Move to Murder: Who Killed Julia Wallace?

[Abby Normal]

Given that we are reasonably certain the phone call could have been made by one of two people, either Wallace or Parry, is there anything in the content of the call that can help us identify which of the two it was.

The voice was described as a man's voice, confident and gruff - very different to Wallace's voice, but also an older man's voice that sounded normal (presumably that means no foreign accent etc...). Whoever made the call was disguising their voice and so this probably doesn't help much but suggests, in my view, it was slightly more likely to be Parry than Wallace.

In terms of other content - I have suggested those elements that I think suggest Parry is more likely and those which I think suggest Wallace is more likely. Other elements I do not think suggest one over the other. It would be interesting to know if posters believe the lists correct/incorrect and how they might change the lists.

Suggests Parry
* mention of a daughter's 21st birthday

Suggests Wallace
* request for Wallace's address

hi eten
good idea. I agree and will continue it.


Suggests Parry
* mention of a daughter's 21st birthday(this is a bigee for me-I mean whats the chance?)

* possible revenge/robbery motive

* criminal behavior/record

Suggests Wallace
* request for Wallace's address

* Call made from that call box

* missing bar and iron/wallace dosnt bring this up to police

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yawn...

If you are asking a human-being in officialdom to do something for you, common-sense suggests it might be recorded, certainly if it is an out of the ordinary request.

Or do you imagine officialdom keeps no records?

Nope.

This was 1931 and not today’s world where we are all conditioned to accept layers of bureaucracy. Getting a call put through just because there appeared to be a problem would have appeared a pretty normal thing. It was a matter of a few seconds and not a major issue. There’s no way that we can assume that the caller would expect the call to be recorded just because it suits one side of an argument.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Lol. I've exploded that nonsense enough times...

Even the Police agreed there was a perfectly good reason for him to go upstairs first.

And of course, had Wallace in fact gone to the parlour first, you would no doubt be effusing "See, Guilty!"

"Heads we win, tails Wallace loses" coin-tricks don't cut it, obviously.

Again, nope.

And of course, had Wallace in fact gone to the parlour first, you would no doubt be effusing "See, Guilty!"

The above part in particular is nonsense. Going into the Parlour first would have been the expected thing to do for an innocent man.

You’ve exploded nothing. I’ve proved this point beyond argument. Way beyond.

We have an ‘innocent’ man.

At the end of his MGE campaign he says that he becomes concerned about Julia.
- so he’s concerned.

He gets home and discovers that, for the first time ever, he cannot get into his own home and Julia doesn’t appear when she hears the sound of Wallace trying to get in.
- he now becomes more concerned and worried.

As soon as he sees the Johnston’s the first words out of his mouth are to ask if they’ve heard anything unusual.
- he’s obviously not concerned about illness but rather that Julia might have come to harm. So his level of worry is increasing.

He gets inside the house and sees that the lights are of even though Julia was in the house.
- He must have been approaching panic now.

He goes through the kitchen and sees that a cupboard door has been pulled off.
- any thoughts of a natural explaination now disappear. Something untoward has happened to Julia. She might be injured or dead. He needs to find her ASAP.


He gets to the doorway of the kitchen to the hall desperate to find and help his wife. The door to the Parlour is within touching distance. It would have taken a matter of seconds to look inside to either find his wife or eliminate the room from the search. But no, he ignores it and goes upstairs.

Now, I’d suggest that if any one of us were in that situation we would have checked the Parlour before going upstairs. It’s the entirely natural, normal, obvious thing to have done. Can anyone seriously say that, at that moment, Wallace might have thought “well, statistically speaking the Parlour is the room in the house that gets used the least and so....”

The fact that you cannot concede even such a startlingly obvious and undeniable fact speaks volumes.

[cobalt]

Suggests Parry
* mention of a daughter's 21st birthday(this is a bigee for me-I mean whats the chance?


For me too.

Wallace would have been more likely to give some brief technical detail relating to the required insurance in order to make the call sound credible.

Being busy with a daughter’s 21st birthday party is, in my view, a pretty good cover story. It establishes the caller as a family man, middle-aged, and presumably soon to be free of his daughter’s upkeep. In short, an ideal client. No wonder Wallace took the bait, if that was what it was.

The coincidence in relation to Parry is striking. The ruse of 21st birthday party coming from Wallace’s lips sounds highly unlikely from what we know about the man.

[cobalt]

HS,

I think you are reading too much into Wallace’s actions.

If the doors were locked he may have assumed that Julia had gone to bed early since she was ill that day.

Even if he feared, as you indicate, that she may have come to harm, then the bedroom is a natural enough place to look for a female victim of violence.

If guilty, what did he gain by not going to the parlour, as you say he should have done?

[OneRound]

Nope.

This was 1931 and not today’s world where we are all conditioned to accept layers of bureaucracy. Getting a call put through just because there appeared to be a problem would have appeared a pretty normal thing. It was a matter of a few seconds and not a major issue. There’s no way that we can assume that the caller would expect the call to be recorded just because it suits one side of an argument.

Blagging a free call off the operator does seem the sort of thing you might expect far more from a young jack the lad type up to no good than a late middle aged man carefully plotting the murder of his wife.

OneRound

[RodCrosby]

Suggests Wallace
* request for Wallace's address

I've still no idea why this is supposed to favour Wallace? We know the caller, whoever he was, was a dissembler. A dissembler might wish it to appear he did not already know the address, just as a dissembler would wish it appear he did not know Wallace was not yet at the club. Both Parry and Wallace knew

a) Wallace's address
b) that Wallace was not yet at the club

So "request for Wallace's address" has to go in the neutral column.

Aside from the nuances of the conversation, the big picture speaks volumes.

If Wallace, then here are the first three rounds of a nine-rounds-of-russian-roulette plan.

a) Wallace, peculiar-looking, well-known in the district, chooses a phone-box at the junction of four busy roads, overlooked by a cinema and a public house. He cannot know he has not been seen approaching, entering, or leaving the phone-box...
AND
b) Wallace, possessor of a non-Liverpudlian accent, speaks to operators, and then speaks to a man (Beattie) who knows him well, and must then recount essentially the same key words to Beattie 25 minutes later. He cannot know that Beattie will not recognise his voice, either immediately (ruining his plan) or later (putting a rope around his neck)
AND
c) Wallace (supposedly) gets on a tram just 25 yards from the phone-box. He cannot know that a "clippie" or an acquaintance who happens to be on the tram or nearby will not notice and remember this...

If you believe anyone might plan a murder in this way, then you might believe Wallace could theoretically be guilty, although you are still faced with the inconvenient fact that there is absolutely no positive evidence to suggest it.

If you believe no rational person would do such things, combined with the sheer absence of evidence that Wallace did in fact do any of these things, then you must, rationally, declare him innocent...

[Herlock Sholmes]

Given that we are reasonably certain the phone call could have been made by one of two people, either Wallace or Parry, is there anything in the content of the call that can help us identify which of the two it was.

The voice was described as a man's voice, confident and gruff - very different to Wallace's voice, but also an older man's voice that sounded normal (presumably that means no foreign accent etc...). Whoever made the call was disguising their voice and so this probably doesn't help much but suggests, in my view, it was slightly more likely to be Parry than Wallace.

In terms of other content - I have suggested those elements that I think suggest Parry is more likely and those which I think suggest Wallace is more likely. Other elements I do not think suggest one over the other. It would be interesting to know if posters believe the lists correct/incorrect and how they might change the lists.

Suggests Parry
* mention of a daughter's 21st birthday

Suggests Wallace
* request for Wallace's address

Eten, an older, more normal voice must surely point toward Wallace.
The pronunciation ‘caffay’ must slightly favour Wallace over Parry.
The fact that Wallace, being on foot, would have had no choice but to have used that call box whereas, with a car, Parry had the option of making the call away from the scene, slightly favours Wallace.
The request for Wallace’s address favours Wallace.

I take your point about the 21st birthday party. But we might also ask why Parry would have been so reckless/stupid as to mention this if he’d known that the next day he intended to go and discus such a party and that it would have to be mentioned to the police.

Also, in Parry’s police statement (23.1.31) he says about his visit to Mrs Williamson “We had a chat about a 21st birthday party.” This gives us no reason to believe that this was the purpose of his visit and so he might well have been completely unaware that there was a 21st birthday party being planned when he made the call.

His girlfriend Lillian Lloyd said that she had the impression that Parry had told her that night about them getting an invite to a 21st birthday party in April.

So we really have no reason to assume that Parry new that a party was being planned when he made the call.

[Herlock Sholmes]

HS,

I think you are reading too much into Wallace’s actions.

If the doors were locked he may have assumed that Julia had gone to bed early since she was ill that day.

Even if he feared, as you indicate, that she may have come to harm, then the bedroom is a natural enough place to look for a female victim of violence.

If guilty, what did he gain by not going to the parlour, as you say he should have done?

Then we must assume that before going to bed Ill Julia had decided to tear off a cupboard door.

That fact alone eliminates any idea of a normal explaination. Wallace would have known for a fact that something had happened.

If guilty, what did he gain by not going to the parlour, as you say he should have done?

Simply a last look around to assure himself that he hadn’t made any howlers.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Blagging a free call off the operator does seem the sort of thing you might expect far more from a young jack the lad type up to no good than a late middle aged man carefully plotting the murder of his wife.

OneRound

If it was intentional then I’d have to agree OneRound. We can’t know that it was though.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I've still no idea why this is supposed to favour Wallace? We know the caller, whoever he was, was a dissembler. A dissembler might wish it to appear he did not already know the address, just as a dissembler would wish it appear he did not know Wallace was not yet at the club. Both Parry and Wallace knew

a) Wallace's address
b) that Wallace was not yet at the club

It’s a superfluous, irrelevant question. If the caller had been given the answer it would have, at the very least, made Beattie and Wallace wonder about the genuineness of the call. “Why would he want my address if he wants me to go to his house.”

So "request for Wallace's address" has to go in the neutral column.

Nope. The Wallace column. You are usually quite happy to defer to Antony’s judgment Rod. Why not on this instant I wonder?

Aside from the nuances of the conversation, the big picture speaks volumes.

If Wallace, then here are the first three rounds of a nine-rounds-of-russian-roulette plan.

Here we go with the dishonest Russian Roulette tedium.

a) Wallace, peculiar-looking, well-known in the district, chooses a phone-box at the junction of four busy roads, overlooked by a cinema and a public house. He cannot know he has not been seen approaching, entering, or leaving the phone-box...

He was tall and thin not a hunchback in a clowns costume. Stop exaggerating. And, as you’ve said, no crime is without risk. He was on foot and so had no choice but to use that phone box. As for how busy it was at the time, unlike you, I haven’t visited 1930’s Liverpool.

AND
b) Wallace, possessor of a non-Liverpudlian accent, speaks to operators, and then speaks to a man (Beattie) who knows him well, and must then recount essentially the same key words to Beattie 25 minutes later. He cannot know that Beattie will not recognise his voice, either immediately (ruining his plan) or later (putting a rope around his neck)

I’ve explained this in very simple terms. A disguised voice is just that. Beattie would have been the last person to have expected a ‘prank’ call. He was focused on the content and getting the message right. No issue at all.
AND
c) Wallace (supposedly) gets on a tram just 25 yards from the phone-box. He cannot know that a "clippie" or an acquaintance who happens to be on the tram or nearby will not notice and remember this...

Perhaps he jumped on the bus as Murphy suggests? Why is it that whenever I’ve brought up any risks involved in a Parry plan you’ve blathered on about there always being risks involved etc. Why isn’t this acceptable for Wallace?

If you believe anyone might plan a murder in this way, then you might believe Wallace could theoretically be guilty, although you are still faced with the inconvenient fact that there is absolutely no positive evidence to suggest it.

Nor for Parry being involved.

If you believe no rational person would do such things, combined with the sheer absence of evidence that Wallace did in fact do any of these things, then you must, rationally, declare him innocent...

No rational person would take the time and effort to come up with such an involved plan then having stand or fall completely on luck but that doesn’t seem to bother you. Why would it?

There is absolutely no reason to suspect that Parry was involved. You have Parkes tissue of nonsense. Remove that by piling up the Mount Everest doubts and drivel and your left holding an empty sack.

Can we say for certain that Wallace was guilty...no of course not. But he’s certainly the likelier candidate.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That’s all for tonight. A man can only take so much blinkered thinking from one person.

[RodCrosby]

That's OK.

Have a good lie down...

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ll just make a final point. I don’t think that I’ve ever known Rod to properly concede a point in favour of Wallace being possibly guilty. And I’ve seen the lengths that he’ll go to incriminate Parry and his accomplice. I’d hope that I’m honest enough to accept doubts though.

So if i was asked what’s the biggest point against Wallace’s guilt I’d accept that it’s the one mentioned. The risk for Wallace of being seen near to the call box at that time. I can’t easily explain this away unlike other points. All I can say is that he would, if intending to kill his wife using this plan, have had to have accepted an element of risk and for whatever reasons know to him at the time he felt that it was worth it or that the risk appeared less to him at the time than it does to us nearly 90 years later.

[RodCrosby]

"Wallace was a straight-backed man, old-fashioned. He looked like an elongated walking-stick..."
Sir Joseph Cleary, 1981

"Wallace was a very peculiar-looking man, and immensely tall..."
RG Parry, 1966