The investigation was made even more complex by an officer from the dead woman’s church who described to police how he had called at Elmgrove on 21 October to collect a charitable donation from Miss Milne. She did not answer the door, he said, but he was certain he had seen her standing at an upstairs bedroom window. When he called back later the same day, he again received no reply. However, he noted that on this occasion the shield on the front door keyhole was lifted when it had not been earlier. If the church officer was correct, it completely contradicted the evidence that Miss Milne had perished on 16 October. On the other hand, if he had indeed seen a woman, but who was not Miss Milne as he had naturally assumed her to be, that opened up the possibility that the killer may have been a woman, or that there was a female accomplice.
Chief Constable Sempill travelled to London to liaise with Scotland Yard and enquire into the spinster’s activities there and any friends who may have visited her during her stays in the Strand Palace Hotel. The continuing investigation and detailed coverage it was given daily in the press had built up major interest in the goings-on in the Broughty Ferry mansion house. Police forces across the land had also been alerted to the hunt for the killer. Ten days after the discovery of the body, police in Maidstone in Kent took more notice than their colleagues elsewhere after they arrested a Canadian for obtaining board and lodgings by fraud. Described as well educated and handsome, he appeared in some ways to match the description of a man sought for the Elmgrove killing, although there was no known connection to the events in Broughty Ferry. The man, Charles Warner, was jailed for fourteen days and as he went off to prison a phone call was placed to the investigating officers in Scotland. At the same time, a photograph of Warner was sent north.
Although the picture was of relatively poor quality, five of those in Broughty Ferry who had seen males in and around Elmgrove at the vital times said they believed Warner was the same man. Amidst great excitement, the five – three women and two men – were put on a train for England to see if they could make a positive identification. When they alighted from the overnight express in London, they were met by a large throng of sightseers, reporters and photographers, for by now the case had also attracted the interest of Londoners.
The next day Warner was taken into the yard of Maidstone Prison and one by one the Broughty Ferry group entered to view a line-up of prisoners. Four of the five picked him out; one of the women said she was uncertain. The tall Canadian was led away protesting his innocence and accusing the witnesses of having colluded.
A few days later, after the conclusion of his short sentence on the minor fraud charge, Warner was met at the prison by Chief Constable Sempill and Trench and arrested for the murder of Miss Milne. He was manacled and taken away in a cab to journey north on the next train to Scotland. A large crowd was at the prison gates to witness the departure. Bizarrely, the cab was stopped en route to the railway station at a nearby bank and Warner, handcuffed to Trench, was allowed to enter to collect money which had been wired to him. As he re-entered the taxi after the transaction, he told reporters who were following in close pursuit, ‘You know they have arrested an innocent man.’ At the railway station, where the air was heavy with smoke and the smell of magnesium from the flash cameras, he continued to inform the large posse of newsmen that he was blameless. News of Warner’s arrest spread north and when his train pulled into Dundee a crowd of more than a hundred people, plus a large contingent of police, waited on the platform for a sight of him – although it was 5.30 in the morning.
Not everyone was convinced of his guilt. The only evidence against him seemed to be that he was handsome and vaguely fitted the description of a man seen around Elmgrove at the material times. The witnesses had made their first identifications from a poor photograph and it was not unnatural that they would want to seem helpful, especially since they had become something of celebrities in their own right. Witnesses in London who were acquainted with Miss Milne had never seen him in her company. More importantly, Warner protested that he had been on the continent at the time she was supposed to have been murdered. As supporting evidence, the Canadian recalled that he had pawned a waistcoat in Antwerp on 16 October and even managed to produce the ticket.
Chief Constable Sempill departed at once for Belgium, taking the pawn ticket with him. Following the instructions given to him by Warner, the policeman located the shop and found that the pawnbroker’s records confirmed the accused man’s account. Next, Semphill travelled to Amsterdam to check another part of Warner’s story – that the British Consul there had issued a passport to the Canadian on 17 October. That, too, was established beyond doubt. The case against the protesting man being held in jail in Dundee dissolved. A short time later he was released.
That was as close as the police came to solving the mystery of the mansion house murder in Broughty Ferry. After Warner had been set free the investigation floundered, all impetus gone, and one of the most celebrated murder mysteries of the 20th century stuttered to an inglorious end. Although much of the evidence suggests that the spinster with the widely contrasting lifestyles died on 15 or 16 October at the hands of some stranger she met on her romantic expeditions away from home, that is by no means certain. The lightness of the blows which hastened her end could have been inflicted by a female, and one witness, the church officer, was emphatic he had seen a woman standing at an upper window five days after that. What if she had been the killer? The proposition that a woman might have been the attacker fits with the fact that none of the poker blows were severe enough to have killed Miss Milne. And the curious infliction of what apparently amounted to ‘prods’ with the carving fork could hint at a form of torture rather than an attempt to kill. No-one ever explained either why a flower vase full of urine was found on a back stairway, despite the mansion having several toilets and bathrooms. Additionally, the floor of the hall close to where Miss Milne lay dead was littered with spent matches. What was their significance?
Much of that may support the notion subsequently whispered by locals that the dastardly deed was the work of a demented young woman whose parents lived close by. It was said she was usually detained in the Dundee lunatic asylum but was occasionally released for “holidays” with her wealthy family. Could she have visited and returned again after initially attacking Miss Milne? It was also claimed that after the murder she was never again permitted home.
Detective-Lieutenant John Trench endured his own form of torture after the case against Warner collapsed. When the Canadian had been arrested, the detective promptly abandoned his ‘strong’ chance-thief theory, switching to a conviction of Warner’s guilt.
This appeared to have less to do with actual evidence than personal prejudices and the fact that the man they detained in London had a nomadic lifestyle and used a variety of aliases.
In his official statement, previously held privately by the police for almost a century, it is revealed that Trench had rapidly come round to the idea the murder was of such a brutal nature that it was likely to have been the work of a ‘maniac or foreigner.’ In a further demonstration of ‘impartiality’, he describes Warner as being ‘very, very coarse and vulgar.’ And, oblivious to the opinion of witnesses that the man they’d seen was handsome, stated that the suspect ‘has a particularly repulsive face.’ More bizarrely still, Trench disputed that Warner was a Canadian, claiming he had ‘all the peculiarities of an accomplished American crook who had probably served many terms of imprisonment on the Continent or in America.’ Just to round things off, he confided that Warner struck him as a ‘particularly bad man who, I would say without hesitation, was capable of committing any crime.’
To Trench’s credit, he returned to Glasgow disappointed but contrite, subsequently agonising at length about how he had jumped to conclusions and how he and Sempill had arrested a perfectly innocent man for a murder which had taken place when the accused was hundreds of miles away in a foreign land.
It may have been these thoughts which prompted
him to consider again the case of Oscar Slater, the man he had helped convict of the murder of the Glasgow spinster four years earlier. Trench had long felt uneasy about the quality of the evidence which had put Slater in the dock and after returning from Dundee he was even more convinced that an injustice had been done. He played a prominent part in demanding a review of the case and his agitation caused so much trouble he was thrown out of the police, eventually being reinstated. He died with Slater still incarcerated in Peterhead Prison. Sadly, he never knew that the information he had passed to a journalist led to the publication of a book which ultimately forced the authorities to re-examine the circumstances of the murder of the Glasgow spinster. They found that Oscar Slater had indeed been innocent and after almost nineteen years in prison he was freed, his conviction quashed.
Miss Jean Milne's unsavoury and untimely demise is likely to forever remain a mystery but, as far as Oscar Slater at least was concerned, it was not entirely in vain.
On her death, Elmgrove, the mansion where she lived and died so mysteriously, was bequeathed to the Church of Scotland and, under a new name, eventually became a care home for the elderly. Miss Milne’s sole heir to her financial estate was her closest relative, Frank, a nephew. He was also a young man who lived in London and during that last summer she spent there he visited her twice at the Strand Palace Hotel. He was such a favourite of his aunt that earlier that year she had bought him a car.
23
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
They had never set eyes on each other before their paths crossed in the centre of the city that fine summer evening. Window-shoppers still strolled Murraygate in the fading August sunshine of 1977 and, in Dundee’s downtown pubs, the Thursday-night regulars had been joined by a stranger from Montrose.
At 8.45 p.m., in a flat tucked behind some of the shops, Linda Batchelor volunteered to fetch carry-out meals for herself and her boyfriend, whom she’d gone to visit an hour earlier. The pretty 19-year-old clerk departed with a cheery ‘Bye for now!’ and set off for a Chinese restaurant 200 yards away in St Andrews Street.
At exactly the same moment, 18-year-old Brian John Mearns walked out of a bar in that street and turned into Murraygate.
They met at the doorway of Richards, a fashion store with a short arcade of off-street window displays that provided shelter when it rained and privacy from those passing along the street. No one knows for sure if the two teenagers even spoke to each other, but within moments of them first coming face to face, Linda was fighting for her life in the concealed corner of the arcade.
She did not win. A few minutes later a passer-by saw Mearns emerge from the entrance, wiping his face. His demeanour aroused the suspicions of the man, who just before had heard noises coming from the precinct. He ran into the arcade and found Linda dying from injuries which were later described as ‘utterly horrifying’. She was naked from the waist down, apart from socks, and had suffered serious head injuries. A broken pick shaft had been driven so far into her body through her private parts that it had all but disappeared.
The observant pedestrian who made the dreadful find rushed back into the street to summon aid, then followed in the direction her attacker had taken, hoping to apprehend him. He never saw him again. The 18-year-old who, minutes earlier, had committed such a savage and random murder had quickly disappeared into a restaurant in St Andrews Street, where he asked to use the toilet. As he desperately sought to remove his victim’s blood and straighten his appearance, his description was being broadcast over the police radio network.
Among others, it was heard by PC David Martin, who was on patrol duty in the city centre.
At 9.15 p.m. he was in Commercial Street when he spotted Mearns approaching and noted that he matched the description of the subject of the all-points bulletin. As the young fugitive came closer, PC Martin also detected what appeared to be bloodstains on his shoes and damp patches on his trousers. The constable’s heart beat faster, but he remained composed. Making no reference to the vicious attack that had been carried out a short distance away, he merely asked Mearns where he was going. The untidy teenager replied that he was about to make his way back to his home in Baltic Street in Montrose. Then, out of the blue, he asked, ‘How is the lass?’ As incriminating remarks went, it was about as damning as they come. Taken to police headquarters, the 18-year-old made other statements which clearly involved him in the crime.
Experienced detectives, well used to lengthy murder inquiries and the frustrating brick walls that can be encountered in the hunt for the perpetrator, were taken by surprise at the suddenness of the events of the evening, for the circumstances were unique. In the space of just thirty minutes, two young people – total strangers, as far as anyone knew – come face to face utterly by accident; on the spur of the moment, one is viciously killed by the other, who takes flight; then, just as much by chance, the suspect walks into the arms of the police and immediately implicates himself.
The murder stunned the city but, even after the completion of the court formalities, no one was any closer to understanding what had brought on such a frenzied, sadistic and random assault. When Mearns appeared at the High Court in Dundee eight weeks later, the two men at the heart of the proceedings were advocates who in later years would become judges in the supreme court. That day, however, they could shed little light on the nauseating drama that had played out in the heart of a city on that peaceful summer evening.
After Mearns pled guilty to the murder, Advocate Depute John Wheatley, prosecuting, recounted the bizarre circumstances of the killing and said the accused man had previously appeared to have had normal relationships with girlfriends, although he also seemed to have something of a drink problem. On the day of the murder, ‘for reasons that were obscure’, Mearns had decided to travel from Montrose to Dundee, where he had visited two bars. Mr Wheatley explained that although there were sexual injuries inflicted in the assault, there were no signs of intercourse.
Andrew Hardie, the defending advocate, said that because of the nature of the assault, psychiatric reports had been obtained about Mearns, but they gave no indication that his responsibilities were substantially diminished, Nor did they indicate that he required any psychiatric treatment.
Pressed by the judge, Lord Wylie, to provide an explanation for the killing, Mr Hardie said he had tried to determine one, but Mearns had either been unwilling or unable to provide a reason. Jailing Mearns for life, with a recommendation that he be detained for at least fifteen years, His Lordship told the unemotional teenager standing quietly before him, ‘This is about the most horrible murder I have come across in all my years on the bench and at the Bar.’
It was not the last the public was to hear of Brian John Mearns, however. Exactly twenty-two years later, while serving out the last months of his life sentence, he failed to return to Saughton Prison in Edinburgh from an outside work placement while training for his eventual release. He had gone on the run to London with a 25-year-old woman he had become involved with while carrying out service with a charitable group as part of his freedom preparations programme. A week after absconding, he was found unconscious in a street in Shrewsbury after taking a drugs overdose. It seemed he and his female companion had argued the day after arriving in London and she had immediately returned to Scotland. Mearns was admitted to hospital in a critical condition and spent some time in an intensive care unit before being taken back under guard to Saughton to resume his sentence. He was still detained at the time of writing (2005).
His decision to flee baffled members of the Scottish Prison Service, who could not understand why he should choose to escape when his official release had been so imminent. It made no sense at all – just like the appalling crime which sent him to prison in the first place.
24
REPENTANCE
Saturday afternoon in Hilltown. A distant cheer carrying on the icy February wind sweeping over the tenement blocks told of a goal at nearby Dens Park. Few who bent into the breeze as they wen
t about their business cared very much. Those who supported Dundee FC were already at the game and the rest were more interested in the betting shops or purchasing something for that evening’s tea.
The agitated figure who thrust his way into a side-street phone box was least interested of all. His head was near to bursting with what consumed him and all he could think of was shouting it out and finding some peace. He dialled 999 and asked for the police. Then he told his extraordinary tale to the female operator, ‘I’ve killed my father. You’d best come and get me.’
He was still unburdening himself when the policeman who had been alerted by the switchboard staff at headquarters in Bell Street a mile away arrived outside the telephone box. The caller hung up and, turning to the officer, exclaimed, ‘Aye. It was me. I killed him. I put a pillow over his face.’
The next few hours that afternoon in 1974 were among the most bizarre of the detective’s entire career. The man identified himself as 42-year-old Joseph Gibson, who lived in Rosebank Street with his 81-year-old father, and he invited the officer to go home with him to see for himself what he had done. When they went to the ground-floor flat together the old man was dead, sure enough. He lay serenely on a bed, dressed in his best suit and with cotton wool filling his nostrils. He had clearly been visited by an undertaker and the funeral was just as obviously imminent. Death, it appeared, had been as a result of perfectly natural causes.
What began as routine checks, however, produced some startling facts. The man who had been so anxious to confess his guilt knew all about killing. Fourteen years earlier he had been sent to Carstairs State Institution without limit of time after strangling his mistress, with whom he lived, with a scarf. He had been detained for twelve years before being released on licence. A telephone call to the dead man’s family doctor revealed that the GP had not examined the corpse of Mr Gibson senior and a death certificate had been issued purely on the basis of the man’s medical history, which indicated that he had suffered from several potentially fatal diseases. A hasty post-mortem by the police surgeon told a different story. Mr Gibson’s life had ended after suffocation, most likely by a pillow or something similar.
The Lawkillers Page 24
