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Practically every day of the year is a landmark of some sort in the annals of crime. Here’s where you can find out what happened this week in years gone by... Stories from the week beginning July 26th. She Didn’t Want Marriage – And She Didn’t Want Him EitherFor two years Samuel Johnson had been courting 23-year-old Beatrice Martin, making no secret of the fact that he had a wife and three children. He was separated and seeking a divorce, he emphasised, but Beatrice told him she wasn't interested in marriage. Then he discovered that he had a rival, a sailor named John Hunter. Nevertheless, Johnson persisted in trying to persuade Beatrice to marry him, only to be repeatedly rebuffed and given an increasingly cold shoulder. At one o'clock on the morning of JULY 27th, 1925, Beatrice's mother saw him outside her house in Stretford, Manchester. He said he was waiting for Beatrice to come home, and her mother told him he was wasting his time. An hour later Beatrice appeared at the end of the street, where she said goodnight to John Hunter and then walked to her gate. Seeing Johnson, she told him to go away. Moments later her mother was wakened by knocks at her front door, which she opened to find Beatrice and Johnson jostling to enter. "You are not coming in here," Beatrice told him. But she wasn't going anywhere either. The next moment Johnson plunged a knife in her back. Within ten minutes he was in custody, having given himself up to a constable patrolling Chester Road. His trial lasted just four minutes when he pleaded guilty to Beatrice's murder, and he was executed on December 15th, 1925. Murdering Mother-In-Law Goes To The Gallows"Please come!" cried the frantic woman rapping on the window of a car parked outside a house in Hampstead. "Fire burning! Children sleeping!" The man in the car got out and ran with her to the house, following her into the kitchen of a flat. A young woman's near-naked corpse lay on the floor, and there was a strong smell of paraffin. Someone had set the body on fire, the flames spreading round the kitchen. The woman who raised the alarm was 53-year-old Mrs. Styllou Christofi. The victim was her 36-year-old German daughter-in-law. Police called to the flat learned that Mrs. Christofi's son Stavros had come from Cyprus to become a waiter in London where he had married Hella, a tall, attractive brunette. In 1953 his mother had left Cyprus to join the couple and their three children, but she couldn't stand her daughter-in-law and the feeling was mutual. Styllou Christofi couldn't forgive Hella for supplanting her in her son's affections. Hella had endured her mother-in-law's constant criticism for as long as she could. Then she had told Stavros she was taking the children to Germany on holiday. On her return she would expect his mother to be gone, sent back to Cyprus. Stavros said he would arrange it. After he went to work on the evening of JULY 29th, 1954, Hella had said she was going to have a bath. Wearing only her panties, she had gone to the bathroom unaware that her mother-in-law was following her, carrying an ashplate from the kitchen stove which she brought down on Hella's head, knocking her unconscious. After dragging her daughter-in-law to the kitchen, Mrs. Christofi had strangled her with a scarf, poured paraffin over her and set fire to it. But as the flames spread she had panicked, fearing for the lives of her grandchildren, and had run for help. She said she had found Hella on fire and had tried to put out the flames with water, but detectives saw the tell-tale red mark round Hella's neck. And where was Hella's wedding ring? They found it in her mother-in-law's room. Hanged at Holloway Prison on December 13th, 1954, for Hella's murder, Styllou Christofi had experienced mother-in-law problems herself when, like. Hella, she was a young daughter-in-law. In 1925 she had been acquitted of the murder of her husband's mother, who had died after having a burning torch thrust down her throat... “A Dreadful Life”"You have led a dreadful life," Mr. Justice Veale told the man in the dock. On trial for his second killing, 27-year-old William Rodgers was in no position to argue. A North Shields labourer, in May 1961 he had been tried at Durham Assizes, accused of killing Emanuel King, whose lodgings he had gone to with some beer and a prostitute. When King asked his visitors to leave and tried to drag Rodgers out of his bed, Rodgers had hit him with a bottle and had then left with the girl, unaware that King was seriously injured. King had died the next day and Rodgers had been jailed for manslaughter. Now he was back in the same court within a year of his release, already on bail for another assault and now charged with murder. On JULY 31st, 1964, he had stabbed George Brown, 23, nearly 20 times after a series of arguments. His plea of diminished responsibility was rejected, and on October 13th, 1964, William Rodgers was convicted and jailed for life. |
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