Dorset Murders

by Sly, Nicola;

  ‘So you did not murder her?’ Mr Hawke asked him.

  ‘I did not’, replied McGuire firmly.

  The jury retired at 7.50 p.m. on the third day of the trial but, after a little more than an hour, sent a message to say that they were hopelessly deadlocked. They were asked to continue deliberating for a further two hours to see if the stalemate could be resolved.

  At eleven o’clock they had still failed to reach a unanimous verdict and told the judge that they believed that there was not the slightest chance that they would be able to reach agreement. This left the judge with no choice but to dismiss them and to remand Frank McGuire in custody until the next Assizes, when he would face a retrial. However, the retrial never happened.

  On 25 June, the Attorney General, Sir William Robson, entered a Nolle Prosequi after having received ‘new evidence’ on the case. For reasons that have never been revealed, the charges against Frank McGuire were dropped and he was released from prison on 27 June 1908, a free man.

  In an interview given to the Bournemouth Echo after his release, he thanked his legal representatives and praised his jailers for always treating him as the innocent man he was. He thanked the anonymous donor of a gift of £10, sent to him shortly after the trial, and announced his intention of accepting the offer of another anonymous benefactor, who had promised to set him up in a picture business in any English town he chose. He had chosen Tunbridge Wells, he told the reporter. He failed to mention that, as an innocent man, he would also now benefit from a £100 legacy left to him by Emma Sherriff in her will.

  Surviving documents on the case contain no clues as to the nature of the ‘new evidence’ that secured McGuire’s freedom. However, it is believed that the original trial jury had voted 10–2 in favour of McGuire’s acquittal, so it is possible that the Attorney General simply wished to avoid the expense of another trial that could easily have ended in the acquittal of the accused. No other person has ever been prosecuted in connection with the murder of Emma Sherriff and, officially, the case remains unsolved to this day.

  12

  ‘SHE DOESN’T WANT ANY MONEY WHERE SHE IS TO’

  Gussage St Michael, 1913

  William Walter Burton was a dapper young man who was seen as a cut above the normal Dorset farm worker. Married to an older woman, who ran the post office at Gussage St Michael and also taught at the village school, he was the very picture of respectability – a regular churchgoer who sang in the choir and was also a bell ringer.

  Burton worked as a rabbit trapper and, at Manor Farm, Gussage St Michael, he met twenty-three-year-old cook, Winifred Mary Mitchell, who was actually a distant relation of his by marriage. Winnie, as she was known, was an attractive brunette with a sweet face and a petite but curvy figure. She was a lively, fun-loving young woman who soon found herself strongly attracted to the rugged and virile Burton with his athletic body, sandy hair and neat moustache.

  The couple met regularly at their work and quickly became friends, then lovers, although Winnie apparently baulked at taking the final steps to physical intimacy. Letters were exchanged between them and, reading between the lines, it seems certain that Burton used a degree of emotional blackmail to finally coerce her into submission. In one letter he wrote that he knew that she would be cross and upset because she had said that she would never forgive such a nasty thing as had happened the previous day. The nature of the ‘nasty thing’ seems apparent, as the letter continued to say that her love for him was not very strong. He had proved that he loved her and they had been together long enough to know each other. In other words, ‘if you loved me, you would sleep with me’, and Winnie obviously eventually capitulated to Burton’s demands, because, in 1913, she told him that she was pregnant.

  To Winnie, Burton said exactly the words she wanted to hear. They would be married, he promised. Perhaps they would elope to London, or even Canada. However, behind Winnie’s back, Burton’s true feelings were revealed to his friend, Arthur Bush. To Arthur, Burton confided that he wished he could find some young man to court Winnie and take the blame for her pregnancy. Winnie’s mother, Rose Mitchell, was told only part of the story. Winnie was going away and she would contact her mother as soon as she arrived at her hitherto unknown destination.

  Between them, the two lovers hatched a plan. Winnie was to pack her clothes – and some of Burton’s – in her travelling bag. A car was to collect her from a crossroads near the farm and drive her to Wimborne station, where she would catch the mail train to London. Burton would make his own way to London to avoid arousing suspicion and the couple would then meet up with friends who lived in the capital.

  Burton confided this plan to another friend, carter Fred Butt. Butt was horrified and urged Burton to reconsider, telling him that if he went the police would surely be after him. Burton told him that he planned to shave off his moustache as a disguise and that, if he went, he did not plan on returning to Gussage St Michael ever again. ‘I’m not so sure about that’, replied Butt, sagely.

  However, Butt’s warning seemed to have struck a chord with Burton and, the next time he saw Winnie, he told her that he had changed his mind and would not be going away with her. Winnie was understandably furious with him for going back on his promise. She threatened to reveal her pregnancy to Burton’s wife, not to mention details of Burton’s previous affairs with other women.

  Lily Burton had not the slightest inkling about her husband’s affair with the young cook, nor was she aware that there had been several other dalliances in the past. For a man like Burton, seen as a pillar of his local community, the inevitable consequences of such revelations were unthinkable.

  On 31 March 1913, Winnie finished her dinner at Manor Farm at 2 p.m., then dressed herself in her best clothes, putting on what few trinkets of jewellery she possessed. At 2.55 p.m., she mounted her bicycle and rode off towards the village. Coincidentally, the first person she met on her journey was Lily Burton and the two women chatted for a few moments before Winnie rode on. She was seen by a villager a few minutes later talking to William Burton, who was sitting on some railings. It was the last time she would be seen alive by anyone other than her killer.

  At first, her disappearance didn’t cause too much alarm in the village since it was known that she had already told her mother that she would be leaving. Still, tongues wagged and rumours spread about her possible whereabouts, with William Burton happy to add to the gossip, telling people that he had heard that she had gone to London or to Canada and that he knew she was all right because she had contacted her family.

  However, as well as reassuring villagers about Winnie’s safety, William Burton also made some rather odd remarks. He remarked to Winifred Bailey, another servant at Manor Farm, that if the police found Winnie in the plantation, he would take his oath that he had done nothing to her. Brewer’s drayman Frank Christopher was told by Burton that Winnie had left all her money behind, but that it didn’t matter because ‘She doesn’t want any money where she is to’ [sic]. Burton also visited Winnie’s mother to see if she had heard any news of her daughter and, a couple of weeks later, he was responsible for starting a rumour that ‘Cookie’ had been found in London.

  On 30 April, police were summoned to the cottage of George Gillingham by the rector of Gussage St Michael, the Revd Wright. Some weeks before, George, who worked as a dairyman at Manor Farm, had been walking with his wife in Sovell Plantation, a nearby wood, when they had found a broken set of false teeth. They had picked the teeth up and brought them home, not realising their possible significance. However, the rector was aware that Winnie wore dentures and was quick to notify the police when he spotted the teeth on the Gillingham’s mantelpiece.

  Police began to investigate and soon found two young boys who believed that they had seen an open grave in Sovell plantation the day before Winnie went missing. Searching for primroses, they had stumbled across a large hole that was 5 or 6ft long and about 2ft deep. A large pile of earth and an abandoned spade lay beside the h
ole.

  On 2 May, one of the boys, Henry Palmer, led police to the site of the hole, which had since been filled in and covered with some branches. Sergeant James Stockley poked the ground with a stick and, when it was withdrawn from the soil, he noticed that it bore traces of human hair.

  Police dug down and, eighteen inches below the surface of the ground, located the body of a young woman buried face down. A veil covered her face but it was still possible to recognise the body as that of Winifred Mitchell. Her long coat was undone and some of her underwear was missing. Most of her head had been blown away, apparently by a shotgun, and another piece from her false teeth was located near to her grave.

  Since Burton was the last person known to have seen Winnie alive, police went straight to Manor Farm and arrested him on suspicion of murder. They had already heard that, on 31 March, Burton had borrowed a gun on the pretext of shooting a black and white cat belonging to Fred Boyt. The gun had been returned a couple of hours later and it’s owner, Leonard Mitcham, was warned not to tell anyone that Burton had had the gun all afternoon, but to say instead that they had walked to the top of a nearby hill together and shot at some pigeons. Although Burton had told Mitcham that he had successfully shot the cat, it was in fact very much alive.

  Its owner could testify to that. And Boyt was also able to tell the police that, on the evening of Winnie’s disappearance, Burton had tapped on the window of his cottage and asked Boyt to come with him to Sovell Plantation where he wanted to check some traps. The two had walked together to a bridle path leading to the woods, then Burton had left Boyt for a few minutes. When he returned, he was pushing a woman’s bicycle, which he told Boyt belonged to Winnie.

  Winnie had gone to Canada, he continued and he had promised to return her bicycle to her mother’s home. Boyt was warned that if he ever said anything to anyone about the bicycle then it would be a ‘bad job’ for him, a warning that was repeated several times over the next few weeks.

  View from Cranborne church tower, 1930s.

  When the police arrived to arrest him, Burton’s first question to Sergeant Stockley was ‘Have you found her?’ When Stockley said yes, Burton paled, saying that he knew he would be blamed as it had been said that he was the last person to be seen with her. He then burst into tears.

  Taken to Cranborne police station, Burton expressed concern for his wife and said that it was a shame that he had ever set eyes on Winnie Mitchell. He denied killing her, saying that when he had met her at three o’clock she had told him that she was going to Lower Gussage, and that she had been alive and well when he left her. He intimated that he was merely one of a number of men who should be suspected of murdering Winnie, the obvious implication being that the young cook had been rather free with her favours. If the police would only release him, he told PC Anderson, he could find plenty of men who could support his story. Furthermore, he assured Superintendent Ricketts that he could account for every single minute of his time on the afternoon when Winnie went missing.

  Burton appeared before magistrates at Wimborne on 21 May, charged with the wilful murder of Winifred Mary Mitchell. He pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ but was committed for trial at the next Dorset Assizes, which opened in Dorchester on 1 June 1913 before Mr Justice Ridley.

  The court heard from Fred Boyt and Leonard Mitcham, who repeated their statements to the police and also from Rose Mitchell, who told of finding her daughter’s bicycle leaning against a tree in her garden after Winnie’s disappearance. In the soft earth next to the bike was a footprint made by a man’s hobnail boot, similar to those usually worn by Burton.

  On the second and last day of the trial, Burton himself was put into the witness box. Asked to account for his movements on the day of the murder, he said that he was setting traps until 2 p.m. when he met Mitcham and suggested that they went shooting. The two had walked together up a hill and Burton had fired two cartridges, one at a thrush. Mitcham then left him with the gun, which he put into a nearby pit. Seeing his wife talking to Winnie Mitchell, he had joined them and chatted for a while, after which Winnie had ridden off on her bicycle towards Gussage All Saints. Burton had then returned to his work until it was time to go home, when he had retrieved the gun and returned it to Mitcham. In the evening, he, Mitcham and Boyt had walked up the hill together and he had found the bicycle behind a hayrick. According to Burton, Boyt had been the one to put the bicycle in Mrs Mitchell’s garden.

  Burton denied ever having had sexual relations with Winnie Mitchell and also denied ever telling anyone that she was ‘in trouble’ or that he wished he could find a young man to take her away. He alleged that Winnie had told him that she was going to meet a man from Poole and that she had arranged to leave her bicycle in Burton’s garden so that he could return it to her mother. He admitted to being surprised to find the bike behind the hayrick.

  Asked why he had never mentioned the man from Poole to the police, Burton insisted that Winnie had told him not to say anything.

  ‘If this “man from Poole” had murdered the girl, would you not have liked to see him tried and hanged?’ asked Mr Foote for the prosecution.

  ‘I do not know that he did it, sir’, replied Burton

  In his summing up of the case for the jury, the judge described the murder of Winifred Mitchell as both cruel and deliberate. The accused, he stated, had been most astute in trying to cover up his actions but the judge questioned why not a word had been heard by anyone about a man from Poole until the trial. Had the man from Poole been in the area in the week prior to the murder, digging a grave in the Sovell Plantation? If Burton’s story of the man from Poole were true, why had he not told it before?

  The jury were absent for just nineteen minutes before returning with a verdict of ‘Guilty’. William Walter Burton was sentenced to death.

  He was hanged at Dorchester by Thomas Pierrepoint on 24 June 1913, having made a full confession of his guilt before he died. He purported to have been ‘proper led away’ by Winnie and said that she had ‘made him believe all sorts’. The irony of the case was that the post-mortem examination had confirmed that, although Winnie was not a virgin, she was definitely not pregnant. Whether she genuinely believed that she was, or whether her claim to pregnancy was simply a ruse on her part to take her lover away from his wife, will never be known.

  Whatever the case, but for the discovery of Winnie’s false teeth it is likely that her murder would have remained undiscovered and that her killer would have been free to continue living the life of a respectable pillar of the community.

  13

  ‘I AM INNOCENT OF THIS CRIME — ABSOLUTELY’

  Tuckton, 1921

  Irene May Wilkins was a modest, rather shy spinster who came from a good family. The daughter of a former London barrister, she had reached the age of thirty-one without marrying and, as far as her widowed mother and her three siblings were aware, had no men friends.

  During the First World War, she had worked as an inspector with the Army and Navy Canteen Board at a munitions factory in Gretna Green. When the hostilities ended, she worked as a lady cook but, on 20 December 1921, she was between posts and decided to place an advertisement in the Situations Wanted column of the Morning Post: ‘Lady cook, 31, requires post in a school. Experienced in a school with forty boarders. Disengaged. Salary £65. Miss Irene Wilkins, 21 Thirlmere Road, Streatham SW16.’

  No sooner had her advertisement appeared in the newspaper than Irene received a telegram, sent from Boscombe post office near Bournemouth. ‘Morning Post. Come immediately 4.30 train Waterloo. Bournmouth [sic] Central. Car will meet train. Expence [sic] no object. Urgent. Wood, Beech House’.

  Irene sent back a telegram confirming that she would attend for an interview and packed an overnight bag containing her nightclothes, a green shantung Dorothy bag, a black and white tartan sponge bag, a hairbrush and comb and some money. However, to the consternation of her mother, brother and two sisters, just after she had left to catch her train, her telegram was returne
d address unknown.

  Bournemouth Promenade, 1932.

  Their worst fears were realised when they read in the newspaper the following morning that the body of a woman had been found by retired labourer Charles Nicklen in a field in Tuckton, on the outskirts of Bournemouth. The deceased had not yet been identified, but was wearing a gold watch engraved with the initials ‘IMW’ and had the name ‘I Wilkins’ marked on some of her underclothes. Irene’s brother, Noel, immediately contacted the police in Streatham.

  Nicklen had been on his regular morning walk at 7.30 a.m. on 23 December when he had spotted some cows taking an unusual interest in an object in a field. His curiosity aroused, Nicklen went for a closer look and found the woman lying on her back, her legs wide apart and her face covered in blood and bruises. After touching the body to make absolutely sure that the woman was dead, Nicklen hurried to a nearby waterworks, from where the police were called.

  Officers arrived at Tuckton before 8 a.m., followed shortly by police surgeon Dr Harold Simmons. They found the woman lying on blood-saturated ground, concealed behind a gorse bush. It appeared that she had been attacked on the gravel path that ran outside the field, since the stones were disturbed as if a struggle had taken place there and a trail of blood led between the path and the body. There were traces of blood on the barbed wire fence enclosing the field, and a woman’s umbrella, also bloodstained, lay nearby. Just a few yards away in the road was a brown suede hat trimmed with red ribbons, and in the dirt at the side of the road were clear tyre tracks, which police later determined had been made by a vehicle fitted with Dunlop Magnum tyres.