You are not logged in
A corpse in a hotel room
The second case explored in this episode involves the violent and sadistic murders of two young women in 1946.
On the afternoon of Friday 21 June, a member of staff at a London hotel entered a room that had been locked all day and needed cleaning. Opening the curtains, she saw that one of the beds wasn’t empty and discovered a woman’s body when she pulled back the bedclothes.
Police and pathologist Dr Keith Simpson were soon at the scene. The room was quite undisturbed, and they found a wartime identity card which showed her to be one Margery Gardner.
When Simpson examined the body, he saw that the injuries were appalling. She also had 17 lash marks on her body, showing a diamond pattern weave. Simpson later wrote that if ever he saw a murderer’s signature on his handiwork, it was the imprint on the body of that whip. If they found the whip, they’d have their man.
These injuries however were not the cause of her death, she died as a result of suffocation.
A military masquerade and a second victim
The hotel register showed that the room had been booked five days before by a man signing himself ‘Lieutenant Colonel NGC Heath.’ The so-called Lieutenant Colonel was soon identified as Neville George Clevely Heath, a 29-year-old petty criminal.
Three days after Margery Gardner’s body was found, Scotland Yard received a letter. It was from Neville Heath, describing how he had found the body when returning late to the hotel, after lending his room to a friend. In a panic, he said, he ran away.
The letter was postmarked Worthing, but Heath had already moved a little further along the coast, to Bournemouth, where he was masquerading as ‘Group Captain Rupert Brooke’.
While there he engaged himself in conversation with 21-year-old Doreen Marshall. Doreen accepted his offer of tea and the pair went back to his hotel, the Tollard Royale. After tea, Doreen agreed to meet up with him for dinner. Failing to return to her own hotel that night, the manager notified local police.
Heath was called into the police station, telling detective constable George Suter that he had left Doreen at her hotel, and then walked back along the seafront to his own. Suter noticed scratch marks on his neck and thought he had seen his face before. He checked the photo of the man wanted for the murder of Margery Gardner.
