When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain (7 page)

His military decorations included three service stripes, the French Battle of Verdun Medal, New Haven World War I Veterans Medal, Republic of France Grande Guerre Medal and the Château-Thierry campaign medal. He was also made a life member of the American Legion, the Red Cross and the YMCA. When the Humane Education Society awarded him a gold medal in 1921, it was presented by General John Pershing.

After the war, Stubby became a national celebrity, attending military parades up and down the country. He even got to meet three presidents: Wilson, Harding and Coolidge.

In 1926, he died peacefully in Private Conroy's arms. Brave, but also lucky, he was the most decorated dog of the First World War. He was also the only dog to be promoted to the rank of sergeant through combat.

 

PART VI

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

‘I have nothing to say.'

AMELIA DYER, AS THE NOOSE WAS PLACED AROUND HER NECK IN PREPARATION FOR HER EXECUTION, 10 JUNE 1896

 

16

Angel of Death

It began with an advert in the Bristol
Times and Mirror
. ‘Wanted,' it read, ‘respectable woman to take young child.' The advertisement had been placed in the newspaper by Evelina Marmon, a twenty-five-year-old barmaid.

Two months earlier, in January 1896, Evelina had given birth to a baby girl named Doris. Unable to meet the cost of feeding and clothing the child, and abandoned by the man who made her pregnant, Evelina had no option but to find a foster home.

As she read through the advert she'd placed in the newspaper, her eye happened to fall on another advertisement on the same page. ‘Married couple with no family would adopt healthy child, nice country home. Terms, £10.'

Foster families were not unusual in Victorian Britain. Unwanted pregnancies and poverty had led to a veritable foster industry, with thousands of illegitimate children being discreetly farmed out to charitable families. The mother of the unwanted child would pay a fee – it was either a one-off payment or a monthly advance – and find herself free of the stigma of having a child born out of wedlock.

Evelina, a vivacious blonde, read the advert and had the feeling that she was at last in luck. She immediately wrote to the lady – a Mrs Harding from Oxford Road in Reading – and asked for more information.

A reply was immediately forthcoming. ‘I should be glad to have a dear little baby girl, one I could bring up and call my own,' wrote Mrs Harding. She also provided a little more information about her love of children. ‘We are plain, homely people, in fairly good circumstances. I don't want a child for money's sake, but for company and home comfort. Myself and my husband are dearly fond of children. I have no child of my own. A child with me will have a good home and a mother's love.'

Evelina was thrilled by what she read; it was the answer to all her prayers. Mrs Harding even described the enchanting place where she and her husband lived. There was a large garden and an orchard. It was the perfect place to raise a young child.

There was only one detail that caused Evelina a moment's hesitation. Mrs Harding said she could not accept a weekly fee for caring for baby Doris. Rather, she wanted a one-off payment of £10. She said she would take entire responsibility for the child and that Evelina would never have to trouble herself about the illegitimate baby.

Evelina felt uneasy. As with any young mother, the idea of being separated forever from her newborn was extremely painful. But she was in such desperate straits that she agreed to Mrs Harding's terms. A week later, Mrs Harding arrived in Cheltenham to pick up baby Doris.

And this was the point when Evelina got a most unwelcome surprise. She was expecting Mrs Harding to be youthful and maternal. Instead, she turned out to be an elderly woman with a rough-looking face.

Evelina was somewhat reassured by the loving way Mrs Harding picked up the baby. She wrapped Doris tightly in a shawl, professing to be concerned about the chill evening air. After chatting about the wonderful home in which the baby would be brought up, she turned to leave. Evelina shed a quiet tear as she waved farewell.

A few days later Evelina wrote to Mrs Harding for news of baby Doris and was relieved to learn that all was well. But it was to be the last news she ever heard of her baby. All of her subsequent letters went unanswered – and with good reason. Baby Doris was dead.

Only much later would the grisly story emerge, one that would cause shock and revulsion throughout Victorian Britain. Mrs Harding was not who she claimed to be; her real name was Amelia Dyer. Under the pretence of being a foster mother, she took in illegitimate babies (for a sizeable fee) and then murdered them.

Amelia Dyer did not take baby Doris home to Reading as she had promised. Instead, she went directly to Mayo Road in Willesden where her daughter lived. In the room upstairs, she took some white edging tape from a box and wound it tightly around baby Doris's neck, slowly strangling the child. She pawned Doris's baby clothes, thereby earning herself a few more shillings, and then wrapped the corpse in a napkin.

On the following morning, she took delivery of another child, a thirteen-month-old boy named Harry Simmons. He, too, was strangled.

The next evening, Dyer shoved the two corpses into an old carpet bag and threw it into a lonely spot by the weir at Caversham Lock. Unknown to her, it did not sink.

Nor did she know that she was already under police surveillance. Just days before killing baby Doris, the police had recovered a parcel in the Thames, near Reading. On opening it, they found the remains of a baby. Crucially, they also found the smudged remnants of an old label on the parcel. After a clever piece of detective work, police found themselves on the trail of Amelia Dyer.

Suspecting Dyer of murdering babies, the police began dragging a stretch of river. They pulled out three baby corpses, followed by the bag that contained the remains of Doris Marmon and Harry Simmons.

In the third week of May, Amelia Dyer was put on trial for murder. She pleaded guilty to one of the killings, baby Doris, and claimed insanity as her defence.

This was swiftly rejected. The jury took just four-and-a-half minutes to find her guilty and Amelia was hanged two weeks later. To the surprise of many, her daughter escaped prosecution.

The police never discovered how many other babies Amelia had killed, but the vast collection of baby clothes and letters found at her house suggested that she had murdered many more. Indeed, some believed her to have killed more than four hundred babies, making her the most prolific murderess in history.

 

17

Who Killed Rasputin?

The frozen corpse was spotted in the River Neva on the last day of December 1916. A river policeman noticed a fur coat lodged beneath the ice and ordered the surface crust to be broken.

The frozen body was immediately recognizable as belonging to Grigori Rasputin, ‘holy' adviser to the tsar and tsarina of Russia. Tsar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, believed Rasputin to be blessed with semi-magical powers that brought temporary relief to their haemophiliac son.

Others took a rather different view. Rasputin was widely hated as a dissolute fraudster who was manipulating the affairs of state to his own advantage. Many in the Russian capital had long wished him dead.

The corpse was prised from its icy sepulchre and taken to Chesmenskii Hospice. Here, a post-mortem was undertaken by Professor Dmitrii Kosorotov. Rumours about Rasputin's death were already circulating around Petrograd, rumours that would later be fuelled by one of the murderers. Prince Felix Yusupov, in whose palace Rasputin had died, not only admitted to being involved, but also justified the killing by arguing that Rasputin was bad for Russia. He bragged about having poisoned him with cyanide before shooting him through the heart.

‘He rushed at me, trying to get at my throat, and sank his fingers into my shoulder like steel claws. His eyes were bursting from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips.'

From the outset there were good reasons to doubt Yusupov's account. The professor conducting the post-mortem noted that the corpse was in a terrible state of mutilation. ‘His left side has a weeping wound, due to some sort of slicing object or a sword. His right eye has come out of its cavity and falls down onto his face … His right ear is hanging down and torn. His neck has a wound from some sort of rope tie. The victim's face and body carry traces of blows given by a supple but hard object.'

Rasputin had been repeatedly beaten with a heavy cosh.

More horrifying was the damage to his genitals. At some point, his legs had been wrenched apart and his testicles had been ‘crushed by the action of a similar object'.

Other details gleaned by Professor Kosorotov suggest that Yusupov's account was nothing more than fantasy. The story of the poisoned cakes was untrue; the post-mortem found no trace of poison in Rasputin's stomach.

Kosorotov also examined the three bullet wounds in Rasputin's body. ‘The first has penetrated the left side of the chest and has gone through the stomach and liver. The second has entered into the right side of the back and gone through the kidney.'

Both of these would have inflicted terrible wounds, but the third bullet was the fatal shot. ‘[It] hit the victim in the forehead and penetrated into his brain.' Professor Kosorotov noted, significantly, that the bullets ‘came from different calibre revolvers'.

On the night of the murder, Yusupov was in possession of a pocket Browning, as was fellow conspirator Grand Duke Dmitrii. Vladimir Purishkevich, also present, had a Savage.

These weapons could have caused the wounds to Rasputin's liver and kidney. But the fatal gunshot wound to Rasputin's head could only have come from a revolver. Ballistic experts now agree that the grazing around the wound is consistent with that left by a lead, non-jacketed bullet fired at point-blank range.

All the evidence points to the fact that the gun was a British-made .455 Webley revolver. This was the gun that belonged to Oswald Rayner, a close friend of Yusupov since the days when they had both studied at Oxford University.

Unknown to anyone except the small group of conspirators, Rayner had also been present on the night of Rasputin's murder. Sent to Russia more than a year earlier, he was a British agent working for the Secret Intelligence Service (now MI6).

Prince Yusupov was circumspect about Rayner when he wrote his memoirs. He mentions meeting him on the day after Rasputin's murder but presents their meeting as a chance encounter. ‘I met my friend Oswald Rayner … he knew of our conspiracy and had come in search of news.'

Yusupov did indeed meet with Rayner after the murder, but Rayner had not needed to ‘come in search of news' for he had fired the fatal shot.

Rayner would later tell his family that he was present in the Yusupov palace that night, information that would eventually find its way into his obituary. Surviving letters from his fellow agents also shed light on his role. ‘A few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement,' wrote one. ‘Rayner is attending to loose ends.'

The tsar was quick to hear rumours of British involvement in Rasputin's murder. Anxious to know more, he asked the British ambassador if Rayner had a hand in the killing.

The ambassador denied any knowledge of Rayner's involvement. So, too, did Samuel Hoare, the head of the British espionage bureau in Petrograd. ‘An outrageous charge', he said, ‘and incredible to the point of childishness.'

Yet Hoare was remarkably quick to learn of Rasputin's death. Indeed he telegrammed London with news of the murder many hours before it was publicly known in Petrograd.

 

18

Till Death Us Do Part

The letter begins as an intimate billet-doux. ‘Oh Harry, my own precious darling, your letter today is one long yearning cry for your little love.'

But within a few lines, a more sinister story begins to emerge. ‘Yesterday, I administered the powder you left me … the result? Nil.'

The powder – arsenic – had not worked.

The writer of the letter was an Edwardian housewife named Augusta Fullam, who lived in Agra in central north India. Her ‘precious darling' was Lieutenant Henry Clark, a surgeon. Together, in 1911, the two lovers decided to poison Augusta's husband Edward. Once he was dead, they would then kill Mrs Clark, Henry's wife. And then they would get married.

But they found themselves with a significant problem when they tried to kill Edward – he stubbornly refused to die. Each day, Augusta sprinkled arsenic powder onto his supper or slipped it into his tea, but all to no avail. ‘My hubby returned the whole jug of tea saying it tasted bad,' she wrote in one letter to her lover.

On Friday 16 June 1911, Augusta managed to administer a massive dose to her husband. This time he ate the lot. But once again, it failed to kill him. ‘Since 4pm [he's] vomited eight times … vomited ten times at a quarter to nine … vomited 12 times at ten pm.'

Augusta began to fear that he was indestructible. ‘I give him half a tonic powder every day in his Sanatogen, lovie darling, because it lays on the top of the white powder quite unsuspiciously.'

For month after month, Augusta fed her husband arsenic. And for month after month Edward clung to life, despite vomiting many times each day. But eventually he fell seriously ill. As he lay in bed with a raging fever, Lieutenant Clark decided to finish him off with a huge dose of poison, administering it himself. Within hours, Edward Fullam was dead.

In his capacity as surgeon, Lieutenant Clark was able to sign the death certificate; it recorded the cause of death as heart failure.

The lovers were halfway to their goal. All they now had to do was murder Mrs Clark. This time, they decided not to waste months in administrating arsenic. Instead, Lieutenant Clark hired four assassins who broke into the house and struck Louisa Clark with a sword, smashing her skull. The noise of the brutal attack woke the Clarks' daughter, Maud, who screamed, causing the robbers to flee.