Do you think William Herbert Wallace was guilty?

[Rosella]

The Liverpool police force had an awful reputation between the wars for corruption, brutality and blundering investigations. Some of the latter can be seen in the Wallace case, where furniture was moved in the murder room to take photos, Wallace's raincoat was removed from under Julia's body before it could be photographed in situ, items weren't fingerprinted etc etc. I think the detectives investigating thought the victim's husband was the man and didn't look any further.

PD James's theory that Wallace impersonated his wife in front of the milk boy with a shawl and a dress on is frankly ridiculous. Wallace was over 6 feet tall, Julia was petite, Wallace also had a thick moustache. Julia spoke to the milk boy, who knew her by sight, urging him to get back home out of the cold. He saw her face.

[ColdCaseJury]

I would still like to know why anyone would wish Julia Wallace dead.

Graham, motive is the red herring in this case. We have insufficient evidence to attribute a motive to anyone, even William Wallace*. The fact is that someone did kill Julia Wallace. Given the evidence we have, where does it most likely point?

* I would agree that it is easier to suspect a spouse - after all, much lies beneath a marriage that is unseen - but this is different to having grounds to believe there was such bitterness to move a man to murder his wife. Indeed, many witnesses thought that the Wallaces were a loving couple.

[ColdCaseJury]

It is only Wallace's word that he(Wallace) left at 6.45.There is nothing to support it.

No one observed Wallace leaving his house, this is true. Wallace was observed boarding a tram at 7:06pm by the conductor. The police accepted this as a fixed point in the timeline.

In my book, I show that Wallace could not have left his house later than 6:48pm.

IF Alan Close called at 6:45pm, then clearly Wallace did NOT have enough time to do every alleged of him.

IF Alan Close called at just before 6:40pm - the time that I believe is most strongly supported by the evidence - then in my judgement I do not think Wallace had enough time. Others may reach a different judgement on the last point.

Almost certainly. Alan Close did NOT call at 6:31pm.

This timing, and indeed the timing of Wallace reaching the chess club, are crucial, objective bits of evidence in this case, and are given due weight in my book for the Cold Case Jury to consider.

[caz]

Maybe the point is that without any obvious motive the best suspect would still always be the spouse, whether acting alone if time allowed or with help if not. There can sometimes be very deeply felt resentment in a marriage (believe me I've been there, done that and got the T shirt - I put up with nearly 30 years of verbal abuse behind closed doors before finally plucking up the courage to vote with my feet) which can be equally deeply hidden from the outside world - and from the wife or husband - which is an obvious advantage to any spouse harbouring murderous thoughts. My own extended on occasion to dark jokes about "greasing the stairs", so I'd have been in trouble if I had been less discreet and he had fallen down them while I was still around.

The age difference would be fairly unusual these days, let alone back then, so I have to wonder if that had something to do with it. Did Wallace fear she would soon become an unwelcome burden, and did he have to keep up a pretence that he would always have loved and looked after her?

Love,

Caz
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[ColdCaseJury]

I think the detectives investigating thought the victim's husband was the man and didn't look any further..

Undoubtedly, this is the case. A former Chief Superintendent, a friend of mine, told me that a key principle of detection is TIE:

Trace and

Eliminate OR Incriminate.

This means ALL suspects must be carefully vetted with the aim of eliminating them from the inquiry (or incriminating them).

In the Wallace case the police (negligently) FAILED to eliminate or incriminate potential suspects, most notably Parry. Crucially, they knew Parry had misled them concerning his whereabouts on the night of the call, but did NOT follow up. Hence, Parry was never properly eliminated from the inquiry.

[Graham]

There are very cogent arguments in the recent posts, but one thing which strikes me is that Wallace's general character does not seem to tally with that of someone who would use brutal and excessive force; or force at all, in fact. If he did decide to do away with Julia, I rather think that a dose of poison would be more in his line. And as he had a home chemistry lab, chances are that he could easily have come up with something nasty.

Graham

[ColdCaseJury]

There are very cogent arguments in the recent posts, but one thing which strikes me is that Wallace's general character does not seem to tally with that of someone who would use brutal and excessive force; or force at all, in fact. If he did decide to do away with Julia, I rather think that a dose of poison would be more in his line. And as he had a home chemistry lab, chances are that he could easily have come up with something nasty.

I agree. Although his reserved "geeky" character certainly does not rule out violence by any means, I think a person like Wallace would more likely be a poisoner; something less direct.

[ColdCaseJury]

Maybe the point is that without any obvious motive the best suspect would still always be the spouse, whether acting alone if time allowed or with help if not.

I agree, spouses are almost always suspects in domestic murders, but it is not evidence in itself.

[Mayerling]

Given the discussion on this thread of how police attention is always directed towards the surviving spouse first, I was considering what recent examples of notorious English murder cases involving spouses offing spouses the Liverpool police could consider:

There are 4.

1) the Crippen Case

2) the Harold Greenwood Case

3) the Armstrong Case

4) the Thompson - Byswater Case

As a potential model the last would not apply too well - Edith Thompson was tried with her lover Freddy Byswater for the murder of her husband Percy. Never in the investigation against Wallace was there any suggestion he had a lover on the side.

Crippen did have Miss Le Neve (and Cora had several boyfriends) but the case really involves several strands, most notably Cora's contemptuous treatment of the seemingly mild mannered Hawley. Similarly Herbert Armstrong had a domineering wife, who would frequently - possibly without thinking of it - make demeaning comments to him in front of others (he needed to take a bath, she'd tell him in front of his friends). Armstong also had various affairs, and even picked up venereal disease at one point. But the financial aspect of his case (regarding the questionable will over Mrs. Armstrong's property), and his apparent attack on a rival solicitor were not involved in any similar fashion in the Wallace Case.

Harold Greenwood's case (oddly enough the only other solicitor tried for wife murder - and just prior to Armstrong) seemed pegged on finances too. However it was a far weaker case than the other three mentioned, and Greenwood was acquitted. But curiously he never really recovered, and like Wallace died within two to six years after his public ordeal.

As one looks over these three cases, certainly Wallace's situation is closest to Greenwood's in the issue of his relationship (as known publicly) to his wife. He never was raked over the coals by Julia like Crippen and Armstrong were regularly by their wives. Indeed, there were stories that Percy Thompson was jealous of Edith for her business success and intelligence, and may have been brutal towards her (rather similar to stories regarding the relationship of James and Florence Maybrick). If the Wallaces had similar problems they are really buried, but from reading of them they just sound like a fairly contented couple.

By the way, regarding the issue of Wallace being frightened of how he'd care with an aging Julia, one should consider Wallace's own health problems. He died in 1933 of (I believe) a kidney ailment - invariably fatal in that period. He may have known of it in 1931, and as a result wondered what would happen to Julia when he was gone. Problem with this theory is that if he genuinely was scared for her sake, and considered a "mercy killing", he certainly picked a really horrendously horrible way of doing it - poison would have been (no irony intended here) possibly more humane.

Jeff

[caz]

Hi Jeff, CCJ, Graham, All,

My mum always wore the trousers in our house, and was strict with me and my brothers, while my dad never said boo to a goose and was all for a quiet life. I don't recall my parents ever really arguing, just the odd cross word quickly forgotten. So it shocked me to the core when I visited one day in later life, when my mum's dementia was getting bad and saw how my dad was struggling to cope. I had a very young daughter at the time and don't drive so I wasn't much use on a day to day basis, but my dad had carers in twice a day to help and he wasn't one to make a fuss. I saw him lose it with mum on this occasion and I had to intervene at one point to stop him hitting her. He was clearly at the end of his tether and we quickly got mum into a nursing home where she got the specialist care she badly needed, while my dad was able to get some peace at last in the house he loved.

Love,

Caz
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[Graham]

Hi Caz,

I can sympathise with you - in our house the atmosphere was similar, but it was my old man wore the trousers and ruled over us with a rod of iron. By the time I was ready to sling my hook my mother had decided just to leave matters the way they were, and in the interests of a quiet life kept her mouth firmly shut.

I did have a friend who regularly bullied his wife and hit her from time to time, and when she eventually packed her bags he seemed at a genuine loss to know why she was leaving.

Regarding the Wallaces, did the Johnstones next door ever give evidence to their having rows and even fights? Everything I've read about other people's views concerning Wallace's personality and attitudes is reasonably complimentary, but of course once behind closed doors......

Graham

[Mayerling]

Hi Caz,

I have to hand it to you that you put up with your personal household situation for thirty years before calling it quits. Today a marriage can end in months.

My own parents were interesting. Mom had a hot and heavy boyfriend before she and dad got together, but her parents (for reasons connected to religion that I can't fathom, as they liked the boy) refused to countenance the marriage. She and Dad were married from 1950 to 1991 when he died. Not bad, as it really ceased being a sexual matter by 1963 or so, and became a type of partnership. Then my father went blind and Mom felt obliged to assist him until the end. That did not prevent Mom from having a side interest - a family friend we liked who occasionally took her on long weekends in New England. Dad knew of it, but figured that he really did not have to complain if this was Mom's way of having some relaxation. Curiously they were mismatched - Dad was a linguist and all intellectual (affecting me truly and my sister). Mom was all practicalities. When having dinner with them, Dad would ask me a crazy question like: "What was going on around the world in 1649?" (he actually did ask me that once - I spent an hour telling him what I knew about events and people in 1649). When he did this, just as I started to talk, Mom left the table to make calls to her various friends. I don't think she really missed anything by not sticking around - except me doing a slow burn acting like a performing seal for my father.

Jeff

[Ginger]

One more thing I've wondered about this case, and have never seen addressed: did Mrs. Wallace have any sort of semi-reliable schedule which might have led an intruder to expect that she'd be out that evening? If the milk always came on Tuesday at that time, then she was probably usually home then, since the milk boy knew her on sight, and they were on friendly terms. Might she have normally been in the habit of going out to a shop after she took in her milk, but didn't this night?

[Rosella]

I've always had the impression that Julia was rather eccentric and semi-reclusive. It was terribly cold that January and Julia had had bronchial trouble, hence the material she had wrapped round her neck, (a sort of home-made scarf,) when she was found.

I don't think she was in the habit of going anywhere on a regular routine. The couple had a very small circle of friends, Wallace's sister-in-law was the only one who came round on a regular basis really. She came round the afternoon before Julia's death to invite her out to a show, but Julia didn't feel like going, as she wasnt really feeling the best.

The Wallaces had musical evenings occasionally, (Julia was quite a good pianist) but you wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination call them social animals. They would speak to people and chat, but they were reserved types, more common then than now in keeping to themselves.

Their next door neighbours, the Johnstons, were reasonably friendly with the Wallaces, were an audience occasionally on musical evenings, fed the Wallaces' cat when the couple were away on holiday, that kind of thing. Like most other people, including the Wallaces' cleaner, the Johnstons never saw any disharmony or heard shouting etc next door.
I don't think Wallace killed his wife, but if he did I've always joked that maybe it was to relieve the sheer boredom and monotony of their lives and get some excitement. Seriously though, they appear to have been quite devoted to each other and there were only a few who said otherwise.

[Graham]

Hi Rosella,

The couple had a very small circle of friends, Wallace's sister-in-law was the only one who came round on a regular basis really.

Colin Wilson quotes a 'researcher' called Kenneth Gunnell (who he?) who claimed to have discovered that Amy Wallace, the wife of William's brother Joesph, had been a member of a flagellation sect (huh?) when she lived in Malaya. Gunnell makes the suggestion that Amy could have been William's mistress, and that it could have been she who murdered Julia. He goes on to suggest that the murder-weapon may have been the metal handle-end of a riding-whip. Could have...may have been...this sounds like so much speculative b.s. to me, but has anyone else come across this 'theory'?

Also, I meant to ask previously - what's the most recent recommended 'serious' book on The Wallace Case? I need to get myself up-to-date.

Graham