Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (30 page)

In the centre of town, Trafalgar Square, a memorial to a more ancient war, suffered little, though one of Landseer’s lions was damaged. A paw had to be replaced and in 1946, there was still a gaping wound in its stomach.
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On 12 February 1946, a week after arriving back in England, Heath checked into the Strand Palace Hotel. It is at this point that he contacted Zita Williams again, the girl that he had jilted and rejected the year before, suggesting they meet at the hotel, with Heath presumably hoping for a casual sexual reunion. Zita didn’t respond to Heath’s telegram and left it to her father to tell him to stop bothering her.

Eleven days later, Heath was asked to leave the same hotel after the incident with Pauline Brees.
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Later that month, the South African authorities notified Wimbledon CID that Heath had – incredibly, given his record – applied for various decorations that he had been specifically refused by the SAAF. He had applied for the 1939–45 Star, the European Air Crew Star, the Italy Star, the France and Germany Medal and the British Defence Medal.
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His application for these awards alerted Wimbledon police to his return and his various previous convictions involving fraud and false pretences. On the evening of 20 March, he was drinking at the Alexandra on Wimbledon Hill, kitted out in the uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the SAAF. He was noted by a local police officer, Detective Bilyard, who approached him and asked his name. Heath replied that his name was ‘Armstong’. At 9.15 p.m. Bilyard arrested Heath for wearing a uniform that he was not entitled to, as well as wearing decorations that he had not been awarded, including the DFC.
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He appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court on 5 April and the case made the local paper: ‘Masquerade of Ex-Public School Boy’. Heath pleaded guilty to both charges, but claimed that he had not been wearing the uniform or the medals in order for financial gain, but to help him get a job. Once again, the magistrates treated him leniently, fining him£5 for both charges, saying, ‘We are ignoring anything that happened before you went into the South African Air Force because we want to try and help you.’

Heath then seems to have made a determined effort to plan his future. Throughout April and May he wrote to several air companies enquiring about work as a commerical pilot and his address book contained a long list of the various air companies he had applied to.
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On 12 April Heath wrote to the London School of Air Navigation asking for details of a ‘B’ licence flying course. This qualified a pilot to fly passenger and commercial cargo planes, as distinct from an ‘A’ licence which only qualified a pilot to fly solo or with a military crew, so he was certainly imagining a future as a commerical pilot. If he couldn’t fly with the RAF, at least he could put the flying experience he had accumulated over the past ten years to some fruitful use. His father agreed to finance him until he passed his examinations and had become established as a civil pilot. Between February and June of that year, Mr Heath gave his son nearly £200, a substantial amount of money at the time, £42 of which he paid in fees for the flying course. At the same time Heath was ‘liberally supplied with money, so that he should not have any worries whilst he was studying for his examinations’. Originally given £2 a week spending money by his father, more often than not he was given £6.

Twenty-eight-year-old Ralph Fisher had left the RAF in November and, like Heath, was keen to work as a commercial pilot. He and Heath met as pupils at the London School of Air Navigation on 24 April when they registered for the five-week course. They both joined the Luton Flying Club and would each hire planes at £3 10s. an hour as they had to complete a certain number of hours’ flying in order to qualify for their ‘B’ licences. At the same time they socialized together at weekends, with Fisher finding Heath a likeable, clubbable character, though he was ‘inclined to brag and [Fisher] didn’t believe all he said’. Fisher also noted that Heath drank ‘freely’ and that he didn’t associate with one particular woman. He was to continue to remain on friendly terms with Heath throughout his trial and beyond.
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On Friday 26 April, Bessie Heath had a visit from a young woman she had never met before. The woman, about thirty years old, asked if Mr Armstrong was at home? Mrs Heath said that she didn’t know of anyone by that name and then realized that the woman must mean her son, Neville. ‘Oh, yes, his name is not Armstrong, it is Heath, but he is known as Armstrong in the RAF,’ she said. Mrs Heath invited the young woman into the house. The woman introduced herself as Muriel Silvester, the widow of Flight Lieutenant Freddie Silvester. Freddie had been stationed in Belgium towards the end of 1944. When he had come home on survivor’s leave in November 1944, her husband had told her that his plane had been gunned down over Venlo. He had struggled to get his parachute on and the pilot, Jimmy Armstrong, had raced down the burning plane to help him. Later, Freddie returned to Belgium to join a fresh crew, but, sadly, in February 1945 he had been killed. Muriel was very anxious to meet some of her husband’s friends in the RAF and Armstrong in particular.

Mrs Heath invited Muriel to stay for tea; she was sure that Neville would be home soon. The two women talked about their experiences during the war, Mrs Heath telling her that even in Wimbledon their house had been affected by the bombing. Time wore on, Mrs Heath explaining that her son must be studying late at the Air School or flying at Luton as he was studying for his civilian pilot’s licence. At 6 p.m., Muriel left Merton Hall Road disappointed not to have met Heath. She had so wanted to thank him personally for saving her husband’s life.
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It is while he was flying at Luton that Heath met a young woman called Jill Harris. She was twenty years old and worked as a shorthand typist at Skefco, the ball-bearing works in the town, living just round the corner from the factory with her parents. She and Heath first met at the Royal Hotel in Luton on Saturday 11 May. He was standing at the bar with Ralph Fisher and two other girls, one of whom Jill knew by sight. Whilst she was waiting to be served, Heath asked if he could buy her a drink. She refused as she was with friends and was buying a round. During the chatter at the bar she overheard Heath say that he was going back to London the following day. That night, she saw Heath again at a fairground. He smiled and waved at her.

The next day, Jill was meeting a girlfriend at the Royal Hotel and was surprised to find Heath still there, accompanied by Ralph Fisher again. Heath said, ‘
Now
I can get you a drink?’ So he bought one for her and her friend. Heath and Fisher invited the two girls to the Luton Flying Club that afternoon. How would they like a spin in the air? Heath took Jill up in a plane for about an hour and Fisher did the same with Jill’s friend. They stayed at the club until about 10 p.m. Afterwards, Heath took Jill home and said goodnight on the doorstep. ‘Beyond kissing [her] goodnight nothing happened. Heath behaved like a gentleman.’
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On Monday morning, Jill received a phone call from Heath at her office, saying that he had left his gloves with her. Later that day she met him at the main entrance of the factory to return them. She was delighted when he greeted her with some flowers. He said he was going back to London but would be back in Luton the following weekend. Though she was looking forward to seeing him he didn’t arrive that weekend and only returned to Luton the following week.

On Tuesday 14 May, Heath and Fisher both took the Air Ministry flying test for their ‘B’ licence. But at the end of the third week of the course, Heath suddenly wrote saying he was ill in bed with flu and asked for some instruction books to be sent to him. The books were posted, but Heath never returned to the school. When he next saw Fisher, he said that he had taken his ‘B’ licence test on 5 June and had passed it.

According to his mother, Heath took more examinations between 7 and 11 June and this weekend was clearly a period of great anxiety and pressure for him. All his efforts and energy were focused on passing these examinations. At the same time, the whole country was gearing up for the celebrations for ‘V’ Day. This was going to be the party to end all parties.

Heath phoned Jill at her office in Luton on Friday 7 June and arranged to send a car to her home at lunchtime to take her to the Royal Hotel. Jill was in a celebratory mood as all employees at the ball-bearing factory had been given a share of a £10,000 ‘V’ Day bonus in that week’s pay packet. It’s unclear from her later statement to the police whether she had sex with Heath that lunchtime, or simply had lunch with him. She met him again that evening and gleaned that he had been married before. He even showed her a photograph of Elizabeth. She assumed that since his divorce he had been dating a number of girlfriends.

The next day, Saturday 8 June, was ‘V’ Day itself. Heath called at Jill’s home impressively dressed in the uniform of a major in the SAAF. They had lunch with her parents and then he took her to the Flying Club again. That evening they called at several pubs and after 10 p.m. they went back to the Red Lion where Heath was staying. After the manageress called ‘time’, Heath continued to try and order more drinks for himself and Jill. But the wily manageress thought that Heath’s intention was to get Jill drunk and then take her up to his room. She saw to it that this didn’t happen.
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Heath was annoyed, so they left the hotel and went to a local park, Pope’s Meadow, where despite Luton’s austerity ‘V’ Day plans there was a £500 firework display. After watching the fireworks, they walked further into the park.

That night an incident took place between Heath and Jill. One paragraph of her statement remains classified
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but seems to indicate either an attempted rape or some sort of sexual assault. After the incident, Heath walked Jill home in silence and left her outside her parents’ house. She phoned him the next day, but didn’t actually see him. She saw him at a dance on Monday 10 June, but he didn’t speak to her. She was disappointed as he struck her as a ‘very charming type of person until that evening in the park’.

Heath returned home and continued studying. He went to Luton again to take his second Navigation Test on Tuesday 11 June. Spooner records that on this day, Heath brought another young woman to a Marylebone hotel that he had also met in Luton and spent the night with her. They didn’t have sex as the woman was menstruating at the time and according to her, Heath was not resentful.
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At around this time, Heath also ran into Moira Lister, his ex-wife’s schoolfriend and neighbour, who had by then left South Africa and become a successful ingenue on the London and Stratford stages. She had recently secured a season with Kay Hammond and John Clements’ company at the St James’s Theatre. Meeting by chance at the exclusive Milroy Club, Heath asked Moira to join him for a drink. When she asked how Elizabeth was, he told her that she had been killed in a car crash on the Pretoria Road. Moira was shocked by the tragic death of her friend but also bowled over by Heath and his ‘ice-blue eyes’:

I can distinctly remember my reaction was, ‘Well, you are so attractive and now a widower with a beautiful little boy – I wouldn’t mind marrying you!’
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Heath took her contact details in his address book and said he would take her out to dinner one evening. Some weeks later when they met at the Bagatelle restaurant, Moira thought him ‘charming, gay [with] absolutely nothing salacious about him’. He behaved ‘impeccably’ throughout the evening, drove her home and kissed her on both cheeks before saying goodnight. When she later heard about the murders, Moira couldn’t believe that Heath was responsible.

I still found it impossible to equate the savage abnormal sex murders he had done with the charming man who had taken me out on the town.
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The week following ‘V’ Day, Heath received some news that was to devastate him and might well have been the trigger for the events that would lead him to kill.

He was told that the fact that he had been previously dismissed from the RAF would make him ineligible for a ‘B’ licence. Though he had passed his exams and practical tests, he would not be able to receive his licence. Consequently, he would never be able to fly as a commerical pilot. All of his plans for the future, the efforts he had put into his examinations and the money his father had lent him had come to nothing. Desperate, he wrote another of his impassioned letters to the Minister of Civil Aviation begging, as ever, for one more chance:

Should the licence be witheld it will mean utter ruin for myself and those dependent upon me, as I have staked everything on this one chance. Issuing or witholding the licence means the difference between a decent future or a future of poverty, misery and the continued payment for misdeeds of the past. Your decision, sir, will give me the one last chance I need to make good. This licence literally means everything to me. It means the chance to regain my self-respect and give my child a decent start in life. I can only prove my words by actions, but should this chance be given me I would pledge my word that I will commit no misdemeanour, however slight, in the future, and I should be everlastingly grateful . . . I have paid the penalty demanded by law for my misdeeds, which can hardly be described as criminal. Stupid and foolish, yes, but I submit that it would not be just should I have to suffer for the remainder of my life.
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The letter was typical of Heath – outlining his extenuating circumstances, promising not to misbehave, claiming to be foolish but not bad. But there was no reply from the Air Ministry. Neville Heath, the golden-haired flyboy was finally brought to earth. This time he was grounded – for good.