The Bournemouth Lady Killer

A woman is lured to woods outside Bournemouth. It is 23 December 1921. Within minutes she is battered to death and her body is dumped in a field. It will take the police five months to catch her killer.

There is blood on fencing and nearby is a discarded umbrella. A name-tag reveals the dead woman to be 'I Wilkins' but there are initially no reports of missing local women.

Vitally there are also tyre tracks. In the 1920s there are fewer than 500 cars in Bournemouth and from plaster casts investigators identify the vehicle as something the size of a Bentley. With the cost of such a car around £800 at the time, when the average wage is £1 per week, the police seem to be looking for a wealthy person.

Answering a police appeal in the press, a south London man named Simon Wilkins confirms the dead woman as his sister Irene. She had travelled to Bournemouth after receiving a telegram offering her a job as a cook. The job advert in The Morning Post is quickly shown to be a lure.

What kind of man could carry out such a terrible crime?

Three men fall under suspicion: John Thornton, a golf-loving ladies man; John Davison, a convicted sex offender, who has not been seen since the murder; and the chauffeur for a family named Sutton whose description matches that given by the post office staff of the man who sent the telegram.

Using handwriting experts the police close in on the sender of the fateful telegram, fighting an unease that masonic links may be obscuring the investigation.

The murderer revealed

John Thornton is quickly ruled out, providing an alibi at the golf club. But while the return address of the telegram does not exist, but the details bear a striking similarity to the Suttons, a Wood at Beach House. Staff at Boscombe Post Office, from where the telegram was sent, describe the sender as a smart-looking man who arrived in a big car. He had sent two other telegrams, but Irene was the only person to respond.

A handwriting expert identifies the person who wrote the telegram as full of anger and most likely reasonably well educated, because of the well-developed letters.

The investigators compare the telegram writing with handwriting on letters of chauffeur Thomas Alloway and the two samples match. He is found guilty of killing Irene with a wheel brace, cleaning it and putting it back in the car’s tool kit. The reason for the killing remains a mystery, but the rumours are that Alloway procured Irene for the shell-shocked son of the Sutton family. Alloway was executed at Winchester jail on 19 August 1922.

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