Silent Witnesses (7 page)

MacNaghten looked closely at the empty cash box and saw what appeared to be a fingerprint on the inside tray. As a member of the Belper Committee established to assess methods of identification, which had recommended the use of fingerprints five years previously, he wondered whether this might be a good opportunity to test the new technique. He used a handkerchief to carefully pick the cash box up, before having it wrapped in paper and taken to the fledgling Fingerprinting Bureau at Scotland Yard.

The bureau was headed by Detective Inspector Charles Stockley Collins, who was by then regarded as the foremost English fingerprint expert of his time. Despite the earlier successes of the method, especially in identifying previously convicted criminals who tried to pass themselves off under pseudonyms, the technique was still considered unwieldy. The police knew that they were risking public ridicule if it failed now, due to the intense scrutiny that a murder case would generate. Furthermore, even if they succeeded in identifying the owner of the fingerprint and charging him, they would still need to convince a jury to convict on the basis of this unfamiliar form of evidence.

Collins examined the print thoroughly and determined that it was made through perspiration and appeared to have been left by the thumb, probably from the right hand. He compared it with those of the Farrows and of Detective Sergeant Atkinson and was satisfied that it did not belong to either of them. Although the Bureau had some 80–90,000 sets of prints on file, there was unfortunately no match among them. This left the police with the daunting prospect of having to find a suspect to compare the print with. Initially they hoped that Mrs. Farrow
would be able to give a description of her assailants when she regained consciousness. However, tragically, she died in the hospital on March 31 without saying a word—a serious setback to the investigation.

The police then had to resort to the usual practice of interviewing potential witnesses. Fortunately there was no shortage of them. Several had seen two men running from the scene of the murder at about 7:30
AM.
One of them was described as being dressed in a dark brown suit and cap, the other in a dark blue serge suit and bowler hat. Two of these witnesses, a professional boxer named Henry John Littlefield and a local girl named Ellen Stanton, positively identified the man in the dark brown suit as one Alfred Stratton.

Although he did not have a criminal record, Alfred Stratton was familiar to the police as a “vagabond” and was known to have contacts in the criminal underworld. His brother Albert was also known to them, and the description of the man in the bowler hat matched him. The identification of Alfred was apparently confirmed when his girlfriend, Annie Cromarty, told the police that he had disposed of his dark brown coat and changed his shoes the day after the murder; she also recalled him asking for a pair of old stockings. A tip from Cromarty also led police to recover £4 that was buried near a local waterworks. Based on Cromarty's information, warrants for the arrest of both the brothers were issued. They were taken into custody on April 2 and, while being held, had their fingerprints taken. When Detective Inspector Collins received the two sets, he compared them to the print on the cash box. He concluded that the print matched Alfred Stratton's right thumbprint. The brothers were charged with murder and the trial was set for
May 5 at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales.

MacNaghten, Collins, and Richard Muir, the prosecutor for the Crown, knew that they would face an uphill battle. Since the fingerprint was the only tangible evidence that they had, the case would stand or fall on whether it convinced the jury, and the defense would try their best to undermine it. Even fingerprinting pioneer Henry Faulds was a vocal detractor, because he had the mistaken notion that a single fingerprint match was unreliable. The defense therefore retained him as a witness. Also set to testify for the defense was Dr. John George Garson, who advocated anthropometry (the English term for
bertillonage)
over fingerprinting as a means of identification. Both men were professional rivals of Edward Henry, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police who had established the Fingerprint Bureau and who was responsible for the acceptance of fingerprinting into the British legal system. Henry himself was also in attendance.

The prosecution called more than forty witnesses to the stand, since Muir and his team wanted to place the two defendants at the scene of the crime. Despite Muir's inherent distrust of eyewitness testimony, he was counting on the consistency of these witnesses to reinforce the evidence of the fingerprint. Although some of them, such as Henry Alfred Jennings, a local milkman, were not able to make a definite identification of the defendants (but were consistent in describing their general appearance), others, such as Henry Littlefield and Ellen Stanton, were positive in their identification of Alfred Stratton. The Home Office pathologist who did the postmortem on the Farrows told the court that the injuries on the couple were
consistent with being inflicted by weapons similar to the tools that the brothers had in their possession.

Kate Wade, Albert Stratton's girlfriend, testified that Albert was not with her on the night of the murder and that he usually stayed with her. Annie Cromarty testified that Alfred had come home on the morning of March 27 with a large amount of money, without explaining where he had obtained it. She added that he threw out the clothes that he had been wearing that day when he saw the newspaper accounts of the murder and that he asked her to tell the police, or anyone else who asked, that he was with her on the night of the murder.

However, the defense counsels, H. G. Rooth, Curtis Bennett, and Harold Morris, were able to give plausible alternative explanations for events that cast doubt on the prosecution's witnesses. They clearly felt they had done a good job, since they were then confident enough to have Alfred Stratton take the stand. He testified that at about 2:30
AM
on March 27, he was awoken by his brother tapping on the window. When he opened it, Albert asked if he could lend him some money for a night's lodging. He replied that he would check if he had some and then went inside to do so. When he came back, Albert was gone. He went out and found his brother some distance away, on Regent Street. It was there that several witnesses had seen them. Alfred told his brother that he had no money but offered to let him stay for the night. Albert agreed and slept on the floor, and the brothers stayed together until nine in the morning, after which Albert left. Alfred went on to explain that the £4 the police had recovered he had won boxing. He had, he said, buried it three weeks prior to the murders for safekeeping and had been intending to give it to Annie Cromarty.

Before calling Inspector Collins to give his evidence about the thumbprint, Muir called William Gittings, who worked in the jail where the Stratton brothers had been confined while awaiting trial. Gittings explained that during a conversation with him, Albert Stratton had said, “I reckon he [Alfred] will get strung up and I shall get about ten years…. He has led me into this.” Muir hoped to impress the jury into thinking that this statement could be counted as a confession. He then called Inspector Collins to the stand.

Muir's plan was to first establish Collins's credentials as an expert in the field of fingerprinting and then get him to explain, in layman's terms, how fingerprinting worked as a means of identification. Collins was then asked to talk specifically about the fingerprint involved in the case. He showed the jury the cash box that was recovered from the scene and the fingerprint that he was able to obtain from it. He then went on to show how it matched Alfred Stratton's right thumb, pointing out that the print had as many as twelve points of agreement. At the request of a member of the jury, Collins also demonstrated the difference in prints caused by various levels of pressure.

After Collins had given his evidence, the defense called Dr. John Garson to the stand. They were hoping to discredit Collins's testimony by establishing Garson's credentials as one of Collins's mentors, thus giving the jury the impression that he was more experienced in the study of fingerprinting. As expected, Garson testified that he could say with certainty that the print taken from the cash box and Alfred Stratton's prints did not match.

However, it was easy for Muir to establish that Garson was not an expert in fingerprinting but in anthropometry, its rival form
of identification. Garson had, in fact, spoken out against fingerprinting to the Belper Committee. Muir then dropped a bombshell during his cross-examination of Garson. He called into evidence two letters written by Garson, one to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the other to the lawyer for the defense. Each said that Garson would be willing to testify for either side in the trial, depending on who would pay him more. In an instant this rendered his evidence completely worthless. Annoyed by this revelation, the judge commented that Garson was an “absolutely untrustworthy witness.” Having had Dr. Garson's credibility as a witness shattered in this way, the defense decided not to call Faulds to the stand, fearing that Muir would find some way to discredit him as well. After each side had given their summations, it took the jury just over two hours of deliberation to find the Stratton brothers guilty of murder. They were sentenced to death by hanging, and were put to death on May 23, 1905.

The history of identification—which I will continue to allude to throughout this book—is a history of uniqueness. Proven systems of identification such as
bertillonage
or fingerprinting are able to work because we are all completely individual, something that is enormously useful for the purposes of criminal investigation. The techniques we have looked at in this chapter represent the first successful attempts to integrate forensic methods into justice systems. They demonstrate that police work is made far easier when suspects can be quickly and efficiently tied to (or eliminated from) an investigation. That said, such proofs of identity, however strong, are often only one part of the puzzle—a case constructed using several different forensic techniques in conjunction will build an even more comprehensive picture of events.

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (1917)

P
olice Constable George Gutteridge was born in Downham Market, Norfolk, England, in 1891. He joined Essex County Constabulary in April 1910 and served as constable 489 for eight years before resigning in April 1918 to join the army. He served in France for ten months with the Machine Gun Corps, enduring all the horrors of trench warfare. He then returned to work for Essex Constabulary. He lived with his wife, Rose, and their two children, Muriel and Alfred, in the small, pretty village of Stapleford Abbotts, working four beats for the Epping division.

On September 26, 1927, Gutteridge was working a split shift. He returned home from duty at 6
PM
and spent the evening in with his family. He then left home to resume duty at 11
PM,
going to meet Constable Sydney Taylor, who was stationed in the neighboring hamlet of Lambourne End. The two met as planned at a conference point on the B175
road running from Romford to Chipping Ongar. Gutteridge departed at 3:05
AM
to start the mile-long walk home. He never made it.

The following morning, at about 6
AM,
the local postman William Alec Ward was on his rounds when he dropped some mail off at the post office in the little village of Stapleford Abbotts. He then continued along the Ongar road, over Pinchback Bridge towards the village of Stapleford Tawney. It was while he was negotiating a bend that he noticed a large object at the roadside ahead and, as he drew closer, realized that it was the body of a man. The body was slumped against the grass bank in a semi-sitting position, with legs extended out into the road. To his horror, Ward recognized the body as PC Gutteridge. Jumping back into his van, Ward raced to a nearby cottage to summon help before driving to Stapleford Tawney to telephone the Romford police.

The first officer on the scene was Police Constable Albert Blockson, who took charge until Detective Inspector John Crockford arrived from Romford at about 7:45
AM
. The inspector examined the body. Gutteridge was still grasping a pencil stub, while his notebook lay in the road nearby. His billy club was still in the pocket in which it was usually kept, as was his flashlight. On the left side of his face, just in front of the ear, there were two holes that appeared consistent with the entry of two large bullets. On the right side of the neck there were two exit wounds. Two further bullets appeared to have been discharged, one into each eye. It was thought that the reason for this might have been the superstition that the last thing a person sees before he dies is photographically imprinted on the
retinas of the eyes—the shots had been fired in order to destroy any such “image.”

The assessment that four bullets had been fired was confirmed when two .45 bullets were prized out of the road surface and two more were recovered from the body during the subsequent postmortem. The time of death was estimated to be about four or five hours prior to the discovery of the body. Because he had been holding his notepad and pencil when found, it was deduced that Gutteridge had stopped a car and had been about to record details when he was shot. The bullets and the cartridge case were handed over to the foremost ballistics expert of his day, Robert Churchill, for examination. Although deformed, the bullets retained sufficient rifling characteristics for Churchill to establish that they had been fired from a Webley revolver.

A full-scale hunt for the killer—or killers—began. From the outset the murder was connected with the theft of a Morris Cowley car, registration number TW6120, which had been stolen on the same night from the garage of Dr. Edward Lovell in Billericay (about ten miles away from the scene of the crime). Neighbors remembered the sound of a car being driven off at high speed during the early hours of the morning. By the time the car had been reported stolen later that morning, however, it had already been found—in Brixton, South London. The left fender had been damaged, and blood traces were discovered on the bodywork. The car's odometer also showed that it had been driven forty-two miles—the precise distance of a direct journey from Dr. Lovell's garage to Brixton.