Do you think William Herbert Wallace was guilty?

[ColdCaseJury]

Hi CCJ,

From my point of view, if I have a dog I don't bark myself. If I have an accomplice, I get him to make the phone call while I am at the chess club. All he has to do is to ask the person at the other end to pass the message on to Wallace. If that person says he's here, you can give him the message yourself, Wallace says "I'm really sorry but I'm desperate for the loo/I'm thinking out my next move/could you be a dear and ask him what he wants/take down the message for me". It would be rude to refuse a club member who asks nicely. Alternatively, expecting the call to come in, Wallace simply absents himself on hearing the phone ring and locks himself in the loo while his accomplice says he's in a hurry and can't call later and could he please leave the message.

Simple enough for a crafty pair of killers, don't you think?

If 'Qualtrough' was acting alone, however, and wasn't Wallace himself, he had the three-fold problem of not knowing if a) Wallace would actually turn up at the club that evening; b) the message would be given to him; and c) he would be able or willing to respond to it, without discovering beforehand that the address did not exist.

Wallace acting alone would work well enough as long as the people at the club were not used to hearing his voice over a telephone. The wires, even today, do not allow for the human voice to travel to the human ear as if they were in the same room. It's not always easy to recognise a familiar voice if you rarely have occasion to speak on the phone.

Love,

Caz
X

Or the person says, "Wallace is here, I'll tell him to phone you back later. What's your number?"

Simple enough for a crafty pair of killers, yes, but certainly too full of risk for a chess player supposedly masterminding the perfect crime, don't you think?

And of course this does not address point (1). Wallace might have wanted to set everything up and not leave it to someone else to make this call. In which case, in terms of the call, there is no difference between Conspiracy and Wallace Alone.

So, no, I do not see this as a huge obstacle to Conspiracy.

[gallicrow]

Or the person says, "Wallace is here, I'll tell him to phone you back later. What's your number?"

"Phone you back later" wasn't really an option in the 1930s, almost no-one had a phone in their house - they would have been calling from a phone box.

[louisa]

Surely you guys aren't serious about this 'conspiracy' theory are you?

You don't think Wallace, whilst waiting in condemned cell, would not have tried to pin the blame on the other guy (if there had been one)?

[AmericanSherlock]

Or the person says, "Wallace is here, I'll tell him to phone you back later. What's your number?"

Simple enough for a crafty pair of killers, yes, but certainly too full of risk for a chess player supposedly masterminding the perfect crime, don't you think?

And of course this does not address point (1). Wallace might have wanted to set everything up and not leave it to someone else to make this call. In which case, in terms of the call, there is no difference between Conspiracy and Wallace Alone.

So, no, I do not see this as a huge obstacle to Conspiracy.

Sorry, just a difference of opinion then I guess. I don't see risk at all, I think it would be simple and easy to still get the message relayed without having to take the call. Wallace could be in the middle of the game...or as Caz suggested say he has to go to the bathroom etc. etc.... I think it would be very unlikely that Beattie wouldn't take the call and relay the message if that's what Wallace had wanted.

As far as not wanting to leave it to anyone else, again I guess a difference of opinion. I agree with this actually in terms of what I believe happened, but I don't see the point of working with someone and not having that person make the call. There are possible reasons you could argue Wallace would want to make the call (if he trusted himself what to say more, be more polished on the phone, he wanted the kick of doing it himself etc. etc. however then you could say the same things for committing the actual murder), but I think in general it wouldn't make much sense, not when Wallace having been AT the club when the phone call came in would seemingly all but exonerate him. That of course gets back to our initial disagreement on whether there was a substantial risk of the phone call not going according to plan with Wallace there when Beattie received it; I don't think so, you seem to disagree.

I just feel that Wallace acted alone and maybe for similar reasons as to your objection here--it's very hard to trust someone else (or even approach or enlist them to help commit a murder) and one can really only even trust oneself. However, I don't think it's feasible to think Wallace "mix n' matched" by having someone else commit the murder, but him making the phone call, it just doesn't make sense to me, not to mention again that in my opinion he could have basically exonerated himself (unless the conspiracy was unearthed) by being AT the club when the call came through.

[AmericanSherlock]

Hi AS,

There may be an intriguing parallel here with the case of Christie and Evans, a couple of decades later. Christie was able to murder Evans's wife Beryl and get away with it for so long because Evans made such an obvious suspect and was all too easy to set up. Who else, after all, was there to suspect at the time?

If Wallace killed his wife, he knew when he first had the idea that he would be the first person under the spotlight - the obvious, and indeed only suspect unless or until the police were given a reason to look closely at someone else. So before he came up with his Qualtrough plan he'd have been on the lookout for someone to fit that bill as closely as possible. Now if I had been in a guilty Wallace's shoes, Parry would have seemed like a gift from heaven. Just as Evans was a gift for Christie.

In both the Christie and Wallace cases, it was the husband who was initially suspected and convicted of his wife's murder. So Wallace was always going to have the tougher job of steering the police towards the other man in the story - in his case, Parry. But although Wallace was rightly set free on appeal, for lack of hard evidence, the police didn't go on to obtain any hard evidence against Parry either.

I was a little taken aback by Wallace's 'thoughts and suspicions' as set out in his life story, serialised in 1932 in John Bull magazine and quoted from in Roger Wilkes's hardback of 1984 [pages 224-7]. While I can understand an innocent man's bitterness and motivation for going into print about the man he believes killed his wife and almost got him hanged for it (without actually naming him), Wallace seems to overdo it with the kind of extraordinary detail that makes it hard to see why he would not have connected all the dots a lot sooner and let the police have chapter and verse about Parry (for Parry it clearly is) and his apparently unique suitability for the task of getting Wallace out of the way with the phone call, getting himself invited into the house by Julia and helping himself to the cash box he knows precisely where to find.

One could almost read it like Wallace is taking us through what he knows about Parry before the murder is committed that will make him such a good bet as a suspect afterwards. Why ever did Wallace trust the man with his wife and his valuables - unless he didn't, and that suited him down to the ground?

Love,

Caz
X

CAZ, that it is a very interesting case, I will have to read up more about it. Thank you for introducing me to it.

I am in agreement in that it seems that if Wallace was guilty, that he hoped to pin the murder on Parry. I think you could term their relationship as "odd" and it does strike me as strange that the Wallaces continued to be on good terms with him up until the time of the murder; in that Wallace thought Julia would let him in the house. The picture painted by some, the Man from the Pru movie for instance, that shows Parry vengeful after being sacked from the Pru (which was 18 months earlier and apparently not necessarily due to Wallace in particular complaining), just appears to not be true.

Whether Wallace actually hoped to see Parry hang for it or just for the suspicion to be enough to divert attention from Wallace, I'm not sure.

An interesting thing to note is that the killing was the day before Wallace would turn in the insurance money and it has been argued that this was a motive for Parry, who would know this as a former colleague. Looked at another way though it could be seen as Wallace trying to get away with the murder and cast suspicion on Parry. It's odd that the killer took the 4 pounds, replaced the lid and put it back on the high shelf, but didn't the money in Julia's handbags or any of her jewelry, including the broach she was wearing. If Parry was the killer, desperate for money, and willing to kill ...wouldn't he take more than just the 4 pounds? You could argue that maybe he was spooked by the crime he had just committed and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but then why take the time to replace the lid and put it back on the high shelf? That smacks to me of Wallace doing it out of habit.

As far as the timing issue which others have issued, I agree with you that I don't believe it to have been too little time to have committed the crime at all. CCJ states uses the time of 6:38 in his book as the most likely time the milk boy came, and I agree with this...yes the milk boy initially said 6:45, and the police were out of order to try to get him to change to 6:31 to suit their purposes. But that doesn't mean 6:45 is accurate either. Murphy points out the angle of the view of the church clock would distort the time making it look later than it was. In and of itself, this might seem like weak conjecture...

But the most important point is the other milk kids saw Close at the house before Wallace's a couple minutes before 6:38, so I really think a couple minutes before 6:40 is the fairest estimate. Wallace would have left no later than 6:50 imo, CCJ estimates 6:48... I think therefore we can say there were around 10 minutes between when Wallace would have been satisfied the milk boy was gone and when he left to have committed the crime, been composed and left. Notice I said "there were around 10 minutes" rather than "Wallace would have had 10 minutes" because Wallace makes his own time frame. He has the putative 7:30 meeting time and is in fact already running a bit suspiciously late imo for an address he does not know precisely (due to the milk boy being late), but nonetheless he does not have a specific timeframe to follow, so he will try to act as quickly as possible to take himself out of the frame, but will also take as long as he needs. 10 minutes seems reasonable to me, apparently to many others they see it as impossible. People cite the fact that he was old, in poor health etc. Remember if he was guilty he would have been planning this for a long while, his adrenaline would be pumping like mad. This isn't out of the realm of what's feasible imo, some act like we're suggesting he could fly or be in 2 places at once, which isn't so.

Again, I'll note that it's rather suspicious that for both the night of the call and the night of the murder he is just in the frame for having done both, but just barely--almost as if he did both and then tried to rush as quickly as possible to make it seem impossible that he could have, or at least very tight. But he couldn't "outpace reality", so he remains suspiciously in the frame for both IMO.

Very enjoyable discussing this with you, Caz

[ColdCaseJury]

Surely you guys aren't serious about this 'conspiracy' theory are you?

You don't think Wallace, whilst waiting in condemned cell, would not have tried to pin the blame on the other guy (if there had been one)?

That wouldn't get him out, of course.

[ColdCaseJury]

I don't see the point of working with someone and not having that person make the call. There are possible reasons you could argue Wallace would want to make the call (if he trusted himself what to say more, be more polished on the phone, he wanted the kick of doing it himself etc. etc. however then you could say the same things for committing the actual murder), but I think in general it wouldn't make much sense, not when Wallace having been AT the club when the phone call came in would seemingly all but exonerate him. That of course gets back to our initial disagreement on whether there was a substantial risk of the phone call not going according to plan with Wallace there when Beattie received it; I don't think so, you seem to disagree.

Hi AS. One of the reasons AGAINST Wallace working with someone is that he was a loner, perfectionist and distrustful. So, there is every reason to suspect that he would not want to trust someone with that important call. So why involve anyone at all? Several possible reasons:

Wallace did NOT want to do the dirty work. He simply wanted his wife out of the way.

As people have pointed out, Wallace might not have been that physically capable of the killing, and wanted someone stronger to make sure the job was done properly.

And most of all - a point I have returned to frequently - an accomplice gives Wallace the Perfect Murder, which everyone seems to think this crime is. That is to say, he can be out at, say 8pm, when the murder is committed. Without this, there is no alibi, no perfect murder, as his solicitor pointed out. He would always be in the frame for murder - as you (and others), the police and the jury think he was.

Of course, differences of opinion are welcome and we can learn from other perspectives. If I were Wallace, I would not have taken the risks he did.

Further, going back to previous posts (sometime ago now) when I asked people which theory left most of the known evidence in place, it is conspiracy that makes most sense of the evidence. I stress that it might have low a priori probability, which is why I have always believed it is also rational to hold other views.

[John G]

Wallace left home no later than 6.49pm. Close originally stated to 3 friends that he called at 6.45pm, which I happen to think is probably true.

Are you saying Wallace killed his wife, and cleaned himself up in 4 minutes?

Sorry if you've already been through this numerous times. You didn't have to reply. I was asking AS.

I absolutely agree with this analysis, Louisa. In fact, I don't understand why it's still being argued that Close's revised estimated time of arrival should be taken seriously. Thus, initially Close told school friends that he arrived at 6:45 and then lied about it.

Fortunately for Wallace, Close's original time estimate is confirmed by James Allison Wildman, who's testimony can be relied upon because he glanced at the Holy Church Clock, which had recently been set to the correct time, as was his habit every night, and it showed a time of 6:40-he saw Close outside the Wallace residence about 2 to 3 minutes later . Moreover, his testimony is supported by Douglas Metcalf, who saw Wildman on Wolveron Street a few minutes after asking the time-he was told it was 6:35.

And Wildman's sighting had to be after 6:30 because he didn't start his newspaper round until then.

[louisa]

That wouldn't get him out, of course.

No but if he was able to shift the blame - especially the actual bludgeoning - onto his 'partner in crime' it may have resulted in the death sentence being commuted to imprisonment.

And he would have had nothing to lose by naming the other person involved. After all, why should this other person go scot free while he, Wallace, was going to hang?

[louisa]

I absolutely agree with this analysis, Louisa. In fact, I don't understand why it's still being argued that Close's revised estimated time of arrival should be taken seriously. Thus, initially Close told school friends that he arrived at 6:45 and then lied about it.

Fortunately for Wallace, Close's original time estimate is confirmed by James Allison Wildman, who's testimony can be relied upon because he glanced at the Holy Church Clock, which had recently been set to the correct time, as was his habit every night, and it showed a time of 6:40-he saw Close outside the Wallace residence about 2 to 3 minutes later . Moreover, his testimony is supported by Douglas Metcalf, who saw Wildman on Wolveron Street a few minutes after asking the time-he was told it was 6:35.

And Wildman's sighting had to be after 6:30 because he didn't start his newspaper round until then.

Thanks John. I'm glad somebody agrees with me.
.

[John G]

Hi AS,

There may be an intriguing parallel here with the case of Christie and Evans, a couple of decades later. Christie was able to murder Evans's wife Beryl and get away with it for so long because Evans made such an obvious suspect and was all too easy to set up. Who else, after all, was there to suspect at the time?

If Wallace killed his wife, he knew when he first had the idea that he would be the first person under the spotlight - the obvious, and indeed only suspect unless or until the police were given a reason to look closely at someone else. So before he came up with his Qualtrough plan he'd have been on the lookout for someone to fit that bill as closely as possible. Now if I had been in a guilty Wallace's shoes, Parry would have seemed like a gift from heaven. Just as Evans was a gift for Christie.

In both the Christie and Wallace cases, it was the husband who was initially suspected and convicted of his wife's murder. So Wallace was always going to have the tougher job of steering the police towards the other man in the story - in his case, Parry. But although Wallace was rightly set free on appeal, for lack of hard evidence, the police didn't go on to obtain any hard evidence against Parry either.

I was a little taken aback by Wallace's 'thoughts and suspicions' as set out in his life story, serialised in 1932 in John Bull magazine and quoted from in Roger Wilkes's hardback of 1984 [pages 224-7]. While I can understand an innocent man's bitterness and motivation for going into print about the man he believes killed his wife and almost got him hanged for it (without actually naming him), Wallace seems to overdo it with the kind of extraordinary detail that makes it hard to see why he would not have connected all the dots a lot sooner and let the police have chapter and verse about Parry (for Parry it clearly is) and his apparently unique suitability for the task of getting Wallace out of the way with the phone call, getting himself invited into the house by Julia and helping himself to the cash box he knows precisely where to find.

One could almost read it like Wallace is taking us through what he knows about Parry before the murder is committed that will make him such a good bet as a suspect afterwards. Why ever did Wallace trust the man with his wife and his valuables - unless he didn't, and that suited him down to the ground?

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

I would disagree with this assessment. For Instance, it's perfectly reasonable for Wallace to have suspected Parry, given his long criminal history. And Wallace's claim that Julia would let very few people into the house wasn't even challenged by the police. I also think that he might have started to wonder what the "musical interludes", that Parry admitted having with Julia, and Wallace seemed oblivious of-they weren't recorded in his diary-were really all about!

[John G]

Thanks John. I'm glad somebody agrees with me.
.

No probem, Louisa. I'm really surprised how many people seemed to suspect Wallace, whilst exonerating Parry of any involvement.

Thus, this involves preferring Close's account over Wildman's, despite the fact that Close lied and Wildman at least based his timings on a clock that we know was set to the correct time. And accepting the police estimation of how long Wallace's journey to the second tram stop would have taken, despite the fact that their reconstruction of this journey was undertaken by younger, fitter officers-referred to locally as the "Anfield Harriers", for obvious reasons. And even then, their average time of 18 minutes, wasn't far off the 21 minutes Wallace stated the journey took him; and he must have taken a fairly steady walk, as he betrayed no signs of distress when he boarded the trams.

It also means ignoring the fact that Wallace was 52 years of age, and seriously ill, and therefore quite possibly incapable of carrying out such a violent and sustained attack: according to McCall, Julia was struck a total of eleven times-he previously said four, but then revised his conclusions.

And then there's the forensic evidence: the Benzidine test was applied to the drains and sinks, a test capable of detecting as little of one fifty-thousandth of a teaspoon of blood, but nothing was found:the perpetrator must have been covered in blood, considering the severity of the attack, resulting in blood spots on the furniture, and on the walls, where blood splatter reached seven foot high.

No murder weapon was found, despite an extensive search of the neighbourhood. So what's Wallace supposed to have done with that?

Wallace was also supposed to be Qualtrough, even though there's no evidence he was a good mimic- Parry was involved in amateur dramatics-and he was well known to the recipient of the call.

Against this, rejecting Parry as a suspect means dismissing Parkes' evidence, and accepting his alibi. That's despite the fact that only two people corroborated his story-only one, Olivia Brine, was an adult-and all they could say is that he left at "about 8:30", which suggests they weren't paying much attention to the time. And don't forget, this was an era when people were probably less conscious of the time anyway-no TV, no mobile phones, many people didn't even own watches...

[John G]

Hi AS. One of the reasons AGAINST Wallace working with someone is that he was a loner, perfectionist and distrustful. So, there is every reason to suspect that he would not want to trust someone with that important call. So why involve anyone at all? Several possible reasons:

Wallace did NOT want to do the dirty work. He simply wanted his wife out of the way.

As people have pointed out, Wallace might not have been that physically capable of the killing, and wanted someone stronger to make sure the job was done properly.

And most of all - a point I have returned to frequently - an accomplice gives Wallace the Perfect Murder, which everyone seems to think this crime is. That is to say, he can be out at, say 8pm, when the murder is committed. Without this, there is no alibi, no perfect murder, as his solicitor pointed out. He would always be in the frame for murder - as you (and others), the police and the jury think he was.

Of course, differences of opinion are welcome and we can learn from other perspectives. If I were Wallace, I would not have taken the risks he did.

Further, going back to previous posts (sometime ago now) when I asked people which theory left most of the known evidence in place, it is conspiracy that makes most sense of the evidence. I stress that it might have low a priori probability, which is why I have always believed it is also rational to hold other views.

Hi CCJ,

Do you think there could have been a conspiracy involving Marsden and Parry? Could Marsden have been the killer, and possibly borrowed Parry's car? Could this explain both Parkes' evidence and Parry's alibi?

Could Marsden be the man Wallace was seen talking to by the witness? I wonder if Wallace might not have initially realized the significance of this encounter so, whilst in shock after discovering Julia's body, he fails to mention it. Subsequently, it becomes obvious that Marsden was probably involved, which explains why he latter told the police he was someone Julia would admit to the house, even though they didn't seem to know each other very well. However, he still doesn't mention the encounter to the police because he realizes he is now their number one suspect, and his earlier failure to mention the conversation might seem highly suspicious, i.e. the police might argue he was involved in a conspiracy.

What do you think?

[louisa]

There are a lot of things that point more towards Parry being the killer than Wallace.

Parry knew the takings would have been in the cash box that evening, ready to be paid in the following day (although Wallace sometimes paid the takings in on a Thursday). He may have been expecting up to £100 to be in the tin.

As for leaving Julia's handbag untouched, it sounds as though it was on one of the dining room chairs, concealed by the tablecloth hanging over it. As for the money in the pot upstairs, it's unlikely Parry would have known about it, that's why it remained untouched.

There's something else.....the women on the switchboard didn't say whether Qualtrough had a Liverpudlian accent or not. I think one of them said he sound quite well spoken and was surprised how he pronounced the word 'cafe' as 'caff-ay' (using the accent on the e correctly)

I would think it would be difficult to disguise a Liverpudlian (scouse) accent. Wallace was from Yorkshire. How would each of them have pronounced the word 'cafe'?

Parry was from quite a good family but I suspect he would still have pronounced cafe as caff because that's how most scousers would say it. A lot of Londoners pronounce it that way too, btw.

So, presuming that one of the above two people was the murderer, at present I'm divided in my opinion as to which one it was.


Another small point, unrelated to the above.....if you look at the angle of Julia's body does it appear to you that it looks twisted? She is not lying in a straight line. It looks at though when she fell she fell completely parallel to the hearth and the murderer took her by the hair and/or clothing, and pulled the top half of her body round towards the door. Why would he have done that? And then turn off the gas fire and the gas lamp on the chimney breast?

[AmericanSherlock]

Hi CCJ,

Do you think there could have been a conspiracy involving Marsden and Parry? Could Marsden have been the killer, and possibly borrowed Parry's car? Could this explain both Parkes' evidence and Parry's alibi?

Could Marsden be the man Wallace was seen talking to by the witness? I wonder if Wallace might not have initially realized the significance of this encounter so, whilst in shock after discovering Julia's body, he fails to mention it. Subsequently, it becomes obvious that Marsden was probably involved, which explains why he latter told the police he was someone Julia would admit to the house, even though they didn't seem to know each other very well. However, he still doesn't mention the encounter to the police because he realizes he is now their number one suspect, and his earlier failure to mention the conversation might seem highly suspicious, i.e. the police might argue he was involved in a conspiracy.

What do you think?

Are you John Gannon?