Tragedy on Desolate Moor

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22172, 27 July 1935, Page 7 (Supplement)

Tragedy on Desolate Moor

Unsolved Crimes —No. 22

VAL GIELGUD RECON THE OTTERBURN MURDER

TO a writer of sensational fiction there can be few cases more fascinating than the story of " The Otterburn Murder."

Both as regards it' 3 environment and its circumstances, the story might so easily bo judged to have sprung from the slightly morbid imagination of the novelist, rather than from cruelly hard fact. But once again fact proved stranger than fiction.

About half-past nine during a night in January of 1931, a bus belonging to a garage proprietor of Otterburn, Northumberland, was returning along tho road from Otterburn to Newcastle, driven by a Mr. Johnson. At a desolate spot on tho moors, known as Wolf's Neck —the name of the place immediately brings to mind some chapter heading—he saw a motorcar about 70 yards away from the road. The car had been on firo and was still smouldering. On investigation, Mr. Johnson and his conductor were amazed to find that the car belonged to tho firm by which they were employed—that is to say, by Mr. Foster, the garage proprietor, of Otterburn. Not far from the car they made a hideous discovery.

Miss Evelyn Foster, Mr. Foster's 27-year-old daughter, was lying moaning on tho grass, crying out for water. Below tho waist oil her clothes had been burned off; her hands were black from tho effects of a hard frost; her face was severely discoloured. Mr. Johnson wrapped the girl in his overcoat and took her home as quickly as possible. Most of the way she kept on muttering about " that awful man that awful man." During intermittent periods of consciousness she told a long and detailed story of the incidents that had preceded and accompanied the tragedy, and shortly afterwards she died. Her story in brief was this: Miss Foster was in the habit of driving cars about the country for her father, and on the previous day she had driven three passengers to Rochester, a village in tho neighbourhood. At Ellishaw, a village twg miles away from Otterburn, she was accosted by a stranger, who told her that ho wished to go to Ponteland in order to catch a bus to Newcastle.

About 7.30 in the evening she picked him up on the bridge just below the hotel at Ellishaw and drove him as far as Belsay. It must be remembered that when she made her statement Miss Foster was in great pain, and was, in fact, dying. » * • • •

But of what happened at Belsay no satisfactory account emerged. In reply to the urgent questionings of her mother, Miss Foster's words seemed to imply that her passenger had made advances to her; when she resisted him lie struck her in the eye; that she lost consciousness, and that tho man finally drove the car away with Miss Foster inside along tho road to Otterburn as far as the Wolf's Neck.

At that point her car was turned off the road and run down a 3ft. bank on to the moor for 70 yards or so. She described her assailant as rather a small man, wearing a bowler hat and a dark coat and speaking like a gentleman, although he had a Tyneside accent.

As to what happened at Wolf's Neck Miss Foster was unhappily, though not unnaturally, vaguer still. According to her story she recovered consciousness owing to the jerking and jolting of the car as it passed on to the moorland. The passenger then got out, took something from his pocket and applied a light to it. There followed a small explosion and a blaze. Miss Foster, in horrible agony and feeling that she must be suffocated, struggled to get the door of the car open. This she finally succeeded in doing, and she crawled out and fell on to the grass where she was found. She seemed to remember seeing the man go back to the road, hearing another car coming along the road, hearing a whispered colloquy, and the other car drivo away. The only other significant item that the victim could add was the fact that the man had told her that he had been picked up by a party of motorists on their way to Hexham, and had had tea with them —the party consisting of three men speaking with a Scottish accent in a saloon car, probably an Essex.

The inquest on Miss Foster was opened by the coroner, Mr. P. M. Dodds, on Thursday, January 8, at tho Otterburn Memorial Hall. Formal evidence of identification was given by the dead girl's father, and tho inquest was adjourned until February 2. In the interval Professor Stuart Macdonald, a well-known pathologist of tho College of Medicine at Newcastle, had been called in to consult with tho doctor who mado the post-mortem examination. It was not until February 5 that Professor Macdonald's evidenco was given.

According to him, no external marks suggesting injury other than burning were found on any part of tho body. Ho gave the cause of death as the result of shock caused by severe external burning. He said that tho distribution of the burned areas suggested that Miss Foster was sitting during some period of tho burning, and he added that there was absolutely no trace or evidence of bruising of tho face. There was also no evidenco of outrage. • # • • •

And the coroner put the whole problem flatly when he pointed out to the jury that the two main points before them were:

(a) Was the girl murdered? (b) Did she set firo to tho car, and in doing so obtain tho burns accidentally?

if the latter, was her object to obtain money from the insurance of the ear? Tho jury, after a retirement of two hours, returned the verdict that Miss | Foster had been murdered by some person or persons unknown. Of course, the unfounded suggestion that Miss Foster had met her death by means self-inflicted in the course of carrying out a criminal fraud was hotly resented by her family, and Miss Foster's father wrote a letter on the subject to the Home Secretary. " There was no tittle of evidence," ho said, "to support such shameful theories," and he resented most strongly the fact that though tho jury had vindicated his daughter's honour, the Chief Constable of Northumberland had stated in nn interview with a newspaper reporter that the verdict was against the weight of evidence. " The police," Mr. Foster continued, " were defending themselves in a case in which they had failed by attacking his dead daughter." And it transpired that, though there wero two insurance policies—one for £-150 and the other for £7oo—in existence, Miss Foster left estato valued at £l-100. It must bo remembered on behalf of the police that the description of Miss Foster's assailant was comparatively comprehensive; that he must almost certainly have had a good knowledge of the locality to have been able to effectively disappear without leaving trace behind him; and yet that no one answering to his description was ever traced.

It is truo that during the night of February 13, a seaman walked into the Newcastle police station and said that lie wished to give himself up for the Otterburu murder. But after being interviewed, he was removed to hospital for observation and was presumably suffering from delusions, or an insane desire for notoriety.

The problem was infinitely complicated by Miss Foster's condition both of mind and body when she made her statement, combined with the very uudcrstandable confusion which seems to have emerged from some of tho facts given by her mother. The coroner asked Dr. McEachran, of Bellingliam, who was called in to Miss Foster when she was brought home injured, if he recollected the mother asking Miss Foster if she had been interfered with—using that or a similar expression. To which tho doctor replied that there had been a question of that nature, and apparently the girl's reply was to the effect that she had been interfered with.

This fact seems to have been put in parallel with the medical report, which stated that there was no evidence of outrage.

And this, combined by the fact that no corroborative evidence could be found of the existence of the assailant, and no trace of anything inflammable except petrol had been found on the girl's clothes, led tho coroner to the summing-up which read distinctly adverse to the verdict as ultimately given by the jury. What of tho possibilities of accident? The car had left the road at not more than ten miles an hour. It had not overturned in crossing the embankment. It seems to have been definitely under control before it stopped. It had suffered no damage which could have caused it to ignite. The valves, the ignition and carburetter were all in perfect order, and there was 110 trace of abnormal heat below the line of tho float chamber. In the back of the car was a burned-out tin of petrol—but it was customary always to keep a full two-gallon tin in the car for emergencies. The cap of the petrol tin had been removed before tho fire started.

It seems, therefore, quite definite that this tragedy cannot be put down to any misadventure, however singular. Nor, unless Miss Foster is to be categorised as a most extraordinary case of mental instability, can the theory hold water—and it was only very tentatively put forward—that she might have been 0110 of those persons obsessed with tho idea of achieving notoriety.

Wo are left, therefore, with tho alternatives of murder or suicide by mistake.

The coroner himself, though evidently inclined to believe the greater part of Miss Foster's statement to be unreliable owing to her condition at the time it was made, pointed out that the suggested motive of obtaining insurance money was inadequate. There remains that " Wilful Murder by a Person or Persons Unknown " which tho jury gavo finally as their considered opinion.

Tho murder has been described as motiveless. Miss Foster's money was in her bag and her personal ornaments were untouched. But, disagreeable though it may bo to accept such a conclusion, tho facts as they stand, point, in my view, quito clearly in one direction.

There are three significant sentences in Miss Foster's statement which form strong links in this chain. First of all was her repetition of the phrase " that awful man," while she was being driven home by Mr. Johnson. Next we find her first reply in answer to her mother's questioning as to what bad happened to her: " It was a man. He hit me and burned me."

And thirdly her story that when the car stopped on the top of the hill by Wolf's Neck, the man offered her a cigarette, and when she refused it, made the remark: ".Well, you are an independent young woman!" Perhaps it should bo added at this point that in reply to the coroner's questions, Mrs. Foster insisted that her daughter's condition was perfectly lucid and sane while she was telling her story, and Dr. McEachran said ho saw no reason to think that she had any idea that sho was going to die.

It does not seem to mo that this statement combined with the facts admits of more than one explanation. It remains, of course, questionable whether the assailant was a sexual maniac, who deliberately hailed Miss Foster because she was a, girl driving alone, or whether his revolting purpose arose only with the incidence of opportunity. it was, as a matter of fact, quite exceptional that Miss Foster should have been unaccompanied on such trips, and it had been suggested by her sister that sho should take a man with her, but she had not done so. But whatever his original motive, the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the moors provoked in the unknown an attitude to which Miss Foster objected, and in this connection his remark about tho cigarette is by no means without significance. Finding that his overtures were not welcomed—probably they were actively repulsed—the man must have lost both his head and his temper, with results catastrophic in an individual almost certainly pathologically abnormal. He then struck Miss Foster in tho eye.

It seems likely that this first attack was comparatively slight, and that the girl was completely terrified, which in the circumstances is not an unlikely supposition. This would account for the absence of bruising on the face, which provoked tho comment in the medical evidence. Ho then bundled her into the hack of tho car, drove to the desolate neighbourhood of Wolf's Neck and deliberately turned tho car oil: the road. At that point, roused to frenzy by Miss Foster's continued resistance, he wrenched the cap off tho spare tin of petrol, drenched her with it and, with a brutality almost unbelievable, sot her on fire.

That done, he disappeared over the moors into tho darkness.

It is perhaps worth making a point in this connection that in pouring petrol from a petrol tin it flows in a stream and not with a splash, which would account for the comparatively localised nature of the burns. That the victim in this awful condition of physical and mental torment —that is to say, after the burning—should have believed that a casual car stopped on the road, and going on again, should have picked up her assailant, although, in fact, it had done nothing of the kind, is surely not stretching tho issue to any great extent.

And it emerged that a motor salesman of Hawick, named lieatty, passed Wolf's Neck between half-past nine and ton that night, saw a blaze on the right-hand side of the road and put on his brakes. He saw that it was a car, but it appeared to him to he completely burned out and ho saw no movement, so lie imagined that it had been abandoned ami drove on

Tho only other clues that were discovered near the burned-out car were a single foot-print, a glovo and a cap. They were all systematically examined. They all led to nothing.