THE BOSCOMBE CRIME.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3114, 24 April 1922, Page 8

THE BOSCOMBE CRIME.

Who killed Irene May Wilkins ? The question, if and when answered, bids fair to involve one of the most extraordinary crimes in our annalsi —and of these there have been recorded of late more than a few. The many New Zealanders who were either stationed at Boscombe sometime during the war, or have visited Bournemouth, may know the scene of the tragedy. On Friday last at 7.30 a.m. an old age pensioner, Mr Nicklen discovered the woman’s dead body lying in a lonely field alongside . Seafield road. There seems little doubt that she was murdered within about eiglit feet of the road, Nicklen’s attention to which was drawn by the alarm of the cows in the field. .Miss Wilkins must have been induced to leave a car, of which the tyre traces were evident, at this lonely spot, for what purpose no one knows, but the disturbed nature of the ground shows that she must have had a terrible struggle with her assailant. The attack made upon her was of a particularly callous and brutal character. The instrument used for this purpose was undoubtedly an open spanner, oily and dirty. Seven vicious blows were rained on Miss Wilkins’s head and face. One blow was delivered with such crashing force that it cut clean through the dark brown suede hat which she was wearing, and which it would require a sharp cutting instrument, such as the end of an open spanner, to penetrate. Six of the wounds were on the skull, which was fractured, the other wound being a large gash on the left cheek. The fact that a spanner was used is proved by the marks of each wound corresponding with those that would be made by the vice end of a spanner. - 6 . Having thus ruthlessly slain the girl, the murderer dragged her body under the barbed wire surrounding the field. In the field he left her lying behind some gorse bushes. There were splashes of blood on the three feet of grass skirting the road, on the bushes, and on the wire fence, while the ground where the stretch-ed-out body lay was saturated with blood. The discovery who the murdered victim was did not take long, for although the murderer had taken away the one piece of evidence —her dispatch case—which would at once have shown that the victim was Miss Wilkin’s her inexplicable disappearance was within a very few hours known to the police who discovered who she waa, Miss Wilkins was a woman of over 30, who had done her bit as many another had done, although but for this war she would have remained in a sheltered home —canteen work, part of it in the munition factory at Gretna Green, that huge machine for turning out T.N.T. on the formerly deserted shores of the Solway Firth. Miss Wilkins since the war had become “fully qualified” in domestic science. She had left a post some time ago and was looking for another, and had put an advertisement in the “Morning Post” : LADY COOK, 31, requires post in school. Experience in school with 40 boarders. Disengaged. Salary £65. — Miss Wilkins, Thirlmere-road, Streatham, 5.W.16. On the day it appeared Miss Wilkins received a telegram in reply to her advertisement, asking her to go to Bournemouth by the where she would be met by a car. This she did, and as far as her family is concerned the retd is silence. Miss Wilkins had sent a reply telegram to the name Wood, and addressi, Beach House, Boscombe, of the telegram, and after she had left for Bournemouth her reply was returned to her home marked “name unknown.” She arrived at the Central Station about 7.4 p.m. and was seen by a taxicab driver, waiting apparently for the motor car. The taxicab driver asked, “Taxi, madam?’’ She replied, “No, thank you, I am waiting for a private car.” Miss Wilkins went back into the station, and a few minutes later returned with an attache case. At that moment the taxi-driver noticed a chauffeur, whom he had seen before, step forward and speak to Miss Wilkins. She then got into a car and both drove away. Where the car was driven between the time it left the station about 7.15 p.m. and about 10 the same night, the approximate time she was murdered, is unknown. It is also a mystery by which route the car reached the lonely spot at the junction of Ilford-road and Seafieldroad aliont three miles from Bournemouth, but. judging from the time which had elapsed, it is certain it must have mad© a circuitous tour. The man is described by the police as about 30, square of jaw, 'medium build clean shaven, and about sft 7in in height. He wore an ordinary chauffeur’s dark blue coat buttoned up and a blue cap. the car is described as being a six-cylin-der Sunbeam, painted dark bine, with Bedford cord upholstery. It had black wings, and was either new or had been recently rennovated. Two of the tyres si added I * C Dun op Ma S mim type, heavily These are the main facts so far as they have been made publicly known, but new complications have been introduced into by the fact which has now become known that two others received telegrams -asking them to como to Boscombe. In one case a registry office asked to send a Present” nurse companion for a girl of 20 sent off a nurse. She left Lonthe s /™e train as Miss Wilkins did 24 hours later—in response to a telegram sent to the Registry on Wednesday. Ihe woman, not meeting him at the station, went on to the address, “Boscombe Blunge, given in the telegram, and found it to be a boarding establishment where, nothing being known of anyone named Butler, the name in which the telegram was sent, she stayed the night, returning to London on Thursday mornmg. in the other case the girl who had advertised that she wanted a place was fortunate m having friends who advised , * n ° fc to .6° 0,1 receipt of the telegram, hut to wait for confirmation by let- .:, may be imagined what the ?irl s leehngs are now at her narrow escape.

What manner ot man then is this iliicrate decoyer of women? That lie is illiterate' is deduced from the fact that his telegrams all show mis-spelling. But for the fact that the women he attempted to victimise, and this victim were poor one would almost have put him on the Landru class. But money was not obviously his aim. Was it the lure of sex’ If so the murderer must have rocked nothing of the sexual charm of the victims whom, apparently,the sought hapazard, except for the “plese it” of the nursemaid telegram. ■That in Miss Wilkins’ case he chanced on a woman with certain charm—though not that of the sex allure—seems to have been pure accident. The more one examines the history of tiie girl the more mysterious does it become. K> The family of the dead woman describe her as being well-built and well able to resist any attack made on her. Miss Welkins’ eldest sister declared that as far as she knew the murdered girl had no friends in the Bournemouth district. “She never had anything to do with men, and had no sweetheart,” she said. A friend of the dead woman bore out this statement, and added that Miss Wilkins was most reserved in manner, and had never had any iovo entanglement or trouble of any sort. She was to all appearances quite happy in the profession she had adopted since the armistice —that of lady cook at boarding schools of the best class. The Wilkins family Wave lived at their Strcatham house for several years. The

father, who died only a few months ago, was well-to-do, assT the family are in comfortable circumstances. Miss' Wilkins had become keenly interested in domestic science since the war. It is now almost a week since the murder took place and there is yet no real clue. The search for the chauffeur of uneducated speech and whose spelling is of the like character has failed. In the meantime the sleuth search for motive goes on. One theory based on the fact that it was attempted to victimise a number of women, is that the murderer is engaged in white slave traffic and, in the case of Miss Wiikins, finding her obdurate, killed her because she knew too much.