Why did Scotland Yard's biggest serial killer hunt fail so badly? Part 2
Why did Scotland Yard's biggest serial killer hunt fail so badly? Part 2
It was London's biggest manhunt, and yet the killer of six women in 1964-5 was never found. So, who were the men who came under suspicion?
In Part 1 I outlined the the murders of six women in west London of the 1960s. All of the victims were left either in the Thames or in the streets, stripped of their clothing and belongings.
The victims were: Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Frances Brown and Bridget ‘Bridie’ O’Hara.
The Hammersmith Nude Murders case triggered a huge investigation involving hundreds of officers. And yet by the summer of 1965, a few months after the final body was discovered, the operation was wound down, no compelling suspect having ever been found.
Here, I want to look at the disparate band of suspects that detectives focused on. In Part 3, I’ll explore why, ultimately, the killer of these appalling crimes was never caught.
Suspects – a mortuary worker, a newsagent, a caretaker, and many more…
So many officers, around 600, were needed because there were so many leads to check and so much ground to monitor.
Could the killer be a 45-year-old man from Fulham. He’d been convicted of murdering a sex worker in 1952, found insane and sent to Broadmoor.
However, he was released on licence in 1961 and returned to London. He was questioned and his vehicle examined, but there were no links to the murders.
A 52-year-old newsagent from Brighton drew police attention. He liked to dress in women’s clothing, but when checked, none of these items were found to belong to any of the victims.
A number of false confessions took up more police time. A tubby 54-year-old caretaker called Kenneth Archibald bumbled into Notting Hill police station in April 1964 and said he had killed Irene Lockwood, victim number two.
Archibald was charged. But at the Old Bailey, he changed his story, confessing not to murder but to being depressed. The jury believed him, the rather flimsy case was dismissed.
A 42-year-old mortuary assistant, a stoker from East Acton, a 36-year-old engineer from Kingston, Surrey – all were among those flagged up to detectives but proved to have no links to the victims.
Mungo Ireland
One man who was connected to the Heron Trading Estate – where police discovered the killer had kept his victims’ bodies in a derelict building – would become hugely significant in the Nude Murders case.
He was 46-year-old Mungo Ireland, who lived on Tildesley Road, Putney, with his wife, Elizabeth. He worked as a patrol man on the estate for Night Security from 6–24 October 1964.
He was a heavy drinker and his home life was fraught with problems. Mungo Ireland committed suicide on 3 March 1965. His suicide note read:
I can’t stick it any longer. It may be my fault but not all of it. I’m sorry Harry [the name of Ireland’s brother] is a burden to you. Give my love to the kid,
Farewell, Jock.
PS To save you and the Police looking for me I’ll be in the garage.
A sad sign-off from a man clearly at a low ebb. He was due to appear at Acton Magistrates’ Court on the morning of his death to answer a summons for failing to stop his car when required to do so. Instead, the night before his court date, he got into his car and drove to his garage in Solna Avenue, a few streets away. There, he left the engine of his Ford Consul running and died of asphyxiation.
Could he have been the man who eluded the massive man-hunt for so long?
As with many of the other suspects, Ireland had tantalising circumstantial links to the case. During just under three weeks as a security man on the Heron Trading Estate he was on site during the nights. He left Night Security on 13 November 1964 and joined the New Century Cleaning Company in Harlesden, before moving on again on 28 November to be foreman cleaner on contract at Jute Industries in Dundee, Scotland.
That job ended and he returned to London on the day before it was thought that Bridie O’Hara’s body was deposited on the Heron Trading Estate, which was 12 February 1965. He committed suicide during the high point of media publicity caused by the latest discovery of a body.
However, it is clear that despite these circumstantial links, Bill Baldock, second-in-command of the Scotland Yard investigation, did not consider Ireland a strong suspect. Ireland’s car, number plate YUL 333, did not crop up in the police index of kerb-crawling motorists, which was how it was believed the killer picked up his victims.
Dundee police also confirmed that Ireland was working as a foreman cleaner in their city on 11 January 1965 – the date Bridie O’Hara was last seen.
The detective
The man who Detective Superintendent Bill Baldock did view as a ‘strong suspect’ was still alive when I was researching my book about the case in 2016, The Hunt for the 60s’ Ripper. For that reason I did not name him, but the investigation of him back in 1965 was one of the most extraordinary episodes during the Nude Murders case.
This man came to notice a couple of weeks after final victim Bridie O’Hara’s murder in early 1965. At that time the man was a car salesman in west London, but prior to that he had been a detective constable whose career ended in disgrace.
The suspect joined the Met in 1956 and in 1961 became a CID officer at Kensington police station, then Hammersmith. In June 1962 he transferred to T division, working at Acton and Brentford stations.
Interestingly, during this time he lived in police married quarters in Eastfield Court, East Acton Lane – half a mile from the Heron Trading Estate, where victims had been stored and Bridie O’Hara found.
At best, the detective could be described as a misfit, at worst a spiteful loner. In 1961 and 1962 there were complaints and suspicions about him. In one incident at Kensington station, a detective sergeant returned from an evening drink to find his court papers burning in a toilet bowl. Someone had taken them out of his tray.
Later, the office’s crime book went missing. It was found in the street by a passer-by and handed in. The feeling was that the office loner was behind it. His former sergeant said, ‘Well dressed, always spotless... He had no pals that I remember. Normally in the CID you’d pal up with somebody, but nobody seemed to be his pal.
‘He was a creepy type of bloke. He always seemed to be hanging around... bloody listening to other people’s conversations.’
The man failed his detective sergeant’s exam in January 1962. It was during the next month that he was sent to Hammersmith for supervision. There, a WPC’s handbag was stolen. The thief was spotted running down a corridor and she and several others chased him towards Shepherd’s Bush Green, but he got away. Again, word was that the thief was recognised as being the loner.
Then, on 17 September 1962, his police career crashed permanently. He was suspended from duty and charged with office-breaking. A psychiatrist’s report concluded the man knew right from wrong, and the break-ins were a display of vindictiveness towards his former colleagues. He was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment and dismissed from the Met.
He was found guilty at the Old Bailey of breaking into properties around Brentford and Isleworth and stealing a bizarre array of goods – paintbrushes, files, a spanner, £11, some tobacco.
He also attempted to break into Admiralty Oil’s laboratory on the Great West Road, Brentford.
He had been caught when a security man there saw him on the roof and noted the registration number of the moped on which he made his escape.
He eventually said that when he joined Kensington CID he felt other officers were watching him. He became unhappy. ‘I found I was doing stupid things,’ he told the police.
At Brentford he was accused of theft and felt persecuted. He said, ‘My feeling, wrong as it was, was that if they thought so strongly that I was a black sheep, I will show them and be a black sheep.’
This is how he explained his crimes. ‘I did not set out to steal but rather have the satisfaction of doing something which I knew my colleagues would have to work on but get nowhere.’
Were the Nude Murders a similar poke in the eye for former police colleagues? An escalation of crimes intended to drag detectives into a time-consuming and ultimately fruitless investigation?
Baldock zones in on disgraced detective
The ex-cop became the most compelling suspect for Det Supt Bill Baldock. Not only had he lived half a mile from the Heron Trading Estate and had a self-confessed grudge against a police service, he also worked throughout the whole area where the murders were committed. This stretched from the pick-up streets of Notting Hill out to the Heron Trading Estate, as well as the car park off Kensington High Street where Frances Brown was left.
Baldock said the ex-cop started to figure in the investigation two weeks after Bridie O’Hara’s murder.
An extensive investigation into the Disgraced Cop got moving.
He came out of Ford prison in June 1963 after serving seven months of his sentence. This, of course, was almost eight months before the first of the six confirmed victims, Hannah Tailford, was found in February 1964.
He went to live in Essex with his wife and family, and found a job as a travelling salesman until February 1964. He become a car salesman for a firm based on the Old Brompton Road, west London. The firm’s managing director told officers the Disgraced Cop had been employed at their depot in Hadleigh, Essex, and was eventually dismissed for being inefficient.
Essex police were asked to keep a watch on the suspect, to record which vehicles he drove and search any premises he might be able to use to store the victims’ clothes or their bodies.
However, when pubs, clubs and west London’s streets were canvassed – with locals being shown enlarged photos of the Disgraced Cop – no one could place him. In addition, none of the many cars he used as a salesman turned up in the police index of kerb-crawling motorists.
It was time to interview him. He denied any knowledge of the Nude Murders. In a statement he said he had only been to London during the evening three times during the sequence of murders.
These were two occasions when he attended the Motor Show at Earl’s Court (23 and 30 October 1964), while the other was for a Volvo sales course at the Washington Hotel, Curzon Street (25 January 1965). He had used public transport and taxi, always returning home no later than 11pm. He said he avoided London because of his past troubles, no doubt a reference to his humiliating police career. He confirmed he was now working for another second-hand car dealership in Hadleigh, Essex.
Before working for the Hadleigh car dealer, the Disgraced Cop had been employed by another motor business in Leigh-on-Sea. The managing director of this outfit told the police that the suspect had been a good salesman and confirmed his trips to the Motor Show and sales course. He said the Disgraced Cop had manned the Volvo and Saab stands at Earl’s Court on 23 and 30 October 1964, which was confirmed by another witness. His expenses for attending the show seemed to further confirm that he was there.
Detectives were also particularly interested in the first date at the Motor Show – 23 October. This was the night Frances Brown went missing after being separated from her friend when they were picked up and driven from Portobello Road by two motorists they’d just met.
Suspicions at the time were that the two men who had picked them up, and had never been traced, were themselves attendees at the Motor Show. So, Beryl Mahood, the prostitute and friend who had been with Frances Brown, was shown a photo of the Disgraced Cop. She did not pick him out as being one of the two mystery motorists. This was frustrating because the police felt that the Disgraced Cop resembled the identikit picture Mahood provided of the man who drove with her on Frances’s last night.
Clearly, it was the other man, the one who drove Frances, who was the killer, but a positive ID from Mahood might have implicated the Disgraced Cop as being an accomplice. However, this turned out to be another dead end.
The question remained – what had the Disgraced Cop done after finishing at the Motor Show? Did he really go home by public transport? The investigation could find no way to disprove this. The killer had been using a vehicle to pick up and dispose of his victims. The Disgraced Cop, for all his oddities and circumstantial links, was not fitting the bill as a realistic prime suspect.
For Bill Baldock, the Disgraced Cop could not be eliminated from the inquiry and remained a strong possibility. But they had so far found no positive identification of him from witnesses such as Beryl Mahood, and had uncovered no evidence linking him to the victims or crime scenes.
Not a shred. Baldock concluded, ‘The circumstances surrounding his mental history, knowledge of the area and background are ideal in every respect for his being the murderer. If he is the man responsible, he will certainly kill again…’
By the time Baldock wrote this in his final comprehensive report on the case, in September 1965, almost seven months had elapsed since the final victim had been found.
The evidence trail was cold. The investigation was being wound down. Public interest in the case, never great because the victims were sex workers and afforded little sympathy, quickly waned.
The investigation fizzled out, a complete failure. The killer of six women never faced justice and went free.
The question no one wanted to ask was: why had such a huge investigation, overseen by Scotland Yard’s top detectives, failed so comprehensively?