Dorset Murders

by Sly, Nicola;

  By morning, Williams had recovered from the excesses of the night before and was now openly bragging about how he had avoided the hangman. Rae kept in touch with him for a few years but eventually lost track of him until the beginning of March 1951, when Williams died penniless and alone in Nottingham. Only then was Rae free to reveal his story, but since Williams’s confession was only hearsay, the case of the murder of Walter Dinnivan could not be officially closed.

  [Note: In certain contemporary accounts of the murder, the victim’s name is alternatively spelled Dinivan. I have taken the spelling used by the majority.]

  21

  ‘THIS IS MY NIGHT TO HOWL’

  Dorchester, 1941

  David Miller Jennings was, it was said, the stuff of which heroes are made. Recognising that war was inevitable, Jennings, a former miner and farm labourer from Warrington, had joined the Army in 1938, determined to fight for King and country. He had seen action in Dunkirk and generally conducted himself with courage and dignity, but tragically his actions were to cause the death of another equally courageous and dignified soldier; in this instance, one who had fought in the trenches during the First World War.

  On 26 January 1941, twenty-year-old Jennings, now stationed at Dorchester, had been for a training session on the rifle range. Yet shooting at targets had failed to ease the anger and bitterness he felt at having recently received a ‘Dear John’ letter from the girl he loved and had fully expected to marry. That evening, in the company of a number of his comrades, Jennings tried to drown his sorrows with drink.

  Their evening started with several pints of beer, alternated by shots of whisky, at the George Hotel. From there the group moved to the Antelope Hotel, where they drank yet more beer and whisky, then to the Ship Inn. There, Corporal Leith spotted him buying a round of drinks.

  Leith had good reason to be surprised since Jennings, who was spending freely on drinks, owed him money. He tapped Jennings on the shoulder and remarked to him, ‘That five shillings you borrowed off me seems to be going a long way.’

  Jennings smiled drunkenly at him. ‘I borrowed more, Corp.’ he explained. ‘This is my night to howl.’

  The barracks at Dorchester.

  High West Street, Dorchester, 1946.

  ‘Then make sure you don’t end up howling in the guardroom’, Leith warned him.

  Shortly afterwards, Leith shook his head as he watched Jennings and his companions stagger out of the bar. Aware that Jennings had been jilted, Leith was of the opinion that he was now spending the money he had carefully saved in anticipation of his marriage.

  The drinkers returned to the Antelope Hotel where Jennings bought yet more beer. At closing time the group moved to a milk bar, where they ate meat pies and drank cups of tea, before making their way unsteadily back to barracks.

  During the course of the evening, Jennings had consumed around seven shots of whisky and ten and a half pints of beer. His friends described him as ‘talkative and merry’, but by the time they reached their rooms the reality of his situation was slowly beginning to dawn on Jennings. Not only had he lost his girl but also he had just spent all his savings on drink. Furthermore, he still owed money to Corporal Leith and others.

  Private Hall, with whom he shared a room, watched in disbelief as Jennings stripped off his best battle dress and, instead of changing into his pyjamas, put on his second-best battle dress with a pair of gym shoes. ‘What the hell are you up to, David?’ asked Hall.

  ‘Nothing’, replied Jennings brusquely.

  ‘It has to be something otherwise you’d be putting on your pyjamas instead of that bloody lot. Come off it – what are you on?’

  ‘If you must know, I’m going to do a break in’, said Jennings.

  Hall tried his hardest to dissuade him, but was told by Jennings to mind his own business. Hall redoubled his efforts to stop Jennings when he saw him pick up his rifle and take some ammunition from his bandolier.

  ‘Leave that. You’re too jerked up to take a rifle with you.’

  Jennings ignored him. ‘Don’t you split on me’, he warned Hall who, knowing the unspoken Army code of not ratting on your pals, eventually decided that he had tried hard enough. He fell asleep as Jennings crept quietly out of their room.

  Jennings managed to leave the barracks without being seen and walked into Dorchester. Meanwhile, Corporal Leith was becoming increasingly concerned about the young private, so much so that he decided to go to his room to check on his welfare.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked the sleepy Hall. When he failed to get a sensible response from Jennings’s roommate, Leith walked over to Jennings’s bed where the young soldier had discarded the bandolier. Leith picked it up and quickly counted the rounds. It should have contained fifty rounds, but now ten were missing.

  In Prince’s Street in Dorchester, garage owner Jesse Broughton was awakened by the sound of four loud bangs. He peered out of his window, but saw nothing and so returned to his bed. What he didn’t realise was that the noises he had heard were shots coming from the office below his bedroom. Jennings had broken into the office and tried unsuccessfully to shoot his way into the safe there.

  In wartime England, the sound of bumps in the night was not unusual and Broughton got back into bed, ready to resume his sleep. Minutes later, as his clock struck a quarter past midnight, he heard six rifle shots – five loud cracks, followed by a pause of about thirty seconds, then a further crack. Seconds later, someone ran past his house, clicking a rifle bolt as they passed.

  Prince’s Street, Dorchester, 2008. (© R. Sly)

  Shortly afterwards, David Jennings ran into the barrack room, slamming the door closed behind him. Blood dripped from several cuts on his face. Corporal Leith witnessed his return and went straight to the barrack room. When Leith got there, Jennings had his back against the door, forcing Leith to shoulder the door open and push past him.

  ‘Where have you been? What have you been doing, soldier?’ asked Leith.

  Jennings was still breathless from running, but managed to reply that he had just broken into the NAAFI and that he thought he might have shot a man.

  Leith seized and checked Jennings’s rifle, finding it empty then marched the young man down to the guardroom, where he was searched and locked up. Jennings had absolutely no money on him. Next, Leith went in search of another officer and, finding Sergeant Murch, told him what he knew and asked the sergeant to accompany him to the NAAFI on Prince’s Street in Dorchester.

  The first thing that the two men noticed on their arrival was a strong smell of gas. They surmised that Jennings had shot and ruptured a gas pipe and, conscious of the strict wartime blackout regulations, Leith switched on his torch and, carefully shielding the beam, swung it around until he found the fractured gas pipe.

  The lock had been shot from the back door and, although it wouldn’t open fully, the officers were able to enter the darkened building without any problems. They were barely inside, when Murch suddenly tripped. Leith lowered the torch beam to illuminate the floor and saw that his companion had stumbled over the body of an elderly man, lying by the door. With Leith continuing to light his way, Murch squatted to check the old man, finding that he had been shot and was dead. The civil police were immediately sent for.

  The victim was Albert Edward Farley, aged sixty-five, who had just that very day started his new job as night watchman at the NAAFI, after retiring from his profession as a tailor. The veteran of the First World War had found retirement tedious and was eagerly anticipating his return to work. Under normal circumstances, the duties of the night watchman were not expected to be arduous and Farley would be able to sleep at his post, a camp bed being set up in the office for that very purpose. Earlier that evening, Bert had been joking with the canteen manageress about getting paid to sleep. Now, just a few short hours later, he would never wake again.

  A post-mortem examination, conducted by Dr G.O. Taylor, would later show that Farley had been shot just below his heart by a bulle
t fired from a service rifle. The bullet had been fired at a downward angle and had exited Mr Farley’s back four inches below the entrance wound, just to the right of his spine. Dr Taylor was unable to establish from which direction the rifle was fired, as he was unsure of the victim’s exact position when he was hit. However, he was able to determine that the shot had not been fired from close range

  Police Sergeant Lill arrived to interview David Jennings at the barracks at 5.40 a.m. Still very drunk, Jennings made several rambling and contradictory statements but curiously at no time did he ever deny the possibility that he might have shot a man. It took several hours before Sergeant Lill was able to get a sufficiently coherent response from Jennings but, as soon as he had made and signed his statement, he was arrested and charged with Farley’s murder. He was taken to the police station and from there to the magistrate’s court, where the pressure of the constant questioning finally got to him. In tears, he buried his face in his hands and was heard to exclaim, ‘Oh, my God!’

  In order for a man to be charged with murder, there has to be evidence of intent. In other words, a murderer has to intend to actually kill his victim and it was extremely unlikely that David Jennings had any prior intention of killing Bert Farley. Without intent, Jennings should have been facing a manslaughter charge rather than one of murder – yet the magistrates allowed the police charge to stand and committed him to the next Dorset Assizes on a charge of murder. When one of the magistrates was later questioned about this decision, his response was to say that, ‘There was a war on. We didn’t have time to think of things like that.’

  Jennings’s trial opened before Mr Justice Charles on 3 June 1941. Mr Henderson prosecuted, while Mr Trapnell handled the defence under the auspices of the Poor Prisoner Rules, which provided counsel for defendants without the necessary means to pay for it. Jennings pleaded ‘Not Guilty’.

  Henderson began by trying to unravel the conflicting statements given by Jennings at the barracks in the early morning after the killing. At times, Jennings had stated, ‘I shot a man’, then the wording of his statement had changed to, ‘I don’t know whether I shot anyone.’ Although Jennings had been searched by Leith on his return to the barracks and found to have no money on him, Henderson maintained that he had managed to surreptitiously pass the sum of 32s, which he had stolen from the NAAFI, onto another soldier for safekeeping.

  Henderson then addressed the matter of the amount of drink that Jennings had consumed on the night of the murder. He pointed out that drunkenness was no excuse for the crime. It stood to reason that when a man used a rifle to fire at another man, there was likelihood that it might kill him. Drink could only be offered as an excuse if the shooter were so befuddled by it that he didn’t know what he was doing, and there was no doubt that Jennings knew exactly what he was doing when he took his rifle and ammunition and went off to commit a robbery.

  The manageress of the NAAFI gave evidence about the amount of money that had been stolen from the cash box. She was adamant that the exact sum stolen had been 37s and 6d – considerably more than the 32s that Jennings was alleged to have given the other soldier.

  Jennings himself gave evidence. He admitted that he knew where the cash box was kept at the NAAFI, but didn’t realise that a caretaker had been newly appointed. He had shot at the back door lock five times, then panicked and ran when he heard Farley shouting from inside. As the door to the NAAFI opened, a shaft of light appeared and Jennings turned to look at it, firing his rifle almost instinctively without aiming. His account of the shots fired was, of course, consistent with the evidence of Jesse Broughton, who had heard five reports, a pause and then a sixth.

  Unfortunately, Trapnell didn’t pick up on the fact that Broughton’s evidence corroborated his client’s version of events. Instead, he chose to focus his defence on trying to show that Jennings was incapable, due to the effects of the large quantities of alcohol he had consumed prior to the murder. He pointed out that, to return a verdict of murder, the jury must believe that the prosecution had proved malice aforethought and, if they did not believe that this had been done, then it was their duty to return a lesser verdict of manslaughter. Trapnell was of the opinion that malice aforethought had definitely not been established.

  However, rather than hammering home the legalities of murder versus manslaughter to the jury, Trapnell then chose to divert his arguments back to the alcohol. He stressed to the jury that drink affects different people in different ways, saying that Jennings’s crime was not a clever act carried out by a clever criminal, but a stupid, drunken escapade by a young man who had just been jilted by his girlfriend. He reminded the jury of the cuts on Jennings’s face. These had been caused by splinters of metal that ricocheted off the safe that Jennings had tried to blast his way into, and Trapnell pointed out the sheer stupidity of choosing such a dangerous and noisy way of attempting to open a safe.

  What Trapnell failed to capitalise upon was the evidence of Corporal Leith and Sergeant Murch. Both stated that Farley’s body was positioned up against the door of the NAAFI in such a way that they had to struggle to get into the building. Even with the aid of a torch, Murch stumbled over the body in the pitch darkness. Yet, according to the prosecution, Jennings, without a torch, allegedly shot the night watchman, manoeuvred his way through the canteen in the darkness, located and emptied the cash box and found his way out of the building, managing to wedge Farley’s body against the inside of the door as he left.

  In his summing up of the case for the jury, Mr Justice Charles showed no sympathy for the young defendant, who had passed his twenty-first birthday while in custody awaiting his trial. He pointed out that drunkenness could not be considered an adequate defence, saying that there was no evidence that Jennings was so drunk that he was incapable of acting intentionally. On the contrary, Jennings had found himself short of money and had deliberately gone out with the intention of committing a robbery. By arming himself beforehand, he had demonstrated intent to shoot if anyone had stood in his way.

  The jury had been left little option but to arrive at a verdict of guilty of murder. Nevertheless, they deliberated for two hours before reaching that verdict.

  Before donning his black cap, Mr Justice Charles asked Jennings if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Jennings looked the judge directly in the eye and replied, ‘I did not intend to kill that man’.

  Having been sentenced to death, Jennings was not without sympathisers among the general public, who felt that his recent training in violence, which enabled him to fight the enemy, had some bearing on the shooting. The people from his hometown organised a petition to appeal to the Home Office for clemency, as did the Army, and his defence counsel immediately announced his intention to appeal the conviction.

  The appeal was held before the Court of Criminal Appeal on 7 July 1941 and again Trapnell argued that not enough direction had been given to the jury with regard to Jennings’s state of intoxication at the time of the offence. However, the Lord Chief Justice was entirely satisfied that the judge had successfully addressed this in his summing up and the appeal was dismissed.

  After the appeal failed, Captain Simon Wingfield-Digby, the then member of parliament for West Dorset, was drawn into the battle to save Private Jennings, personally contacting Home Secretary Mr Herbert Morrison. However, Morrison replied that he felt unable to commute Jennings’s sentence.

  George E. Chappell was next into the fray. Chappell, the prospective liberal candidate for West Dorset, shared the opinion of many that, in this instance, the law had erred. ‘You and I know that His Majesty will not be unmindful of the unselfish service and sacrifice that this soldier has given to his country’, he said in an address to his prospective constituents. Appealing for clemency directly to a higher authority than the Home Secretary, he sent off a carefully worded telegram to His Majesty King George VI.

  Whether or not the king replied is not recorded. That he didn’t choose to intervene is evident since, on 23
July 1941, Thomas Pierrepoint executed David Miller Jennings at Dorchester for the murder of Albert Edward Farley.

  Had Jennings been correctly tried for manslaughter rather than murder, then he would undoubtedly have served a prison sentence and his life would have been spared. As it was, two war heroes from different generations died needlessly, the first because of a ‘Dear John’ letter, and the second as a result of a flawed legal decision made hurriedly because ‘there was a war on’.

  22

  ‘PUT ME DOWN AS NOT GUILTY, OLD BOY’

  London & Bournemouth, 1946

  Group Captain Rupert Brooke looked the very picture of respectability. Tall and broad-shouldered, he carried himself with a military bearing befitting his rank. An intelligent and well-spoken man, his fair, wavy hair and piercing blue eyes, coupled with a charming manner, ensured that he was never short of female admirers.

  On 3 July 1946, he met the latest of his conquests while out for a stroll on the promenade in Bournemouth. Doreen Marshall of Pinner, Middlesex, had recently been discharged from the WRNS. Shortly afterwards, she fell ill with a bout of influenza and, deciding that some sea air would do her good, had travelled to Bournemouth to convalesce.

  She was only too pleased to meet a handsome stranger and, after chatting with Brooke for some time, accepted his invitation to take tea with him at the hotel where he was staying, the Tollard Royal in West Hill Road.

  She enjoyed a pleasant afternoon with her new-found friend, so much so that she agreed to return to his hotel and dine with him that evening. At first, the dinner date was enjoyable, but by the time the meal had finished, Brooke was beginning to show the effects of the alcohol he had drunk that evening and Miss Marshall was finding his company a little wearing. Looking strained, she asked another hotel resident to order her a taxi to take her back to the Norfolk Hotel on Richmond Hill. However, Brooke cancelled the taxi, promising that he would walk her back. As the couple left the Tollard Royal, he remarked to the night porter that he would be back in half an hour. ‘No, in a quarter of an hour’, argued Miss Marshall and the two walked off together in the direction of Richmond Hill.