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Practically every day of the year is a landmark of some sort in the annals of crime. Here’s where you can find out what happened this week in years gone by... Stories from the week beginning June 25th. Killer On The Night BeatGraham Wood, 23, of Scunthorpe, who had a two-year-old daughter and another child on the way, was a policeman. He was also a married man, and his lover was a young policewoman. Wood was on night beat on JUNE 28th, 1971. Not his usual night beat, because he had specifically asked to patrol a beat near his home that night. Just after 1 p.m. police headquarters lost contact with him for about an hour. At the end of the night shift a colleague took him home, and Wood asked him in for a cup of coffee. PC Wood went into his bedroom and gave a gasp as he saw his wife Glenis lying dead on the bed, strangled with an electric-kettle flex. Hidden under the body was an anonymous letter made up of newspaper cuttings. Grilled by his own colleagues, Wood made a pathetic attempt to lay the blame on an intruder. His deceit collapsed within hours. He pleaded guilty at Leicester Assizes to murdering his wife, and those who sat in court wondering how he ever imagined such a feeble plan would fool his own police colleagues were answered in part by a defence psychiatrist. “This young officer is immature, and he was ill-equipped to deal with the emotional situation in which he found himself,” declared the expert, before Wood was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Madman Next DoorParish constable Walter Ford had little doubt that William Jacobs, his neighbour in Lower Street, Edgefield, was mad. The constable knew that Jacobs had been sent home from work a few days ago on account of his “strange behaviour.” It appeared that Jacobs, a 39-year-old single man, had been shouting at the top of his voice at the building site where he was employed. So when the constable stepped out into his garden in the blackness of Saturday night, JUNE 30th, 1907, to get some coals, he wasn’t all that surprised when his weird neighbour appeared at the back door and began trying to convert him to God. When Jacobs began shouting the officer tried talking in a reasoning sort of way. But the unruly neighbour suddenly leapt at him, striking out with a knife. The constable fell to the ground bleeding profusely. Other neighbours, hearing the uproar, rushed to help, and Jacobs fled. But Constable Ford was already beyond all aid. The neighbour’s knife had pierced his heart and he died within hours. When officers were sent to search Jacobs’ house, they were in for another surprise. For lying on the floor was the madman’s father, his head split open by a meat cleaver. Next morning Jacobs was arrested. As he was put in a cart to be taken to nearby Holt for interrogation, he was laughing heartily and throwing his cap in the air. The judge at Norwich Assizes, where he stood trial for the double-murder, had no doubt of his condition and, dispensing with the trial, ordered that the prisoner should be detained in Broadmoor. Final Practice At The Pistol RangeThe scene was the Imperial Institute in London. It was the evening of JULY 1st, 1909, and a meeting of the National Indian Association was ending. As members rose to leave a young Indian stepped forward and spoke to Sir William Curzon-Wylie, the 61-year-old aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India. Then five shots rang out and Sir William dropped to the floor, killed by four bullets in his head. The young Indian was the gunman, and Dr. Cawas Lalcaca, 48, moved forward to grab him, only to fall mortally wounded as two bullets ploughed into him. Then the gunman put his pistol to his own head and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun had failed to fire, and he was overpowered and arrested. Asking for the return of his spectacles which he had lost when he was manhandled to the floor, he told the police he was Madan Lal Dhingra, 25, lodging in Ledbury Road, Bayswater. He had come to England in 1906, was studying engineering at London’s University College, and he had decided to commit a political assassination to demonstrate his opposition to British rule in India. There was ample evidence of premeditation. Six months earlier he had obtained a licence for a revolver, buying a Colt automatic the next day and later purchasing a six-chambered Belgian revolver. He was carrying both when he was arrested. In March he had written to the National Indian Association’s secretary inquiring about membership, and in April he had begun visiting a Tottenham Court Road pistol range several times a week. In the same month he was invited to attend the Association’s next function, a concert to be given on the evening of July 1st. He spent that afternoon at the pistol range, having a final practice. Then he went home to dress for the concert and took a cab to the Institute. Refusing to be represented at his trial at the Old Bailey, he said he did not recognise the court or its right to try him. Sir William’s death was no crime. In killing him, Madan Lal Dhingra said, he simply disposed of an enemy of his people. He had not meant to kill Dr. Lalcaca, and had shot him only in self-defence, intending to save the last bullet for himself. At his request a long statement he had made was read out in court. It accused the British of being responsible for the deaths of millions of his countrymen, and of taking millions of pounds from India every year. The British, he said, were an occupying force, and he had as much right to kill them as the British would have to kill Germans if Germany occupied Britain. On being convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Madan Lal Dhingra said he was proud to lay down his life for his country, which he did on August 31st when Henry and Thomas Pierrepoint hanged him at Pentonville Prison. |
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