Great Unsolved Crimes

by Rodney Castleden

  There were other businessmen, mainly American, who were interested in developing Nassau, but with less altruistic motives. One of them was Frank Marshall, whom Christie met in the early 1940s. He represented a group of American businessmen who wanted to open gambling casinos on Nassau. Marshall knew that the law prohibited casinos, but also knew that Oakes and the Duke of Windsor could have the law changed; Marshall thought Christie would act as a go-between, to facilitate the legalization of gambling. Christie thought the casinos would be profitable, but that it was unlikely the law would change. Christie gradually discovered that the American investors represented by Marshall were connected with Lucky Luciano, the Mafia boss. This worried Christie enormously. In spite of this anxiety, Marshall talked Christie into agreeing to discuss the casino proposal with Oakes and the Duke. Marshall realized that Christie was not interested enough to argue his case convincingly, so he arranged to meet Oakes and the Duke in person shortly afterwards. Marshall was disappointed to find that Christie had indeed spoken to them, but had persuaded them not to support the idea. In fact Oakes and the Duke were opposed to the idea anyway. Marshall became irritated, tried to persuade the three men that there was a lot of money to be made, and was put under increasing pressure from his American associates to bring off the deal. It may be the mounting pressure over the casino deal that led directly to Oakes’s murder.

  Another member of Sir Harry Oakes’s social circle was Count Marie Alfred Fouquereaux de Marigny. He came from Mauritius to Nassau shortly before the Second World War. He liked to dissociate himself from his aristocratic pedigree. He liked to be called Freddie de Marigny. He shared Oakes’s love of adventure. Freddie ran a profitable chicken farm on the island, and also owned several apartment blocks. He enjoyed yacht racing, and won almost every race he entered at the Nassau Yacht Club.

  Freddie was divorced from his first wife, separated from his second, and regarded as an eligible playboy. He had a lively social life and was seen with a different woman on his arm every time he went out partying. He was good-looking, six foot five, charming. He stood out from the other Nassau residents and was both liked and disliked for this reason. At a ball, Freddie met Nancy, the red-haired seventeen-year-old eldest daughter of Sir Harry Oakes. Freddie knew Sir Harry and Lady Oakes would not approve, and the relationship developed in secret. When Nancy was eighteen, they flew to New York for a secret wedding. Nancy de Marigny phoned her parents to tell them. They were shocked and angry, upset that they had been completely excluded. The Oakeses had little choice other than to accept the situation, and accept Freddie into their family.

  This was very difficult, as Sir Harry knew that Freddie had already had two wives, divorced both of them, and was a terrible womanizer. Sir Harry did not keep these feeling to himself, either. On several occasions, Freddie de Marigny and Harry Oakes were seen quarrelling in public. The whole of Nassau knew that Oakes and de Marigny were at loggerheads. The rift between the two men could have led to Sir Harry’s murder.

  When Harold Christie found the body he made several phone calls for help. He tried a neighbour, who did not answer, and then his brother Frank. Christie asked Frank to call a doctor out immediately. When he hung up, there was an incoming call from a reporter called Etienne Dupuch, who had an appointment for an interview later that day. Christie was still in a state of shock and shrieked at the reporter, ‘He’s dead! He’s been shot!’ The reporter naturally made the most of his story and the headline swiftly went via the news agency round the world. The Duke of Windsor hoped to confine news of the murder to the island, but thanks to Christie was unsuccessful, but he immediately blocked any further news about the case for the next two days.

  Perhaps the Duke of Windsor was conscious that this was potentially a scandal that could ensnare him. A thorough police investigation might reveal his own as well as Sir Harry’s financial wheeling and dealing. For whatever reason, the Duke took complete control of the investigation. His first initiative was to sidestep the Bahamas Criminal Investigation Department and the Nassau Police Department. He instead brought in two detectives from Miami to lead the investigation. Naturally, once the news leaked out that the Duke had tried to stifle news of the investigation and also had overridden his own police departments, there was widespread suspicion about his motives.

  The Miami detectives, James Barker and Edward Melchen, were chosen by the Duke because they were regarded as two of the best fingerprint experts in the United States. Melchen had also served as the Duke’s personal bodyguard and the Duke had been impressed by his resourcefulness and loyalty. It was said that the Duke’s brief to the two men was that they should confirm that the death was a suicide. If that is so, it is peculiar because he was well aware that Oakes had been murdered. It was an inauspicious beginning to what was one of the worst murder investigations of modern times.

  Barker and Melchen arrived at the Oakeses’ house a few hours after the murder. They found a bizarre scene: Sir Harry Oakes lying on the bed on his back, half burnt and covered in feathers from his pillow. The left side of his head was covered in blood, which ran from four dents in his scalp down towards his nose. The direction of blood flow showed that when the blows were delivered Sir Harry was lying face down, or indeed sitting with his head leaning forwards, perhaps while reading a book. The Chinese screen stood by the bed, covered in blood and fingerprints. The wall beside the bed carried a single bloody handprint. There were muddy footprints on the stairs up to the bedroom. Not only was it very obviously a murder, not a suicide, but there looked to be more than adequate forensic material to identify the murderer.

  Unfortunately, the two detectives had left behind in Miami their camera for taking photographs of latent fingerprints, which straight away reduced the amount of information they were able to collect from the crime scene. Another error of judgement was to allow into the house several of Nassau’s social elite to see the room where the body was found, once it had been removed. No trouble was taken to stop these sightseers from handling objects at the crime scene.

  Sir Harry was murdered while his family was away on holiday. His wife was waiting for him to arrive at another property they owned in Maine, where he was expected to arrive the day after the discovery of the body. The children were travelling round North America. Only one member of the family could possibly have been a murder suspect.

  The detectives interviewed Harold Christie, who had slept in the next bedroom on the night of the murder. He claimed he had not heard any unusual or suspicious sounds on the night of the murder. This seems extraordinary. There had clearly been a struggle between Oakes and his killer, he had been hit over the head four times, petrol had been splashed about, and a small fire started. It is hard to believe Harold Christie heard nothing at all.

  The detectives also interviewed Freddie de Marigny. After that, they resumed their search for fingerprints and found their best piece of evidence, a fingerprint on the screen, which Barker claimed belonged to the murderer. It belonged to Freddie, who was charged with murdering his father-in-law and taken to Nassau jail. There was a surge of anger and hatred on the island directed at Freddie de Marigny. The Duke ordered the fire brigade to stand by the jailhouse to protect him if necessary.

  Freddie’s wife Nancy, the daughter of Sir Harry, thought the idea that Freddie would or could kill her father was ridiculous. She knew him very well, and considered him incapable of committing a crime like that. Nancy recruited her own detective, Raymond Schindler, to prove that Freddie was innocent. The detective agreed on condition that Freddie agreed to submit to a lie detector test. Freddie agreed; Schindler found a fingerprint and lie detector expert, Professor Keeler, and flew with him to Nassau.

  When Schindler and Keeler arrived at the crime scene, they were staggered to fine police officers there scrubbing the bedroom walls – they had removed the bloody handprint by the bed. They had no idea whose handprint it was. Schindler asked why they were destroying fingerprint evidence, and the policemen answered that they were no
t Freddie de Marigny’s and therefore were of no interest. Either the Nassau police were unbelievably incompetent or someone had specifically given the order to destroy evidence that pointed to the true murderer. Someone in authority was protecting the murderer and concealing his identity.

  Barker had taken photographs of the walls in the bedroom, including the single bloody handprint. He flew back to Miami with the plates to have them developed. Those plates were destroyed by accidental exposure to light, so the identity of the owner of the hand that left the bloody handprint could now never be established.

  Meanwhile, the body of Sir Harry Oakes was shipped aboard a plane to Bar Harbour for burial, but the plane had to return to Nassau so that Barker could take new photographs of Sir Harry’s fingerprints. These fingerprints were essential so that any prints at the crime scene that were Sir Harry’s could be eliminated. But at the same time, the crime scene was being cleansed of fingerprints, so collecting Sir Harry’s prints was pointless. It is not known who gave the order for the removal of the fingerprints. Schindler suspected that someone powerful was manipulating the situation. He suspected that his phone was being tapped. To test this out, Schindler dialled an unknown number and said he would meet the person at a particular location. He thought whoever was tapping his phone would show up at the named location. He went to the location, watched from a vantage point, and two police cars appeared. This confirmed that someone powerful was not only following the investigation, but trying to ensure that it failed to reach the truth.

  The trial of Freddie de Marigny started on 18 October 1943 at the Bahamas Supreme Court. There was worldwide interest in the case, and for a short time the murder of Sir Harry Oakes took precedence over war news.

  Freddie did not get the solicitor of his choice. Shortly after his arrest, he asked the police to contact his lawyer, Sir Alfred Adderley. He was a distinguished barrister with an impressive record of success in the courtroom. Later, Sir Alfred said that he would certainly have taken the case for the defence but the police had never contacted him, which looks like another attempt by the police to ensure de Marigny’s conviction. De Marigny’s second choice for a defence lawyer was Godfrey Higgs. Instead, the prosecution enlisted the services of Sir Alfred, which must have disconcerted Freddie, as was probably intended.

  Early in the trial, Harold Christie described how he had found the body. He said he was a close friend of Oakes and often spent time at his estate. If he was there late in the evening, he often slept over in the bedroom next to Sir Harry’s. On the evening before the murder, Oakes had entertained several guests: Christie, Christie’s niece and her friend, and two other acquaintances of Sir Harry’s who had been guests on earlier occasions, Charles Hubbard and Mrs Dulcibelle. Christie’s niece and her friend left at about seven o’clock, while the rest stayed for dinner. After dinner they played checkers. Hubbard and Dulcibelle left at eleven that evening. Soon after all the guests had gone, Oakes retired to his bedroom to read his newspaper. Christie had gone with him and they had chatted until half past eleven. Then Christie had gone to the guest bedroom to read before going to sleep. Christie said he had woken twice in the night, once to fend off mosquitoes, once by the storm. In each instance, he was only awake for a few minutes before falling asleep.

  When he woke in the morning he had breakfast. Seeing no sign of Oakes, he went to his room. Going in rather tentatively, he greeted Oakes, got no reply, then noticed that the mosquito net and a part of the bed were blackened and burnt. Then he rushed over to the bed, and saw Oakes lying aslant on it, half burnt and his head bloodied. Christie did not realize Oakes was dead, and tried to lift his head to give him water. He also tried to wipe Oakes’s face clean with a bathroom towel. After that he ran to the bedroom doorway to shout for help, not knowing that the servants were off that day, before going downstairs to telephone. Christie claimed to have seen burn marks on the stairs and saw a little smoke coming from Sir Harry’s bedroom.

  Christie was cross-questioned by Sir Godfrey Higgs, acting for Freddie, and he asked why Christie had gone out of his way to park his car out of sight of the house when he normally parked it clearly in view. Higgs was implying that Christie had gone to the Oakes house late at night, in secret, did not want Oakes to know he was there and murdered him. Christie said he was trying to save petrol and it seemed a natural thing to do. Then Higgs revealed that Christie had been seen as a passenger in a station wagon arriving from the area of the harbour in Nassau at midnight. In fact a strange boat has been sighted in the harbour on the night of the murder. A night watchman saw two strange men getting off the boat and getting into a car. It is thought that Higgs himself may have been one of the two men. By chance, perhaps, the night watchman was unable to give his testimony at the trial because he was drowned shortly after Freddie’s arrest.

  Dr Hugh Quackenbush gave evidence for the defence. He noticed blisters at various points round Sir Harry’s body. He thought they had been created before death and therefore were unconnected with the fire; they were due to some other, completely unknown, trauma. He put the time of death at between two and five o’clock in the morning on 8 July 1943. Dr Laurence Fitzmaurice, who carried out the post mortem, said that Sir Harry’s skull had been cracked by a heavy blunt object. He also found triangular wounds a few inches across on and round the left ear lobe, showing that the blunt instrument had a well-defined edge.

  Thomas Lavelle testified that he had overheard part of a conversation between Oakes and de Marigny. Oakes was upset with Freddie, telling him not to write letters to his wife; he also called Freddie a sex maniac.

  Barker and Melchen, the American detectives, gave evidence that showed their incompetence, which was so extreme that people wondered if they were deliberately concealing or destroying evidence. They even contradicted one another. Barker claimed he discovered Freddie’s fingerprint on the screen on 9 July, and it was that discovery that led directly to Freddie’s arrest. Now Melchen revealed that Barker did not mention to him that the fingerprint was identifiable as Freddie’s until 15 July. Even more bizarre, this contradicted his own earlier statement that he had been unaware of the identification until 19 or 20 July. There were also inconsistencies regarding the time of their interview with Freddie.

  Higgs poured scorn over the method Barker had used for lifting the fingerprint on the screen. He had used an abnormal method which destroyed the print. Higgs accused Barker of lying. What Barker had really done was to lift Freddie’s print, not from the screen beside Sir Harry’s bed, but from a glass Freddie was drinking from during the interview. Barker insisted that he had taken the print from the screen. Then, when Higgs confronted Barker with the screen in the court room, he asked Barker to show him where exactly he had taken the print. Incredibly, Barker was unable to remember where this crucial piece of evidence had been found. Significantly, Barker was the only person to claim to have seen the fingerprint on the screen. It was now emerging that the evidence was very likely rigged in order to frame Freddie. Further incompetence was exposed when Barker admitted that he had not dusted for fingerprints on the bed’s footboard. He had also missed out several other areas in the room where prints might have been found. He failed to fingerprint all the visitors to the crime scene for elimination purposes. Worse still, he had lied about doing so, first saying that he had and later admitting that he had not. Barker was also asked why he had failed to tell his colleague Melchen about the discovery of the crucial fingerprint for such a long time. Barker was unable to answer.

  Overall, Barker did a great deal of damage to his own professional reputation as well as to the case for the prosecution.

  Freddie took the stand and gave frank testimony to the strained relationship with his father- and mother-in-law. He said Oakes was often angry with him, apparently for being married to his daughter. He also seemed to have an alibi for the time of the murder. He had entertained several people at his house that evening. Most had gone home at midnight, and he had driven one guest home at one o’cl
ock, returning home at half past one in the morning. His friend Georges was in the house in another room with his girlfriend. Freddie went to bed at about two o’clock. He was woken by the cat (which belonged to Georges) at three o’clock, at which time he heard Georges leaving in his car to take the girlfriend home. Georges returned at a quarter past three and Freddie called him to collect his cat. Then Freddie slept until he was woken up at half past six. It was, in fact, only a partial alibi; there were gaps during which Freddie could have gone to the Oakes house and killed Sir Harry.

  He admitted that Melchen and Barker found singed hairs on his hands and beard. He explained that the singeing happened when he lit cigars and when he cooked on the gas cooker. They had asked to see the shirt he had been wearing on the evening of the murder. He could not remember which one, but showed them all his laundry; there was nothing there to incriminate him.

  When Georges testified his evidence tallied with Freddie’s. But then counsel for the prosecution read from the statement Georges had made to the police; in that he made clear that he did not see Freddie between eleven o’clock in the evening and ten o’clock the next morning. The night appeared to have been enlivened with encounters in order to supply Freddie with an alibi. Then Ernest Callender for the defence read Georges’ statement out word for word. Georges said that at half past one he had a conversation with Freddie through the bedroom door; he had not actually seen him, but nevertheless they had words. That meant that Freddie was at his own house at half past one.