While detectives visited tattoo parlours in the city to find a source for the snake design, enquiries took an unexpected turn when the headless body of a woman, minus two fingers from the right hand, was found in swampy ground. A footprint left in soft soil near the body suggested the involvement of a heavily built man and the surgical skill evident in the removal of the fingers led detectives to think their quarry was a surgeon.
By a process of elimination, they came up with the name of Dr Herman Schmitz. He fitted the weight criteria and his medical background was highly relevant. The doctor had suffered a decline in his practice following charges of malpractice. Despite being exonerated of any wrongdoing, the stigma remained.
Enquiries revealed that Dr Schmitz was married with two
children and that he also had a mistress, all of whom were fit and well. Further scrutiny of his background showed that his mistress frequented a particular dress shop where her purchases were charged to the doctor’s account. Significantly, his previous mistress, Anna Stein, had enjoyed the same privilege and she was now missing.
Attention immediately switched to the woman’s body, minus its head and two fingers, which lay in the mortuary. Next came a search of Dr Schmitz’s consulting rooms where officers found the head of Anna Stein immersed in preservative. The outcome of tests on the body was that she had been poisoned with cyanide.
It was presumed that the doctor had killed her to make way for his new lover. He then hit on the idea of literally giving two fingers to the police to taunt them and perhaps to get his own back for what he saw as the injustice of being prosecuted for malpractice. Unfortunately for him, his taunt came at a price because he had failed to remove all traces of the identifying tattoo.
While in custody, Dr Schmitz made a bid for freedom and, in the course of his escape, fell from the top of a building. He made a dying confession of murder and Vienna’s police museum acquired a new exhibit in the form of two fingers.
A Secret No More
A man out walking his dog in Norwich in the UK on a summers’ day in 1851 was surprised when the animal rooted out a piece of flesh which turned out to be a human hand. The discovery was reported to the police and there was great public curiosity at the prospect of finding more human remains.
Search parties aided by dogs scoured the countryside and in the days following the initial discovery, a foot, pelvis, several vertebrae and sundry gobbets of flesh were retrieved. Doctors examining the remains believed they were of a woman aged between sixteen and twenty-six.
Posters were printed seeking information, especially about any missing women. Meanwhile searches continued in a
radius of two to three miles from the centre of Norwich and further discoveries were made. Another foot and hand turned up, together with some intestines and pieces of flesh, all in different locations.
Curiously, there was no coroner’s inquest and interest waned as other events captured the public imagination. The unidentified remains were preserved in spirit and after several months, were emptied into a hole dug in the basement of Norwich Guildhall and covered with lime.
Time went by and the remains of the woman lay out of sight and out of mind. Then, eighteen years later, out of the blue, came a confession to murder. On 1 January 1869, a man appeared at Walworth Police Station in London and declared, “I have a charge to make against myself.” Asked to explain himself, he said that he had murdered his first wife at Norwich, adding, “I have kept the secret for years and can keep it no longer.” He identified himself as William Sheward.
Sheward was put in a cell overnight and questioned the following morning. He stated that he cut his wife’s throat with a razor on 15 June 1851 and then cut up the body. He was charged with murder and remanded pending enquiries in Norwich. Many of those involved in the original investigation had since died. Relatives of Martha Sheward provided a description of her, with particular reference to her golden hair. The man who had found a piece of skin back in 1851 remarked on the golden colour of the hair attached to it. Direct comparison with the remains mouldering in the earth under the Guildhall proved impossible; all that was left were a few bones.
Sheward was sent for trial at Norfolk Assizes where he appeared in March 1869. After hearing the evidence the judge advised the jury that they needed to answer three questions: was Martha Sheward dead? was she murdered? were the remains hers? All the answers appeared to have been affirmative when the jury returned its guilty verdict. The judge pronounced sentence of death and Sheward was taken to the City Gaol.
While awaiting execution, he made a confession. He said he and Martha had “a slight altercation” over money. “Then I ran
the razor into her throat.” He continued by giving a detailed account of which body parts he disposed of on which days. He had put his wife’s head in a saucepan and boiled it before breaking it up for disposal.
Execution was set for 20 April when fifty-seven-year-old Sheward, badly crippled with rheumatism, shuffled to the gallows. The hangman did his work while 2,000 people waited outside the prison gates. His confession was published and
The Times
described it as a “shocking and disgusting narrative . . .”.
Out Of The Deep
Visitors to the Coogee Beach aquarium in Australia admired a tiger shark and its graceful movement in the water when the creature experienced what might be described as a stomach upset. Out of the shark’s mouth came a human arm which, on closer inspection, was seen to bear a tattoo of a pair of boxers squaring up to each other. This exotic discovery in April 1935 sparked off one of Australia’s most enduring murder mysteries.
With the evidence of the tattoo and by taking fingerprints from the severed arm, investigators were able to identify its owner as James Smith, a forty-year-old ex-boxer. Smith was employed at the Sydney boatbuilding yard operated by Reg Holmes and had been missing for two weeks.
Smith had spent a holiday in a rented cottage at Cronulla with Patrick Brady who was known to the police as a forger. The police had stumbled on an intricate web of underworld dealings. Brady was questioned and denied killing Smith but implicated Reg Holmes in criminal activities.
While Brady was in custody, there was an incident in Sydney harbour involving Holmes. His speedboat was stopped after a chase and when police boarded it they found Holmes lying injured with a bullet wound to the head that turned out to be superficial. He claimed that he had been trying to get away from a gunman who was attempting to kill him. Holmes admitted knowing Brady and accused him of killing Smith and disposing of his body.
Brady was charged with Smith’s murder and while he was in custody, Reg Holmes was shot dead in his car. Telling his wife he was meeting a friend, Holmes left his home on the evening of 11 June saying he would be home before 9.30 p.m. A witness living at Miller’s Point saw a man leaning into Holmes’ car and then heard three shots. The man walked away and was never identified.
The fatal shooting of Reg Holmes occurred on the eve of the Coroner’s inquest into the Shark Arm affair at which he was due to appear as a witness. Medical evidence featured prominently at the inquest and doctors stated that the arm had been severed with a sharp knife, although not as part of any surgical operation. Another expert was confident that the arm had been removed from a dead body by the shark. Brady’s lawyer argued that an arm did not by itself constitute a body and contended that there was no conclusive proof that Smith was in fact dead.
The inquest proved to be a stormy affair with first the widow of James Smith giving testimony and then the statement previously given to the police by Reg Holmes. The question hanging in the air was how much of a body was legally required for it to be accepted as a body within the meaning of the Coroner’s Act? The outcome was that, at a special hearing, Mr Justice Halse Rogers decided that an identified part of a body and evidence that it came from a dead body were insufficient for a Coroner’s jurisdiction.
Patrick Brady was committed for trial but, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence put to the court, the judge acquitted him. Brady, who had protested his innocence throughout the Shark Arm saga died in hospital on 11 August 1965. It was believed that both Holmes and Brady had been involved in murky underworld activities. Had he lived, Holmes would have been a star trial witness. Two men charged with his murder were subsequently acquitted.
An international forensic expert who examined the Shark Arm believed that Smith’s body had been dismembered and put into a trunk for disposal at sea. The arm would not fit inside the trunk so it was roped to the outside, worked loose in
the sea and was swallowed by a shark. The police believed that the elimination of Reg Holmes dispelled any hopes of solving the mystery.
The Handless Corpse
Amateur scuba divers in the UK discovered a naked man’s body in a quarry on 14 October 1979. The hands had been cut off at the wrists and the face mutilated to obscure the identity of the dead man. Initial thinking was that he had been executed in some kind of gangland killing or was possibly an IRA victim.
Then, out of the blue, two women appeared at Leyland police station to tell an amazing story about a drugs syndicate operating in several countries and turning over millions of pounds. Julie Hue had been in Spain with a friend, Barbara Pilkington, when she was told that the syndicate had killed her boyfriend. Fearing for her own life, she returned to the UK.
The handless corpse was the boyfriend, twenty-seven-year-old New Zealander Martin Johnstone, a member of the drug syndicate. Sometimes known as “Mr Asia”, Johnstone ran the syndicate’s operations in south-east Asia. Hue and Pilkington were afraid of Andrew Maker, who had worked with Johnstone.
Maker had sidetracked Johnstone to work on a fictitious deal in Scotland and it was Maker who shot his business associate and mutilated his body before dumping it in the flooded quarry. Others were involved in supplying weights to make sure the body sank in the water and providing the murder weapon.
As the investigation spread its net, the path led to Alexander Sinclair, known as “Mr Big”, a New Zealander with a criminal record. He and his associates criss-crossed the globe moving drugs and money about and keeping a tight rein on their operatives. Johnstone had, apparently, stepped over a few boundaries and Sinclair gave instructions that he was to be eliminated.
In July 1981, the plotters were put on trial at Lancaster Castle. Eight men and one woman appeared in court in proceedings
that lasted 121 days. Alexander Sinclair, who was believed to have made £25 million from drug-dealing denied murder. Andrew Maker pleaded guilty to murder and conspiracy. James Smith who helped dispose of the body, denied murder. Keith Kirby denied murder; Frederick Russell, who supplied the weapon, pleaded guilty; Leila Barclay, the syndicate’s banker, pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges; Errol Hincksman, Christopher Blackman and Sylvester Pidgeon denied drug conspiracy charges.
The jury listened to detailed allegations of an international drug operation that ended in the sordid execution of one of the main players. After deliberating for thirty-eight hours, they found Sinclair, Maker, Smith and Kirby guilty of murder; Russell had already pleaded guilty. Three others were convicted on drug conspiracy charges.
Sentenced to life imprisonment and wanted in Australia in connection with five murders, Sinclair was confined in Parkhurst Prison. His death in prison was reported in 1983. He was thirty-nine years old and most of his drug-dealing fortune remained intact.
I.D. On A Plate
Daryl Suckling was a caretaker at Wyrama Station, a remote community in New South Wales, Australia. In March 1988, he and his supposed niece were invited to dinner by neighbours. During the evening, Sophie Carnie, detached herself from Suckling and privately told her host that she was being held captive by him against her wishes. The dinner host discreetly informed the police and a bizarre story began to unravel.
Under questioning, twenty-six-year-old Sophie related how she had befriended Suckling, a man twice her age, who had served time in Pentridge Prison. She felt sorry for him because he seemed friendless when he was released. She invited him to live with her and her husband in Melbourne. Events took a turn for the worse when Suckling teamed up with her husband to carry out burglaries. Both men ended up with prison sentences.
On his release in 1987, Suckling sought to re-establish his relationship with Sophie but she made it clear that she did not want to know. In March 1988, Suckling kidnapped Sophie, held her captive at his home and repeatedly raped her. He threatened to kill her saying that he had “a body buried down the wood already”.
Sophie’s strategy was to comply with her captor’s wishes to the point where he allowed her limited freedom. This culminated in the dinner with neighbours and her opportunity to escape from his clutches. When police searched Suckling’s home, they found chains, handcuffs and drugs which amply supported Sophie’s story. They also found articles of female clothing, not belonging to Sophie, and, significantly, discovered a denture discarded in a waste disposal sack.
Further searches turned up photographs of naked women and one in particular who appeared to be distressed and drugged. She was identified as Jodie Marie Larcombe, a twenty-one-year-old Melbourne prostitute, missing since December 1987. Confirmation of her identity came from the discovery of her dental plate found at Suckling’s home.
Suckling was charged with Larcombe’s murder, although there was no body. Intensive searches using police divers and aerial surveys failed to recover the missing woman. The only evidence against Suckling was circumstantial. In the meantime, he was charged with the abduction and rape of Sophie Carnie but the young woman died of a drug overdose before the trial.
In August 1989, Suckling was committed for trial for the murder of Jodie Larcombe but proceedings were dropped due to lack of evidence. The case remained open and police achieved a breakthrough in 1994 when a man who met Suckling in prison revealed the admissions his fellow inmate had divulged. Suckling told him that he had abducted and murdered a woman several years previously. The informer co-operated with investigators and in bugged conversations Suckling boasted about getting away with murder and described some of his acts of mutilation in horrific detail.