| Kill Total: |
1 |
Kill place: |
Luton |
| Kill date: |
November 1943 |
Victim(s): |
Wife = Caroline |
| Date of Birth: |
|
Marital Status: |
Married |
| AKA: |
Luton Sack Murder |
Occupation: |
Fire engine driver |
When some workman who
were walking along a river track saw a sack floating in
the River Lea near the Vauxhall factory in Luton they
wanted to know what it contained. When they fished the
sack out of the water on 19th November 1943 they were
shocked and horrified to see it contained the body of a
middle aged woman. She was naked and had been strangled
and then, it would appear, beaten so severely as to try
and hide her identity, her wrists and ankles were also
tied. The police were called, they moved the sack
from the mucky water, discovered that there were actually
two sacks, in these days before forensics, the body and
sacks were then removed by the police. Photographs of the
woman were shown at local cinemas, shops and pubs.
Three months later in
February 1944 Police were searching household waste on a
local tip, when they spotted a dog playing with a piece of
material it turned out to be a piece of a woman's coat
that had a dry-cleaning tag on it. The mark was
traced to Mrs Caroline Manton who, when they checked they
found had handed the coat in for dyeing in the previous
November.
When they spoke to Mrs Manton's husband who was a Fire
Brigade driver known as 'Bertie', he denied that the
photos were of his wife and told police that his wife had
left him to live with her brother. To back this up he
showed them letters that he said had been written by his
wife since the previous December. Officers noticed that in
all the letters a simple spelling mistake was evident. It
was in the word 'Hampstead' which in all cases had been
written as 'Hamstead'. The police asked him for a sample
of his handwriting and they noticed that he too mispelt
the same word.
When the police searched the house they found it had been
so thoroughly cleaned that an examination only managed to
locate a single fingerprint belonging to its former
occupant. This was found on a pickle jar in a n under
stairs cupboard. As the woman had lived in the house for
many years they would have expected the house to be
covered in her prints so it showed that Bertie Manton
had tried to remove all sign's, but why if she had simply
left him?
Satisfied that they had got the right man they arrested
and charged him with the murder of his wife. Realising
that there was no way out he confessed to killing his
wife. He said that they had quarrelled and that he had hit
her with a stool. He had wheeled her body to the river on
his bicycle and dumped it into the water. He appeared for
trial at Bedford Assizes and was found guilty and
sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life
imprisonment and he died in Parkhurst prison on the isle
of Wight three years later in 1947
