Accident or Murder?
| Published date | 01 April 1960 |
| Date | 01 April 1960 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6003300205 |
| Author | H. W. Langman |
| Subject Matter | Article |
DETECTIVE
CHIEF
SUPT.
H.
W.
LANGMAN
Devon Constabulary
Mr. Langman has had in this article the collaboration of Mr. G.
Stewart Smith, M.A., M.D., Area Pathologist, of the Royal Devon
and Exeter Hospital, and of Mr. W. A. Gliddon, B.Sc., of the Home
Office Forensic Science Laboratory at Bristol.
Accident
or
Murder?
POLICE OFFICERS are concerned in many cases where death is
brought about as the result of a vehicular accident. In a large
number more than one vehicle is involved; consequently, there are
two or more witnesses, usually unknown to each other, and the fact
that death did so occur is beyond dispute.
It
remains only for the
investigating officer to inquire into the circumstances with a view
to determining whether or not negligent driving was the cause. In
other cases, however, it happens that only one vehicle is involved.
Aperson is killed and it may well be that there is only one survivor
to give an account of what occurred. This type of case needs to be
approached by the Police with considerable care, thought being
given when examining the scene as to whether what is found there
fits in with the story that has been told. Such a case recently
occurred in Devon and, but for intelligent observation by police
officers, what was in fact a brutal murder might have been passed
off by the perpetrator as a vehicular accident.
The
circumstances
of this case are, in the writers' opinion, of sufficient interest to be
worth recording.
The
offender, aged 49, was an excavator driver by occupation,
and the victim his wife. The couple had been living apart for some
years and there was a Court Order on which he was obliged to pay
her maintenance. He was the owner of a shooting brake with a
left-hand drive.
At about 1.40 p.m. on a dark February night, a company director
and his wife were motoring along a quiet country road between two
villages on the edge of Dartmoor, not many miles from Tavistock,
when they saw a shooting-brake stationary on their offside of the
road. Just behind it, lying in the road, was a dark object which at
first they thought was a sheep, but almost immediately they realised
it was a woman who, judging from the sounds she was emitting,
was in extremis.
The
shooting-brake was that of the man subse-
April-June
1960 95
To continue reading
Request your trial