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The news this week...
100 years ago
RUBBISH was on the minds of councillors in Berkhamsted who met to discuss whether bin men should collect refuse twice a week instead of once.
Council surveyor Mr E H Adey suggested that Berkhamsted follow the lead of Watford, where residents brought their refuse out onto the streets for collection. Mr Adey suggested that this might allow bin men in Berkhamsted to make more than one collection each week. The Gazette reported: “It seemed to him if they allowed that system at Berkhamsted, they could possibly get in two collections a week, whereas, at the present time, with their horse and cart they could only do one.”
TRAIN timetables published in The Gazette showed journey times for rail journeys to and from London.
A midweek journey from London Euston to Boxmoor (Hemel Hempstead) took around 50 minutes, with stops at Willesden Junction, St Albans, Watford and Kings Langley. A train from Tring to London Euston took just over an hour. There is however, no mention of replacement bus services at weekends.
LOCAL football clubs were preparing for the new season with both Boxmoor and Berkhamsted hotly tipped for a successful season.
The Gazette read: “One matter of congratulation is that this season there has been no unnecessary [sic] tinkering with the laws of the game.
“The man in the crowd likes to be able to return to his favourite game without having, so to speak, to go to school before he can be thoroughly informed of the causes and effects of the alterations.”
THE ANNUAL meeting of the Kings Langley Rifle Club went off with a bang as members heard their finances were all in good order. There was some reason for sadness, too, when club secretary Mr D Clark announced he was leaving the village to live in Russia. The Gazette reported: “...it was resolved that the club should place on record its high appreciation of his work.”
50 years ago
A HEMEL Hempstead man wanted a coal bunker so desperately that he stole 146 bricks from a building site to build one.
Berkhamsted Magistrates Court heard how Eric Arthur Kitchener had lied to police investigating the theft of bricks from the site in Paston Road, telling officers that he had bought them from a friend.
He later admitted to police that he had in fact stolen them from the site and used them to build a new coal bunker. Chairman of the Magistrates Court, Councillor Harold Cooper, said: “In the statement we have heard, you admitted to being a fool. There is no doubt of that.
“You will be fined £2 and I hope we shall hear nothing about you again.”
OUTSTANDING examples of fruit, flowers and vegetables were on display at the 26th annual Tring Horticultural and Allotments Society show.
The event was hit by bad weather but the number and standard of entries was impressive, with 430 exhibits put forward in total.
The Gazette reported: “The judges were pleased with the standard of exhibits and said that taking into consideration the difficulties which the weather has forced upon gardeners during the so-called summer Tring had done very well indeed.”
Special mention was given to Tring Secondary Modern School, which was awarded the Bronze Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society.
A CHAMPION swimmer rescued a girl who got into deep end difficulties at Hemel Hempstead swimming pool.
Christopher Mosedale, 18, an attendant at the pool, dived into the water fully-clothed to save Maureen Dunn.
The 11-year-old from Rucklers Lane had been swimming with a rubber life jacket but it deflated while she was in the deep end.
25 years ago
FOOTBALL whizz Richard Wilde scored the maximum possible 20 goals in a sponsored penalty competition.
Richard, then aged 11, together with 35 other seven to 14-year-olds, was helping to raise money for the Highfield Hawks football team.
The team was formed by the youngsters themselves, with the help of neighbours Mr Peter Davidson, Mr Bob Edes and Mr Stephen Pynaert.
They set off on a seven-mile sponsored walk which took them twice around Randall Park in Highfield, Hemel Hempstead, and six times around Gadebridge Park.
The walk and the penalty competition, which took place later in the afternoon at Highfield School, raised over £170 and the money was used to buy kits for the two teams- one for the over 12s and one for the under 12s- and with the cost of running the club.
THE NEW Sainsbury's shopping development at Woodhall Farm was more than 18 months behind schedule and facing serious problems.
Rising damp was discovered in the three shop units attached to the supermarket on Shenley Road.
Martin's Newsagent and Thresher's Off-License, that were each waiting to move into a unit, were becoming impatient with the building delay due to problems with damp at the site.
A spokesman for Martin's was quoted as saying: “It's downright disgraceful. There is considerable damp penetration and there is no way we will have staff working in conditions like that.”
The cellar in the unit leased by Martin's was still damp, despite being plastered four weeks previously, and when a ‘doorway' was knocked through the cellar wall a huge mound of earth was found piled on to the damp course.
Both companies were in disagreement with the developers, Fairview Estates Ltd, over the standard of the building work.
HERITAGE SPECIAL
HERITAGE THE unsolved murder of a woman in Hemel Hempstead 50 years ago is among a collection of crimes brought together in a new book by a former Herts detective.
Paul Heslop a former Detective Sergeant spent around 40 years in the force including two spells based in the town and since retiring has produced non-fiction works on crime.
The Hertfordshire Casebook has just been published by Book Castle and among the misdeeds and mysteries is the story of the murder of Diana Suttey.
The case dominated the headlines across the country with a nationwide hunt for Mrs Suttey's killer being carried out.
Mr Heslop, 62, who lives in Leverstock Green said he became interested in the case when he found out it was still unsolved.
He said: “It had some unusual features. It was the first case to have a photo fit produced of the suspected murderer and also to use a line up of cars for witnesses to try and identify, and of course it's still unsolved.”
A number of people witnessed the body being dumped and The Gazette dubbed the crime ‘the kid gloves murder' after the gloves the murderer was said to have been wearing.
Mr Heslop said: “It was an amazing crime because there were so many people, kids, people walking their dogs, mums pushing pushchairs, who actually probably saw the killer and the body being dumped.
“I'm not suggesting the book will help solve it but you never know. The murderer was described as middle aged by the children who saw him and so he could be around 85 years-old now, but you never know.”
The following is an edited version of the
Suttey murder from Mr Heslop's book.
The quiet, narrow lanes to the east of Hemel Hempstead are largely unchanged over the years, save for the M1 motorway which was driven through their midst over 40 years ago, and the widening of Green Lane off Breakespear Way, which serviced the Buncefield oil terminal. Today, Hogg End Lane is much the same as it ever was, a quiet link between Green Lane and the A5183, the former A5.
On these byways, on a quiet September afternoon in 1956, murder was committed. Murderer and victim were seen by several witnesses, both before and possibly during the deed, and immediately after it, yet despite the best efforts of police no one was ever apprehended.
The investigation would include two ‘firsts': a ‘portrait' of the suspect, fashioned from the description given by a
witness, and an identification parade, not of suspects but
of motor cars.
It was about 2.50pm on a Friday when three schoolboy cyclists from Adeyfield noticed a car parked in Green Lane.
They were Alan Glaister, aged 13, Nicholas Heaslewood, 14, and Allen Clarke, also 14, who lived at Wealdstone but was staying at his grandmother's house.
There could be no obvious reason why anyone should stop in such a place, and so intrigued were they that they hid their bicycles in the hedge, and kept watch. They saw the driver walking away from the car.
He was carrying something which he dumped into the bracken at the roadside. It might have been rubbish, but when the man drove off one of the boys said he thought it might have been ‘a body', which made them all laugh. Then they poked the bundle with a stick and thought they saw a leg, after which they cycled away as fast as they could and perchance they saw a policeman.
When the policeman looked closely at the bundle he told the boys to cycle to a telephone box and call the police station. A police car arrived, and the boys were taken to the police station to make statements.
When they arrived home late for their tea their parents threatened to stop their pocket money. But events took on a more serious turn when they were told that the boys had discovered the partly-clothed body of a woman, who minutes before had been strangled and dumped in the bracken by the driver of the car.
She was identified as Diana Winifred Suttey, aged 36, a married woman from Harrow. She had been strangled with a pink and white scarf, and there were teeth marks on her body. Although married, she did not live with her husband, Charles Suttey, 28, who lived in London.
It was he who identified her body, and police were satisfied he had not seen her for a fortnight. That her body had been found immediately was most fortuitous, for without the observations of the three passing schoolboys she may have laid undetected for weeks or months, longer even.
The boys had most assiduously noted the description of the man who dumped the body, describing him as about 50 years of age, 5 feet 8 inches tall with dark hair, greying at the sides, and of medium height, wearing a navy blue pin-striped suit, horn-rimmed glasses with thick lenses and brown or yellow kid gloves.
They also took note of the description of the car, which they thought to be a light grey or pastel Standard 8 or 10, registered number possibly SUU 138.
The officer sent to head the investigation was Detective Superintendent Albert Griffin of Scotland Yard, who had earlier worked on the infamous Christie case. He, together with Hertfordshire detectives, commenced enquiries.
The media were quick to report the incident, including the London Evening Standard, which reported dramatically that ‘Detectives from the Yard had visited mist-shrouded Green Lane…'.
Police established that Mrs Suttey was known to frequent transport cafes in the Markyate area, where she was known to lorry drivers and other men of the road.
As early as the night of the murder they were focusing their enquiries in Watling Street, the former A5, where a lorry driver told them he had seen Mrs Suttey, whom he knew, accept a lift from a man driving a two-tone grey Rover car, about 2.30pm, near the Crow's Nest café, between Markyate and Redbourn. It seems the police were satisfied this was not the same vehicle seen shortly afterwards in Green Lane, but they sought the driver nonetheless.
The next morning, they searched the scene, looking for Mrs Suttey's handbag, which may have contained documents giving clues to her killer's identity, and one of her brown shoes, which was missing. They found nothing.
Plaster cast impressions were taken of tyre marks on the grass verges. Further impressions were taken of teeth marks found on Mrs Suttey's body. A reconstruction of teeth was later published in the British Dental Journal in an attempt to find a match to identify the killer. Teeth marks are as identifiable as fingerprints, each being unique to one person.
A Central Murder Office was set up at Hemel Hempstead police station, a sort of forerunner to today's incident room system.
The police had acted quickly and were doing all the right things. One of these was to check out the registered number of the car. It turned out to be either false or mistakenly taken, as it came down to a three-wheeler.
This was a bitter blow. They would have considered a similar registered number, but unlike today, where a computer check quickly identifies the owner of a motor vehicle, searches then had to be done painstakingly, a slow, methodical process involving checking card indices at county halls and town halls where details were kept. Some 107,000 numbers were reportedly checked, which failed to provide the sought-after result.
The police appealed for witnesses to come forward, and there were plenty who did, a quite astonishing fact considering the remote location where events took place.
Thomas Owen, a farmer, of Kettlewell's Farm, said he saw a man and a woman in a grey car being driven along Hogg End Lane towards Green Lane. Mrs Freda Fitzjohn, wife of the head cowman at Kettlewell's Farm, not only saw a car, but spoke to the occupants. She was taking her two children, aged three years and 15 months, for a walk along Hogg End Lane shortly before 3pm. The children were in a pram. The Fitzjohns' black Labrador ran into the front of the car, which had to slow down or stop. Mrs Fitzjohn spoke to the driver, intending to apologise, and saw that there was also a woman in the car. She said the driver ‘stared vacantly' at her, and that neither occupant spoke to her at all.
Detectives considered Mrs Fitzjohn's encounter to be vital in their effort to identify the man, almost certainly the murderer.
She was taken to a police artist's studio in Chelsea, her account of which appeared in the Hemel Hempstead Gazette:
‘I was shown a large number of photographs which had been cut into small pieces. These were fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, and from the result the artist made charcoal drawings. These were also cut into small pieces and another jigsaw portrait was made. I then gave advice from which another, completed portrait, was drawn.'
It is believed that this was the first time in the annals of British crime detection such a portrait had been prepared.
The ‘portrait' was published in the Police Gazette, and circulated to all forces.
The police continued their search to identify the car so many had seen in the vicinity. To identify the car was almost certain to identify the murderer. Its make was uncertain, the registered number was incorrect, but to identify it was vital. To do so, they formed an ‘identification parade' of cars.
It took place in Gadebridge Road, Hemel Hempstead. A line-up of some 40-60 cars, kindly provided by local dealers and residents, stretched for 200 yards along the road, and one by one the witnesses, each accompanied by a detective, walked the line.
The objective was to establish the make and colour of the suspect's car. The cars were of various shades of grey and green and fawn, and included some American models and Volkswagens.
After the parade, the police were able to say that the suspect car was probably a Standard 8 or 10, or maybe a Morris, possibly of medium blue-green or blue-grey and not of lighter colour as at first thought.
The search field had ‘decreased' to some 250,000 cars. It would take time to check out the owners. They failed, but one cannot fault the enterprise of Superintendent Griffin and his team. It is believed that the motor car ‘identification parade' was the first to be held in the country.
There were other lines of enquiries, during the course of which the police sought a man who had stayed at an hotel in Hemel Hempstead and who left on the date of the murder, earlier than expected. They did not trace him.
They visited at least two car factories in the Midlands. As well as ‘thousands' of motorists, suspects interviewed included two gypsies from Saffron Walden who were in the area at the time of the murder, a number of schoolteachers, a large number of commercial travellers and three clergymen. All were alibied.
Of Mrs Suttey herself, it was established that she had previously been engaged in domestic employment, and efforts were made to trace former employers in the Stanmore and Elstree areas.
Whatever success the police had in this regard, it did not provide any positive lead.
As the Gazette reported: ‘Enquiries are being conducted in the way that a master chess player solves a difficult problem on the board'.
Alas, it ended in stalemate. Despite the number of people who saw both murderer and victim, and the car, the police drew a blank. The murder of Diana Suttey was never solved. |
