Did a serial killer go unrecognized?

[sdreid]

Hi Harry: Is this guy still living?

If not, maybe his name can be given - totally your call.

[sdreid]

I see that Miss Wren stated that she received her injuries at about 5:45 in the afternoon. That may be a true statement not that it gains us much. I don't see anywhere that a doctor argued against this time line.

[sdreid]

I also don't see why she would have any reason to lie about the time unless she was going so far as to give her killer an alibi. That would be remarkable if it was true.

[sdreid]

Why haven't the suspect names been released in the Wren case or have they? These individuals would all be deceased by now I'd think.

[sdreid]

If any were still living, they would have to at least be well into their 90s.

[sdreid]

I should mention that some think a man named Ernest Brown confessed to this murder on the gallows in 1934 when he was about to be hanged for another slaying. His statement was unclear.

When asked for his statement on the scaffold, Brown reportedly said either Otterburn or ought to burn. The trap was sprung before he could be asked to clarify. If it was Otterburn then the interpretation was that he was confessing to Foster's murder which happened on the Otterburn road. If he said ought to burn then he was, presumably, condemning himself to Hell. It's sort of like when Cream was trying to confess to being Jack the Giant Killer just as the trap was sprung.

[sdreid]

Nineteen years might sound like a long span for a serial killer but that has been surpassed by several including Nannie Doss and Adolph Seefeld.

[sdreid]

There could have been some lack of continuity. Sir Bernard Spilsbury investigated the Wren case but had taken himself out of the picture by the time the later murders occurred.

[sdreid]

And back in London, does anyone know anything about the murder of Dorothy Wallis? She was a 36-year-old spinster who ran an employment agency and was found beaten to death in her business. I believe it was in the late 40s like maybe 1946. To my knowledge, the murder was never solved, am I correct? Supposedly an unknown man had answered the phone when a call was made to the office the evening before and the suspicion is that this person was the killer.

She was also known as Daisy Wallis and she was found dead on August 15 of 1949. Miss Wallis was described as a spinster but apparently had a rather active sex life that she made record of in one of her diaries. A man who was described as "Italian looking" was observed leaving the area of the murder but is a mystery as is the rest of the crime.

[sdreid]

As I understand, screams were heard coming from Wallis' business the evening before she was found and that's when the man was seen leaving the area. This was on a Sunday.

[sdreid]

I don't think that Miss Wallis' firm was open on Sunday so apparently she was using it for a "love nest".

[Mayerling]

I don't think that Miss Wallis' firm was open on Sunday so apparently she was using it for a "love nest".

Thinking of Mrs. Wren in 1930 I can recall that at that time the only similar murder of a store owner was in the Philip Yaie Drew case (in 1930 also, I believe) when an actor "in the provinces" on tour was all but accused by the coroner of killing a tobacconist, but the victim was a man.

Prior to that the killing of Vivian Messiter, a garage owner in 1928, led (in a somewhat disulatory manner) to the eventual arrest and trial and execution of William Henry Podmore. Messiter was also beaten to death with a hammer, and his body left hidden in the garage for weeks. Most students of the case feel the police caught the right man, but the circumstantial case (while intriguing) is somewhat strained, and it is just as possible that Podmore simply was cheating Messiter on non-deserved sales commissions, and that a second party did the murder.

The Earle Nelson "Gorilla Man" case is interesting too for the number of victims
(mostly boarding house owners) that Nelson killed. Ironically, had he not been caught in Canada (Winnipeg, I think) for the last one, but in the U.S., most of his murders were in states where he would have been "guilty, but insane", and he would have served out a life sentence in a prison for the criminally insane. In Canada they did not give a rat's ass about that defense, and he was hanged.

I think only one book was written about Nelson, a novel by Jay Roberts Nash.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

I expect that the primary argument against would be the 19 year gap but that could possibly be explained by a stint in prison for a less serious crime or the military.

That said, there have been longer gaps, such as Donald Merritt who took 28 years off.

As well, perhaps there was no lull. Can anyone think of a possible case(s) that would fall in the middle years?

Problem with using the unmentionable Merritt is that his murders were all for gain. By the way, if he is used as a "serial killer" he changed his modus operandi three times: he shot his mother in 1926, and he tried to copy the "Brides in the Bath" Smith method with his wife in 1953 (planning on an ornate, and doomed, alibi in Germany), and he beat his mother-in-law to death (who showed up unexpectedly at his wife's murder) . If he is a serial killer, he disproves the modus is always maintained. By the way, he was also suspected of the shooting death of a German who was a partmer or associate of his in the black market in the late 1940s.

Jeff

[sdreid]

Yes Jeff, it had been some time since I read about the Alfred Oliver Case for which Drew was accused in Landmarks in 20th Century Murder by Robin Odell. I just reintroduced myself to the events here on the web and it says that Mr. Drew starred in an American movie series called Young Buffalo and was in some way related to the Barrymores.

[sdreid]

Drew Barrymore, I wonder.