Do you think William Herbert Wallace was guilty?

[ColdCaseJury]

Parry had an alibi from three different people for the time of the murder (and some outlived Parry without changing their story) and none of them were his girlfriend.

On the night of the murder Parry had an alibi from Olivia Brine, and her 15-year-old nephew. There is no police statement from a witness independent from Brine. Again, the police should have thoroughly investigated all witnesses connected to the alibi to eliminate Parry from their inquiries.

One point that I raise in my book. If Parry did have a secure alibi, why did he promise his father never to talk about the case? If you were linked to a crime but were innocent and had a secure alibi, wouldn't you be telling it to everyone, including journalists who came knocking?

Given he also misled the police about where he was on the night of the call, surely Parry's behaviour is at least suspicious?

[John G]

On the night of the murder Parry had an alibi from Olivia Brine, and her 15-year-old nephew. There is no police statement from a witness independent from Brine. Again, the police should have thoroughly investigated all witnesses connected to the alibi to eliminate Parry from their inquiries.

One point that I raise in my book. If Parry did have a secure alibi, why did he promise his father never to talk about the case? If you were linked to a crime but were innocent and had a secure alibi, wouldn't you be telling it to everyone, including journalists who came knocking?

Given he also misled the police about where he was on the night of the call, surely Parry's behaviour is at least suspicious?

Wasn't Olive Brine's 13 year old daughter, Savona, also present? Parry said he left at about 8:30, but continued to accumulate alibis, i.e. Mr Hodgson at the post office; Hignetts, where he bought an accumulator; Mrs Williamson...

[John G]

I also point out in my book that Parry misled the police on the night of the call. Because the police failed to TIE (Trace and Incriminate or Eliminate) Parry, he is still very much in the frame for that call. I did not suggest that Wallace tipped off Parry. Although its an intriguing idea, is it compatible with the fact that two days after the murder Wallace was telling the police everything he knew about Parry?

Yes, I agree, it's difficult to see Parry being Wallace's accomplice. And why would Parry get involved in a conspiracy with Wallace? I mean, it's hardly credible that he would have allowed himself to get embroiled in a murder conspiracy. And, of course, if Wallace was the killer then we have the tricky problem of how he would have sufficient time to commit the murder, clean the blood off of himself and dispose of the weapon, which was never found. And what about the Macintosh being found under the body, according to Mrs Johnston, which seriously undermines the police theory that he attacked Julia, whilst being naked under the coat-it had been done before-thus avoiding getting blood on himself? Thus, if that was the plan he would have to be crazy to then push the Macintosh under the body, which would have involved him touching Julia, and thereby getting blood stained, the very thing he was supposedly anxious to avoid!

If Parry was involved in some way, but Wallace completely innocent, then what was the motive? Robbery is possibly the most obvious possibility, but there are all sorts of problems with this scenario. For instance, only £4 was taken from the Prudential takings and other money in the house was left untouched, including money in Julia's handbag. Moreover, there was little in the way of insurance takings as Wallace had been ill and the monthly collections -there were monthly and weekly collections- were on a different date to the murder, factors Parry may have been aware of. Moreover, why go to so much trouble with the Qualtrough ruse, when Parry must have known that Mrs Wallace would still be left in the house?

[John G]

To be fair to Goodman, he did not focus on Parry in his 1969 book The Killing of Julia of Wallace. His aim in his book was to prove Wallace innocent, and only spent a few pages speculating on the identity of the murderer. True, he supported Roger Wilkes in the radio broadcasts in 1980, which pointed the finger at Parry.

But did Wallace have enough time to commit the crime? If you read James Murphy's account of what Wallace did, Wallace had to do an awful lot to do in a very short time. From my book:

If the milk boy saw Julia Wallace alive at 6:45pm, as he originally told his friends, then Wallace could never have completed everything he is alleged to have done – bludgeon his wife, wash, dry, dress, tidy the bathroom, clean and possibly hide the iron bar, and stage a robbery – in only three minutes before departing his house at 6:48pm [see Exhibit H in the Evidence File for a justification of the departure time]. This is why your view on the timing of the milk delivery is crucial: if you believe that the Alan Close spoke to Julia Wallace at 6:45pm then you cannot accept this view of the murder. If you believe that Alan Close called earlier, the maximum amount of time available to Wallace was 18 minutes. How long does it take to kill, clean up, stage the house and leave? For how long would you scrub the bath, knowing that if the police found a trace of blood you might be hanged? Did Wallace have enough time? This is a crucial question.

And Close's evidence is strongly corroborated by the testimony of James Allison Wildman, including the time he estimated he spoke to Julia.

[ColdCaseJury]

Wasn't Olive Brine's 13 year old daughter, Savona, also present? Parry said he left at about 8:30, but continued to accumulate alibis, i.e. Mr Hodgson at the post office; Hignetts, where he bought an accumulator; Mrs Williamson...

Savona was present (a relation of Mrs Brine, of course) and a Miss Plant called. There are no extant statements from any of these or the others you mention. I'm sure today all statements would have been taken and cross-checked.

[ColdCaseJury]

And Close's evidence is strongly corroborated by the testimony of James Allison Wildman, including the time he estimated he spoke to Julia.

Indeed, it is. I mention this in my book too. By my reckoning, Wallace had at most 10 minutes.

[John G]

Indeed, it is. I mention this in my book too. By my reckoning, Wallace had at most 10 minutes.

Actually, I've just download your book as I have a fascination for this case, and I'm sure it'll be an excellent read.

My own view is that it may have been a case of a robbery gone wrong, involving Parry and an accomplice. Of course, Parry had a long criminal record and had previously stolen insurance money from Wallace. I would speculate that his role in the conspiracy was to make the Qualtrough call.

Thst said, the evidence of John Parkes is pretty damming. Parkes claimed that Parry came to his garage in an agitated state, demanding his car be washed down, inside and out. Parkes then discovered a leather glove inside the vehicle covered in blood. Apparently, Parry then snatched it from him, saying "If the police found that, it would hang me." He also referred to an iron bar that he'd just disposed of.

On the face of it this incident would seem to Parry being the probable killer. However, would he have been crazy enough to implicate himself on such an obvious way, particularly as Parkes was clearly no friend. Might he simply have been playing a joke, albeit one in very bad taste, on a gullible Parkes? And then there's that seemingly unshakable alibi for the night of the murder!

[ColdCaseJury]

Actually, I've just download your book as I have a fascination for this case, and I'm sure it'll be an excellent read.

Thank you. I hope you enjoy it. I believe it is the first book to pull together the four major theories concerning the murder of Julia Wallace, place them side by side, reconstruct the murders according to each, and discuss the evidence. The verdict will be yours!

[John G]

Hall's account has great significance. Why would Wallace deny meeting someone after he had gone to great lengths (according to the Wallace Theory) of getting noticed for the previous hour?

Who did Close see if Julia Wallace was dead when Close arrived? Surely it could only have been William Wallace - 6'3" tall with a mustache - who did a great job of impersonating his wife - 5ft tall and petite. Is this a mistake you would make? Close had delivered milk to the Wallaces for nearly two years. He knew the couple by sight and to speak to.

Close said he had spoken to Julia that night. What possible evidence is there to deny this claim? I suggest it would have to be overwhelming evidence of Wallace's guilt and that the murder was committed by 6.30pm. Unfortunately, if this were the case, there would be no mystery to solve.

The problem is Hall was a very unreliable witness. To begin with the police only heard of her evidence, via a handwritten note delivered to the police by her father, four days after the murder. Moreover, according to Hall she wasn't interviewed by the police until about a week after the alleged sighting.

Worse, she was broken on the witness stand, where she fell to pieces. In fact, under cross examination she couldn't remember either the day or time of the alleged sighting, or even if she was going home at the time or to the cinema.

[AmericanSherlock]

Do you think William Herbert Wallace was guilty of the murder of his wife Julia?

The Wallace case is arguably one of the most famous in the canon of unsolved murders. The case has everything: a mysterious telephone call, the suspicious behaviour of her husband on the night of the murder, and one of the most bizarre clues in criminal history – a burnt mackintosh stuffed under the victim’s body. It's now the subject of my latest Cold Case Jury e-book, Move to Murder, which has just been published.

The story is well known. In January 1931, a telephone message was left at a Liverpool chess club, instructing one of its members, insurance agent William Wallace, to meet a Mr Qualtrough. But the address given by the mystery caller did not exist and Wallace returned home to find his wife Julia bludgeoned to death. The case turns on the telephone call. Who made it? The police thought it was Wallace, creating an alibi that might have come from an Agatha Christie thriller. Wallace stood trial, was found guilty, but his death sentence was quashed on appeal.

Over the decades scores of books and articles have been published on the case, each advancing a theory on who might have killed Julia Wallace. My research reveals that four major theories that have been advanced to explain the murder:

- William Wallace acted alone in killing his wife, creating a devious alibi by making the telephone call to his chess club.

- Hard-up insurance salesman Gordon Parry made the telephone call to lure William Wallace from his house. He murdered Julia Wallace after he failed to extort money from her.

- William Wallace orchestrated the killing of his wife. The conspiracy involved Gordon Parry making the infamous telephone call to provide an alibi for Wallace, and the murder was committed by Joseph Marsden, a clerk who was being blackmailed by Wallace.

- Most recently, the late novelist P. D. James suggested that William Wallace killed his wife after exploiting a prank telephone call, which gave him the chance to commit the perfect murder.

These four theories are reconstructed, the evidence sifted and discussed, and then readers are asked to deliver their verdicts online. Like the Ripper murders, I don’t believe the Wallace case will ever be satisfactorily resolved - I believe we do not have all the facts. With the release of the police files, however, we now have all the available information, more than was presented to the original jury in April 1931.

So was William Wallace a cunning murderer, or a victim of the crime himself?

I'd love to hear your views.

Antony Matthew Brown
Author, Move to Murder, an investigation into the Julia Wallace murder.

Mr. Brown,

I have been long intrigued by this case and have an extensive knowledge of it, I believe my first exposure to it was as a chapter in a book called "Guilty or Innocent". I was only a school kid at the time and was quite scared by the subject matter...now in my 20's, I've managed to read almost all of the main works about it, especially The Killing of Julia Wallace, The Final Verdict, The Murder of Julia Wallace (by Murphy), and Gannon's book also titled The Killing of Julia Wallace. I've also read hundreds if not thousands of pages of forum posts here, on yoliverpool, and various other forums. I was very excited to learn of your book and purchased it thru Amazon yesterday.

Before I give my analysis of this perplexing case, I would like to say your book is absolutely fantastic, logically sound, and you are well served by not trying to steer the reader to a conclusion and allowing us to be the jury. I recommend everybody "pick it up"...for only a couple dollars/pounds it's absolutely worth every penny and then some! With that said, here are some thoughts I've had now having been immersed in this case for over a decade.

First, here are some nuggets of info that are the closest things we have to smoking guns imo; in this case that does not mean much, but they do serve to raise an eyebrow, or at least did mine. Some are well known, some appear not to be.

1. John Parkes testimony about Parry. Most, if not all of us know this. If Parry wasn't involved, Parkes would have to be lying or it was a tremendous coincidence.

2. The supposed deathbed confession of John Sharp Johnstone. Also well known. I don't give this theory (or Slemen's whole scenario) much weight, so I can't remember exactly who it was (friend or family member) who claimed Johnstone confessed. Again, if we think this is untrue, then obviously the person who claimed this would have to be lying.

As an aside, I have learned not to take any one claim too seriously without proof, one tends to wonder "why would they have a reason to lie?", particualrly in the case of someone like Parkes; remember something like 70 lunatics falsely confessed to Julia Wallace's murder and were found to have nothing to do with it. Still, they are interesting.

3. In John Gannon's book, he had access to Wallace's full diary, including an entry which WHW refers to an interesting book he was reading shortly before Julia's murder. The book is titled "J LAYS 1889" Gannon claims this is an anagram for SLAY J and 1889= 7:29...Julia's planned time of death. One could also read this as 6:29, I supposed. Gannon of course posits the Parry/Marsden conspiracy theory and therefore the later time of death. I do not believe in the later time of death, nor do I agree with this conspiracy theory. For a couple years, I believed that this was a strong hint that Wallace was guilty in some capacity, as whether or not you believe in the anagram (some might view it as silly), it did appear to be a reference to a book that did not exist. However, the book DID appear to exist, there is a book called Under a Mask by a John Kirkwood Leys and was in fact published in 1889.

4. Most of us know that Parry called Wallace "sexually odd" and Gannon's theory would jibe with that and perhaps bring to light exactly what Parry was getting at. Someone wrote a reply to an article about Gannon's book stating that in effect Gannon had gotten the story close to right, but actually Parry and Marsden were gay prostitutes for Wallace and Julia knew and was threatening to reveal it; this is why she was murdered. This man claimed that he know this because his father had admitted to him that he too was a gay prostitute as a youth in Liverpool for William Wallace and told him the whole sordid story. He did not make it clear if his father told him that he knew for sure that was why Julia was murdered, or was simply theorizing. It's not impossible that this man's father had been telling the truth, and that nevertheless this had nothing to do with Julia Wallace's murder. If this account were true, it would also jibe even further with Parry's "sexually odd" comment.

Again, though there is absolutely no proof for such a supposition and while one may ask why someone would make something like this up, as we have seen there are many claims of first hand knowledge of "the real story" and clearly they contradict eachother. All of them cannot be true. In fact, I think it is more likely that none of them are true than even 1 of them is. Still, I wanted to present the additional bits of interesting info as I knew them.

Onto my observations about the case, I won't recap it as we all know the whole in depth story by this point, but I will give some thoughts.

- "21st Birthday mentioned by Qualtrough"- seen as perhaps strong indicator of Parry being Qualtrough, however Wallace quickly pointed the finger at Parry (and Marsden) and if he was trying to cast suspicion away from himself and onto them, it seems hardly an unreasonable thing for him to mention. I don't view this as conclusive.

- "Menlove Gardens East"- I enjoyed Murphy's book and found it to be probably the seminal modern work. Murphy claims that Wallace was the caller and meant to say West and either mis-spoke or it was mis-heard. Remember, he was corrected by Beattie and told that it was East, not West, when upon hearing Beattie's recounting of it, repeated back "Menlove Gardens West" In my view, it does not matter much either way. I think it's a red herring. Wallace could search for the true address and still get lost, not find it, try all Menlove Gardens etc. Whether Qualtrough was Wallace or wasn't, I don't think it really helps him either way to say East or West.

-"Cash Box"- A small point, but I agree with previous posters who have pointed out that the replaced lid and putting the box back on the high shelf may point to Wallace not clearly thinking and in a panic resorting to old habits. This is a minor point of course and hardly conclusive; I would classify it as slightly pointing to Wallace in the same way that you could argue the caller mentioning a 21st Birthday slightly pointed towards Parry.

-"Planned murder or robbery". To me, the entire set-up suggests a planned murder. I cannot conceive of such an elaborate scheme to get rid of the husband; have the wife still there in the house to set up an uncertain robbery. Why not have gone the night before when Wallace was presumed at the chess club? I like your idea, Antony, that sometimes real life does not match the "tidy, clipped maze of crime fiction". However, further problems arise in my mind. How did the caller know that Wallace would even BE at the chess club that night for sure? And how would he know as others have suggested Wallace would have gotten the message clearly and gone. He could have been lurking waiting for Wallace to leave, but as again others have mentioned, how would he know Wallace was in fact going on the fruitless trek and not just stepping out. Most pressingly though in my mind is what was there to gain for Parry (or anyone else) to go to such great lengths to get Wallace out of the house. If it was to be alone with Julia Wallace to persuade her to lend money (or rob a feeble old woman), was such an elaborate ruse really necessary? If it was additionally in part revenge on Wallace for sacking him (assuming again it was Parry), then there is something amiss in my opinion. Assuming it was Parry who was to that point on good terms with Julia, how could he expect to get money out of her, leave and not have her eventually realize what had happened when Wallace returned home that evening and recounted he had been sent on a false journey based on a prank call. It just does not make sense to me that the Qualtrough call was for the purposes of "getting Wallace out of the house" so a robbery could take place. It looks like a murder plot, and to me that strongly implicates Wallace. Finally, some have suggested the Tuesday date as key because it was when the most cash would be expected to be in Wallace's possession before it was turned in to the company on Wednesday. A fair point as to explaining the chosen date and it not being done on the night of the phone call, but I don't think it invalidates my other points about why I suspect this was NOT a planned robbery. Also, like many other remarkably "symmetric" aspects of this case, this could point in equal measure to Parry OR Wallace (or them working together.)

5. "Conspiracy or Alone"--Many think Wallace was guilty but was involved in a conspiracy with Parry and/or Marsden or someone else and therefore did not actually murder Julia and may not have made the call. I find this hard to accept. For one, Wallace mentioned Parry and Marsden as people of interest. It is unclear to me why he would have done this if he had truly collaborated with them (either hired or blackmailed them to assist him); some may argue he knew suspicion would be cast on them anyway and had them prepared with a great alibi or explanation... i.e. he was attempting to beat the police to possible theories, and confuse and misdirect. As it turned out Parry did have a pretty good alibi for the murder night, if not the phone call (as Lily Lloyd famously recanted.) Whether the murder night alibi was true, is of course up for debate. On the other hand, Marsden's "flu" alibi was hardly a very good alibi. I don't think there is much to indicate a collaboration or a truly good counter as to why Wallace mentioned Parry and Marsden as possible suspects that could reconcile 2 or all 3 of them working together.

It is my belief either Wallace acted alone or somebody else did.

6. "Richard Gordon Parry: A Shady Character"-- Much has been made of Parry's criminally devious ways and exploits. It seems clear that he has a pretty typical villain of the "Wide Boy" variety and had almost no scruples. A ladies man with an endless need for money, it is easy to not put anything past Parry. As noted before though, I don't consider Parkes' testimony a smoking gun by any means. It is one of several claims by people who claim to have "known" what happened. Parry seemed to be a very unlikable character by some and had even stolen money from coats in Atkinson's garage where Parkes had worked. He was also a suspect from immediately following the murder. I could see a few explanations as to what really happened that would reconcile Parkes testimony with the truth; most of them reflect somewhat unfavorably on Parkes. He was an old man at the time of the Radio City presentation where this was revealed and a bit senile sounding, on the other hand it is true that he apparently recounted this story at the time it happened to to others who verified it on that presentation. They did not say though exactly what Parkes told them back then or if it was word for word the same as what he said in 1981. I find it incredibly hard to believe Parry would implicate himself like that, even if desperate and having just committed a murder. What's more, parts of Parkes testimony that involve Parry's supposed ridiculous outfit seem almost certainly not true and designed to intrigue or explain away doubts some might have. I just can't take it at face value, particularly from someone who was one among many Parry seemed to have rubbed the wrong way. It should also be noted, Murphy states that Parry's clothes were thoroughly investigated at the police station that night (cannot find a precise time for the start of the interview) and free of blood etc so was rightly exonerated, of course he would have likely had time to clean up but he was rather thoroughly investigated including under nails etc....I do not get the impression as some have hinted at that the corrupt police force was looking to let him off the hook no matter what. Then again Wallace was also free of noticeable blood on his journey but would not have been under the same scrutiny to account for minor blood on his person, under nails etc, as he found Julia's body, touched her, smeared blood on the notes in the other room etc. etc.

Finally, it has also been suggested as evidence of guilt that Parry's parents wanted him out of the country...I don't see it in the same way; here we have a typical "bad boy" who has gotten in immense amounts of trouble, particularly for someone of a moderately well accomplished family background (I think Gannon is right that the claims that Parry's uncle was the chief librarian were untrue, however his father was moderately well off and a respected treasury official.) Now, he was at the center of a murder investigation. It does not strike me as unreasonable that desperation would set in from the parents to try to get him across the world, or necessarily indicative of guilt. Similarly, Goodman's account of meeting Parry does not say much to me other than Parry was a sleazy conman type who may have been a low level sociopath, and in equal measure did not enjoy being blamed for the old murder, and also reveled in some of the attention and infamy. Goodman, Whittington-Egan and Wilkes all seem unfairly prejudiced towards Parry as the killer in my view. I respect all of them, and Goodman's work is seminal for that time; I tend to think he did the best he could with the information available, but that Murphy really moved the case forward.

7. "The Timing"-- Perhaps the key point against Wallace being the killer. Even without this as a factor, allow me to make it clear I do NOT think there was enough evidence to convict Wallace. Nor do I think there is even with all we know today. If I had to vote, I would have to have acquitted, and therefore I believe that the verdict being quashed on appeal was correct. (I do, as an aside, think it is likely that if the case was investigated properly at the time, and certainly by today's more thorough standards, even excepting DNA evidence, that Wallace would be able to have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.) What I do think however is that Wallace was most likely guilty and acted alone, but the timeline of events has long been a reason for many to deem it impossible. Again, I tend to agree with Murphy's version of events. While it appears the police was corrupt in how they tried to move back the milk boy's timing, I do think it is very inconclusive what actually happened, whether Wildman really did look at the church clock or not etc. I believe that Close probably did recall initially it was 6:45 when he saw Mrs. Wallace alive as the other witnesses claimed he told them at first, but also do not think this necessarily is conclusive in terms of meaning that that was in fact the time. Metcalf himself indicated it was around 6:38 and wasn't totally convincing either in his testimony. I could see how Wildman's final time of 6:31 would seem unduly influenced down by the police and perhaps it was but it's hard to know exactly what to make of it. I don't find Murphy's approximate time of 6:35 unreasonable, nor his explanation as to how he arrived at that. If Wallace was the killer, using the milk boy delivering and leaving as the sign to spur to action would make perfect sense to me. The timing would be extremely tight to make the tram he was spotted on if he needed much time to clean up, use the bath etc...and as we know no blood was found in the drains etc... again though, I find Murphy's explanation to make the most sense here. I think some have overestimated how difficult it is to not get blood on one if one has pre planned a murder. The mackintosh being in the position it was under Julia's body, seems to have been used for this purpose and if her head was covered by it right before the blow would serve to minimize blood getting all over the place and being totally unavoidable as a contaminant to the killer. There was a large pool of blood and splatter up the walls to 7 feet, but I don't think this absolutely means the killer would be covered in it if careful precautions were taken. The suspicious mackintosh position seems to point to the fact that it was used in the way posited by Murphy (and Gannon)--this appears to me to strongly indicate pre-planning and NOT a spur of the moment attack!!! I have seen a few claim that stating that Wallace could have avoided the blood as being ridiculous or insane, I still fail to see how a clean and naked Wallace would necessarily have been unable to commit the murder, mackintosh over Julia's head and hurriedly rush to clothes that had already been laid out, replace the cash box etc as blood was slowly pooling and exit on his journey.

While this scenario might take many leaps to believe for some, it is clear SOMEONE viciously murdered Julia Wallace, and to me all other scenarios take even MORE leaps to believe.

Well there you have it, all my thoughts on this case. I greatly have enjoyed reading everyone's contributions on this thread and all of the authors aforementioned. Antony, I found your book to be fabulous and to cover almost every angle in a fair, precise manner. While you strayed from fully giving your opinion, I think it was clear that you believed it was probably more likely than not that Wallace was innocent and certainly did not believe he was guilty and acted alone. I think I recall you saying or hinting so earlier in this thread as well. I voted for Wallace acting alone on the site and saw that this was a minority opinion; the only one less likely was P.D. James somewhat laughable (in my opinion) "Opportunistic Wallace" theory. It should be noted that while Parry being guilty and acting alone was the most likely one, it still had less than 50 percent of the votes, so the implication would be that more than 50 percent of people thought Wallace was guilty in some capacity, even though most did not think he acted alone. I wonder if that is a a true reflection or if the results would change slightly if there was another poll which simply asked whether he was guilty (ina any capacity) or not. I suspect in that case, slightly more than half of the people might vote for his total innocence in such a poll.

Anyways, back to the fact of our disagreement; such is the facts of life. It it what makes this case so interesting in my opinion; all the varied and valid opinions about this case (as well as the more illogical ones!) make this case live on seemingly infinitely. For years, the bulk of the crime writers as well as obviously the jury thought Wallace guilty. I think the perceived simplistic logic and underlying mean spiritedness of some of these accounts that may have assumed Wallace guilty due to being a chess player, that he was stoic etc. have rubbed the more modern examiners of the case the wrong way, and for a long time the majority opinion was Wallace was innocent, which reached its height with Goodman's book, and the eventual Parry expose in the 1981 Radio City presentation. In the past couple decades, in large part due to Murphy's 2001 book, but also for reasons that are not totally clear to me, there seems to have been some movement in the popular opinion back a bit towards the perception of Wallace's guilt.

Finally, I'd like to note that while this case has given me and all of us great intellectual stimulation in its infinite permutations and attractively spooky background, we should note that Julia Wallace was an innocent victim who did not deserve to die in the manner that she did. May she rest in peace.

[ColdCaseJury]

Mr. Brown,

Before I give my analysis of this perplexing case, I would like to say your book is absolutely fantastic, logically sound, and you are well served by not trying to steer the reader to a conclusion and allowing us to be the jury. I recommend everybody "pick it up"...for only a couple dollars/pounds it's absolutely worth every penny and then some! With that said, here are some thoughts I've had now having been immersed in this case for over a decade.

Thank you for the generous comments. I have just returned from a few weeks travel and saw your post. This is why I have not responded sooner.

Your post is insightful, knowledgeable and logical - I'm so glad you are a member of the Cold Case Jury for this case! I need more time to look at your points and frame a proper response. Needless to say, I do not think you are wrong based on your arguments. This case, almost uniquely, depends upon how you weight the evidence as much as how you interpret it.

The one thing I learned at a management school many years ago was that the more people (i.e. from different backgrounds, experience, demographics etc) look at a problem and reach a decision, the more likely the correct decision (if one is possible) will be made. I hope the Cold Case Jury will serve this purpose for a collection of historic unsolved cases. Certainly, its verdict will be better for having your vote.

Thank you. More later.

[louisa]

It has been a while since I read two books on this subject The Killing of Julia Wallace, The Final Verdict and The Murder of Julia Wallace.

Forgive me for butting in because I am definitely not as knowledgeable as the above writers and I must admit that I haven't (yet) caught up on the previous posts on this thread.

I would just like to say that I think the killing of JW is probably the most definitive whodunnit in the annals of British true crime. Everyone has a theory and we all want to solve this murder mystery.

There have been a lot of conspiracy theories bandied about and whilst it is all very well to 'think outside the box' I think that sometimes the simplest answer could be the right one. Simple answers are no fun, are they? The human brain was designed to solve puzzles and this murder seems to be the ultimate one.

The facts are all there, set out before us we just need to unscramble them.

In my experience of 65 years, the last 30 mainly spent reading (and watching) true crime accounts, it seems that people tend not to stray from who they are, their core being, especially many older people who we would refer to as 'set in their ways'.

Wallace was a creature of habit. My instincts tell me that, much as we may like to think so, just to jolly up a juicy murder mystery, Wallace did not alter his persona in order to commit this murder. He would not have been able to. His life and his ways were far too ingrained in him to suddenly become Mr. Hyde and commit such a brutal murder, especially on his wife. They were not a couple who argued and we have not heard anyone say Julia nagged him. They seemed to get along fine.

I suspect that, if he had wanted to, Wallace could have cooked up his convoluted alibi (he was a chess player after all, so his brain worked fine) but I honestly do not think he did. Mainly because he had nothing to gain. Just loneliness in his old age.

Whereas Parry....he's another kettle of fish. Am I right in thinking that his alibi was found to be a false one when his girlfriend was contacted, years later, and told investigators that Parry was not with her after all?

The poker I believe was found hidden inside the fireplace when it was removed (in fairly recent years).

I could be wrong about all of this and I apologize if I have overlooked facts.

It's still a fascinating case, for experts and amateurs (like myself).

[ColdCaseJury]

The facts are all there, set out before us we just need to unscramble them.

Louisa, thanks for your post. I agree that the Wallace case is probably a true-crime Agatha Christie plot. I disagree with your point above, however. It seems to me that we do not have all the necessary facts to say with confidence whether Wallace was guilty or not. I believe we view this case from behind a veil of doubt. Something is missing - not least the murder weapon!

[Graham]

CCJ,

what's your take on the rumour that Wallace confessed to the crime on his death-bed? To a lawyer, as I recall.

Graham

[ColdCaseJury]

CCJ,

what's your take on the rumour that Wallace confessed to the crime on his death-bed? To a lawyer, as I recall.

Graham

I guess the key question must be: is the confession credible? I would have thought James Murphy (who believes Wallace guilty) would have used this as a key piece of evidence in his book if it was extant and credible. I do not recall seeing it presented in any of the main books on the case. If Wallace confessed to a lawyer I would like to see the signed affidavit. My instinct tells me he never confessed, and certainly not to a lawyer.

There is also a rumour that Jack Johnston confessed on his death bed. Perhaps there is even a rumour that Parry confessed - if not, we can always start one!

As always, I am open to changing my mind based on the evidence, but rumour is merely gossip that there might be some evidence somewhere to support someone's viewpoint. It might motivate one to look for the evidence, but it is not evidence in itself.

What's your view?