Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Read online

  This may well be another reason why Heath’s story touched such a popular nerve at the time, articulating as it did a brutal and violent strain in modern culture, unnervingly close to the surface, through the story of a once-heroic individual turned bad.

  For the first time, this book examines evidence and witness statements that have been held in previously restricted files from the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police. Some evidence relating to third parties remains restricted in the National Archives until 2045 as do the scene of crime and post-mortem photographs, which were described at the time as ‘grotesque’. The post-mortem reports themselves are sufficiently graphic to make it clear the appalling nature of these images.

  My intention is to examine the tragic events of 1946 in the fuller context of what we now know about the period and the case, as well as examining issues unexplored at the time concerning Heath’s life leading up to the killings, which might have some bearing on his subsequent actions. What was the combination of circumstances that brought the crisis in Heath’s life to a head that summer? And how far is Heath’s case emblematic or indeed symptomatic of the age in which he lived? For in a country battered and exhausted by six years of war, a culture in a moment of change, and the sense of a new morality around the corner, Heath was regarded as ‘the incarnation of war-time and post-war vices’.25

  Throughout 1946, the major international news stories were the increasing violence in Palestine and the trials of the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. With the revelation of the horrors of the death camps, there’s a sense that mankind was capable of a depth of cruelty, a lack of humanity barely imaginable in the relative innocence of the pre-war period. Certainly with Gordon Cummins, the ‘blackout ripper’, who mutilated the sexual organs of his victims with a can-opener, followed soon after by Heath, then the acid-bath murderer Haigh and the necrophiliac Christie, there does seem a real sense of extremity – a ferocity and violence extremely rare in British crime since the Whitechapel murders at the end of the nineteenth century.

  Early in the investigation, Detective Superintendent Lovell of the Dorset Constabulary first articulated the intriguing power of Heath’s complex nature: ‘Certainly his personality is an extremely puzzling one, and capable of more than one single interpretation.’26 Heath’s solicitor, Isaac Near, later commented that ‘whatever the facts of the case, Heath had certainly a remarkable personality – a personality that made one like him’.27 As well as a startling lack of remorse, the persona Heath reveals in his letters from prison show real tenderness and self-awareness. He was capable of inspiring genuine affection in many of the people he knew, yet it’s impossible not to be repelled by the atrocities he committed. What continues to fascinate is his elusive, contradictory character. How do we reconcile the suburban confidence trickster, the charismatic and articulate ladies’ man with the savage and pitiless murderer who had the capacity not just to kill, but to violate the bodies of his victims with such ferocity that war-hardened police officers vomited on seeing them?

  At times it’s uncomfortable to examine the records of this case and find the lives of both killer and his victims described in such forensic detail, a knowledge denied to even their closest friends and family; not just a list of dates and places, but the most intimate details of their lives – the money they had (or more often didn’t have), the dates of their menstrual cycle, their sexual predilections, their innermost secrets. But it’s this sometimes invasive detail that diminishes the passage of time and brings home the fact that they may not be ‘fools in old-style hats and coats’ at all; that perhaps we share more with the wartime generation than we thought, and their ambitions and anxieties – despite the years between us – remain constant and universal, urgent and real.

  William Bixley served for fifty years in Court No. 1 as supervising officer at the Old Bailey. He had held a uniquely privileged position, attendant at the most distressing and dramatic of trials. Yet, in his memoir of 1957, Bixley reflected that, of all the trials he had witnessed throughout his half-century of service, Heath’s case was ‘the most upsetting’.

  The reason for the feeling of revulsion and dread which, I think, permeated the minds of everyone in that Court was that Heath seemed ostensibly so normal, and one had deep forebodings that only by a hair’s breadth did other seemingly decent and pleasant young men escape from the awful sexual sadism which, at times, makes man lower than any animal that walks or crawls on the face of the earth.28

  It’s that hair’s breadth that separates us from Heath that continues to chill us, too. How could this ‘seemingly decent and pleasant’ young man also be capable of some of the most brutal acts in British criminal history?

  CHARACTERS

  21 MERTON HALL ROAD, WIMBLEDON

  Neville George Clevely Heath, 29

  ex-RAF pilot

  William Heath, 56

  his father

  Bessie Heath, 55

  his mother

  Michael (Mick) Heath, 17

  his brother

  ‘STRATHMORE’, WARREN ROAD, WORTHING

  Yvonne Marie Symonds, 21

  ex-WRNS

  Major John Charters Symonds, 55

  her father

  Gertrude Symonds

  her mother

  24 OAKHOLME ROAD, SHEFFIELD

  Margery Aimee Brownell

  Gardner, 32

  artist

  Peter Gardner, 32

  her husband

  Melody Gardner, 2

  her daughter

  Elizabeth Wheat, 67

  her mother

  Gilbert Wheat, 30

  her brother, a schoolteacher

  Ralph Macro Wilson, 43

  family solicitor

  19 WOODHALL DRIVE, PINNER

  Doreen Margaret Marshall, 21

  ex-WRNS

  Charles Marshall, 59

  her father

  Grace Marshall, 53

  her mother

  Joan Grace Cruickshanks, 25

  her married sister

  LONDON

  Strand Palace Hotel

  Leonard William Luff, 58

  assistant manager

  Thomas Paul, 59

  head porter

  Pauline Miriam Brees, 21

  model

  Pembridge Court Hotel

  Elizabeth Wyatt, 65

  manageress

  Alice Wyatt, 40

  her daughter-in-law

  Rhoda Spooner, 26

  waitress

  Barbara Osborne, 32

  chambermaid

  Panama Club

  Solomon Josephs, 56

  receptionist

  Harold Harter, 40

  taxi driver

  Associates of Neville Heath

  Leslie Terry, 43

  restaurant owner

  Harry Ashbrook, 38

  journalist

  Ralph Fisher

  commercial pilot

  Zita Williams, 23

  shorthand typist

  Jill Harris, 20

  shorthand typist

  William Spurrett

  Fielding-Johnson, 54

  squadron leader, RAF

  Associates of Margery Gardner

  Peter Tilley Bailey, 29

  gentleman thief

  Trevethan Frampton, 26

  student

  Iris Humphrey, 29

  civil servant

  John Le Mee Power, 33

  building firm accountant

  Joyce Frost, 33

  friend of Margery Gardner

  Metropolitan Police

  Reginald Spooner, 43

  divisional detective inspector

  Shelley Symes, 41

  detective inspector

  Thomas Barratt, 48

  superintendent, Scotland

  Yard

  JOHANNESBURG

  Elizabeth Armstrong, 26

  Armstrong’s wife

  Robert Michael Armstrong, 2

  their son
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  Moira Lister, 23

  actress

  BOURNEMOUTH

  Tollard Royal Hotel

  Ivor Relf, 35

  manager

  Arthur White, 38

  head night porter

  Frederick Charles Wilkinson, 33

  night porter

  Alice Hemmingway, 47

  chambermaid

  Peter Rylatt, 31

  demobbed lawyer

  Gladys Davy Phillips, 62

  married woman

  Winifred Parfitt, 40

  married woman

  Heinz Abisch, 30

  designer, wire company

  Peggy Waring, 37

  student

  Bournemouth Police

  George Gates, 45

  detective inspector

  George Suter, 40

  detective constable

  Leslie Johnson, 38

  detective sergeant

  Francis Bishop, 46

  detective sergeant, Dorset

  THE OLD BAILEY

  Isaac Elliston Near, 45

  Heath’s solicitor

  Mr Justice Morris, 50

  judge

  Anthony Hawke, 51

  counsel for the Crown

  J. D. Casswell, KC, 60

  counsel for the defence

  Dr Keith Simpson, 39

  pathologist

  Dr Crichton McGaffey, 43

  pathologist

  Dr Hugh Grierson, 60

  psychiatrist

  Dr William Hubert, 42

  psychiatrist

  Dr Hubert Young, 57

  psychiatrist

  PROLOGUE

  Mrs Brees

  23 FEBRUARY 1946

  In the early hours of Saturday morning on 23 February 1946, a guest on the fourth floor of the Strand Palace Hotel was disturbed by violent noises from the room directly above. Something fell on the floor, a woman screamed for help. The guest reported the commotion to the head porter, Thomas Paul. Paul was accustomed to the realities of hotel life during wartime and was used to turning a blind eye to the excesses of alcohol and sex, so he discreetly went up to the fifth floor to see if there was a problem. When he got to Room 506, he listened at the locked door and heard a woman screaming from inside.

  ‘Stop! Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’

  Concerned by the severity of her cries, Paul ran down the stairs to get his colleague, Leonard William Luff, the assistant manager.1

  The Strand Palace was (and remains) a large building on the north side of the Strand, parallel to the Thames. Its exterior was built in the grand Empire style in 1909, but the hotel had been expanded and refurbished during the 1920s and by the Second World War boasted 980 bedrooms. The famous foyer of the hotel was remodelled in 1930. Claridges, the Savoy and the newly constructed Dorchester all had sumptuous Art Deco foyers, but Oliver P. Bernard’s designs for the Strand Palace had made his creation one of the most celebrated hotel interiors in London.2 The foyer combined traditional and contemporary marbles and made innovative use of glass and lighting. The walls were clad in pink marble and the floor with limestone. The balustrades, columns and door surrounds were made of mirror, chromed steel and translucent moulded glass. The foyer became regarded as an iconic Art Deco masterpiece and, indeed, is now preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum after its removal from the hotel in 1969. Back in 1946, the hotel seemed to represent the epitome of pre-war elegance, bringing a touch of Hollywood glamour to war-torn London.3

  Conveniently located amongst the pubs, bars, nightclubs and restaurants of London’s West End, the Strand Palace had been popular with American forces during the war and had only recently been decommissioned as an official rest and recuperation residence for US servicemen. Now, with thousands of American troops awaiting shipment back home and huge numbers of British officers and service personnel newly repatriated to the UK, London was teeming with servicemen and the hotel was fully booked.

  Ten months earlier, on VE Day, nearly 5 million Britons had been in uniform across the globe. The process of repatriation and demobilization was to take months, and in some cases, even years.4 The large West End hotels provided discreet but accessible havens of transition between the past dangers and thrills of service life and the post-war world of spouses, families and responsibility. For many, such hotels represented the last opportunity for illicit liaisons, as well as offering the possibility of sensual indulgence amongst the legion of prostitutes in central London – a profession that had boomed during the war years.

  The occupant of Room 506 at the Strand Palace was known to be Captain James Robert Cadogan Armstrong of the South African Air Force. Armstrong had checked into the Strand Palace on the previous Saturday, 16 February. On his uniform he wore the ribbons of the Africa Star and the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross). He seemed to be a regular hero.

  In response to the woman’s screams, Thomas Paul and Leonard Luff headed upstairs to deal with the matter. When Luff opened the door with his pass-key, the two men were met by a shocking sight; a young woman lay face down on the bed, stripped naked and rendered helpless, with her hands tied behind her back. Standing over her, also naked, was Armstrong – tall, tanned, blue-eyed and handsome.5 The woman twisted her face to the intruders, exclaiming, ‘Thank God you came in.’

  Armstrong turned to Paul and Luff in a fury.6

  ‘What the hell are you doing, breaking in here?’

  Mr Luff explained who they were, but Armstrong made no answer. Luff asked what had been going on, but the girl asked to be untied first. Luff told Armstrong to do so and the girl was freed. He then adopted a nonchalant attitude and tried to bluster the matter out, demanding what right the staff had to enter his room, but when Luff mentioned that he would call the police, Armstrong became more reasonable.

  Luff asked the woman, Pauline Brees, if she knew the man and she said she did. She claimed that he had knocked her out and then undressed her. She turned to Armstrong and asked if he had raped her. This question he avoided at first, but finally denied. Asked by Luff if they should call the police, Pauline insisted that they shouldn’t. She just wanted to leave the hotel and didn’t want any publicity.

  Despite Pauline’s story, Luff didn’t believe her. There were no marks of violence on her, her clothing was on a chair by the bed – undamaged – and there were no signs of a struggle having taken place. Luff thought that Pauline ‘looked to me like a prostitute’.7 He told Pauline and Armstrong to collect their things and leave. They got dressed and Armstrong took Pauline home in a taxi to her lodgings. He then checked out of the hotel himself that Sunday morning. Though the incident had raised alarm, it was regarded as embarrassing rather than serious.

  Pauline, who had been widowed just six months earlier, had been introduced to Armstrong about a week before by a mutual friend at Oddenino’s – a restaurant in Regent Street much frequented by RAF officers. When they met, Armstrong was wearing the khaki uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the South African Air Force. On the following Wednesday (20 February), Armstrong telephoned Pauline at her home in Maida Vale and invited her to lunch the next day. So, on Thursday, they lunched together at the Berkeley Restaurant in Knightsbridge. Afterwards they parted company in good spirits.8

  On Friday, Pauline and Armstrong met again by appointment at Oddenino’s and from there went to the Berkeley again for a drink. This initiated something of an all-day pub-crawl that took them from the Falstaff in Fleet Street where they had lunch and then to Shepherd’s pub in Shepherd Market followed by the Brevet Club in Mayfair, which were both popular drinking venues with the Royal Air Force. They left the Brevet Club at about 10 p.m. as the club had run out of beer. This was a common occurrence throughout London at the time as publicans dealt with reduced supplies of beer as well as the increased demand for it since the outbreak of war.

  Armstrong suggested that they go back to his room for a nightcap. Pauline agreed to accompany him to the Strand Palace where she knew he was staying but told him
that she had to be home by 11.30 p.m. as she had an awkward landlady. The pair went up to the fifth floor to a double room overlooking the Strand and opposite the Art Deco entrance to the Savoy Hotel and the Savoy Theatre.9

  In Room 506, Pauline sat on the bed while Armstrong poured himself a drink. Pauline refused to join him as she didn’t like whisky. He went over to the bed and kissed her. As he became more persistent, Pauline told him that she had to be going.

  ‘Oh no, you’re not,’ said Armstrong. ‘You’re staying the night with me.’10

  At this point, events took a darker turn. Pauline got up, telling him not to be ridiculous as she headed for the door. But he had locked it. Grabbing her, he seized her arm and twisted it behind her back. Though she realized that she was in some danger, she claimed she didn’t scream because she didn’t want to embarrass him by getting him turned out of the hotel.