A Matter for the Jury
Page 43
Oh, ’tis my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year
He felt pressure against his legs as Ken pinioned them.
Success to every gentleman that lives in Lincolnshire,
Then it went dark. Arthur had taken the white hood from his pocket and placed it over Billy’s head. What had happened? Had someone turned the lights out? Was he still alive, or had it happened already?
Success to every poacher that wants to sell a hare
More pressure, this time up by his neck. Arthur was adjusting the noose, tight under the left jaw for the quarter-circle rotation.
Bad luck to every gamekeeper that will not sell his deer
Arthur checked that Ken was well clear of the drop. He reached for the lever. The clock sounded the final stroke for the hour.
Oh, ’tis my delight
62
The alarm woke all three with a shocking clarity. Barratt switched on the small radio he had placed on his desk the previous evening.
This is the BBC Home Service. It is 9 o’clock on Thursday the 6 of August 1964. Here is the news.
The crisis in the Congo took a decisive turn yesterday as Simba rebel forces led by Christopher Gbenye and Pierre Mulela entered the outskirts of the capital, Stanleyville, amid fierce fighting. Sources in the country say that the city will fall today, giving the rebels a decisive advantage in the civil war. Many thousands of people have fled their homes, and the United Nations has called on both sides to give safe passage to all refugees. It seems unlikely that there will be any lull in the fighting for some time.
And in the Far East, the United States has launched a bombing campaign against military targets in North Vietnam. The move follows a confrontation yesterday in the Gulf of Tonkin, in which North Vietnamese gunboats attacked the United States destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy. A spokesman for the Department of State told reporters that the attack had been repulsed with the aid of air support, with the loss of one Vietnamese gunboat. North Vietnam has made no comment on the incident.
In Rome, Pope Paul VI has issued the encyclical ‘Ecclesiam Suam’, in which he likens the Church to the body of Christ. The encyclical, which has taken several years to compile, is expected to be controversial among non-Catholics because of the privileged position it suggests for the Roman Catholic Church to the exclusion of other denominations.
At the Great Basin National Park near Baker, Nevada, Prometheus, which had been claimed to be the world’s oldest tree, has been felled. The tree, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, was believed by many scientists to be at least 4862, and possibly more than 5000, years old. The cutting down of Prometheus has sparked outrage among scientists and conservationists, but the team which felled the tree claims that there is no compelling evidence of such an advanced age, that they were unaware of the true age of the tree, and that the tree will yield important information for future research into diseases affecting trees.
William Cottage, a 28-year-old lock keeper from Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, was hanged this morning at Bedford Gaol for the murder of Frank Gilliam. Cottage was convicted of capital murder at the Huntingdonshire Assize in June. The prosecution alleged that Cottage launched a frenzied attack on Frank Gilliam and his girl friend, Jennifer Doyce, on a houseboat on the Great Ouse river near St Ives in January. Jennifer Doyce, although critically injured, survived the attack, but Frank Gilliam died instantly.
And finally, they say New York is full of surprises, but no one could have been more surprised than a man who found himself walking past City Hall in Manhattan yesterday, when he was asked to step inside and act as a witness for the wedding ceremony of a couple who wanted to get married straight away. The surprise? The couple turned out to be comedian and script writer Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft. As they say over there, ‘that’s show business!’.
And that’s the news at 9 o’clock. The weather report and shipping forecast will follow in one minute.
Barratt reached out a hand and switched the radio off. He stood by his desk and stretched out his arms towards Ben and Jess as if giving a final benediction.
‘Ite, missa est,’ he said. ‘It’s over. It’s time to carry on with our lives. It’s time for the next case.’
Jess took Ben’s hand and led him to the door of Barratt’s office without a word, pausing only to kiss Barratt on the cheek. He in turn placed a hand on both their shoulders as they left.
* * *
In the kitchen of the lock keeper’s house at Fenstanton, Eve Cottage also switched her radio off as the news ended. She sat in her chair for some time in the silence of the house. Then she put on her hat and got ready to walk into town to do her shopping for the day.
63
Ben and Jess emerged from Barratt’s office into the already bright sunlight, which promised another hot day. Standing in Essex Street, watching Londoners hurrying to work, listening to the noise of the traffic on the Strand, Ben had a strange sense of detachment, even of alienation, as though he were observing the scene as a visitor from some other universe. The hubbub around him was one he saw every day as part of his working life, but today he was not a part of it. He felt utterly disorientated. A few yards from the Temple, around which his life revolved, he felt lost; he was not sure he could find the way back to Chambers. After some time, he became aware of Jess standing close by his side.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Barratt says we can take the car.’
He followed without a word. He settled into the front seat of the Rover, wound down his window, and stretched out his legs. As Jess expertly weaved her way into the morning rush-hour traffic, he allowed the cooling breeze to play on his face and through his hair. In a matter of minutes, he sank into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When he awoke, they were pulling into a long driveway. The noise of traffic had vanished, and the air felt different; it was fresh and relaxing, despite the increasing heat of the day. Around him he saw nothing but trees and grass, and some bright flower beds around the perimeter of the house resplendent with reds, yellows and mauves. She switched off the engine, and turned towards him. As their eyes met, she saw his lost-boy look and touched his hand.
‘You’re in a magic place, in Sussex,’ she explained. ‘This is my Uncle Jim and Aunt Ellen’s house. They spend their summers at their place in France. I’ve had a key for the last couple of years. They like someone staying once in a while and keeping an eye on the house for them. We will stay for a few days, till you’re ready to go back. Uncle Jim’s shirts should fit you pretty well. Mrs Digby, their housekeeper, will have laid in some basic supplies – bread, milk, that kind of thing. We will walk down to the village shop tomorrow, or later this afternoon, if you feel like it.’
It took him some time to digest the information. He turned to her.
‘Jess, what am I doing here? What about Chambers?’
She turned and held him by both arms.
‘Ben, you remember what Barratt said. He will have talked to Merlin by now. Barratt has the number here, if anything should come up, but it won’t. Come on.’
She climbed out of the car, walked around, and opened his door for him. He took her hand and she led him through the elegantly furnished house and into the back garden, which looked out over acre upon acre of green rolling countryside. Two benches and a table, made of dark, heavy rust-red wood, stood under a portico on the stone patio.
‘Sit there and relax for a while,’ she said. ‘I will go and make some coffee before we do anything else.’
She brought the coffee and set it before him, then sat on the edge of the bench and pulled off her shoes and stockings. Next she knelt and took his off also. She threw them all into the far corner of the patio.
‘We won’t need those for a while,’ she said, as she sat down beside him.
He was taken aback for a moment, but the country air had begun to ease him into relaxation. He smiled h
is thanks. They savoured the coffee and the view together for a long time as the sun traced its afternoon arc towards the West. They listened to the breeze and the birdsong and the distant humming of bees on the flower beds.
‘Thank you for bringing me here, Jess,’ he said. ‘But why did you? What made you think of it?’
She eased herself off the bench and came to kneel in front of him. She took his hands in hers.
‘They had a saying in the Middle Ages,’ she said. ‘In media vita in morte sumus. In the midst of life we are in death. It seems appropriate to your profession, Ben, especially today. So I was thinking that perhaps we could stand it on its head. In the midst of death, perhaps we can find life.’
She kissed him full on the lips.
‘You told me that the world ended for you a few years ago,’ she said. ‘I thought it was high time we made a new world, and set it spinning around its axis.’
Postscript
The Times, February 1991
Tests Confirm Old Murder Conviction, say Scientists
By Our Legal Correspondent
A team of scientists working at University College, London, announced yesterday that tests involving the use of DNA profiling have confirmed the guilt of a man hanged for murder following one of the last capital murder trials to be held in England before the death penalty was abolished in 1965. William Cottage, a lock keeper from Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire, was convicted in June 1964 of the murder of Frank Gilliam. The prosecution alleged that on the night of 25 January 1964 Cottage repeatedly beat Gilliam over the head with a heavy winch handle in a frenzied attack on board a houseboat, the Rosemary D, on the Great Ouse river, near St Ives. Gilliam’s girlfriend, Jennifer Doyce, was also savagely attacked and raped. Her injuries were very serious and she lay unconscious on the boat for more than thirty hours before being discovered, but she was able to give evidence at the trial and subsequently made a complete recovery.
The case against Cottage at trial was circumstantial. His fingerprint was found on a window ledge in the sleeping quarters of the Rosemary D, where the crime was committed, but the prosecution was unable to prove that the print had been left on the same occasion. A few days after the murder, Cottage was found to be in possession of a gold cross and chain which Jennifer Doyce had worn on the night of the attack. Miss Doyce gave evidence that her attacker sang verses of a folk-song, the Lincolnshire Poacher, to himself while raping her, and there was evidence that Cottage had sung the same song earlier the same evening, and on an earlier occasion when he was arrested for indecent exposure in 1961, an offence to which he pleaded guilty. But there was no direct evidence against him, and he declined to give evidence or call witnesses in his defence. Cottage was convicted, and after an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal and a plea for a reprieve to the then Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, he was hanged at Bedford Gaol on 6 August 1964.
The case has been a controversial one ever since. Cottage had no relatives to take up the cause. His only known close relative, his sister Eve, died in 1965, in her gas-filled kitchen, in an apparent suicide, though no note was found and an open verdict was recorded by the Coroner. But a number of legal scholars have questioned the conviction and several calls were made to successive Home Secretaries, without success, for a public inquiry into the case. One matter for concern is that, under the law at the time, the Homicide Act 1957, Cottage could not have been convicted of capital murder unless he killed Gilliam in the course and furtherance of theft. Not only did Cottage steal from Jennifer Doyce, and not from Frank Gilliam, the scholars say, but the evidence suggested that Gilliam was already dead before the theft was committed. But the Court of Criminal Appeal held that this did not affect the correctness of Cottage’s conviction for capital murder. Another recurring complaint has been the absence of direct evidence to prove that Cottage was the murderer.
But the scientist who oversaw the testing, Dr Paul Burgess, says that this second point can now be laid to rest. The scientific evidence available to the prosecution in 1964 was inconclusive. But, Dr Burgess says, new DNA profiling identifies Cottage as the murderer. Profiling by means of DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid – was first announced as a technique in 1984 by a team at Leicester University led by Professor Alec Jeffreys. DNA is a molecule which contains the genetic instructions for all known organisms, and its use for profiling involves the use of encrypted sets of numbers to identify the unique genetic profile of the subject. This can then be compared to other profiles. For some years the profile was regarded as too expensive and complex for commercial purposes, but since 1987 it has become increasingly available. Dr Burgess and his team, who have employed DNA profiling to look into a number of instances of alleged miscarriages of justice, compared a DNA sample taken from a specimen of Cottage’s blood to the DNA found in two vaginal swabs taken from Jennifer Doyce. The result was a match. Dr Burgess told The Times that the probability of anyone other than William Cottage being the source of the DNA found on the vaginal swabs was many millions to one against.
Five years after Cottage’s execution, Jennifer Doyce married Edgar McHugh, an Edinburgh banker. They have two children. They live quietly in Scotland. Jennifer McHugh has never commented on the case publicly. But yesterday, the family released a statement through their family solicitor, thanking Dr Burgess and his team for their work, and expressing satisfaction that the question of Cottage’s guilt had finally been resolved.
‘It is as close to scientific proof as you could wish,’ Dr Burgess said of the test results. He added that DNA profiling has heralded a new era of certainty in criminal trials, and that it can be expected to become routine within the next few years, considerably reducing the risk of miscarriages of justice. It seems that William Cottage was indeed guilty of the murder of Frank Gilliam. Whether he should have been hanged for it is a controversy which may never be resolved.
Acknowledgments
While this book is not based on the case of James Hanratty, I have made use of some of the details, and of the evidential problems which arose in that case. I acknowledge my debt to Bob Woffinden’s Hanratty: the Final Verdict (Macmillan, London, 1997) and to Louis Blom-Cooper’s The A6 murder: Regina v. James Hanratty, the Semblance of Truth (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1963). I have drawn liberally on Albert Pierrepoint’s autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint (Harrap & Co Ltd, London, 1974), for detail of the preparation for and conduct of executions, and the training of executioners in this country. Last but not least, Archbold: Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, 1962 edition (Eds. Butler and Garsia, Sweet & Maxwell, London 1962) was an invaluable source for the law and practice in capital murder cases.
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