Evidence in ‘No-Body’ Murder Trials
| Author | James Morton |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2006.70.6.459 |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Opinion |
OPINION
Evidence in ‘No-Body’ Murder Trials
James Morton
Even in these days of DNA evidence one of the most difficult cases for a
prosecutor is still where no body has been found. It is, for example, only
in recent weeks that the first conviction in a no-body case in Massachu-
setts was upheld when the State Appeals Court ruled that Joseph D.
Romano Jnr had murdered his wife Kathryn. The Commonwealth
argued that he had cut her up with an electric saw whilst he claimed she
was either alive and had left him or had been harmed by drug
dealers.1
It has always been a legal fallacy that there could be no conviction
unless the Crown is able to produce a body. It stems back to the 17th
century case known as the Campden Wonder.2In 1660 William Harri-
son, a steward in the village of Campden, disappeared and as a result two
men and a woman, who had the additional disadvantage of being
suspected of being a witch, were hanged. Two years later Harrison
returned to the village with a fantastic tale about being kidnapped and
taken to a Turkish harem from which, after many adventures, he had
escaped. Most probably he had absented himself either to avoid an
inquiry into the accounts or to avoid retribution for his behaviour under
Cromwell. Whichever is the reason the case had a serious curb on the
Crown for the next three centuries.
It is Sir Matthew Hale who is erroneously quoted as saying that there
could be no murder charge if there was no body.3What he said was that
there must either be a body or direct proof of killing. However, a number
of 18th century judges misquoted him in dicta, but the fact remains that
without a body or a confession no one was convicted of murder in
England and Wales for nearly 300 years. It was not until the 1930s that
a man was convicted in England of a murder where there was no body.
In September 1934 Thomas Joseph Davidson appeared at the Central
Criminal Court charged with the murder of his eight-year-old son John
who had disappeared the previous December. He had apparently con-
fessed, first in a letter to the police, then in a signed statement, and
thirdly and finally, in a letter to his wife, to drowning the boy and then
throwing the body on a dump in Yiewsley in Middlesex. By the time the
police investigated the matter all trace of the body had disappeared. At
his trial he claimed that he had found the body in the canal. But the
question of the absence of the corpus delicti was not raised. The jury
convicted him but added a recommendation for mercy. The absence of
1Boston Globe, 23 August 2006. For a full rehearsal of the arguments in American no-
body cases, see Virgin Islands v Harros 938F 2d (3rd Circuit, 1991).
2 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Campden_Wonder, accessed 13 September 2006.
3 (1736) 2 Pleas of the Crown.
459
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