Do you think William Herbert Wallace was guilty?

[RodCrosby]

Rod actually thinks it was part of an elaborate "accomplice robbery" plan wherein Parry made the call and got "Qualtrough" (someone unknown to Julia so he could claim he was Qualtrough to be let in) to agree to take all the risk and actually rob JW. He got caught in the act and brained poor Julia. This is Rod's theory. He thinks you are stupid if you do not agree 100 percent with this. This is who we are dealing with here, just to remind everyone.

I only think you're stupid if you can't come up with a better theory that fits all the facts [like mine does], and yet continue to rage impotently from the sidelines...

You... rage.

I reason. abductively...

[AmericanSherlock]

I only think you're stupid if you can't come up with a better theory that fits all the facts [like mine does], and yet continue to rage impotently from the sidelines...

You... rage.

I reason. abductively...

You haven't converted a single person so you are the one raging from the sidelines. Not 1 person has been convinced. All you have done is make a major fool of yourself by posting lame videos in cars and helicopters alone.

Also I just give you back your own energy. You are the 1 who has come in here and started insulting people "raging"

[RodCrosby]

Hardly the Napoleon of Crime is he

You may have forgotten, but Napoleon himself failed, then came back for another go, and failed again...

Petty criminals the same. And sometimes... they just get lucky.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Deja-vu!

Debate replaced by playground insults.

Solving a case doesn’t mean solving it your own mind, to you’re own easy-to-please satisfaction. Can you name any other human being who is convinced by your theory?

There’s a guy on here who ‘believes’ that Vincent Van Gogh was Jack the Ripper. You and he would get on

[Herlock Sholmes]

You may have forgotten, but Napoleon himself failed, then came back for another go, and failed again...

Petty criminals the same. And sometimes... they just get lucky.

I’ll remind you. You said that the ‘plan’ showed ‘extraordinary care and extraordinary imagination.’

Care?

Off the cuff I provided six transparently obvious ways that the plan could have failed.

And as for failing and coming back to have another go. Well another phonecall plan would be out so how else would ‘Qualtrough’ have arranged for Wallace to be out of the house?

[RodCrosby]

Hi Rod,

What's your opinion of the forensic evidence?

My un-qualified opinion is that - putting the Police cross-contamination and altering of the crime-scene, and the temperature blunders to one side - MacFall was basically correct in his view that Julia was attacked in a frontal assault while on or near the left-hand chair, and the Defence theory of an attack while lighting the fire doesn't stand up.

There were no blood-stains in the right-hand corner of the room, near the gas-tap. All were in the left, near and behind the chair...

So Julia was not immediately killed by her killer; she died after a period of seeming normality in their encounter.

Which fits with her rumbling a sneak-thief at about 8pm, and some sort of confrontation leading to her instant death.

The mac is there because she was intent on leaving the house, most likely on some pretext "I've forgotten to collect the cat from next door" or "I don't know what's happened to my husband - I'd better go out and look for him, you'll have to come another time Mr. Q" etc., etc.

The small recent bruise on her arm suggests she was grabbed, and possibly flung onto the fire, which would explain the burning.

Mostly speculative, I accept. We'll never be able to recreate the sequence perfectly, not least because the photos are not a true representation of the original scene.

I hope someone does try to recreate it someday.

Amazing for all that violence there is not a picture out of place, not a cracked plate or vase, not a tottering music-stand falling over, nor a teetering sheaf of music sliding hopelessly to the floor...

One of the most iconic and baffling photos in the history of Murder...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/klt4qegzqa03ktj/parlour2.JPG?dl=0

[RodCrosby]

The scene...

[AmericanSherlock]

Seen the "scene" before many times. You are not offering much new this go round, I'm afraid. Except further comedic relief.

Nothing in the scene suggests your favored scenario in particular. You make broad assumptions and suppositions and present them as fact. Absolutely laughable.

[RodCrosby]

'... it was the setting for the most baffling whodunnit in the annals of crime. Close the door, light the light. Forget Kafka and Poe. Welcome to the Wallace case...

Either it was her husband, the scrawny insurance agent William Herbert Wallace or, "if it wasn't," declared the critic James Agate, "then here at last is the perfect murder."

It was Tuesday, January 20, a numbing, black night. The neighbours, a couple called Johnston, had been on their way out when they stumbled on Wallace looking agitated in the rear entry. He told them he'd been out for a couple of hours, returning home to find all the doors locked against him. Mr Johnston suggested trying again. "It opens now," murmured Wallace, disappearing through the back door. Moments later he was back. "Come and see!" he exclaimed. "She's been killed!"

Wallace's tale was a strange one. On the evening before the killing, he had gone to play chess at a café in central Liverpool, arriving to find that a message had been telephoned to the cafe not half an hour before. Wallace was to call the following evening at 7.30 at 25 Menlove Gardens East. Although not knowing the caller - who gave his name as R M Qualtrough - Wallace, scenting commission, kept the appointment.

On the next night, leaving Julia sniffling at the back gate, Wallace said he'd taken a series of trams to the leafy suburb of Allerton. But Menlove Gardens turned out to be a triangular affair, and while there was a Menlove Gardens North, South and West, there was no Menlove Gardens East. Nor had anyone heard of R M Qualtrough. Back home, there was Julia, dead on the rug.

Now the nightmare began in earnest. The police piled in, led by the half-cut CID chief, Det Supt Moore, who almost tripped over the pathologist, down on all-fours observing the progress of rigor mortis. No need to take the rectal temperature, said Professor MacFall. Mrs Wallace had been dead a good four hours. And that meant that Wallace did it before setting out for Menlove Gardens. Supt Moore liked the sound of that.

Little house, big crowds, police, doctors, photographers, neighbours. Blood all over the parlour, pools on the carpet, spurts and stipples on the walls and pictures. Under the body, a bloodstained mackintosh. "Is this yours, Mr Wallace?" It was. But at the Anfield bridewell, Wallace, his clothes, boots, hands, hair, even his Crippenesque wire-rimmed glasses, were all blood-free.

Neighbours in Wolverton Street said the Wallaces were a queer couple, dingy and withdrawn. Married for 16 years, no children. Wallace, tall, cadaverous, played chess and the fiddle, looked like a murderer. Julia came down in the world when she married him. MacFall reported she was wearing patched-up corsets when he found her.

Moore was convinced that Wallace was Qualtrough. By a fluke, the mysterious call to the chess club was traced to a kiosk just 400 yards from Wallace's front door, and smack bang next to the tram stop for central Liverpool. So, Moore concluded, Wallace made the Qualtrough call, left a message, hopped on a tram, got to the cafe, picked up the message. Frontispiece for the perfect alibi.

But the whole case turned on time. To catch the tram that took him to Menlove Gardens, Wallace would have had to have left home no later than 6.49. But a milkboy swore seeing Julia alive on her front doorstep at 6.45. In the time available, could wheezy Wallace, at 52, a heavy smoker, out of condition with a chronic kidney complaint, really have stripped naked (wearing the mackintosh to shield himself from splashing blood), bludgeoned his wife to death, cleaned and secreted the murder weapon (never found), faked a burglary, attended to various gas-jets, fires, locks and bolts, and dressed himself for a journey across Liverpool, calm and composed, on a winter's night?

A dozy Liverpool jury thought he could. Wallace was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He got off on appeal, left Wolverton Street and his suspicious neighbours and moved across the Mersey to a bungalow in the Wirral. He died a broken man less than two years later, having first fingered a local Jack-the-Lad ("rather foppish, wears spats, very plausible") as his own prime suspect. But that's another story...

Raymond Chandler reckoned the case would "always be unbeatable". Seventy years on, crime buffs are still drawn to this quiet Liverpool backwater, to gaze at the Wallace house and to wonder at its secret.'

[Roger Wilkes, 2001]

[AmericanSherlock]

Roger Wilkes wrote a foreword for John Gannon's book. I wouldn't quote him if I were you

Also it is commonly accepted that the time the milk boy came was neither 6:45 like his original claim nor 6:31 as the police tried to present it, but 6:37ish. This is corroborated by the other milk kids. It is widely accepted now. You know this. Don't equivocate and present things you know to be untrue. This is dishonest.

Finally, just posting old documents,quotes, or articles in questionable context shuts down conversation and is a form of trolling. I will not tolerate it. You ruin discussion here every time you post just as you have done among the TENS and HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of largely vile posts you have scattered across the internet.

You're a pathetic, friendless man who has admitted to being hopelessly depressed and spends your days arrogantly pontificating on the internet. Deep down you know this. This is not an ad hominem attack; I am pointing this out in addition to debunking your flawed arguments.

[Herlock Sholmes]

There would appear to be no length to which Rod won’t go to make unsubstantiated assertions to prove his ‘theory.’ For example, how can it be deduced that there was a ‘period of normality’ in the meeting between Mr X and Julia? Wish thinking to ‘substantiate’ the simply not believable ‘sneak thief’ suggestion.

On to Rod’s theory; from memory though.

Master criminal Parry, in a stroke of genius, finds the world’s stupidest, most obliging partner-in-crime ever. A man prepared to take all the risks of being identified by Julia after the robbery. Parry, on the other hand, will remain far from the scene of events at Wolverton Street in a perfect position to deny any connection to the crime or to Mr X. In addition Parry is lucky that Mr X is the vicious type who is quite willing to batter an old lady’s brains out to silence her.

Parry then makes the Qualtrough phonecall to get Wallace out of the house even though he knew perfectly well the times when Wallace was out of the house anyway and the times when the cash box would have been at its fullest. He’s not at all concerned that Wallace might decide not to go to the club on that Monday night; or that someone might forget to give him the message; or that Wallace (for any number of reasons) might have decided not to go to Menlove Gardens (after all he’d expressed his doubts to Caird); or that Wallace might have had other plans for that night; or that Julia might not allow Mr X across the threshold. Parry, who knows the Wallace household and the details of his work, selects a night for the robbery when the cashbox contained meagrest of rewards (which he has to share of course.) Strange? Unbelievable? Of course not! On we go.

Wallace goes off to MGE and ‘Qualtrough’ turns up at the house. Then Julia, after hearing his tale, doesn’t find it at all strange that the mysterious stranger that her husband has gone to meet (out of work hours) has turned up. We know that Wallace had told Julia that he was going out on business but we only have Wallace’s word that he mentioned the name Qualtrough. Julia changes the cautious habits of a lifetime time and, at night and completely alone in the house, she admits a complete stranger.

Sometime during their conversation in the parlour Julia becomes suspicious of Mr Qualtrough (maybe it’s the mask, the black and white hooped shirt and the bag marked ‘swag’ that does it.) Qualtrough leaves the room, perhaps to use the bathroom. He goes to the cash box and takes the money putting the box back on the shelf. Julia catches him in the act or just catches him coming out of the kitchen. Now, according to Rod, Julia decides to escape. She goes to the coat rack and, ignoring her own coat, she takes William’s (maybe she was a cross dresser?) and tells Qualtrough that she needs to ‘pop out.’ If she’d just wanted to get out of the house why bother with a coat? A quick dash next door would have been the safety-first order of the day. Qualtrough then takes her back into the parlour. The gullible accomplice then becomes the brutal murderer of a frail old lady. If it’s suggested that the level of brutality was as a result of panic then I’d comment that he wasn’t in so much of a panic that it prevented him immediately fleeing to safety. No, he goes upstairs to try and supplement his meagre takings. (He couldn’t have gone upstairs earlier because of the blood on the note.) Despite taking no precautions against being covered in blood he leaves none outside of the murder room apart from the note and the clot on the toilet bowl (although I can’t see why a thief would expect to find cash in the loo?) He goes into the bedroom and finds cash in a vase but he decides that he doesn’t want it after all so he puts it back in the vase leaving the smear of blood. Qualtrough leaves the house and vanishes into history.

Later that night, completely of his own volition, incriminates himself to a man that doesn’t like him. He even volunteers information about the murder weapon even though he didn’t commit the murder himself. Parkes then, after some persuasion, tells the police who proceed to disregard his story. Apparently they’re not at all concerned that they might be about to send an innocent man to the gallows or that after the event Parkes might tell his story to all and sundry (including the Press) which could leave them looking incompetent or dishonest. For some reason the police are out to get Wallace to the exclusion of every other option. Even when a suspect is handed to them on a plate.

Wallace returns home. He’s worried for his wife’s safety. He goes through the back kitchen, checks the kitchen and then rather than take few steps and a few seconds to check the parlour he goes straight up stairs. (Absolutely nothing about this makes sense.) When he gets upstairs, according to the Johnstone’s, a light goes on in Wallace’s lab. So he’s avoid the parlour to search, as a priority, the only room in the house that he could be certain the Julia would never have entered! Can any unbiased person say that this makes any sense at all? Of course it doesn’t. I’d propose that putting any person in the shoes of an innocent husband they would all have checked the parlour before venturing upstairs.

This whole scenario fails at the most cursory of investigations. It just doesn’t hold together.

Motive: Parry might have needed cash so why didn’t he choose a night when he could have been certain that the cashbox would have been full? Why take the risk 0f involving a confederate? One with whom he’d have to share the meagre takings.
Wallace, I fully admit, doesn’t have a proveable motive but motives are often far from obvious. There were at least four apparently unbiased people, who knew the Wallace’s at close hand, who stated that the marriage was far from a happy one. It’s far from impossible that Wallace had grown to resent being tied to an old woman. That all he could envision was a life of caring for a woman old enough to be his mother. Maybe he’d somehow discovered that she’d lied to him about her age? The viciousness of the murder speaks more of a ‘personal’ attack than an attempt to permanently ‘silence’ a witness to a crime.

The Plan: Parry didn’t need a plan to carry out a robbery let alone one that could have failed on so many points. It’s obvious and inescapable that he could have simply waited for Wallace to go out at any time.
Wallace on the other hand was giving himself an alibi for being ‘otherwise engaged’ at the time of the murder.

Blood: Experts at the time felt that the killer would have been covered in blood. The fact that there was no blood outside of the parlour (except for the note and the clot) would appear to indicate that either the killer actually got very little blood on him or that he cleaned up before venturing upstairs. Rod, if I recall correctly, hasn’t argued that Qualtrough took precautions against blood spatter or cleaned up. Indeed an outsider would have had no need to clean up to any great extent as he would have been escaping in the dark, probably to a waiting car. Wallace however would have had to have cleaned up to allow him to continue with his plan. A combination of the use of the mackintosh to shield himself and perhaps a bit of good fortune might have meant Wallace was only minimally contaminated with blood. As a man with a lab full of chemicals upstairs it can’t be impossible that he cleaned himself and the sink thoroughly enough to beat 1930’s technology.

Timing: Yes it appears tight for Wallace but as we know from Ripperology times can be stretched a little. Alan Close arriving a little earlier than he stated for example. Tight maybe but impossible no.

The Weapon: It would definitely have been easier for Qualtrough to have permanently have disposed of the weapon than it would have been for Wallace. That said, it can’t have been impossible. If Wallace planned the crime then the disposal of the weapon would have been planned too. At this point in time we just can’t know that plan.

Everything about that night smacks of an intentional murder made to look like a robbery gone wrong. The replaced cash box, the lack of blood around the house, the blood on the note upstairs. Then there’s Wallace completely disregarding it when a policeman categorically informs him that Menlove Gardens East didn’t exist. Then there’s the Qualtrough call that only ‘benefitted’ Wallace. Wallace is the only person that we can definitely place at the scene of the crime.

Despite the doubts, and they do exist, Wallace surely remains the likeliest suspect

[RodCrosby]

Repeating your factual errors and logical fallacies ad nauseam will never make them look any less foolish.

The Wallace case is now solved, as far as it can ever be.

The acreage of drivel and abuse posted here, by people no-one has ever taken any notice of - and never will - is rather... satisfying...

Like... bugs on my windshield....

[Herlock Sholmes]

The Wallace case is only solved in your own head. But you know that don’t you? You just don’t have the honesty or integrity to admit that your childish scenario has been utterly trashed. Made up completely to feed your enormous ego.

You know nothing.

Zero.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Oh and by the way. Does everyone else know that this genius has ‘solved’ the debate on whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. It’s settled. He didn’t write them. Why? Because Rod says so. Have we heard this before somewhere.

CLOWN

[Herlock Sholmes]

Repeating your factual errors and logical fallacies ad nauseam will never make them look any less foolish.

The Wallace case is now solved, as far as it can ever be.

The acreage of drivel and abuse posted here, by people no-one has ever taken any notice of - and never will - is rather... satisfying...

Like... bugs on my windshield....

This is the most amazing statement I’ve read on here yet! You talk of abuse!!!
You!!!
You do nothing but insult and abuse. It’s in every single one of your posts. You can’t help yourself. It’s your character!

As for the part that I’ve emboldened (that means made thicker and darker by the way) can you name one person, you know, with arms, legs and a head and who isn’t related to you, who has read at least one book on the case, that agrees that you’ve solved it? When does the best seller come out? I’ll have a guess...never.