When George Robinson-Brannon presented documents purportedly signed by his father to a clerk at the Wakefield branch of the Halifax Building Society the clerk decided they were false and refused Robinson-Brannons request for funds to be removed from his fathers account.
Several times more Robinson-Brannon returned to the building society office, each time with a new set of papers and signatures which the clerk still refused to accept. Finally, the manager called the police.
Detectives who went to Robinson-Brannons terraced house in Denby Dale Road, Wakefield, were welcomed by a distinctly unpleasant smell.
They could get no satisfactory explanation from the young man about the whereabouts of his father, but they found the source of the smell a bucket of faeces in a bedroom.
Strangely, when the bucket was removed the house still stank. As Robinson-Brannon began to change his story several times, the police decided to search the house more thoroughly.
The noxious smell seemed to emanate from an old Victorian wardrobe standing in a bedroom alcove. It was empty, but when it was removed it was seen to be covering a cupboard door that had been nailed shut. The door was forced open – and out fell the maggot-ridden body of William Robinson, the young mans father. He had been strangled by a leather belt still tied around his neck.
Because of the fragility of the corpse it was impossible to carry it safely downstairs for examination, so the fire brigade, using a sling and ropes, hoisted it out of the bedroom window.
George Robinson-Brannon, self-confessed forger, was tried for patricide at Leeds Assizes on DECEMBER 11th, 1957. He collapsed in the dock when he was jailed for life.