The Lawkillers

by Alexander McGregor

  It all began more than twenty-four hours earlier, on the Saturday evening, when the occupants of the imposing villa – retired doctor Alexander Wood and his wife Dorothy (both 78) – heard noises coming from their basement. They entered to find a man with his back to them who turned, startled, at their entrance. It is difficult to know who was most surprised, but Dorothy reacted instinctively and stepped towards the intruder, who was aged about thirty. She shouted for her husband – disabled and with an artificial leg and who had been released from hospital only the day before – to call for the police, all the while pointing her finger in the face of the stranger in her home. He too reacted without thought and grabbed her arm. At the sight of this apparent attack on his distraught wife, Dr Wood moved forward to protect Dorothy and began lashing at the excited man with his walking stick. Dorothy tugged desperately at the stranger’s hair and the man shouted that he didn’t want to hurt either of them, but as the doctor struck him once more with his cane, that is exactly what he did.

  Reason left the man and he turned to pick up a slater’s hammer that lay in the basement. Screaming and shouting at the two old-age pensioners who had tried so gamely to protect themselves and their home, he lashed out, swinging the hammer-headed, hooked weapon and punching them at the same time.

  Even the demented attacker did not know how long the frenzy lasted. The passage of time ceased for him as he rained blows on the helpless couple and his next recollection was standing gazing down at their dead bodies lying before him on the floor, covered in blood. He began to shake and simultaneously laugh and weep. Then he vomited and for the next two hours he sat on the floor beside the corpses.

  But reason had not entirely left him. Remembering why he had entered the house through the basement window, the housebreaker-turned-double-killer made a quick search of other parts of the villa and loaded silverware and jewellery into one of the family’s suitcases. He took rings and watches, necklaces and earrings and even a tea-set, a haul valued at £2,000.

  Then he put on Dr Wood’s raincoat to cover his own blood-soaked shirt and, glancing once more at his tragic victims, quickly left the house and hurried down Perth Road. He did not stop walking until he arrived at the railway station and seemed oblivious to the fact that he presented a noticeable figure, being dressed for rain on one of the warmest evenings of the year. A short time later, he boarded a train for London.

  During the coming days, while the man sought refuge in various areas of the south coast of England and sold the stolen jewellery, police in Dundee tried to make sense of the savage attack which had stunned the city. Detective Chief Superintendent James Cameron, leading the murder hunt, had investigated his share of brutal killings in his time, but was clearly shaken at what he had seen in the basement of 2 Roseangle. Appealing for witnesses, he unusually broadened the call for assistance to include members of the Dundee underworld, stating publicly that the degree of violence was not normal for them and he was convinced that they would feel the same abhorrence as he did at what had taken place.

  It was a plea that brought results and several housebreakers made contact to pass on points of information, at the same time expressing their distaste at the fate of the two helpless 78-year-olds. Yet there was nothing which gave the merest hint as to who might have been responsible. Door-to-door enquiries were stepped up and renewed appeals were launched through the media. A breakthrough seemed imminent when a local GP came forward to say she had been troubled by a fear that the dreadful slaughter might have been committed by one of her patients. She had racked her conscience and had decided it was her duty to pass on the name of the man she suspected. It was the kind of assistance the murder team was hoping for and the lead was immediately followed up – only for it to fall at the first hurdle when the suspect provided an impeccable alibi for the relevant times.

  Among the other witnesses who came forward were several students who had lazed that sunny May afternoon on the lawns at Seabraes, the green oasis in Perth Road which almost forms part of the Dundee University campus. It was where the quartet of footballing students had played and where the always neatly trimmed grass adjoined the home of the Woods. The sunbathers told of seeing the old couple outside the house in late afternoon, waving off their dentist son Nicholas, who was travelling back to his home in Banchory. It was believed he was the last person – apart from the killer – to have seen the elderly couple alive, and that they had probably perished within an hour of his departure.

  One of those who responded to the police appeals for help was a young woman who worked in the Labour Club, a short distance from the Woods’ villa. She recalled that on the Saturday afternoon an ‘odd-looking’ man had arrived at the door of the club to ask for directions to the home of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dunkeld, whose official residence was in Roseangle. She gave a good description of the strange visitor, whom she thought was aged about thirty, and remarked that he stood out because of the dated style of shirt with its large floral patterns that he wore. At the bishop’s house, door-to-door enquiries revealed that a man fitting the same description had suddenly appeared in the garden there, but he had quickly departed after being confronted by the priest’s housekeeper.

  As these facts took their place in the growing murder log being compiled in the days after the discovery of the bodies, another, apparently unrelated topic surfaced. The latest edition of the Police Gazette arrived at police headquarters in Bell Street and a minor listing showed that Dundee-born Henry John Gallagher, sometimes known as Reid, had failed to return to Maidstone Prison after a home leave on 12 May. He was aged twenty-nine and serving a three-year sentence for burglary.

  Bells began to tinkle. Detective Inspector William Hart recognised Gallagher as the man who eight years earlier had carried out a vicious assault on a Dundee minister, the Rev. Roy Hogg, minister of the High Kirk in Kinghorne Road and moderator of Dundee Presbytery. Gallagher had unexpectedly appeared one afternoon in June 1972 at the kirk manse in Adelaide Place, saying he was in great distress and apparently seeking spiritual advice. The minister was alone at the time but, having no reason to turn him away, invited the stranger in. Within moments Gallagher had demanded £20, saying that if he did not get it he would kill the cleric then go on to steal. In a prolonged ordeal, during which he tried four times to escape, Mr Hogg was severely beaten and kicked, then finally bound hand and foot by a dressing-gown cord. Gallagher ransacked the house before departing with a haul of silver.

  He had no real hope of getting away with the attack. During his time in the manse, Gallagher had recounted a long tale of woe about his tragic life and had given his name and even an address. Despite his terrifying experience, the 67-year-old Mr Hogg was able to build an Identikit image of his attacker. This was then successfully matched to a police photograph taken during an earlier arrest of Gallagher, who had embarked on a life of crime as a schoolboy and who spent his first period in custody as a 12-year-old.

  Quickly arrested for the assault and robbery at the manse, Gallagher was jailed for three years. He did not complete the sentence, however. Several months after his High Court appearance, he went on the run from Bridge of Earn Hospital, where he had been admitted from nearby Perth Prison to receive treatment for Crohn’s disease (from which he had suffered since his teenage years). He vanished from the hospital wearing only pyjamas and a dressing gown.

  The escapee eventually surfaced in Stockton-on-Tees and, after a period of sleeping rough and carrying out muggings, he once more decided to call on a clergyman for aid. He randomly chose the home of Father Donald Cronin, the 69-year-old parish priest of St Cuthbert’s, and proceeded to unburden himself about his troubled life and the illness he had, which he repeatedly said would claim his life by the time he was thirty. The elderly priest listened but replied that he was unable to help, advising Gallagher to visit the local Social Security office. As he led his visitor out, Father Cronin took Gallagher’s hand in his and remarked, ‘God bless you, my son.’

  This b
lessing seemed to ignite a suppressed rage within the prison runaway. He exploded with anger and set about the defenceless priest, striking him a dozen times with a club. Gallagher admitted later that he had no recollection of what had taken place, only that when his anger had subsided the room was a wreck, with table and chairs overturned and Father Cronin lying unconscious on the floor. Doctors were to say that only the unusual thickness of his skull had saved the clergyman’s life. Gallagher fled to Harrogate, where he collapsed as a result of his illness. He was soon arrested. Once again, he readily admitted his crimes. This time he was given seven years.

  When the Dundee murder team reacquainted themselves with Gallagher’s background, it became apparent that he might well have returned to his native Dundee after going on the run from his latest stretch in Maidstone Prison. His fondness for attacking clerics also fitted perfectly with the circumstances surrounding the killing of Dr and Mrs Wood, as their assailant had apparently attempted earlier to locate the Roseangle home of the Roman Catholic bishop.

  Armed with this thought, the detectives concentrated their inquiry on tracking him down. They learned from a Dundee prostitute that Gallagher had indeed recently been in town. They re-interviewed the helpful employee at the Labour Club in Roseangle and presented her with a selection of some ten photographs of men aged about thirty – among them Gallagher’s. She had no hesitation in identifying him as the ‘odd-looking’ man in the flamboyant shirt who had called at the club a few hours before the Woods had so savagely been hacked to death. Detective Inspector Hart, showing the photographs to his namesake, Bishop Hart, the Bishop of Dunkeld, and the clergyman’s housekeeper, received the same confirmation.

  The murder detectives now knew without doubt who they were looking for, particularly since the brass nameplate on the doorway at 2 Roseangle could easily have been mistaken for the type found outside a manse.

  In the days after the savage attack on the two 78-year-olds, police were involved in one of the biggest manhunts that Dundee had ever experienced. As word filtered out about just how viciously the helpless pensioners had been put to death, local people came forward with any scrap of information they thought might help. Witnesses told of a man in a raincoat and bloodstained hat making his way down Perth Road, carrying a suitcase, on the Saturday evening. The trail of witnesses led to the railway station and it became evident the killer had left the city by train shortly after his act of slaughter amidst the sunny, tranquil setting of Dundee’s academic quarter. But where was he? With a twenty-four-hour start before anyone was even aware of his dreadful deed, he could be just about anywhere.

  It was a week later before the public next became aware of Henry John Gallagher. The fugitive had found his way to Ramsgate – there he had fallen in with a couple who had promised, for a price, to provide him with false identification which would enable him to travel to France. Gallagher explained away his haste to leave the country by saying he was on the run from Scotland for drugs offences.

  The double-killer then reverted to type, following an inexplicable but horribly predictable course of action. Desperate to cleanse his conscience before fleeing Britain, he stopped a woman in the street to ask for directions to the home of the nearest Roman Catholic priest. He was pointed in the direction of the residence of Father Paul Hull, a frail 88-year-old Benedictine monk, who lived with his 73-year-old housekeeper Maud Lelean in Hereson Road (next to St Ethelbert’s Church in Ramsgate). He was seen entering the presbytery and then, a little more than an hour later, leaving it – and wearing a raincoat he had not previously had on.

  On his arrival at the door of the manse, Gallagher had been welcomed by the white-haired priest with the kind face and he was immediately invited inside and given a seat. The caller said nothing for a few minutes, then hesitatingly disclosed that he had an important matter to confess, but would only do so if Father Hull promised never to reveal what he was about to be told. The priest agreed, but responded that if Gallagher did not trust him, he should not unburden himself. There was another prolonged silence, broken only when Maud Lelean entered with tea and buns for the pair. That, along with the patient, gentle coaxing by the old man seated opposite him, seemed to relax Gallagher and he finally uttered the words he had come to say: ‘Father, I have killed two people in Scotland.’

  That was as far as the confessor got. Father Hull sprang to his feet and rushed for the door, shouting to Maude who was returning to the room that the visitor was a murderer. Gallagher grabbed the cleric by the arms, blocking his route to the front door and pleading all the time that he should not repeat to anyone else what he had just been told. Maud, despite her terror and frailty, attempted to force the man who was attacking her kindly employer to release his hold. But she was quickly pushed away.

  That was the point at which a veil once more descended over Gallagher’s rationality, later to be described by him as ‘like a switch being flipped’. He picked up the first thing at hand, the priest’s walking stick, and in a demented rage set about the defenceless pair with unrestrained ferocity. His next conscious moment was several minutes later, when he found himself standing over their blood-covered bodies, shouting, ‘Where’s your God now? Tell me!’ Then, in a further chilling replay of the ghastly events that had unfolded inside 2 Roseangle a week earlier, he searched the house for jewellery and silver, put the priest’s raincoat on top of his blood-saturated clothing and fled the scene.

  Some thirty minutes later, assistant priest Father Patrick Whealan called at the manse to discover the scene of horror in the blood-spattered study. He found Father Hull dead. Maud, seriously injured, was still alive, though unconscious. She was rushed to Margate Hospital and detectives began a bedside vigil in the hope of learning what had gone on in the house adjoining St Ethelbert’s Church. However, she died three days later without regaining consciousness.

  Gallagher, meanwhile, returned on the night of the murder to the Stag’s Head pub for his arranged meeting with the couple who were going to arrange his false identification. There he gave them some of the stolen jewellery in exchange for a rent book and cheque book, which they assured him would allow him to make a day-trip to France. The couple noted that their new acquaintance was behaving oddly and queried several times if anything was troubling him, but accepted his reassurances that he was merely feeling a little under the weather. They also remarked to Gallagher that ‘something big’ must have occurred in Ramsgate, since the town was buzzing with police activity, including in the Stag’s Head where two CID officer known to them had arrived shortly after they had. Since news of the bloodbath in the manse had not yet been made public, they were in no position to fit the jigsaw pieces together.

  That night Gallagher stayed at the couple’s home, but was unable to sleep for a single moment and chain-smoked his way through two packets of cigarettes. The next morning, as England awoke to the full horror of what had taken place in the home of the priest, the now-multiple killer knew he had to leave the area as speedily as he could. He boarded the first bus he came across. It took him to Canterbury and from there he went by train to London, where he spent the night.

  Back in Dundee, the Woods murder squad had become aware of the fate of Father Hull and his housekeeper and immediately notified their police colleagues in England of their strong belief that they might all be looking for the same man. A nationwide hunt was launched, every police force in the country being alerted that a man who had almost certainly killed four times in crazed, psychopathic attacks on elderly people was on the loose and liable to turn up anywhere.

  Henry John Gallagher, sometimes known as Reid, who had started his life of crime as a petty schoolboy thief, had leapfrogged the rest of the underworld to become the most wanted man in Britain and one of the most dangerous men police forces on both sides of the border had ever encountered. No one doubted that he was perfectly liable to slaughter again, his most likely victim being an elderly person living in a large house who was probably a minister of religion.

&n
bsp; Bizarrely, although there was every possibility that he might next surface back in his native Scotland, the media there was prevented from using his photograph in connection with the deaths of Dr and Mrs Wood because his identification might infringe his right to a fair trial. This prohibition still exists in criminal cases, though in a slightly more relaxed form.

  There were fewer scruples in England and Gallagher’s photograph started to appear on the front of every newspaper in the country, alongside headlines such as ‘Catch This Man’ and ‘Danger Man’. The fugitive began desperately moving from town to town, stealing £400 from a safe in a Salvation Army hall in Southend before making his way to Brighton. The town was packed with Bank Holiday visiting skinheads and Gallagher made a clumsy attempt at shaving his head so that he might disappear into the crowd. Instead, the cuts he inflicted on his scalp made him more noticeable than ever. Next, he wore a loud shirt, sunglasses and yellow and white cap and put a camera round his neck to pose as an American tourist. His amateur disguises did little to help conceal his true identity and the huge nationwide exposure being given to the hunt meant he was beginning to be recognised almost at every turn.

  He spent a night in a guest house in Eastbourne but was forced to escape through a window when he heard the female owner tell her cook that she thought her guest with the strange haircut was the man police were seeking. From there he took flight on a bus making a day trip to Windsor Safari Park, but had to make another quick exit when a passenger started comparing his reflection in a bus window with the photograph of him on the front page of the newspaper in her lap. Gallagher realised his only chance of remaining at liberty was to keep on the move and he went next to Slough and Reading and then on to York after stowing away on board a train.