Dorset Murders (29 page)

‘Where is he?' he asked the sleepy Hall. When he failed to get a sensible response from Jennings's roommate, Leith walked over to Jennings's bed where the young soldier had discarded the bandolier. Leith picked it up and quickly counted the rounds. It should have contained fifty rounds, but now ten were missing.

In Prince's Street in Dorchester, garage owner Jesse Broughton was awakened by the sound of four loud bangs. He peered out of his window, but saw nothing and so returned to his bed. What he didn't realise was that the noises he had heard were shots coming from the office below his bedroom. Jennings had broken into the office and tried unsuccessfully to shoot his way into the safe there.

In wartime England, the sound of bumps in the night was not unusual and Broughton got back into bed, ready to resume his sleep. Minutes later, as his clock struck a quarter past midnight, he heard six rifle shots – five loud cracks, followed by a pause of about thirty seconds, then a further crack. Seconds later, someone ran past his house, clicking a rifle bolt as they passed.

Shortly afterwards, David Jennings ran into the barrack room, slamming the door closed behind him. Blood dripped from several cuts on his face. Corporal Leith witnessed his return and went straight to the barrack room. When Leith got there, Jennings had his back against the door, forcing Leith to shoulder the door open and push past him.

‘Where have you been? What have you been doing, soldier?' asked Leith.

Jennings was still breathless from running, but managed to reply that he had just broken into the NAAFI and that he thought he might have shot a man.

Leith seized and checked Jennings's rifle, finding it empty then marched the young man down to the guardroom, where he was searched and locked up. Jennings had absolutely no money on him. Next, Leith went in search of another officer and, finding Sergeant Murch, told him what he knew and asked the sergeant to accompany him to the NAAFI on Prince's Street in Dorchester.

The first thing that the two men noticed on their arrival was a strong smell of gas. They surmised that Jennings had shot and ruptured a gas pipe and, conscious of the strict wartime blackout regulations, Leith switched on his torch and, carefully shielding the beam, swung it around until he found the fractured gas pipe.

The lock had been shot from the back door and, although it wouldn't open fully, the officers were able to enter the darkened building without any problems. They were barely inside, when Murch suddenly tripped. Leith lowered the torch beam to illuminate the floor and saw that his companion had stumbled over the body of an elderly man, lying by the door. With Leith continuing to light his way, Murch squatted to check the old man, finding that he had been shot and was dead. The civil police were immediately sent for.

The victim was Albert Edward Farley, aged sixty-five, who had just that very day started his new job as night watchman at the NAAFI, after retiring from his profession as a tailor. The veteran of the First World War had found retirement tedious and was eagerly anticipating his return to work. Under normal circumstances, the duties of the night watchman were not expected to be arduous and Farley would be able to sleep at his post, a camp bed being set up in the office for that very purpose. Earlier that evening, Bert had been joking with the canteen manageress about getting paid to sleep. Now, just a few short hours later, he would never wake again.

A post-mortem examination, conducted by Dr G.O. Taylor, would later show that Farley had been shot just below his heart by a bullet fired from a service rifle. The bullet had been fired at a downward angle and had exited Mr Farley's back four inches below the entrance wound, just to the right of his spine. Dr Taylor was unable to establish from which direction the rifle was fired, as he was unsure of the victim's exact position when he was hit. However, he was able to determine that the shot had not been fired from close range

Police Sergeant Lill arrived to interview David Jennings at the barracks at 5.40 a.m. Still very drunk, Jennings made several rambling and contradictory statements but curiously at no time did he ever deny the possibility that he might have shot a man. It took several hours before Sergeant Lill was able to get a sufficiently coherent response from Jennings but, as soon as he had made and signed his statement, he was arrested and charged with Farley's murder. He was taken to the police station and from there to the magistrate's court, where the pressure of the constant questioning finally got to him. In tears, he buried his face in his hands and was heard to exclaim, ‘Oh, my God!'

In order for a man to be charged with murder, there has to be evidence of intent. In other words, a murderer has to intend to actually kill his victim and it was extremely unlikely that David Jennings had any prior intention of killing Bert Farley. Without intent, Jennings should have been facing a manslaughter charge rather than one of murder – yet the magistrates allowed the police charge to stand and committed him to the next Dorset Assizes on a charge of murder. When one of the magistrates was later questioned about this decision, his response was to say that, ‘There was a war on. We didn't have time to think of things like that.'

Jennings's trial opened before Mr Justice Charles on 3 June 1941. Mr Henderson prosecuted, while Mr Trapnell handled the defence under the auspices of the Poor Prisoner Rules, which provided counsel for defendants without the necessary means to pay for it. Jennings pleaded ‘Not Guilty'.

Henderson began by trying to unravel the conflicting statements given by Jennings at the barracks in the early morning after the killing. At times, Jennings had stated, ‘I shot a man', then the wording of his statement had changed to, ‘I don't know whether I shot anyone.' Although Jennings had been searched by Leith on his return to the barracks and found to have no money on him, Henderson maintained that he had managed to surreptitiously pass the sum of 32
s
, which he had stolen from the NAAFI, onto another soldier for safekeeping.

Henderson then addressed the matter of the amount of drink that Jennings had consumed on the night of the murder. He pointed out that drunkenness was no excuse for the crime. It stood to reason that when a man used a rifle to fire at another man, there was likelihood that it might kill him. Drink could only be offered as an excuse if the shooter were so befuddled by it that he didn't know what he was doing, and there was no doubt that Jennings knew exactly what he was doing when he took his rifle and ammunition and went off to commit a robbery.

The manageress of the NAAFI gave evidence about the amount of money that had been stolen from the cash box. She was adamant that the exact sum stolen had been 37
s
and 6
d
– considerably more than the 32
s
that Jennings was alleged to have given the other soldier.

Jennings himself gave evidence. He admitted that he knew where the cash box was kept at the NAAFI, but didn't realise that a caretaker had been newly appointed. He had shot at the back door lock five times, then panicked and ran when he heard Farley shouting from inside. As the door to the NAAFI opened, a shaft of light appeared and Jennings turned to look at it, firing his rifle almost instinctively without aiming. His account of the shots fired was, of course, consistent with the evidence of Jesse Broughton, who had heard five reports, a pause and then a sixth.

Unfortunately, Trapnell didn't pick up on the fact that Broughton's evidence corroborated his client's version of events. Instead, he chose to focus his defence on trying to show that Jennings was incapable, due to the effects of the large quantities of alcohol he had consumed prior to the murder. He pointed out that, to return a verdict of murder, the jury must believe that the prosecution had proved malice aforethought and, if they did not believe that this had been done, then it was their duty to return a lesser verdict of manslaughter. Trapnell was of the opinion that malice aforethought had definitely not been established.

However, rather than hammering home the legalities of murder versus manslaughter to the jury, Trapnell then chose to divert his arguments back to the alcohol. He stressed to the jury that drink affects different people in different ways, saying that Jennings's crime was not a clever act carried out by a clever criminal, but a stupid, drunken escapade by a young man who had just been jilted by his girlfriend. He reminded the jury of the cuts on Jennings's face. These had been caused by splinters of metal that ricocheted off the safe that Jennings had tried to blast his way into, and Trapnell pointed out the sheer stupidity of choosing such a dangerous and noisy way of attempting to open a safe.

What Trapnell failed to capitalise upon was the evidence of Corporal Leith and Sergeant Murch. Both stated that Farley's body was positioned up against the door of the NAAFI in such a way that they had to struggle to get into the building. Even with the aid of a torch, Murch stumbled over the body in the pitch darkness. Yet, according to the prosecution, Jennings, without a torch, allegedly shot the night watchman, manoeuvred his way through the canteen in the darkness, located and emptied the cash box and found his way out of the building, managing to wedge Farley's body against the inside of the door as he left.

In his summing up of the case for the jury, Mr Justice Charles showed no sympathy for the young defendant, who had passed his twenty-first birthday while in custody awaiting his trial. He pointed out that drunkenness could not be considered an adequate defence, saying that there was no evidence that Jennings was so drunk that he was incapable of acting intentionally. On the contrary, Jennings had found himself short of money and had deliberately gone out with the intention of committing a robbery. By arming himself beforehand, he had demonstrated intent to shoot if anyone had stood in his way.

The jury had been left little option but to arrive at a verdict of guilty of murder. Nevertheless, they deliberated for two hours before reaching that verdict.

Before donning his black cap, Mr Justice Charles asked Jennings if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Jennings looked the judge directly in the eye and replied, ‘I did not intend to kill that man'.

Having been sentenced to death, Jennings was not without sympathisers among the general public, who felt that his recent training in violence, which enabled him to fight the enemy, had some bearing on the shooting. The people from his hometown organised a petition to appeal to the Home Office for clemency, as did the Army, and his defence counsel immediately announced his intention to appeal the conviction.

The appeal was held before the Court of Criminal Appeal on 7 July 1941 and again Trapnell argued that not enough direction had been given to the jury with regard to Jennings's state of intoxication at the time of the offence. However, the Lord Chief Justice was entirely satisfied that the judge had successfully addressed this in his summing up and the appeal was dismissed.

After the appeal failed, Captain Simon Wingfield-Digby, the then member of parliament for West Dorset, was drawn into the battle to save Private Jennings, personally contacting Home Secretary Mr Herbert Morrison. However, Morrison replied that he felt unable to commute Jennings's sentence.

George E. Chappell was next into the fray. Chappell, the prospective liberal candidate for West Dorset, shared the opinion of many that, in this instance, the law had erred. ‘You and I know that His Majesty will not be unmindful of the unselfish service and sacrifice that this soldier has given to his country', he said in an address to his prospective constituents. Appealing for clemency directly to a higher authority than the Home Secretary, he sent off a carefully worded telegram to His Majesty King George VI.

Whether or not the king replied is not recorded. That he didn't choose to intervene is evident since, on 23 July 1941, Thomas Pierrepoint executed David Miller Jennings at Dorchester for the murder of Albert Edward Farley.

Had Jennings been correctly tried for manslaughter rather than murder, then he would undoubtedly have served a prison sentence and his life would have been spared. As it was, two war heroes from different generations died needlessly, the first because of a ‘Dear John' letter, and the second as a result of a flawed legal decision made hurriedly because ‘there was a war on'.