** The Murder of Julia Wallace **

[Abby Normal]

Nice post Colbalt, but can I pick up on one point in it (above).

Wallace himself explained how the murder took place (though suggesting it was someone else's actions) in an article in John Bull published on May 21 1932. His version makes more sense in terms of the burning mackintosh (IMHO) than if someone had been naked and wearing the mackintosh.

The link to the article is : https://www.williamherbertwallace.co.../jm_Oooks.jpeg
which is on the site Herlock refered to in an earlier post (The Julia Wallace Murder Foundation - https://www.williamherbertwallace.com ) - which is an excellent, comprehensive and informative site.

The extract pertinent to this point is reproduced below:

He followed my wife into the sitting-room, and as she bent down and lit the gas-fire he struck her, possibly with a spanner. The implement of murder was never discovered.

He had now to kill her. To strike her again while she lay on the floor and him standing over her would mean the upward spurting of blood.

Two strides took him into the lobby, where he had observed my mackintosh hanging, and he held it as a shield between him and her body while he belaboured her to death.

She must have been felled as soon as she lit the fire and before she could regulate the flow of gas. It would have been at full blaze, and as he bent at the fireplace the flame set light to the mackintosh.

Then he would see that the bottom edge of her skirt was burning, and, throwing the mackintosh down, he must have dragged her away from the fire and on to part of the coat, leaving her in the position I found her.

interesting. but why would an intruder care if she caught on fire?hes already killed/ killing her. and you would think and outside intruder a fire on her body would be ideal actually. but not so for a killer who knows hes gotta still live there.

[Herlock Sholmes]

interesting. but why would an intruder care if she caught on fire?hes already killed/ killing her. and you would think and outside intruder a fire on her body would be ideal actually. but not so for a killer who knows hes gotta still live there.

Good point Abby

[Herlock Sholmes]

A point about why a guilty William chose the method that he did. He was trying to give the impression that this was a robbery that turned into a murder so wouldn’t a bludgeoning have been more in keeping with that? I’m not trying to set myself up as an expert on criminal psychology because I’m certainly not one but I’d suggest that strangling is a more ‘personal’ method for murder. A way of killing someone close that you have reason to hate and wish dead, perhaps the culmination of an argument. Or a way of killing by someone who gained sexual gratification from the act. A blow with a blunt instrument is more in keeping with a robbery but this was overkill. It’s not a nice thought but how difficult could it be for a man to kill a 73 year old woman with a heavy blunt object. One blow to the head..two? Were the extra blows incompetence, panic or pent up rage? I favour the latter.

Another point is the location of the body. If she was killed because the thief was caught in the act then surely she would have been killed in the kitchen? Some theories have the killer taking her into the parlour where she suddenly panics causing him to kill her but this makes little sense to me. What would have been the point? She’d seen him. So why didn’t William killer her in the kitchen to make it seem more like she caught a burglar in the act? It’s a fair question. I think that this might point again to William trying to implicate Parry by pointing out that there was no way that Parry could have taken the money and gotten away with it because Julia knew him. So he killed her in the parlour before going for the cash box.

[Fiver]

If Wallace was trying to create an alibi, then he needed his wife to be seen alive late enough that he could not have killed her and still made it to places he was seen. That depended on something WHW had no control over, the milk boy's arrival time. The milk was supposed to be delivered around 6PM, before WHW returned home that day. and much too early to provide WHW with an alibi in any case.

According to neighbors, the milk boy had been delivering any time between 6pm and 7pm. If the milk was delivered between 6pm and 6:30pm, WHW would have had no alibi. If the milk was delivered between 6:45pm and 7pm, it would have been delivered after WHW would have to have already left home, based on the places and times that he was seen. WHW would only have an alibi if the milk was delivered between 6:30pm and 6:45pm.

According to milk boy Allan Close, he made the delivery and picked up the empties from Julia Wallace some time between 6:30pm and 6:45pm, the only time frame that would give WHW an alibi. Close's coworker, Elsie Wright, said she saw Close at about 6:40pm, shortly before he entered Wolverton Street to deliver to the Wallaces and their neighbors. Elsie Wright had never met WHW, but her statement reinforces that Julia Wallace was alive at 6:40pm to 6:45pm.

Wright also said that before talking to the police, Allan Close said he had seen Julia Wallace alive at about 6:45pm and that Close also stated the time in front of Kenneth Caird, Douglas Metcalf, and Harold Jones. Caird confirmed this. Jones confirmed this, adding that he heard Close tell the police that Julia Wallace was still alive at 6:45pm. Metcalf also confirmed what Close said, adding that he heard Close tell the police that Julia Wallace was still alive at 6:45pm. Paperboy Allison Wildman said he saw Close at the Wallace's door between 6:35pm and 6:40pm.

Based on all of these, it seems Julia Wallace was still alive between 6:40pm and 6:45pm. There's a lot more to it than just the milk boy's statement and WHW had no way of knowing, let alo9ne controlling, that all of these teens would give him alibi.

[Herlock Sholmes]

William could never have envisioned an alibi for the time of the murder because that would have meant convincing someone that they had seen Julia alive after he’d left the house. What he wanted to convince the police of was that he hadn’t made the phone call because they would naturally have assumed that killer and caller were one and the same. So his plan was for the police to think that a Mr X made the call to get William out of the house. He couldn’t kill Julia until after Alan Close had been because that would have meant that Julia was dead and it might have led to Close telling the neighbours that he’d had no response from number 29 causing them to become concerned and going to check on her etc.

If Close had arrived at 6.30 it wouldn’t have affected William’s plan. He’d have still killed her and left. We have to remember that William stepped down from his final tram at 7.20 leaving himself just 10 minutes to find an address in a very large area that, according to him, he was completely unfamiliar with. A slightly careless attitude by William or was he forced to leave the house later than he’d expected? I’d go for the latter - because Alan Cross was late arriving. I’d suggest that he had reckoned on arriving 10 minutes or so earlier.

(So he was late arriving at the chess club and he cut it fine for his search - William has always struck me as methodical, by-the-book, a bit of a plodder but reliable. The kind of man who was never late?)

You probably know that I believe that William used the mackintosh to prevent himself getting covered in blood. This was the second part of the plan in my opinion. It would be believed that if William had done it then he’d have been covered in blood requiring a time consuming clean up operation. If the police factored in the time for this clean up then they would have serious doubts about whether he would have had enough time available. Actually Close did William a favour by turning up late because he narrowed the window of time available creating additional doubt in people’s mind. We can’t be certain of his arrival time though. I’d suggest 6.40 as a reasonable approximation. Maybe a bit earlier; maybe a bit later?