DEATH SENTENCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 June 1944, Page 6

DEATH SENTENCE

PICKLE BOTTLE AS CLUE

LONDON, May 22

Scotland Yard detectives attempting to identify the nude body of a woman, whose husband has now been sentenced to death, patched up the face with wax and adhesive tape, and arranged for photographs of her to be put in shop windows and flashed on cinema screens. The investigation was among the most remarkable in the history of Scotland Yard, and was completed when Bertie Horace William Manton, 40, who was in the National Fire Service, was sentenced to death at the Bedford Assizes for the murder of Mrs. Caroline Seagrave Manton, 30. The inquiry started last November, when two men found a bundle of sacking in the River Lea at Luton. The sacking contained the body of a woman whose face had been severelj 7 injured. All her clothing had been re- ) moved and every precaution taken to prevent identification.

[ After months of investigation while detectives were conducting a search of I all salvage dumps and dustbins in the I Luton area, one man saw a mongrel J dog playing with a scrap of torn slimy i material. Under the microscope the detectives found the trace of a dyer’s mark. A check of local cleaners’ books showed that the scrap had been torn from a coat sent in by Mrs. Man- , ton, of Regent Street, Luton. ■ Finger-print experts were sent to I Manton’s home, and found the finger- •' prints had been wiped off all things •’ she must have handled—except one, a pickle bottle at the back of a cupboard. This proved beyond all doubt that the victim was Manton’s wife.. Manton later confessed. |