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Kill Total: |
1 |
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Kill place: |
Essex |
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Kill date: |
September 1927 |
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Victim(s): |
George Gutteridge |
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Date of Birth: |
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Marital Status: |
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AKA: |
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Occupation: |
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On Tuesday 27th
September 1927 a post office worker, was driving in Essex
near Howe Green. He saw a body by a bank at the side of
the road and found PC George Gutteridge wearing his full
uniform and cape, with his helmet and notebook beside him,
his pencil still in his hand. He had been murdered by
being shot four times in the face.
About 10 miles away a
Morris Cowley car belonging to a doctor had been
stolen from his garage in London Road Billericay. Some of
his medical instruments and some drugs were in the car.
But by the time the theft was reported, the car itself had
already been spotted 42 miles away in a narrow passage
behind 21 Faxley Road, Brixton. There were blood splashes
on one of the running boards.
The police recovered the car and found a cartridge case
marked RLIV. This marking indicated that it was an old
Mark IV type made at the Royal Laboratory in Woolwich
Arsenal for troops in the First World War. The case seemed
to have been scarred by a fault in the breech block of the
gun which had fired it. The foremost gun expert of the day
was Mr Robert Churchill who found that the bullet would
have been fired by a Webley revolver.
It looked as if the
murder of PC George Gutteridge was linked with the theft
of the car. And the car's mileometer showed that it had
been driven the same distance - 42 miles - as the distance
from Dr Lovell's garage direct to Brixton - and the scene
of the murder was on the direct route if the car had been
driven along by-ways to avoid detection.
The murder hunt went on for 4 months. The police suspected
two car thieves Frederick Browne and Pat Kennedy but did
not have any evidence. Two Webley revolvers were found in
the River Thames, but Mr Churchill proved that they could
not have been the murder weapon because they did not make
the same mark on the cartridge cases.
Eventually the police
had evidence against Browne for the theft of another car,
a Vauxhall, and raided his premises. They found cartridges
and a loaded Smith & Wesson in his room off Lavender Hill.
He had been using a car he had part exchanged for the
stolen Vauxhall the police were interested in. And when
the police searched that car they found yet another loaded
revolver in a secret recess in the car. And it was a
Webley.
It was that Webley which
Mr Churchill examined and found to be the very same one
which had caused the peculiar mark on the cartridge case.
Later Browne's accomplice Patrick Kennedy was arrested,
but only after he had pressed a loaded firearm into the
ribs of Sergeant Mattinson of Liverpool Police and pulled
the trigger. But the gun clicked as a bullet jammed in the
barrel, Sergeant Mattinson survived and both Kennedy and
Browne were now in custody. They were later convicted of
murder.
The Sunday Dispatch newspaper carried the headline "Hanged
by a microscope" reflecting the fact that microscopic
examination of the cartridge cases had provided the
crucial evidence to convict them of an awful murder.
Both Browne and
Kennedy were hanged on 31st May 1928, Browne at
Pentonville, and Kennedy at Wandsworth.
