"MURDER" WITHOUT BODY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 22, 26 January 1935, Page 4 (Supplement)

"MURDER" WITHOUT BODY

CAN SUCH A CRIME BE PROVED?

ENGLISH COURT DISMISSES APPEAL AGAINST DEATH SENTENCE— SON'S BODY NEVER DISCOVERED — CASE RECALLS AMAZING EXECUTION FOR MURDER — HOW AGENT ON ENGLISH ESTATE DISAPPEARED—MAN SERVANT SENT TO FIND HIM—MOTHER AND TWO SONS HANGED ON GALLOWS—AFTER THREE YEARS "CORPSE" CAME BACK.

Can murder Lie proved before the body is found? The Court of Criminal Appeal in England recently dismissed the appeal of a man against sentence of death for the murder of his son, whose body was never discovered. This case recalls the most amazing execution for murder that the story of British or any other justice contains, writes George Temple, in the "Daily Express."

On Thursday morning, August C. 1(5G(), William Harrison, agent to Viscountess Camden of Chipping Campden in the Cotswold country, set out to collect the rents of her tenants at Charringworth. Jt was only a two-mile walk, but by eight o'clock that evening he had not returned. So !Mrs. Harrison sent their servant, John Perry, to look for him. By the next morning neither Harrison nor Perry was back. Then Edward Harrison, the missing man's son, started for Charringworth to find them. Blood-Stained Hat Band. Soon after leaving Chipping Campden lie met Perry returning. His father was not at Charringworth, though he had been there earlier, the younger Harrison was told. After a fruitless morning spent making inquiries 111 the neighbourhood, they at last heard that a poor woman gleaning had picked up a hat, a band and a comb 011 the Cnmpden-Charring-"worth road. Harrison and Perry sought her out. She showed them what she had found.

The hat was slashed, the band was blood stained and both were the property

In September Joan, John and Kichard Perry were tried at the Gloucester Assizes betore Sir Christopher Turner 011 two charges, one of robbery in 1(559, one of murder in 10(50.

Either to save time, or on the very bad advice of foolish friends, Joan and Richard pleaded guilty to the robbery. They pleaded not guilty to the murder, and in the absence of the body Sir Christopher would not try them.

In the following spring (1(561) they were brought up again, this time before Sir Kichard Ilyde. All three pleaded not guilty. John's confession before the magistrate was then read and proved. "Ho told thl 111 he was then mad and knew not what he said."

Richard protested his innocence and said his brother had accused oLliers as well as him, and that most of the witnesses knew it. None of the witnesses, in fact, seemed to know what ho was talking about. A few days later all three were carried to the gallows 011 Broadway Hill and hanged. , Joan (being reputed a witch and "so to have bewitched her sons that they could confess nothing while she lived") was liangod the first. Missing Man Returns. In 1(503 the missing Harrison returned to his home 110 worse in health than when he left it. He had a most amazing talc. Three horsemen had waylaid him on his way home, they had carried him overland to Deal (by 110 means the most convenient port for Chipping Campden), put him

of old Mr. Harrison. The woman showed them the place where she had found the things, and the whole village hunted there for the missing body, but could not find

Nobody doubted any longer that Harrison had been murdered for the rents collected at Gharringworth. Suspicion fell on John Perry, whose all-night absence on a two-mile quest struck his neighbours as distinctly strange. So Perry was examiued before a justice ,of the peace. He explained that he had started for Gharringworth, but was frightened and could not bring himself to face the night alone. Twice lie set out, twice he returned timidly home—and finally he went to sleep in his mistress' hayloft. Woke Up at Midnight. That was about nine in the evening. At midnight he woke up.' The moon was then shining brightly. Up he got and for a third time iset out for Gharringworth. But he lost his way in a mist and slept again under a hedge. At daybreak he went on to Gharringworth and inquired for his master. Then, finding he was already gone, he returned home and met Edward Harrison coming out to look for him. Various witnesses confirmed _ this account, but the justice was suspicious of it, and John Perry was detained. During his detention he began to give things away. A tinker had killed Harrison; then "it was a gentleman's servant; then he had been set upon, done to death and hidden in a bean rick (it was searched to no purpose). At last he said that if he were again brought before the justice who first examined him he would "discover everything." So on Friday, August 24, be was again examined, and said that his master was murdered, but not by him. Out With His Story. At last John Perry came out with his story. He said that ever since he had entered his master's service his mother, ' Joan, and his brother, Richard, had wor- j ried him to help them rob Harrison. He told the juslicc how "on j the Thursday morning he met his brother in the street, whom he | told whither his master was going, and if he waylaid him he might have the money"; how he betrayed William Harrison's route, how he came upon

"his master 011 the ground, his brother upon him, his mother standing by';; how lie told his brother he hoped lie would not kill his master; and how Richard, replying, "Peace, peace, you're a fool," proceeded to strangle Harrison with a slip knot of twine.

Ho said, too, that the murderers had decided to throw the bodv into "the sink by Wailington's mill." But 110 body was found there. Joan and Richard Arrosted. On this evidence Joan and Richard Perry were arrested. They protested their innocence violently. But as the inquiry went on things looked bad for them. Returning from the justice's house to Campden. Richard dropped u ball of twine by the road. The constable who picked it up found a slip knot tied at the end and, showing it to John, asked if he knew it. John, who did not know that his brother had dropped the twine, identified the knot as that with which William Harrison had been strangled. It was brought up, too, against the prisoners that William Harrison's house had been broken into the year before and a robbery connnitteed there, and of this John also accused his brother. The prisoners «cre committed for trial.'

011 board a ship, where his wounds were dressed and where he stayed "as near as I could guess six weeks." The ship was boarded by Turkish pirates (a fate common enough in those days), and old William was sold as a slave "to a grave physician of 87 years of age who lived near to Smyrna and knew Crowland in Lincolnshire, which he preferred before all other places in England. . . He employed me to keep his still house and gave me a bow] silver gilt to drink in." After a year and three-quarters the old doctor died and gave William Harrison his freedom. So he made his way to a port he knew "being twice there employed by my master about the carriage of his cotton wool," where, for the price of his silver bowl, ho obtained a passage in a "Hamburg ship" to Lisbon. There lie was cast adrift till someone "born near Wisbech, in Lincolnshire," took pity 011 him and induced the "master of a ship bound for England" to take the fugitive home with him to Dover. "Not An Impossible Story." I see nothing impossible in this story. 1 Indeed, the scant details given bear a decided stamp of truth. That Hamburg ship, for instance—(the Hansa ships did trade with the Levant in those days)—the odd references to Crowland (no one seems to have inquired there whether a Turkish doctor had practised lately in the neighbourhood), to Wisbpch and to Deal—places of which a Gloucestershire countryman in the seventeenth century was not likely to have heard. But who contrived the abduction, and why? And what induced John Perry to accuse himself, his mother and his brother of a crime of which they were palpably innocent? In my view the two men and the one woman who were hanged on Broadway Hill were not altogether innocent in William Harrison's fate. These were troubled times. There had just been a civil war, a commonwealth and a restoration. Harrison was in a position to know more of his neighbours' conduct than was comfortable for them at the height of the royalist reaction.

I think—but there. What docs it mater what 1 think?

Three centuries of thinkers have got no nearer to the solution of the Campden mystery.