never possessed a gun in my life. Caruana seemed frightened of Smithson and he gave me £30 to give to Smithson.’
