I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years writing about true crime.
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a twenty first century lens.
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
This is buried bones.
Vakate. How are you?
I'm great, Paul, how are you?
I am doing really good.
I have a big sports story for you. Not really, it's big for our family. One of my girls, Quinn, is a big athlete. She loves basically every sport. We are not a basketball family, okay, we just you know, I played soccer, Quinn plays volleyball. She's great at volleyball. You know, We've done a lot of different sports. Basketball has never been one of them. Did your kids ever
play basketball or did you ever play basketball? And no, tall, short jokes whatever you're about to say, not being qualified to play basketball because of your height.
Yeah, you know, during I would say, like the sixth to eighth grade, basketball is my favorite sport.
Okay.
I was out in San Antonio and there was a basketball hoop out there on the street and I would go and do like one hundred labs with my right hand, hundred labs with my left hand, you know, and a lot of pickup games and never played it after that, you know, So I have experience with basketball. I kind of wish I had done it in high school, you know, instead ended up playing football, and my body just did not hold up very well to football.
So football ruined you essentially for other sports.
Is yes, that pretty much. I had a my junior year during hell week, you know, helmet to helmet collision, you know, the pick a hole, and ended up getting a pretty significant concussion.
Oh.
I still get what I call my concussion headache today, which is right here. This is a weird thing, And in hindsight, I am very happy that I did not continue to play football because in you know, what kind of injuries or even concussive effects would I have now that I'm getting older.
Oh, yeah, I mean, how awful, awful awful, And your kids did not play in high school? I assume no.
You know, my older kids they both played volleyball, My oldest daughter played water polo o. My younger kids just never took up sports. They just were not interested in it.
Okay, well I have one kid like that, and then Quinn, who will play anything. So Quinn got talked into playing basketball because she's friends with these two seniors who were wonderful and they're on the basketball team, and they said, you know, you need to come play basketball. So she said, okay, I've never played before. We'll go to the park and shoot hoops a little bit. But neither of us. I mean, I'm not good. She's not particularly good either, so she
is petrified to play. I think it was the second game. I was sitting there watching her and I was talking to one of the other parents, and I saw her sitting next to the head coach, listening to him really intently, and he had a notepad, and I asked one of the parents, who's really into basketball? I said, what's happening? And she said that the coach is teaching your kid how to play right before she goes on because she didn't know the difference fall between offense and defense in
terms of basketball. She didn't understand. Yeah, so I said to her, I gave her the ageous device I could come up with, which is win in out, steal the ball, don't touch the person, but steal the ball and get it to somebody who can shoot. Because I think it's unrealistic for her to think that she's going to be shooting three pointers immediately. We have to kind of build up to that. Yeah, and the coach of Green with my technique, and so we said that's a good idea.
So she's playing. She's playing, she's doing what I'm saying. She's not really stealing the ball, but when she does get the ball, she's feeding it to the right people. So there's three seconds left and we are just getting killed. Like it's pretty awful. I think it's like ten to forty eight or something else. Really Okay, yeah, it was really bad. But she's just happy to be on the court and just trying to figure out the way this game works. And all of her friends says she's doing
a good job. So she's on the court. There's three seconds left. There's somebody I don't remember the technical term. What is it when you get the ball and you go, you know, across the line and then you like throw it in, you do like a chess throw or whatever in and then the person on your team can throw and could shoot. What is that? What does that mean? Taking an inbound or something like that?
Inbound pass? Yeah, for sure, I think that's what you're talking about.
Yeah. So her teammates on the sideline with the ball and their team is crowded up. The kids who are on the court are all crowded up. There's three seconds left, and the girl looks at Quinn, her teammate, and starts saying, I'm going, oh god, Quinn's going to get the ball, and there's three seconds left. Maybe she can turn and shoot and salvage something from this terrible game. So the clock starts, the girl has the ball, she looks at Quinn. She passes Quinn the ball, and Quinn ducks.
Of course she does.
I've never seen that happen before. And the buzzer is so dramatic, and then the buzzer goes off and I started laughing, and luckily her coach laughed too. You know, we were like a smart art school. The sports is not their big priority. We love sports, but you know, we give that same kind of energy to like the art shows and the bands that they have. So sure, luckily nobody really ribbed her too much about it. But oh my gosh, I mean when she did that, I
just thought, that's my kid. Boy, she just and then she said she got into the car and she said, Paul, she said, it's three seconds. What am I supposed to do it through? Was I really supposed to take a shot? And I said, yes, you weren't. You were supposed to do a shot.
For her, though, you know, that's that's a tough position to be put in.
I know. And she said, well, I didn't think she was throwing it to me at all. And I said, okay, well I understand that, but when you done right, well I thought that was funny. It was a very typical kind of Quinn story that was lovely.
No, yeah, when and yeah, I would say, like basketball, the worst injury I ever got from basketball was the ball to the nose. Oh that hurts so bad. You know, it bangs off the rim and now it hits the square in the face. You're done at that point. Fortunately, I never broke my nose as a result, but I had that happen several times.
Yeah, I had a bad a couple of bad injuries with soccer. I mean I felt like, you know, I had a separated shoulder and broken ankle, broken foot, things like that. But yeah, I don't know Quinn. She's gotten better for sure. But when she ducked, I just thought, that's she's comic relief. I think for sports.
Teams, is she going to be continuing to play? Is this something that's ongoing?
Then the seniors are making her so yes, I think.
Okay.
So then we ended up playing a team where it was reversed. I mean, we really like ended up stomping this team and they were great sports about it. She ended up scoring, and I kind of think she's like, that's great. And I told my friend, I said, this is like Vegas. You know, she hit the jackpot one time, and hopefully she'll continue to go back, but there's no guarantee depending on the team, so you know, she'll try any sport essentially, But she's excited her sister doing rock climbing.
She's in a rock climbing club. So yeah, okay. One of the things that my kiddos. Love is. We spent a part of our summer in London every year, and they do all kinds of activities outside, and we are, for this story going to be in London, nineteen twenty two, London. So you and I to go back to London where we were.
That's great. You know, I've gotten to know London a little bit better since you and I met up there, and you were with me when the hotel caught fire, right, that was dramatic.
I don't know was it that dramatic? I can't remember was it really? I guess it was.
You had the fire engines coming, they had their homeland the equivalent of their homeland security people showing up being honest, like, are we dealing with a terrorist act here? You know which over in London. That's that's something. But then we all end up petting to a bar and waiting the fire out.
It was a pub, but yes, that's exactly what.
We same thing. Speaking of which, I got my bourbon for this episode, so.
Oh you did? You did your American bourbon for this very British story.
I think, yeah, they need to have more more bourbon over in London. There's too much Scotch.
I can't even get into the difference because I'm clueless about the difference and frankly not that interesting.
Yeah, if you don't like bourbon, you would struggle with Scotch at all likelihood.
I struggle with all hard liquor. They're not my friends for sure. Okay, Well, I'm going to get a cider and we're going to head to London and let me set the scene. We are in nineteen twenty two UK, and this is a story about a couple and their relationship and kind of what ends up happening, and the police really trying to piece some things together. It's just after midnight. It's Wednesday, October fourth, nineteen twenty two, and there's a young married couple named Edith and Percy Thompson.
You gotta love a good Percy. We don't get a lot of Percy's here in the United States, I think, right.
No, you know, I can think of one football player Minnesota Viking, Percy Harvin. Okay, that's probably the only purse. No, I can think of somebody in high school. I think I was also Percy.
Okay, very old school name, or at least in the United States.
I think it would be ye.
So Edith and Percy are walking home from a trains to their house in the London suburb of Ilford after an evening out of the theater. You know, they're pretty close in age. Edith is twenty eight and Percy is thirty three. So getting right to the incident, here witnesses here a woman's scream and she says, according to some witnesses, she says, oh dear, what should I do? My husband has fallen and cut his head. And they also then
hear the sound of vomiting. If we take this at face value, I don't think we've talked about this before. What happens to your body to trigger vomiting when you've had some kind of a head injury. What is that exactly?
You're really testing my medical knowledge on this question. It's I think, you know, when you start talking about, you know, that nauseous feeling, I think there's a lot of things
that could cause that. You know, first of course, maybe a brain injury, traumatic brain injury, but also you know, there's weird things like with the cranial nerves, like like there's a vagual nerve reflex where you can have all sorts of different types of reactions to injury, whether it be like to your neck, and that's something where the medical evaluation would have to consider all sorts of different
things for this symptom. You know, it's if it truly is a result of this traumatic you know, this fall where it's at least significant enough that there's a laceration on the scalp and you've got you know, this vomiting that's occurring pretty quickly afterwards.
Okay, so sorry for testing your medical knowledge. Ball. We'll see what comes of this though. Yeah, I understand, and you know. So they hear the sound of vomiting. Edith rushes to find some people to come to help, and she finds two people who have also been walking back from this train around midnight. She says, come quickly. She says, her husband's blood is all over her. And they get back to Percy. He's laying the ground, he is bleeding heavily, and one of them runs to get a nearby doctor.
So the street is very dark, so I would assume no street lights. One of the people who's come back to help strike a match, and the only thing they could really see is that Percy looks dead and there's a large amount of blood on the ground around him. A doctor gets to the scene about twelve forty am, so this is, you know, thirty forty minutes afterwards, and he says, this is interesting, Percy has appeared to be dead for about ten minutes. So I looked it up.
The nineteen twenties. They just said rigor and body temperature were used to determine time of death. Ten minutes seems pretty specific. How would he know that? Is that based on body tibe? What was it? What is that?
No, ten minutes. There isn't going to be anything that would indicate that short duration of time. There's just no way that doctor would be able to say he's been dead ten minutes. Weird, you know. Of course, back back in the day, you know, liver temperature would be used, you know, but that's also been shown to be completely unreliable because there's so many variables that impact how fast a body cools. And then rigor takes longer for rigor to form than ten minutes. You're talking on the order
of several hours. And that's in the smaller muscles, and then it progresses into the larger muscles of the body. So I, yeah, I'm a little bit confused as to how this doctor is saying he's been dead ten minutes.
Yeah, that's really odd, but he confirms he's dead.
Okay.
So at twelve fifty, ten minutes after that, Percy's body has been taken to the Ilford Mortuary and an ambulance and Edith is brought down to the police station. And the reason she's brought down is and she's hysterical, by the way, the reason she's brought down to the police station is that when an ambulance it comes and they start to look at Percy's body, it looks like there are cuts and not I just fell down and gashed
my head. Cuts, like actual cuts on his body, Okay, which is alarming of course to you know, the doctors with the ambulance and then the police show up. So I have more information about that. We just know we have an hysterical wife who is saying her husband fell in hit his head, and then you've got a dead man who has been taken and he's in his early thirties. So the cuts, you want information about the cuts? Once they get all his clothes off and start examining him.
Yeah, are these cuts to his head? You know? Part of in listening to this is when you start dealing with like paramedics. You know, they're not forensic pathologists, and of course they've got exposure to a wide variety of different, you know, types of injury. But are they truly assessing the nature of this injurre Oftentimes people will think somebody has been cut and it's actually a laceration from a blow. It's the skin has been split. A pathologist knows how
to diagnose the differences between an incision and laceration. So if these cuts are just about Percy's head, I would go are they lacerations? And do you have multiple blows occurring to his head? But now if you have what appear to be cuts to other parts of the body, that's inconsistent with what Edith said happened.
We'll talk about inconsistencies. Let's go through this. So I had said before the doctor had said about fifteen cuts on his body. Okay, So when his clothes are removed, the corner says that all but three of the cuts are superficial. So most of the superficial cuts were on his face and on his Torso there are three deep cuts and here there right There's a cut measuring three and one quarter inches long on the inside of his forearm.
There's a stab wound at the back of the neck two inches deep and one in a quarter inch wide, which was toward the side ending near the right ear. And there's a stab wound on the right side of the throat which was one inch long and two and a quarter inches deep. This cut penetrated both the carotted artery and the jugular vein. So those are his injuries.
What do you think homicide?
Is that your expert opinion? Homicide?
You know, the twelve roughly twelve superficial cuts to the face and torso, you know, it appears that would tend to suggest that you have a sharp edged weapon, and the superficial nature. I'm not sure why those are just superficial unless there's actually I could see a struggle between Percy and the offender and the knife is just not getting close enough to cause deeper cuts to the face
or torso area. The deep and eat very long incision to his forearm that is entirely consistent with a type of defensive injury, as Percy's trying to ward off a knife. Unless the knife just happens to cut, you know, just randomly cut hit his forearm. But then when you have the stab to the back of the neck and the stab to the right throat, you know, obviously this is a in all likelihood an intentional act to kill eat. A story is completely wrong, just completely wrong. So what the hell's going on?
Well, let me tell you before you get all on top of the Edith here, let me tell you more information about the blood boy. You target people so early polls for Edith. Okay, let me tell you what. The police they go back after they get all this information, they go back to the crime scene. Because we have real police officers, thank goodness, in London in nineteen twenty two. We're not talking about like the Bow Street Runners or this is not that long ago. So we have an
organized police force, the Metropolitan Police. So they go back to the street corner to figure out what happened. I can't emphasize this enough. It's very dark, you know, there's just no lamps anywhere. It's three in the morning, and they can see now using torches flashlights that the coverage of the bleeding. There's a trail of blood about forty
four feet long. I mean, I know, I talk to you sometimes about distance and me being confused by distance, But forty four feet seems like a long distance to me from the street corner up the road.
So Percy's got some significant bleeding injuries the forearm and the neck wounds right, and the superficial cuts may or may not be significantly bleeding. So is this, you know, Percy after being stabbed, stumbling and falling. Is this the offender during a stab cutting himself and you know, running away? So that's, you know what I'm tossing around in my head right now and waiting to hear more information about this.
It looks like he's trying to get home because the end of this trail is about one hundred yards from his house, which is at forty one Kensington Gardens. It's a Victorian townhouse. So what they're saying is that there's this trail forty four feet long from the street corner up the road, and it starts and stops pooling about every three feet, So I think exactly what you're talking about. Then at the end of the trail there's a big puddle, and that's where they think he was stabbed in the throat.
So tell me if this is something they could really know. They said, it looks like the blood spurted out in a six foot arc six feet and then nearby at the garden wall he was found slumped against. There's more blood, including a puddle, which is the vomiting that they think people heard after the cut to his throat began to fill his stomach with blood. Okay, does that all make it to you? Six foot arc?
Gosh, yeah, you know there's because you have the stab wound that goes through the carotid artery. When the heart is still beating, of course, there's pressure within the arterial system, and when there is a cut a breach in an artery, if circumstances are right, when the heart beats the next time, the blood instead of going through the artery, sprays out of the artery. And so this is what we call it an arterial spurt. And so this arcing pattern might
suggest that that's what that is. It also could be something like with this forearm injury, if he's got the significant bleeding from his forearm, him moving his arm is going to cause a cast off what we call a cast off pattern, and that also could potentially look like this arct pattern just depending on his movement.
Well, I mean, this just sounds like a nightmare. They say the attack began at Belgrave Road, which is where they were, and you know, like I said, it was about ended about one hundred yards from the house. They said that the couple had followed Belgrave Road from the train station and then they were about to turn on to Kensington Gardens. So again really dark area. And the house is in an area that has front gardens, which
I love. They have little walls, some of them have hedges, great places to hide, and the hedges have a little cutout so that you can kind of like somebody could squat down. And it looks like the police are saying whoever attacked Percy waited in one of these little sort of like alcove cut out things at a house on Belgrave Road and then attacked him there. So then the police of course want to talk to Edith. So now we have to figure out if Edith's story makes sense.
Well, he didn't fall down and hit his head.
No he didn't. But it's dark, Paul, maybe she doesn't know. Maybe, I mean, you know, it's pitch black. They said they're.
Walking together right now. Stabbings can be shockingly fast in terms of the amount of time it takes to commit. And you know when when people often see numerous stab wounds are thinking this was a prolonged attack. Well, just watch a jail shanking. You know, the surveillance cameras pick up the victim being approached and next thing you know, ten stab wounds are done in a blink of an eye.
I think about Edith's statement, It's like, well, is it possible that you know, at a certain point, you know, an offender could have come up and very quickly attack Percy with a knife and Edith not be aware that this is happening. I wantn't rule out that possibility, considering how you've stated that this is a very dark alley and then Percy the blood trail with you know, in all likelihood, after this arct pattern, you're going to have
a lot of drip pattern. And then you say there's small blood pools when he's pausing, and now you have bleeding injuries that are stationary over this location for a period of time because he suffered a mortal injury, right, he is slowly bleeding out as he's struggling to get home. How does Edith not really observe that aspect of Percy's movements. Now at the very end, if he collapses, then her statement of yeah, he fell down and hit his head
is possibly an accurate statement. You mentioned at the beginning that there is vomiting. Was that Percy vomiting or was that Edith vomiting?
Well, the police that gets him because of there's blood all in it, but don't know, we'll see if we get more information about that. So they were saying blood was going seeping into his stomach and that was causing his vomiting. It just seems awful.
What some of these victims experience is horrific in terms of lungs filling up with blood there you know, every time they're trying to breathe, you know, they're expiring blood and they're trying to suck in air and they you know, it's imagine how miserable that would be in the last moments of your life.
It's awful. Well, let me tell you as we continue on. So this is Edith, this is Edith's story to hang on tight. It's interesting. So the very early morning hours, the police take her to her house and they want to get her story about what she saw that night, she appears really shaken, She's dazed. Her clothing is caked
with blood. It's all over her, all over her handbag, all over the contents inside the handbag, which the police look inside, you know, just in case, but there's nothing in there, but everything in there has blood all over. So Edith says to the officer who walks her initially to the house, they're going to blame me for this. Uh, I would think, yes, of course, They're like, you're the only person in your story. Doesn't make any sense. But she says that immediately, and then she talks about what
her side of the story is. So what do you think so far?
Well, I think because the just the huge inconsistency between what she said happened and what they're finding truly happened to Percy. It's now they have to get to the bottom of why is she so wrong, you know? And is this an intentional thing that she's saying to mislead police or is there a true explanation for how wrong she is, you know? And that's what you have to kind of tease out from her statements.
Okay, so she's covered in blood. Everything that she has is covered in blood. She says, they're going to blame me for this. She says to the officer walking her home, we were just coming home from the theater and walking along. My husband said, oh, then fell against me. I said, bear up, thinking that he had had one of his attacks. She says that he has heart issues and I don't know if that's an arrhythmia or what that means, but sometimes he'll sort of like you know, freeze up or fall,
but he always recovers. And she basically said, suck it, it's fine. She said that we walked a little further, he fell against the wall and slid to the ground. She said that he would recover from these little attacks without getting any medical attention from a doctor. But of course the police in their heads say this makes no sense, and the officer doesn't say anything and just listens to her, essentially because they know there's blood everywhere, so there's more
suspicion of course around Edith. And she makes another statement, and this is one where she's now picking up on the fact that the bleeding is an important part of this story and she needs to address the bleeding. She says, we were coming along Belgrave Road, just past the corner of Inslee Gardens, and I heard him say oh, and he fell against me. I put out my arms to save him and found blood, which I thought was coming
from his mouth. I tried to help him up. He staggered for several yards toward Kensington Gardens and then fell against the wall and slid down. He did not speak to me. I cannot say if I spoke to him. I felt him, found his clothing wet with blood. He never moved after he fell. And then she says, we had no quarrel on the way. We were quite happy you together. Immediately I saw blood, I ran across the
street to the doctors. I appealed to a lady and a gentleman who were passing, and the gentleman also went to the doctors. The doctor came and told me my husband was dead. Just before he fell down, I was walking on his right hand side, on the inside of the pavement, nearest the wall. We were side by side. I did not see anybody about at the time. My husband and I were talking about going to a dance. All of that information kind of all in one statement,
which again seems odd. What do you think about all that?
Well, believe it or not. I can see where some of what Edith is saying could line up really. Percy walking and he goes, oh, you know, is he being stabbed in the neck? Right? Most people, I shouldn't say most people. I actually talked to a stabbing victim who was a friend of my first wife, and he had been out walking and got basically robbed and stabbed. He had no idea he had been stabbed. Oh ye, he said, it felt like punches. And this has to do with
your internal organs. The pain nerves aren't set up to register like cutting injuries. They're set up to register like expansion. Yeah, you know. That's why when you get really bloated, it can really hurt. So Percy could have been stabbed in the neck not realize he had been stabbed. But he's, you know, receiving what would ultimately be a fatal injury with the jugular and crowded being severed on one side
of his neck. That aspect, if it truly, is just somebody pops out from the shadows and stabs Percy and somehow Edith doesn't see that. That is I think plausible. But she has twelve superficial incisive injuries to his face and torso you know, he has a large, incisive injury
to his forearm. You know, it seems like there's a little bit more prolonged interaction between the stabber and Percy that I still have a hard time seeing Edith not, you know, at least observing some aspect of that interaction.
That's going to be important for us to establish with the story. I think, how much do we think that Edith knew? So you're saying that there is some sort of like possibility that Edith might not know what's going on. You're saying that her story is more plausible than it was before, but we're not saying we believe her one hundred percent, right.
Yeah, I'm still struggling to correlate Edith's lack of observing Percy having an interaction with somebody that is stabbing him for the amount of injuries that he has.
Yeah.
Fifteen of Edith's statement is, you know she's talking about at certain points like Percy ends up slumping down, you know, is that location consistent with the blood trail? You know, because she's not going to know the blood patterns at this scene. You know, she may observe blood, but she doesn't have the expertise to actually know what what the blood patterns mean. So you know, she's saying, Percy slumps down at a certain location. Okay, now do I have
a drip pattern there? Do I have pooled blood at that location that would support it, would corroborate Edith's statement? Doesn't sound like they followed through with that type of assessment. Edith having blood all over her as well as on items within her purse, is that what you had indicated? Yeah? Yeah, So of course, now there has to be a question as to Okay, how did she interact with Percy after
he's received bleeding injuries? Is there you know, because a loved one, you're going to go up and you're possibly going to be touched, hugging, you know, blood is on your hands. You're diving into your purse to see if there's anything that you know could help you know the situation. You know, that's where doing a proper interview is so critical. Does she have an explanation for the types of blood patterns and the locations of the blood patterns that are on her person?
Well, there's more information, so let's let's go through it.
Of course there is.
Okay, now the police who have talked to Edith and gotten her wacky story. I want to go back to the scene now that the sun is up and they can actually see. As the sun rises on Wednesday, the press of course descends and I'm a contaminated area. I'm sure I don't think they had yellow tape. At that point they are looking at the bloody pavement on Belgrave Road, and the investigators really start looking more at the Thompson's and who they are. So this is what we know.
Edith had grown up in East London, in the suburbs of East London, and she is the oldest of five children. After school, she moved to London to work for a wholesale hat shop called Carlton and Pryor. Eventually she rose through the ranks to become the chief buyer at the company, which is a huge deal. In nineteen sixteen, she marries Percy and they buy a house in the London suburb of Ilford, and Edith keeps working and she actually makes
more money than Percy does. This is kind of unconventional, but this is, you know, the way women in the nineteen twenties, you know, are starting to move forward in careers. She likes to go out to London's hotels and dance halls, and you know she likes to spend money, and she likes to spend evenings at the theater in the cinema. This is a couple who is close to a young man named Fred Bywaters. He's twenty and he had been
a schoolmate of one of Edith's younger siblings. So Fred is twenty and Edith is twenty eight, Percy is thirty three. Just so we know where everybody's ages are here, at least three people become friends. But Fred had become close with Percy and Edith and had spent some time living with them, and I'm sure Percy must have looked at him as sort of like a little brother. And Percy's brother is the one who actually tells police that they need to talk to Fred to get some more information.
You probably know where this is heading, because you know, you have a couple and an attractive young woman and you know younger man who moves in. I feel like we've done this story four or five different times. Police find out fairly quickly that Edith and Fred had been sleeping together and they have been for a couple of years. From when Fred was eighteen and Edith was in her mid twenties. And when police searched the room that Fred used to live in, they find a love letter from Edith.
They essentially, you know, start putting some pieces together here and again, I'm sure you know where this is heading. The accusations that you know, Fred and or Edith did this to get Percy out of the picture and why, And that is one question is if that is the case, who knew what and who did what? In a couple who is under suspicion at this point.
Well, it's naturally something that has to be looked into, you know, because we have seen these lover triangles that is a motive for homicide, But there's plenty of you know, these scenarios where you'd never have any type of issue, you know, but you just have to explore Fred. Where was Fred that night? You know, because as I was listening, you know, and evaluating the information out at the crime scene, I was thinking, yeah, this sounds like potentially an ambush
on Percy. But with Edith's inconsistent statements to what happened, suggests that this may be something that she arranged or well, actually that's where she understood what was likely going to ha happened, and.
That is going to be a big question because the death penalty is in play here in the UK in this time period, so that'll be important. We have had a couple of different stories involving couples. One in particular, I remember a couple. It was a man and a woman having an affair. Do you remember this? And the intended victim had been he was a real jerk. He was like the head of a gambling hall, and he had already been shot twice in the past, you know, I think he still had a bullet in his body.
People have been trying to kill him, and he finally dies, but they could not figure out who did it. It was like she poisoned him and the lover shot him or beat him with a baton. I can't remember which one, and they could not prove which were the what was the thing that killed him? And so both of them essentially got like attempted murder and didn't serve very much time at all. So I find that confusing. I guess that is you actually have to know who actually did
the killing killing to charge with first degree murder. I didn't think that was the case. Oh that was a big eye roll.
Well, because you know this is now getting to where, you know, when you start getting into kind of the weeds on the elements of the crime and different das, Some das are much more aggressive than others in terms of I can prove this case. You know, now, when you have a scenario where let's say you have two that you think are involved, but you don't know which one actually inflicted the fatal injuries, I can see where there would be a DA that will go, yeah, I'm
charging both of them. You know, there's enough proof for both of them, and possibly another DA going you keep investigating, you know it's not clear. I want something clear, you know, to take in front of a jury.
Well, I can tell you that police in London in nineteen twenty two are very alarmed by the discovery of Fred. The way this goes is in intervening two years when Fred and Edith starting to have an affair. It sounds like Percy doesn't know Fred rented a room from them. He was in between jobs as a storekeeper on ships. Sometime in the year leading up to Percy's murder. Percy had evicted Fred because he suspected that Fred and Edith
were having an affair. Fred says when the police interviewed him that on at least one occasion Percy had hit Edith in front of Fred, and despite this, Fred and Edith continued to see each other at hotels after Fred was evicted, and police get a lot of this information also from the tenant. So there's a female tenant who moved into the extra room once Fred moved out, and she confirmed this. She said, yeah, Percy hit Edith and
there was definitely arguments over Fred. So the police tracked Fred down and he is, as I said, he worked as a storekeeper on ship, so he's had a job. He has a job on the S s Morea, which is a ship he's supposed to be on and it's going to set sail pretty much now, and it's docked at Tilbury, which is at the mouth of the Thames River. They find a lock box in his cabin and there's love letters. So here's kind of the question that we have.
I think it's pretty clear that somebody killed Percy Thompson. I think it's clear that it's probably either Edith or Fred or both. Do we agree on that so far?
I think that's most likely scenario.
Yes, So the question will be important in that what evidence do we have, like real evidence going forward that both were involved, because they're both being focused on at this point. And you know, there are a lot of rumblings about wrongful convictions, and I'll tell you that this case is one of the cases that potentially led to the abolishment of the death penalty in the UK. Okay, so we'll see. Okay, So they find this lock box.
There are love letters in the lock box, and it sounds like Edith in one of these letters is alluding to an attempted poisoning of Percy. She said in a kind of an accusatory manner. It says, sounds like to Fred, she writes, Fred, you said it was enough for an elephant, meaning to kill an elephant, I to I mean, I see this all the time. Being a poisoner is not that easy. You really have to know what you're shaking your head, you can know what you're doing, I mean,
not anybody. It's just so she said, basically, you know, you messed up your dosage. It didn't work. It sounds like they've been plotting, or at least she's been plotting this.
Yeah, this is obviously a major clue, you know, in terms of pointing the finger at both Edith and Fred in terms of what happened to Percy that night, kind of wondering is her life insurance policy on Percy?
I have not seen that that there is a life insurance policy, but it does sound like as things kind of go forward, she is pretty miserable with him and wants to be out of that relationship. Not that I have seen now, but that's definitely a possibility. They find also in this cabin that Fred's overcoat is there, and it is also caked with blood. It's not a rocket science to figure out it. I'm sure it's Percy's blood.
So this is more hard evidence. So Fred is clearly at least there, if not the one holding this knife, I assume, right.
Yeah, you know, so of course in this day and age, we have to show that that's Percy's blood. Yeah. Was Fred given an opportunity to explain where that blood came from? And typically they'll make up something you know, I ran over an animal, or you.
Know, I'm a butcher, something like.
That, the butchers. So I'm assuming if that if Fred has a coat that has Percy's blood on it. Then Fred is out there at the homicide scene. Yeah, and likely is the one that is got the knife. Yep.
Okay, now this is interesting and you have to tell me the morals about this. Okay. So it's now Thursday, Thursday, and Edith is already being held in the matron's quarters of a local jail where all the ladies are, and Fred is brought to the same building. The police decide to walk them past each other to see how they're going to react, and Edith says, why did he do it? I didn't want him to do it? Oh god, oh god, what can I do? I must tell the truth? Roh for Fred sounds like.
She didn't to make a big turn on him.
Oh my god.
That's why. That's why you know the police did that is they recognized, you know, they've got two people, and now it's well, how loyal are these two people to each other? And it turns out Edith jumped on the opportunity to start pointing a finger.
Okay, well, listen to this. So she said, yes, I saw him attack Percy. I did not want him to do it, but she also didn't want to implicate him, and that's why you know she did and say something further. This seems risky though, because why believe her. I guess sty'll look at the evidence. But I know it's sort of like the first one who puts her hand up gets the deal. But this still seems pretty risky. She
doesn't know what friend's going to say. Maybe Fred's gonna deny, who knows, you know, it just seems risky to me.
Well, she's she's trying to preempt Fred. You know, when she sees that Fred is now you know, essentially if he's being taken into this this ward area, she sees that he's with law enforcement, what's he saying to law enforcement? You know, she's now her wheels are spinning going, uh, oh, he's going to dine me out. I bet her front information that minimizes my role in the homicide and maximizes Fred's role. You know. And so now this is self preservation.
But just because she's the first one to offer information, that's not like, Okay, well she's going to get the deal. You know, now you take that information and now you're telling Fred Edith has just dimed you out. What do you have to say? And see what he says, you know, and this is that classic uh oh, the movie La Confidential where they have, you know, two different suspects and
two different interview rooms. And I think it's Russell Crowe going back and forth or one are the investigators going back and forth and in essence playing each guy off of each other, and then next thing, you know, somebody's actually telling the truth, you know, And that's that's what I think these investigators were starting the process. And at least right now in the case, Edith is the one that took the bait.
Well, let's see if Edith's telling the truth, you know, Fred is surprised to see her. Edith says what she says. Fred had initially said, I have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't have any part of this. They tell him, you know, that Edith had said I didn't want him to do it. This is what Fred says. Fred says, I killed him, and he says Edith had nothing to do with it.
Oh, I put some veracity on that. Okay, you know, now part of the concern. Let's say Fred is in love with Edith.
And he's twenty paul.
Just to remind us, so this is where you know, he is letting his emotions kind of dictate protecting Edith, So that would be my concern. But the fact that Fred is fronting I did it. I put some weight on that because he could have just denied, denied, or he could have said, she asked me to do this. Yeah, And the fact that he didn't say she asked me to do this, it's like, Okay, well he's he's putting himself into this homicide. It's just now, is he protecting
Edith because of his romantic relationship with her? Or is he telling the truth and he just acted alone and decided to eliminate the husband so he could have Edith all to himself.
Well, this is the mystery. It is not who killed him necessarily, it's does Edith know what happens? So this is the statement. It's not too long, but I want to read the whole thing. Fred says, I wish to make a voluntary statement. Missus Edith Thompson was not aware of my movements. On Tuesday, third October, I left Maynor Park. So now I need you to make sure all everything he's saying lines up with the evidence. Paul I left Maynor Park at eleven PM and proceeded to Ilford. I
waited for Missus Thompson and her husband. When near in Sleigh Gardens, I pushed her to one side, also pushing him further up the street. I said to him, you have got to separate from your wife. He said no, I said you will have to. We struggled. I took my knife from my pocket and we fought, and he got the worst of it. Missus Thompson must have been spellbound,
for I saw nothing of her during the fight. I ran away through in Gardens, through Wanstead, Leytonston, Stratford, got a taxi at Strafford to Aldgate, walked from there to Finnchurch Street, got another taxi to Thornton Heath, then walked to Upper Norwood, arriving home about three am. The reason I fought with Thompson was because he never acted like a man to his wife. He always seemed several degrees lower than a snake. I loved her and I could
not go on seeing her leading that life. I did not intend to kill him, I only meant to injure him. I gave him an opportunity of standing up to me as a man, but he wouldn't. I have had the knife sometime. It was a sheath knife. I threw it down a drain when I was running through en Sleigh gardens. And that is his statement. What do you think, does it ring true to you?
I called bullshit?
Oh okay, First.
Kind of dissecting the statement, you know, he's an since pushing Edith away, minimizing her involvement in the homicide, and now he is confronting Percy, and he's bringing up an excuse as to why he feels he has to confront Percy to give Percy an opportunity to be a man. You know, So it's such a self serving. Look at me, I'm the man in this scenario. Now, this whole thing about his escape path and everything else that could be accurate.
But part of assessing what Fred is doing here is, well, we have to take a look at the totality of the information that we have, and we have evidence that Edith and Fred conspired to poison Percy. Edith was fully aware. She's like the one that is actually administering the poison. Sounds like Fred's the one that told her this is what is going to work to kill your husband. So you have a prior act that the two were involved with.
Then we have Percy and Edith walking home, right, they get off the train and they're walking home, and now I start to question as to well, did Fred know that ahead of time? How did he know that ahead of time?
Yeah?
Did Edith tell him this is where we're going to be at And it just so happens that Fred finds what sounds like the perfect location to be able to jump out and ambush Percy.
I think you're right, Paul, because Percy knew Fred. Obviously they had lived in the same, you know, apartment, So I guess you could say Fred was maybe stalking him and Edith didn't know. But he would have been spotted. I mean, he's twenty, he's not some CIA agent. He would have been spotted. So yes, I think you're probably right.
Yeah, you know, And then you know, part of what I'm kind of curious about, you know, how Fred is saying that him and Percy got into a physical fight, you know, and that that Percy got the worst of it. Well, was there any injuries on Fred? And do we have any information on that? It doesn't sound like there is. There's nothing significant on Fred, you know. And then I'm like, you know, what you've got to stab to the back of the neck. You got to stab to the neck.
This it sounds more akin to more of an ambush style attack. Fred lies and wait, you got the little cubbies if you will, along this route that the original investigators said, the offender likely weighted in one of these cubbies and he jumps out, stabs Percy and he probably runs off very quickly after that, and then Edith comes up with initially husband, you know, fell down and hit his head and that's why he's dead, possibly being naive to the types of physical evidence that law enforcement can
use to discern. Oh no, this isn't a accident, this is actual homicide. He's got stab wounds, right, So I'm not buying Fred's statement. I think he is trying to prot Edith and he's trying to, you know, in essence, maximize his role. And again, twenty year old in love with the older woman, you know, I think that's what's going on.
Well, you know, is there enough evidence he's confessed? She hasn't. Is there enough evidence to convict her of murder, which is a capital crime in England? Right now? Is there enough evidence for her?
I'm going through my head trying to think about the various bits of information. There's definitely, I think proof that Edith was lying. She changes her statement from the early statement about Percy falling down to she's now seeing Percy being attacked. You know. I think it really does come down to whether or not there is sufficient evidence that would support that she arranged this homicide. She was an excessive to this homicide. Fred's the killer, He's one wielding
the knife. But did Edith provide the information to Fred? Did she ask Fred to do this? And that one, I think is a much tougher sell with the information at hand. And this is where you know that those previous letters that the poisoning attempt, You know, is there a possibility, if that was even admissible, to be able to get the jury to convict her for some charge? Yeah, you know, almost like a murder for higher type of scenario.
Yeah. Well, listen, nineteen twenty two, the police charge them both with first orge murder and they are both convicted in sentenced to death. Fred is stoic and he never implicates her, and she collapses and they are both hanged. In January of nineteen twenty three, a woman hanged over what I consider to be pretty shaddy evidence. I mean, I know there's stuff there, and I know there's a there there, but I don't know. I mean, put her
in life in prison. I don't know. If this case makes me uncomfortable, and it is one of the reads. It's an important case in the UK because of the question of whether or not this woman should have been executed when there's a big question mark about whether she was involved at all. I think she probably was. I think you think she probably was. But legally is she responsible? I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, I think you know, when she is not the one who's actually committing the murder and she's just asking for it to happen and possibly leading Percy to his death, you know there is criminal culpability there. But is it at the level of first degree murder with special circumstances. I'm not sure that there's a case there.
I don't either. I mean, I think it's right and we don't talk about the death penalty and or feeling about it. But what a story. I know that it seemed like it was going to be pretty clear cut from the beginning. But the thing I think about with these kinds of stories are you know, there's a difference between what you know and what we can prove, and it makes me uncomfortable when there are cases where you know, you're so certain that somebody is guilty, and you know
there's an enough evidence and they still get convicted. And it's like, well, okay, you know, am I going to get convicted on shotty evidence when I didn't do anything wrong? How many murderers are I've been let free? Or how many innocent people have been convicted when they shouldn't have been. And I think this is one of those cases where I just kind of go gosh. I mean, I need her to be punished, because I really do feel like she was involved. It just sounds like it. But executing
someone on evidence like that just made me uncomfortable. And I like to make you uncomfortable, Paul, So I wanted to see how you were going to react to this.
Yeah. I don't feel uncomfortable in terms of the deployment of the death penalty. It's so swift in this case. Yeah, And I personally do not feel that the evidence adds up to where she could even be charged with murder, you know, So that's where I think the sentencing is way off base with Edith. I do believe she is involved based on the totality of the information provided it does I can see where this case would be something where people would question the use of the death penalty
and sometimes maybe the over use of it. And you can have just over time, you know, and we've seen with exonerations that have occurred with DNA, where you see truly innocent people convicted of, you know, really horrific crimes and even sentenced to death. And sometimes, you know, you have very very skilled prosecutors that can take circumstantial evidence and get a jury of twelve to convict even when
the case is weak. But then that person is now convicted of you know, first degree murder with the you know, the special cirque and eligible for death. And it is scary, you know, from that perspective, we know that we've had innocent people executed in this country and over in the UK. At some point legislators over there recognize, you know what, we probably have to adjust our our sentencing structure to prevent people from being overcharged and losing their life.
Absolutely well, Paul, I think you should go and enjoy your bourbon, not Scotch, for sure.
Because you hate Scotch.
I bet you drink it if there was nothing else.
But I you know, I can do it. I can do a poor Scotch. I like it. I like the PD.
You know, I don't know what that means, but I'm assuming it's something that you enjoy. So that's good.
Scott Scotch has like a smoky and imped because it, you know, it uses. I think it's the peaked out there and so it's a distinct flavor. But it's a very strong flavor. So I can do a single poor, but I have to go back to my bourbon.
We'll go back to your burb and you might need a double for next week, but I'll give you a warning beforehand.
Okay, as always, I'm looking forward to it.
Let's see you later, all right, take care. This has been an exactly right production for our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emrosi.
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Our artwork is by Vanessa.
Lilac, Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
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Pod Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now, and
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life life solving America's cold Cases is also available now