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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 August 6th. Deadly Love RivalThe press called it “The Wrinkly Murder,” and with good reason. The jealous lover was 67. His rival was 80. And the femme fatale was 52. Edward Martin, 67, had been two-timing the flame we will call Ann Smith, and both she and his other woman had realised what he was up to and had cooled towards him. Ann began to encourage the attentions of 80-year-old Warwick Batchelor, a wealthy widower, but at the same time she continued to see Martin. They all lived near each other in Sussex, and it wasn’t long before Martin realised he had a rival. His jealousy festered, and it erupted when he learned that Ann was to go with Batchelor to France for a weekend break. On AUGUST 7th, 1994, the day prior to the couple’s planned departure, Ann dined with Batchelor at his luxury flat in Hassocks. The phone rang several times during the evening, but each time Batchelor answered it the receiver was put down. The caller was Martin, waiting in the shadows of the block of flats, armed with a two-foot-six sharpened screwdriver and checking on his rival. At the end of the evening Batchelor drove Ann home. On his return Martin was waiting for him by the garage block, where he stabbed his rival 20 times as he got out of his car. Two hours later detectives were examining the scene when they became curious about another car parked nearby and went to have a look at it. It was Martin’s. He had left it there while he went to dispose of his bloodstained clothes, screwdriver and gloves. He was spotted concealing them in some bushes, and was arrested. Admitting the killing, he told the police: “I felt that she was my girl because I met her before he did. I was going to tell him to keep his hands off her while they were in France. He was much too old for her. I was so jealous and I just wanted to say to him, ‘Please leave her alone.’” He claimed he had acted in self-defence. At his trial he said, “I knew he was bigger than me, so I took the screwdriver with me in case he started on me.” There was a struggle in which Batchelor grabbed the screwdriver, Martin testified. “I looked up to see him coming at me with the screwdriver. It was the most horrible face I had ever seen. It had murder written all over it... “The last thing I remember is that I was on his back somehow and stabbing him in the shoulder. He was shouting, ‘Help! Help! I’m being attacked!’ Then he said, ‘I’m dead! I’m dead!’ I thought he was going to kill me.” The jury didn’t believe Edward Martin’s story. They convicted him of murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Fairground MurdererBlack men in Scotland were as rare as hen’s teeth at the beginning of the 20th century, so when Pasha Liffey, a 20-year-old Basuto, arrived in Larkhall he was at once conspicuous. He was also a character. He came to Britain in the company of a returning army unit which he had assisted during the Boer War by acting as a runner behind the lines. He settled in Scotland to take part in the “Savage South Africa Show,” a travelling fairground attraction which displayed how the Zulus waged war. From this he graduated to fighting in the fair’s boxing booth, challenging all comers. The crowd loved battling Pasha – for them he could do no wrong. All that changed on the evening of AUGUST 10th, 1905, when he was sacked from the fair for stealing money and being drunk. Next day he attacked 64-year-old Mrs. Mary Welsh, wife of a Larkhall miner, raped her and stabbed her to death. When he was arrested and charged the crowd who had loved him wanted to lynch him. Hangman Henry Pierrepoint did the job for them, on his first professional visit to Glasgow, on November 14th, 1905. He Asked For A RazorIt was, intoned a local Caerphilly newspaper, “a murder which appears to have been caused by unemployment.” That wouldn’t have surprised many in 1931, when millions were on the dole. It started on March 24th, when William Corbett’s wife Ethel, 39, went to the police station to report that her husband was “behaving strangely.” But because he had done no more than ask for a razor, there was nothing the police could do. Next day Corbett punched his wife during an argument at their home in Caer Bragdy, off Lawrence Street, Caerphilly. His step-daughter, Florence, went to her mother’s aid, whereupon Corbett turned on her. Ethel then leapt on her husband, who slashed his wife’s throat with a razor. Corbett next turned round to slash Florence while Ethel, despite her terrible wound, did her best to intervene. Although Ethel was then dying, the two women managed to grapple him to the floor. Corbett tried to cut his own throat, failed, and recovered in hospital. Immediately he was put on trial for his wife’s murder. He was found guilty, condemned to death, and executed at Cardiff on AUGUST 12th. |
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