Read Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Online
Authors: Sean O'Connor
Given that Heath stated several times that he would rather hang than spend the rest of his life in Broadmoor, he cannot have planned the murder of Doreen Marshall as a ploy to avoid the gallows. But if that was not the motivation for her murder, how could it be explained?
Having failed to establish what the motives for the two murders were at the trial, there was much speculation in the press as to what they might actually be. But a series of errors, inaccuracies and mistakes quoted at the trial and in the newspapers began to obscure this issue in a cloak of confusion.
Early in Spooner’s investigation in June, both Leonard Luff and Thomas Paul of the Strand Palace Hotel were shown photographs of Margery Gardner and identified her as the woman Heath had been with at the hotel in February.
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This, of course, was not true. It is clear that the woman at the Strand Palace who had submitted to Heath was definitely Pauline Brees. But she was not called as a witness at the trial and her evidence was never heard. Once Luff and Paul had made their mistaken identification, the story began to appear in the press, repeated as fact – that Margery Gardner had spent the night with Heath before and had escaped a beating.
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In this scenario, she would
definitely
have known the danger she might be in and therefore must have knowingly succumbed to him at the Pembridge Court Hotel.
When Pauline Brees was finally interviewed by Spooner on 27 July and it became clear that Margery was
not
involved in the Strand Palace incident, stories suddenly appeared indicating that there were
two
similar incidents in
two
different hotels which
might
have taken place in March. Or was it May? These errors were repeated at the trial itself and even resurfaced in the memoirs of Josh Casswell and Keith Simpson.
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In reality, there was no evidence from any witness or in any police file that Margery had ever spent a previous night with Heath. Placing her at the Strand Palace Hotel was a mistake. Heath had only recently begun to patronize the same pubs and clubs that Margery did, possibly only a week or two before they met on the night he killed her; she didn’t even know his surname. Consequently, despite what was reported in the press and then repeated in books and articles about the case ever since,
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Margery may have had no idea at all what Heath’s sexual tastes were when she agreed to go back with him to Notting Hill. In all probability, all that Margery might have expected at the Pembridge Court Hotel was straightforward intercourse with Heath. If this is the case – and taking into account the witness statements which have recently become available – a much clearer motivation for both murders becomes apparent and both crimes can be explained more simply and more plausibly.
Heath had lost everything; his wife, his home, his son, his career. Rejected from the Air Ministry, he stated several times that he had nothing left to live for. On the day of Margery Gardner’s death, he was given £30 by Harry Ashbrook that he knew he wouldn’t be able to pay back. Nor would he be able to supply the service that he had said he could – the trip to Copenhagen – as he had failed his ‘B’ licence. He had also lied to his mother that he had received the licence, which she would very soon find was not true. On 20 June, he wasn’t even thinking a day ahead and proceeded to drink to great excess – a fact completely ignored at the trial.
Whilst seconded to the RAF, Heath’s behaviour had been so extreme that he was never allowed to fly again and his senior officer, well versed in psychological problems in pilots, identified that he was suffering a breakdown. Following this he seems to have suffered some sort of post-traumatic reaction after he baled out over Venlo.
At the same time, Heath also admitted that he had been conscious of an impulse to ‘react in a certain way’ in his sexual relationships. Having lost all power and control in every other aspect of his life, was he now able to feel in control solely during intercourse?
Margery Gardner, like Pauline Brees, had certainly consented to sleep with Heath. She undressed and removed her earrings. But it may only have been at this point that Heath made it clear that he wanted some sort of extreme or sadistic sex with her. He might have assumed that Margery would consent, given her bohemian reputation. But had he been wrong-footed when Margery reacted in exactly the way that Pauline Brees said she had done? Had Margery rejected him? The incident at the Strand Palace Hotel was not discussed at the trial, but in their investigations, both police and psychiatrists fixed on Heath’s comment to Pauline – ‘I hate women’ – as if it were an indication of Heath’s misogyny. But what was more telling was his subsequent comment to Pauline:
‘I’ll make you do exactly what I want you to do.’
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Could Margery, drunk as she was, have refused to submit to the more extreme acts that Heath desired, just as had occurred at the Strand Palace Hotel? Drunk, fuelled by rejection and sexually aroused, had he then knocked Margery unconscious (the bruises on her cheek), lost all control and gone beserk?
In his relationship with Peggy Waring, she noticed that Heath exhibited physical symptoms at the thought of rejection (‘He seemed very distressed and perspiration was running down his face . . . His passions seemed so roused that he was compelled to become rough with me and then to control himself he would immediately leave me’).
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He had also shown these extreme physical reactions years before when he was confronted with the fact that the RAF did not want to take him (‘He displayed unnatural excitement and loss of self-control. His eyes were wild, his whole body shook with emotion and he could not sit down).
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It’s intriguing that these displays occurred when Heath was unable to pursue the two great passions of his life, sex and flight.
Having killed Margery, in the cold light of the next morning, he was appalled at what he had done and what he was capable of. He went to Worthing and met Yvonne Symonds, sleeping with her on more than one occasion, but didn’t harm her.
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When he wined and dined Doreen Marshall, just as he had done with Yvonne Symonds, had he ‘over-persuaded’ her to go up to bed with him? Hence Doreen’s increasing anxiety during the evening and her desire to go home. Having failed to seduce her at the Tollard Royal, perhaps Heath had hoped to do so on the way back to her hotel. In order to secure her trust, he might have suggested they get engaged (just as he had done with Yvonne) as they walked towards Branksome Dene Chine.
By the time they reached the chine, Doreen might have agreed to have sex with him
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or he may have suggested that the route through the chine offered a shortcut back to central Bournemouth. After having persuaded her into the isolated chine in the pitch dark, again, it may only have been at this point that Heath revealed his intentions and Doreen, like Margery, rejected his suggestion of extreme sex acts. Again, he knocked her unconscious (the bruises on the cheek), stripped and bound her – his desire merging with rage once more.
Both women were beaten in the face, both were tied and gagged, both had their nipples bitten and both their bodies were savaged by terrible genital injuries. So both murders may have been inspired by a similar chain of events rather than being the two very different scenarios they have hitherto been regarded as. This outline of events follows Spooner’s thinking at the time:
It might be assumed that Heath has resorted to violence and sadistic acts where his advances have been repudiated and so resulted in his use of physical force which accentuated his perversity.
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As is clear from Heath’s whole life and career, he was very much a creature of habit. He’d commit a crime and then attempt to salve it with a letter. He would do wrong, then run away before rationally thinking about the consequences. He would propose to a girl solely in order to get her into bed. His life was a fabric of repeated patterns and much of the time he would be condemned to make the same mistakes and never learn from his experiences. With the statements of Pauline Brees and Peggy Waring, it’s now possible to see the pattern in two murders that have previously seemed to be related but inexplicable acts; both women brutally murdered by a man whose charm and good looks had fostered an arrogance and conceit that baulked at the idea of any woman – whether vamp or virgin – telling him ‘no’.
In the condemned cell at Pentonville, Heath was only allowed ordinary prison food and none of the special treatment he had been afforded on remand. Asking why he was only allowed to eat with a spoon and not allowed a knife and fork, it was explained to him that from now on all his food would be cut up for him by the warders. He was no longer allowed to receive tobacco, though every day, due to an archaic ruling, he had an allowance of tobacco and a pint of beer. He was no longer allowed to be sent books, magazines or newspapers from outside and was reliant on the ‘awfully good’ prison library. Despite not having access to newspapers, he was still concerned about how his story was being presented, having been informed of this in letters from home (‘I see no reason why the press should be permitted to print quite blatant lies’).
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Unlike his stay at Brixton, the time at Pentonville seemed to pass ‘very pleasantly’, playing chess and card games. He read
The Thirty-Nine Steps
twice; the story of a man on the run accused of murder, desperately trying to prove he is innocent.
The sentence initiated a new wave of stories in the press relating to the case, including great concern about the police’s holding back of Heath’s photograph from the public. Several headlines appeared on the subject: ‘Ban on Picture Cost Life of My Doreen’,
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‘The Heath Picture: the Facts’
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and ‘Doreen Marshall; Should She Be Alive Today?’
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The picture had been embargoed by the police for twelve days whilst Heath had been at large and only released on 30 July when he was already in custody. It had not been issued to the press who were warned that any publication of the photograph would ‘seriously prejudice’ Heath’s trial. But Doreen’s father could only see that the ban on the picture had allowed a killer on the loose to kill again.
We fully appreciate that publication of the picture of a man wanted for questioning might embarrass the police if he was afterwards found innocent. But in this case because normal procedure was followed it has cost my daughter’s life. I am sure she would have recognized Heath from pictures she would have seen in the newspapers we take, but for the Scotland Yard request that newspapers should not print this picture.
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Doreen’s mother concurred, recalling the night when Doreen had grabbed the
Daily Mail
from her and told her not to read about the Notting Hill murder.
If there had been a picture of Heath she would have seen it automatically and the chances are she would have recognized him later. Even if she felt she could not read such details a picture might have caught her mind and made all the difference.
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On Thursday 10 October, Norman Bower, MP for Harrow West, challenged the home secretary in the House of Commons about the embargoed photograph. Mr Chuter Ede took the opportunity to rebuff the question once and for all. Whatever the Marshall family felt, the police had followed the correct procedure.
The circumstances of the murder of Mrs Gardner did not afford any reason to suppose that her assailant would commit a second murder, and I am satisfied that the police were right in asking that the press should not take a course which might have prejudiced the due course of justice.
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As well as recriminations against the police, there was also a certain uneasiness from some quarters about the death sentence. Several newspapers ran comparisons between Heath’s case and that of Ronald True – another ex-airman who had been tried and convicted of murder in 1922 under the M’Naghten Rules.
29
True’s appeal failed, but the home secretary had intervened and the sentence of death commuted to life in a psychiatric hospital. True was still living in Broadmoor in 1946 and would remain there until his death in 1954. Given the similarities between the two cases, some commentators felt that Heath should be sent to Broadmoor rather than sentenced to death.
30
On 7 October, as a contribution to the medical review, Heath’s solicitor sent a copy of Fielding-Johnson’s statement to the home secretary together with a letter from Bessie Heath outlining the difficulty of Heath’s birth and the fact that her uncle had been sent to a mental institution. Heath also suggested to his mother that she tell Near about the ‘Johnstone’ episode when he was at school (possibly a reference to the incident with ‘Jeanette’) as well as ‘several other events of a similar nature which you may be able to recall’. Heath was not keen to pursue it, but told his mother it was ‘entirely up to you’.
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The medical enquiry had been automatically put in process by the Home Office. This was headed by Dr Hopwood, the superintendent of Broadmoor, and Dr Norwood East who was president of the Psychiatric Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, lecturer on crime and insanity at the Maudsley Hospital and co-author of
The Psychological Treatment of Crime
, which he had written with Dr William Henry Hubert. The doctors visited Heath at Pentonville on the afternoon of 9 October. Heath himself didn’t see the point: ‘My bet is that they are quite happy wth their present verdict and I’ll lay you five to one that they don’t alter it.’
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