The Southampton Garage Murder
| Published date | 01 July 1931 |
| Date | 01 July 1931 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3100400302 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The
Southampton
Garage
Murder
(THE
PODMORE
CASE)
PART
I.
1\T 6.45 p.m, on
loth
January, 1929, the following telephone
J-\.message was received at Scotland Yard from the Chief
Constable of Southampton (Mr. McCormac) :
, A case of murder has occurred here. A man has been found shot
in a room the door of which was padlocked.
The
body was found to-day
and has probably been in the room some eight or nine weeks. Will you
please send an officer down to investigate the matter.'
In response to this message Chief Inspector Prothero of the
Central Office of the Criminal Investigation Department (now
Superintendent Prothero) was instructed to proceed at once to
Southampton, taking with him Detective Sergeant (now
Detective Inspector) Young. Early next day he commenced,
in co-operation with the borough police, one of the most diffi-
cult and complicated criminal investigations on record. This
account of it necessarily gives only an outline of the case, and
represents
but
a small selection from the vast mass of informa-
tion collected and sifted over a period of more than a year.
The
body had been found at No. 42 Grove Street, a garage
or warehouse (hereinafter referred to as ' the garage ') in a back
street of a poor quarter of Southampton.
The
corpse was in
an advanced stage of decomposition,
but
had been identified as
that of a man named Vivian Messiter, who had been missing
for about ten weeks. His disappearance had been reported at
the time by Mr.Parrott,an ex-policeman, in whose house, (which
was in another part of Southampton), he had been lodging.
Mr. Parrott had informed the police that his lodger had gone
out as usual after breakfast on the morning of
jcth
October,
saying that he had an appointment, and had never returned.
It
was not considered at the time that there was anything
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