An Unconventional Murder Case
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X5202500105 |
| Published date | 01 January 1952 |
| Author | Lawrence Dexter |
| Date | 01 January 1952 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
AN
UNCONVENTIONAL
MURDER
CASE 25
competency of the complaint the court should not interfere. His
Lord.
ship could not see
that
any such step could have remedied the mischief,
which was irretrievable from the moment when the complaint was laid
before the judge and his notice drawn to the existence of the previous
convictions.
The
court was empowered to quash a conviction where the
accused had been prejudiced in their defence on the merits or where a
miscarriage of justice had occurred.
In
His Lordship's opinion, this
was such a case and the conviction could not stand.
An
Unconventional Murder Case
By DETECTIVE-SERGEANT LAWRENCE
DEXTER
Nottingham
City Police
A
WOMAN
was stabbed in the back in a public-house toilet and
subsequently died from the injury. Yet at the time, far from realising
that she had received a mortal blow, she did not even know that she
had been attacked.
In
her own words,
she"
thought
that
somebody
had
pushed
her
over." She walked home half a mile without assistance,
went into the front room and removed
her
coat, came back into the
kitchen and handed two meat rolls to her granddaughter
saying"
Here,
eat these, I got them for you at the Mason's Arms."
The
wound was
discovered some time later when she undressed prior to getting into
bed. She was taken to hospital and detained for three weeks, during
which time she made a remarkable recovery.
Then,
just
when she was
on the point of being discharged, she suddenly died.
Her
assailant was arrested four months later and denied all know-
ledge of the offence. Later, when confronted with certain evidence,
he made apartly damaging, partly favourable admission, retracted it
and at his trial returned to his original
utter
denial. At no time during
this trial did the semblance of a motive emerge for the killing. At no
time during the protracted police enquiries was the name of the killer
once
mentioned-although
he must have been known to many in the
district-until
the day of his arrest.
These are some of the remarkable facts in a remarkable case which,
from the police point of view at any rate, started off on the wrong foot
and only
just
succeeded in recovering its balance.
The
attack took place at about
10.15
p.m., Friday,March loth,
1950,
in the ladies' toilet of the Mason's Arms, Bulwell, a fairly thickly popu-
lated mining suburb lying on the outskirts of Nottingham.
The
victim,
Polly Heaney, was a 72-year-old widow of no financial means beyond
her widows' and old age pensions; furthermore, she and
her
assailant,
azo-year-old miner named Roy Birkin, were complete strangers to
one another.
At
10
p.m. on the night of the offence Polly Heaney and a friend,
Annie Crofts, left the Mason's Arms by the back way, crossed the back-
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