Thinking Sideways: The Murder of Julia Wallace

else apparently. Yeah, that's true. Here today, we're gonna talk about a mystery, a pretty big mystery actually, kind of one that's touted as one of the biggest unsolved mysteries. This is one of those ones that you'll here referred to on the lists on the internet of locker room mysteries kind of style where it's the perfect perfect mystery. Yeah, it's always ranked up in there. It is, and I have to say it's it's a puzzler for sure, But for as big a mystery it is, there's not it's

not big. Yeah, well you know, but still people have been chewing over for a long time. A lot of famous people like Raymond Chandler, for example, says it's his favorite mystery of all time, or said it was like he's dead, but he might still say mystery. Yet he didn't have any knows the answer now and find out Yeah, okay, so he was ready, Yeah, okay. In the evening of Monday, January of nine one, sometime between sixty five and five pm,

Julia Wallace was beaten to death brutally. Her husband, William Herbert Wallace seemed a really likely suspect and was arrested, tried, and convicted. So what's the mystery. Well, uh, it turns out the evidence was really really lacking in the case against Mr Wallace, pretty so shoddy in fact, that the Criminal Court of Appeals officially pardoned him and declared he was innocent and totally said nope, he's not guilty at all. He's free to go. And nobody knows who did this crime.

He knows who murdered Julia Wallace. There's a few suspects, but yeah, it's interesting. When he was tried, I think his demeanor kind of did him and he was kind of another one of those those Bramber cases. Yeah, and he was apparently not liked by the jury because the judge when when he was instructing the jury all but told them they had to let him off. Yeah, and they convicted him anyway because the evidence was just so weak. Yeah, and we'll talk more about that. Yeah, was actually kind

of non existent. Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah. So so let's tell the story. Let's tell the story first, okay, okay, And I want to just introduce you to the two main characters. I guess the first character would be one Mrs Wallace. Her maiden name was Dennis. She was Julia Dennis. Originally she married Mr Wallace in March of nineteen fourteen. She was significantly older than Mr Wallace. I think it was seventeen years according to the dates I could find

on the wiki. There's a lot of contention over that because for a long time people said that they were around the same age. Everybody thought that they were they were definitely contemporaries. And then I think somebody was able to find her original birth certificate was in the last decade or two. Yeah, I think so too, um, which which said that she was seventeen years older than him. So she was fifty three when they were married and

he was thirty six, which is quite reverse. It's a reversal of roles for the time, but it's also still that's still a big gap. But it used to be the old man would marry the younger woman. Days, some people kind of point to that as maybe something that had to do with the murder. I think that, Yeah, I think it's really silly, but I've seen that tossed around,

so uh, just to go ahead and throw that out. Actually, I think that her age might have had if you if you didn't need to killer, her age might have had something to do with it. You want to hear about it now? No, No, I don't know what could you talk about that later. Julia was originally the daughter of a quote ruined alcoholic farmer unquote, and there's really like nothing about her except for that she played the piano quite well. I think she was an accomplished pianist,

is how they describe her. And she doesn't even have her own Wikipedia page, just bite being the victim of this crime. No, I mean that's it's interesting that there's I think there's a lot to be said about a victim. I think that the victim really informs the crime a lot of times. So I am sad that there's not more information about her out there because I think it just seems like we would be able to know more about the crime maybe or everybody focused on her husband.

Details of her were just left behind, and that maybe why we won't ever be able to solve it, because there may be things about her that we just don't have access to anywhere. Absolutely, I was able to find

some quote some people, some people about her. She was described as meek and kind of uninteresting, and yeah, yeah, there was one person who was looking in on them for about three weeks in her name was Florence Mary Wilson, and William Wallace had about a pneumonia and so this this person was basically, you know, looking after them, and she said that she says she thought Julie was a poorhousekeeper who basically laid around and did nothing, and she

said she had no enthusiasm for anything. And she said she didn't really think that they were a happy couple. Yeah, and so there's a there's a little bit of insight. Of course, you know, that's a small window. It doesn't necessarily mean she was always that way. But there were other people also who said that they didn't really think it was a happy marriage. Yeah, it's interesting. They people

didn't seem to think it was a happy marriage. But they lived in this kind of townhouse row house situation that's pretty common in London Liverpool, I guess. But they so they shared walls with their next door neighbors, and their neighbors said they never heard them raised voices or really talking at all, which may have been a sign. I guess that they didn't talk that much, but it could be they had their own but they didn't. Yeah,

but yeah, there's there's definitely loudly. There's two different ways to go about hating each other, and we've seen and really it's people with their relationship they or yell at each other, were they say nothing. So it maybe that that's why nobody heard anything. They just did their own thing and ignored each other. So let's talk a little

bit about Wallace. Mr Wallace. We're just gonna call We're going to refer to him as Wallace through the rest of this thing, because apparently he's the only one that really matters. And then we'll call Julia Wallace Julia Okay. Wallace was born in eighteen seventy eight, and he left school at fourteen when he started to train to be a Draper's assistant. He got a job with the company that outfitted Her Majesty's Armed Forces and the Colonial, Indian

and Foreign Services in Manchester. He spent five years with the company. Company then transferred to Calcutta, India, then Shanghai two years after that with the same company. His youngest brother lived in Shanghai, so there was a familial connection. He had a bum kidney, so he had to return to England in nineteen oh seven. He didn't want to have it cut out in Shanghai. Yeah, for some reason in England. Yeah, he decided to come back to England, so we did actually have the operation he had to

cut out. And then there's about a four year gap in between there until he became an election agent in nineteen eleven where he met Julia and then they got married in nineteen fourteen, as we said, and then they moved to Liverpool in nineteen fifteen because he had lost his job. And yeah, it was because it was it wasn't didn't you lose his job because the position of elections was just basically totally eliminated in that the reason there was some Crown rule that eliminated all of the

work that he was doing. Yeah, yeah, I was totally eliminated. So he lost his job and he called his dad and was like, Dad, I need a job, and he his father helped him get a job with the Prudential Insurance Company as a collections agent. And the Prudential is an insurance life insurance company by and large, and they're based in Liverpool. So yeah, the couple is described as meek.

Wallace had an unusually curious brain for the time I gather, and that I guess it wasn't typical for a person, particularly a man, but a person to take interest in kind of a wide variety of topics, but Wallace did. He supplemented his time and income by lecturing in chemist He had an interest in botany. He was a violinist, He was an amateur electrician, He had a lab electric with electricity at home. And he loved chess. And he was in fact a member of the Liverpool Central Chess Club.

Not to be confused with the Liverpool Chess Club or the Central Chess Club, because those are two other things. And this that's a very serious offense to be taken. Apparently in my research I found I didn't know that is this a Chess Club still in existence and they still meet at the same place. No, No, the Central Chess Club is still a thing, I think, but this particular one, I'm pretty sure was eventually disbanded. Yeah, it

was pretty small when Wallace was going to it. It was you know, they weren't very good chess players, and it was a small chess club and then this whole thing happened and it was kind of a third drink club. Yeah. So actually, uh, our story kind of begins at a meeting of this club. So we want to just transition

into that. Yeah, definitely hustling into cool. So January nineteenth, nineteen thirty one, Wallace was meant to be competing in a chess championship over a number of months, and so this was one match that he was supposed to be competing in. His game was scheduled to start at seven forty five pm, and at seven twenty pm, I believe the Chess Club received a phone call from a R M. Quality. He was looking for Wallace um and he left a message with the club captain, whose name was Samuel Beattie.

The message was that Mr Wallace was requested to call upon Mr Qualtro that's how he's going to say from now on Qualtro. The next evening, at about seven thirty pm, at twenty five men Love Gardens East regarding an insurance issue, because one of Wallace's jobs was to sell insurance as well as collect insurance, does and things like that, and so it seemed that this gentleman had some insurance business

to carry out. I think that's one thing it took me a while to figure out, and a lot of people aren't familiar with this now, but in those days, you had to walk around and collect payment from your customers. So that's one of the big things he did, is he walked around town all day and pick up money. Yeah, I got money from probably get him in good shape, probably. Yeah. So Mr Wallace obviously wasn't there at the time, and the caller did ask Beatie is Mr Wallace expected to

be there tonight? And he said, oh, I don't know if I can expect him or not, because it turns out he was fairly delinquent in his attendance. I thought it was they said once a fortnight, so once every two weeks, fourteen fourteen days. So he didn't know. Beati didn't know if Wallace was going to show up or not. He said he if he was going to be there,

he'd be there soon and he'd relay the message. While said that he had never heard of Caltra, and he also hadn't heard of Men Love, Men Loves Garden, Men Love Gardens East, and he and a member of a few other members of the chess club discussed it, and he just I think he said, well, I've got a Scotch tongue in my brain or in my head or something like that, a very odd meaning that he would find it. They all figured it was just off Men Love Avenue somewhere and that'd be that, and that that's

the way it was. Because I did I did some reading on this because I didn't understand why this guy would just go trooping across town not knowing where he was going. That would freak me out. But it just turns out, you, okay, well, I know this has got to be off of that, so I'm just gonna walk down it until I find it. Yeah, and they, and you know, one of the guys at the club said, well, I know Men Love Gardens North or something, you know. So I think they just all thought, well, it must

be there somewhere. There's a north south and west east. Yeah. So despite knowing really anything about this, it just being kind of a blind call, Wallace decides to keep the appointment. So the next day on he arrives home from work around six pm, and then sometime between six thirty and sixty five, the milk boy stopped to pick up his money, which he got from Julia. He said, I got it from Julia. There's been some speculation that it was Wallace

and Drag but I'm sure it wasn't. It was definitely Julia. And then I don't know how the milk boy would have known what time it was. He said this other time when a church clock and there was either right before or right after, and there was one. Yeah, there's a there's a church a few walks away that's got three clocks on its on it, so he would have known, so we can presume his time is about correct. Yeah. I don't know if anybody checked at the police checked

the church to see if the clocks were correct. Yeah, that would have something to check on the we're running on daylight savings something like that. That would be too bad. The Liverpool Police in this case that they the locals called them the jiggery Pokey. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't have the best reputation. Um. I think the Milk boys saw Wallace there too. I'm not sure, but I got on

Google Maps. I pulled the Joe, got on Google Maps and map directions from Wallaces the Wallaces rented flat to men Love Gardens West, because I that's a natural address and on today's transit it would take no less than thirty seven minutes. And according to the train schedules at the time, which I actually looked up, he would have had to have been on the tram at sixty nine pm for the whole timeline to make sense. And it's verified that he's coming off of that tram at exactly

the right time. So we can assume, I think pretty reasonably that he was definitely on the tram at six pm that night. Yeah, and how he's done the conversations that directly followed that, Yeah, absolutely. And how far was

the tram stop from his house? Not very far, but it's a bit of a walk, maybe five minutes, not anything now, Okay, hang on, So I remember something about in their awesome investigations police having a young fit officer played the part of Wallace, and I remember there was discussions of him running, and so I was under the impression that meant that he was running from the house to the tram stop, which made me think the tramp shop was farther the two mile running things, okay, and

that he ran to get there at seven oh six to make this transfer. I don't remember, okay. So the two miles thing is that he made a transfer to a different tram and had an interaction with the conductor of that tram, and that transfer spot was two miles away. So I presumed that they were trying to see if anybody fit could run that two miles in the allotted time that that they would have needed and bypassed that first train bad Kidney had recently, Yeah, I think. Yeah.

He was a heavy smoker too, wasn't Heah. Yeah, Actually, it's absurd to assume that he could have kept that page well and then nobody would have noticed this guy running, you know, breakneck page right, or or that the conversation he would have had with the conductor, the conductor wouldn't have said, oh and he was super breathless by the way, sweating. Yeah. Actually,

the police actually didn't just do one detective running. They sent out a hole like a half a dozen teams at various times to try different just to see yeah, which is only probably the most thorough job they did on any part of it. But no, I think that's what you're talking about. The two miles that you're thinking of. I think the tram stop and I'm sorry to anybody who's going to call us out on that. I don't actually know, but I think it was a five minute

walk or something. It wasn't that far, Yeah, Because the two miles that you are talking about is the transfer he made two miles away from his home for one tram to the other like their street cars, right, you

guys know what trams are, okay. And that was at seven oh six pm, which you know was right on schedule with him being on the tram right before at the sixtine mark, and he had a conversation with the conductor and he he asked him directions to men Love Gardens East and was told to transfer trams again at Penny Lane and he spent most of that ten minute ride pestering the driver to not forget to call out Penny Lane. And a lot of people think that's suspicious.

I think it's I think it's just like a nerve. I would. I've done stuff like that before, not like the entire time, because I've then gotten really awkward and thought like, oh, I'm annoying this person. But if I don't know where I'm going, I get really anxious, And especially if I were trying to make a meeting and I really didn't know where I was going and was maybe running a little late. By my own sense, I I definitely can see the like, okay, but don't forget

to call, Like, don't forget to do it. Don't have we missed it. I really don't know where I am right now, Like everything was lit up and easy to see. It's January, it's you know, it's December, and it's dark at you know, four o'clock right now, so it's it's dark out. And also you know, he can't pull your map or phone out of your back pocket. You have no idea what's going on. Wasn't as easy back in

those days. Yeah, So I just I don't think it's as suspicious as most people think, but some people do think it's really suspicious. Yeah, A lot of people feel that he tried to call people's attention to himself repeatedly. There there's a lot of that in this story though, But there's a lot of I gotta admit. I'll just tell you right now. There's several things that I'm just going to point out with one word, which is claim. Yea, they claim. They make a lot of claims about certain

things that he did them. So the conductor, of course did not forget to st Yeah, he was like, oh my god, get off now. He's like, this is your stop, get off, uh, And Wallace made the connection no problem. He got on the next tram and he asked the conductor promptly, Hey, where do I get off for men Love Gardens East. The conductor said, you get off at men Love Avenue and walk and probably was told to just saw it off and look for it, because I guess, yeah, just get off here. And it was only like a

six hundred foot ride or something like that. It was stupid short, but I think all the conductors were just like, you do this. I don't know, you just do this thing. But he did. He got off at the avenue and started to search for men Love Gardens East. There was a men Love Gardens North, South and West but not east. Apparently he was really determined, so he asked a number of passers by, you know, where is the street? None of them had ever heard of men Love Gardens East.

He went to men Love Gardens West to see if they knew anything about it. They said, no, we've never heard of anybody, and we didn't make a call. Go away. Wallace did what you're meant to do and found a local beat cop next and okay, people, there's the claim. And I think the cops said this, so I'm willing

to say that this happened. But instead of just saying, oh, I'm looking for this address, he apparently regaled the cop with the entire story of the call and then the train ride, and then the difficulty he's been asking people all the time, and oh, do you know where this address is? Finally, you know, at the end of that,

when the cops said, no, that place doesn't exist. I got the feeling through some of the things that he's said and done before everything happened, and then as it was going on, he was just kind of an awkward guy. He was just one of those ones. I think he was and anxious and and didn't really know how to interact with people. That was my sense of him. Yeah, definitely. Um, so he was not satisfied with the copper saying no,

that's not a thing. But he did ask the cop what time it was, and he asked it in kind of a strange way apparently, and he said, it's not eight o'clock yet, is it? And the cops said no, So he checked the time and he said no, it's seven forty five. And Wallace looked at his watch and he said, oh, yeah, at seven forty five. And again people think that's suspicious, which I don't think so, but okay, well,

fine whatever. He was still not satisfied, so he walked over to a local newsstand and they had directories in the news stand apparently, so he looked through the directory. Still the address didn't exist. So finally he's had enough. At this point he would have been really late, or as some people claim, he'd made enough stink to have

a good albi. Well, and he also made a stink with the person at the Yeah again it was saying where this address is a distinct interaction and again you know, he asked her, he said, he looked up and he said, you know what I'm looking for and she said no, And he told her the address and she said no, that doesn't exist. And he said, okay, fine, I'm just I'm gonna go home. Then fine, and he got home. I guess it seems like he searched for about forty five minutes all all told. He got off the trammet

seven fifteen, left probably about eight, got home. I guess around you know, I think that that trip takes about forty five minutes. I think my my math is good. It's half an hour, half an hour. But then again he's got to wait for stupid thing is there when you're there? Right? I mean maybe it is, but rarely, rarely. Yeah, but he based Long story short, you got home about eight thirty or eight thirties. Probably the earliest he could have gotten home reasonably etive is probably when he got home.

But again, the next time he's seen in his forty five, he's standing outside of his back door and his neighbors, the Johnston's, are just leaving. They encounter him in the back alleyway and he looks, God, what's the quote, worried and confused, worried and confused, thank you? He looks worried and confused, and they say, okay, Mr Allis, what's up? And he says, well, my my keys aren't working. McKy in the front or the back door, they're not working. And they said, well, we you know, we have a

spare key to your house. Do you want us to try our key? And he said, oh, I don't. I've never heard what he said, so I just assume he just kind of mumbled, and then he tried his back door key again and miraculously at open uh. And they waited around because they were good neighbors. They thought, Okay, he seems confused and worried and weird, and we'll just

wait till he gives us the all clear. So they kind of waited around, and he went upstairs and he lit the gas in the parlor, and then he came back down and just very calmly said, uh, come and see she's been killed. Strange. Strange. I think he was in shock, like I think he is in chocked, because I would be in shock if I walked into this. Absolutely, But can we stop for a second and talk about the door. So he tried, if I understood correctly, and

I just want to make sure I understand this. He tried the front door and his key wouldn't work or the door wouldn't unlock. And then he went to the back door and he couldn't get it to unlock with his key, and then he tried it again in front of the Johnstones and that's when it opened. Yes, correct, the back door open, the back door, so they were they were apparently the dead or the latch events had been shut on the inside. Is that what it was?

Because I was thinking, well, maybe there was somebody like was there was the front door unlocked when they went to look at it later, because it makes me wonder, Hey, you can't maybe see in and so he's trying his key and somebody's holding the lock. No, But you know what I didn't actually I just thought of is maybe the front door was unlocked when he arrived and he accidentally locked it. It seems unlikely, but I guess it seems like a I just got home and impeeved kind

of moved. But it's interesting because you know, if you if he actually was telling the truth and say the bolt had been shot from the inside on both the front and the rear, then he comes home, that if he is totally telling the truth and he wasn't just confused not using his key. Correct, mean that must mean the murderer was inside exactly where I was going. Yeah, so he's he's been he's been rattling the front door.

And then the murderer like boogies out the back door, and of course he can't shoot the bolt this time around. He pulls the door shut behind him and sneaks out down the alley. Oh that he would have tried the back door first, and that didn't work. So he tried the front door and that didn't work. So he came back around, at which point they encountered him kind of walking back to try the back door again. Is that

what you're saying? Yeah? Yeah, and that he said, Mike, he's not working, and they said okay, and he tried it again and the bolt wasn't locked. Is that what you're saying. Yeah, Yeah, So the door was locked, but the bolt was not had not been shot from the inside. Interesting because that's the only way this, this whole I can't get my key to work thing makes sense to me, is if somebody else was inside, you know, manually operating

a lock that he couldn't have access to. That's true. Yeah, that's not a bad point, although that would mean the murderer had to key to the house, not necessarily because you don't use a key to lock your door from the but the I guess it's he could have left the door unlocked and that Mr Wallace, just out of habit, tried to unlock it and it worked, right, That's what I'm saying. Okay, that's fair, that's good. Yeah, I haven't

thought about that. There's not a scrap of evidence to support that, but well, that's that's the refrain of this entire case. Though there's not a scrap of evidence to support that, but we're gonna say it anyway. So what did Mr Wallace find? And I guess the Johnston's when they Johnston's Johnstones, but john Stones Johnston's either way, they saw something they could never unsee. Yeah, uh, it was.

It was a really gruesome scene. In the parlor, Julia had her head had been bashed in eleven times, her brain was exposed, and the blood splatter in some places was seven ft up on the walls, which is pretty high. What happens when he beatbody definitely would Yeah, and the Johnston's, as I mentioned, the walls were thin in between and

I think the parlor wall. They shared a wall, and they had been home all night and they said they hadn't heard anything, which is kind of weird, Like one would assume that you would at least scream a little the first time that the first one catches you unar and rattles your little brain. Yeah, followed by several swift hits. You're out. There is one other explanation for them not hearing anything, and that is that they did it. I

found her. I found somebody out there that claims we'll talk about that in theories because it's it's actually not the worst theory out there. Um. So yeah, as we were talking about, uh, we kind of I guess shot our load a little early. The big whole mystery on this thing is that all of the windows and doors were locked ostensibly when when Mr Wallace arrived. So it's you know, it's one of those locker room mysteries where you're just like, how how did the murderer get out? Well,

they weren't. They weren't dead bolted though, were they? I don't, I don't know. I see that's the thing that yeah, I mean, because you can always pull the door shut behind you, Yeah, although it's nineteen thirty one, so I don't know. Yeah, I don't think they were. I think they were mostly dead bault locks at that point. Well I know, okay, my experience in Britain with locks has never been good because I get locked out all the time when I'm over there because they don't believe indoor handles.

It's all keys, and they auto locked behind you, which is why I'm wondering if, like Joe said, they just auto locked automatically that was the standard way to do it. Yeah, but I guess I don't know. I guess the frustrating thing in that case then, right, is that? Like then why is that such a big mystery? Like if it's so ubiquitous in this area, that doors which is locked behind you, why is everybody saying and the doors were locked like okay, cool, then the murderer left out the door.

Why are there's so many claims about the things this guy could do? Like that's that's right up there with Yeah, although if it was the old fashioned kind, like the church key kinds, you know what kind of talking about, if it was one of those a lot of in those days that a lot of the times people would leave their key on the in the lock on the inside, and that's why that's the way to block somebody from the outside picking your lock, and so your key is

blocking it. And that was very common in those days. So there might have just been a key in one of the front of the rear door is just there. He just takes the key out, steps outside, pulls it shut and takes the key and locks the door, walks away and walks away. I'll cover with gore. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm super covered in blood because is that like this person would have been just wrenched in blood, coated in blood.

There wasn't really anything missing. Mr Wallace said that there were a couple of pounds maybe missing, and then they the only other thing that was missing were to fireplace instruments, a poker and a metal bar. I don't know what the metal bar. I could never determine what the bar was. Showed up that one finally, Yeah, did show up. So yeah, the poker didn't show up, and actually the bar showed up with no blood on it. Yeah. Years later it was like in the back of the fireplace, it'd fallen

through a hole in the bottom or something. Yeah, And then there's the whole, the macintosh, the raincoat. Oh yeah, and then there was a partially burned Macintosh or a raincoat underneath her body. It was supposedly his, it was it was his that there was no supposed it definitely was his, But that doesn't mean that he was involved. Really,

I would have been by the door. Okay. See that's funny because I had heard contention that it might not have been his, like it may have been somebody else's, And they took his on the way out, So I guess that's fair. I it matched his. I thought it was his. I thought it was his too, But I'm reading a lot. But the investigation into this is so poor that I don't I guess. I can't say definitively that it was his. It looked like his, that's all

I can say. They didn't. They also didn't know any evidence or anything like that because it had been partially burnt. It had been partially burned. Yet, so can I ask? I'm sorry? I know I do this to you all the time. I have a question crime scene photo. I swear I've seen it, but I also thought it was a recreation. Yeah, so I have seen a lot of pictures that look like they might be crime scene photos.

I think they're all re enact re enact recreation recreations because I don't because there's not enough blood in any of them. Well, I saw a couple of photos and I think they were the real thing. They were taken. They were taken either by police or by reporters on the night of Yeah, I saw those two, and I just didn't think that there was enough blood. Yeah, So I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell. The kind of murky pictures. Yeah, I saw these in a book.

Guy who was John Gannon wrote a book called The Killing of Julia Wallace. He did we're going to talk about book. He's got a lot of pictures in there. Yeah, but I don't know. I can't. I guess I can't authenticate what the pictures, if they were real or not. Just again, because it doesn't seem like it looks like the crime scene was described to have been. But it's also possible that the description of the crime scene is inaccurate.

What I was going to say is, that's the thing is that I saw something that talked about when Julia was struck and she fell. I saw something I swear that said that the reason that the macintosh had caught on fire was that she had fallen forward into a fireplace, so that that he had fallen forward into the fire. The person wearing the macintosh had fallen forward into the

fireplace and it had partially caught fire. Oh so they're saying this doesn't make any freaking sense weight and that it that it was that they put the fire out and then pushed it under her body. Oh so killer wearing said macintosh catches on fire, stops drops of rolls and then rolls her up in it it underneath her. Was somebody to do that, though, I don't know. It doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any sense. It makes I think it makes more sense that that she died

on it. Yeah, it's it's entirely you know. One theory about the macintosh is that it was indeed Wallace's macintosh. She hadn't taken it with him, and he had probably hanging on a hook by the front door, and somebody somebody called on her for whatever reason, rang the bell and she put that on against the cold or whatever, or maybe they and that she was actually wearing it and not necessarily with her arms at the sleep was just straped over her shoulders. Maybe you know, who knows.

Maybe she was in her pajamas and she was feeling modest or something for some reason or you know, whatever reason, probably the cold, and so I think that's probably what it was. I agree. But fireplace, fireplace was on, you know, I mean, you could say somebody came over for whatever reason to murder her, obviously, but it was it would have been somebody she knew. Yeah, let's let's save this.

So Um, Despite having a pretty solid alibi created or not um and a really severe lack of forensic evidence, the cops arrested Wallace, as we said, and it was a couple of days later. Yeah, as we as we talked about a little bit to this case. It's it's another case of the jury just kind of not liken the guy. The public they hated him, yeah, they did. Um. He was definitely condemned in public for the rest of his life. Yeah, he got constantly got hate mail. Yeah,

he did and stuff. He took the witness stand against Earth in his defense, I guess, not against himself, but he did kind of work against himself. Yeah, and he he appeared detached and cold. Um. And the jury did convict him. The trial lasted four days and the jury deliberated for less than an hour, and he was sentenced to hang for the crime. But then in March of nineteen thirty one, the Court of Appeals did overturn the ruling. They just said there there just wasn't enough evidence to

have convicted Wallace and um, so he was innocent. He obviously found it hard to return to normal life in Liverpool, so he moved to the country and then he died in nineteen thirty three, just two years later, of kidney issue. No, he didn't, he didn't move to the country right away because I know he took he took a he tried facing job with the insurance company, he tried to return, he moved. I think I think he lived in Liverpool for six months or and then he moved to the country.

But he was also he was pretty sick too. Yeah, he was getting progressively worse. Yeah, he was not one of those two was really in great healthy. So he was fifty one at the time of the murder. Yeah, seventeen year age difference means his wife would have been sixty eight. I'm just I'm just thinking about Yeah, I mean, they both would have been a rather rather slow pair.

And I can see her age at that time, of being sixty eight in the thirties is to me kind of the equivalent of being ninety today is I mean, just because of the way that you live and the harsh lifestyle. So I can see why she may have been considered kind of lackluster and just old and tired and she couldn't dig it anymore. Well, yeah, I think that he didn't really have much in the way of motive,

except maybe he was just sick of her. But the other thing about it was I was going to mention her age as as a motivation for him, Like you said, that was that that would have been back in those days, the equivalent of eighty five or nine years old, and he's starting to look at the US and thinking, you know, I don't want to spend I don't want to spend the rest of my life changing her diapers. You know, I'm going to put her out to past year. That's kind of the way he looked at it. That would

be a motivation, I guess. Yeah, maybe he was just sick of her. Yeah, that's also possible. But there's some quote actually gosh. The quote I think was that you need no more motivation than being married. Yeah, yeah, which I think is probably fair, I say to a newly led Steve. Yeah I did, and matro side my list of words. Yeah, I'm now going to start using around the house. Yeah, so that it's not actually yeah, she'll appreciate it. Yes, absolutely, So we can. We can jump

into theories. But I just want to mention two or three things. First. One big, really big thing is that the police unit that came to investigate the murder was really really really really subpar to say the least. But yeah, the Liverpool Police, I'm sure they're highly professional today, but they had actually it was I think it was in nineteen nineteen there was a huge strike and they lost more than half of their police force. It was a

huge amount. Yeah, and so you know, I guess within ten years essentially they had tried to replace everybody and it was just it was not going very well. I believe the term ring saw for the staff was underqualified. Yeah. But okay, so the really fine whatever, they were unqualified. The biggest blow to this case that happened was their forensic expert. I guess they His name was John McFall, and he operated under the pretense that his instinct was enough. Um.

He didn't take notes, he didn't run tests. He observed Julia's body and decided, based just on the rigor of her body, that she had to have been killed at six pm, give or take an hour. He actually had originally said she died somewhere around eight o'clock or so, and then wound back the clock on that to match up when they charged Wallace. Yeah, so there's a little

bit of that. That's that's hinky, that's hinky step number one. Yeah. Yeah, the only test that was and that that was the only test that was done on her at the time. He didn't do body temperature, They didn't take any blood samples. They didn't take any they didn't collect any forensic evidence. They didn't try and fingerprint or anything like that. Um, they did I guess somehow, and I don't know how, but I guess they were able to determine that nobody

had cleaned themselves up at the house. There wasn't evidence that somebody took a shower to clean. The drains were dry. The drains were drying, So okay, that was That was good at least they did that, so we know that whoever killed her would have been really, really bloody and would have had to have probably left the house pretty bloody. And that that fact alone completely to me blow blue their theory of what he did out of the water, because you're saying, hey, we've proved that nobody took a

shower or used water in this house. But this guy, he was buck naked and he killed his wife. Or my favorite is he was buck naked. Yeah. The police actually questioned him quite extensively about the practice around his house of they totally made this up, but they decided that he and Julia Julia, they he played the violin and Julia played the piano. They had these music nights um and they said, well, yeah, you like to do

that naked wearing just your macintosh, don't you. And he said, uh, you know what and they said, yeah, yeah, that's how you play the violin. When she's playing the piano, you're just wearing your raincoat. And he said, no, what are you talking about, And they said, no, no no, you you like hanging out like that. So we're just gonna go ahead and enter that as a matter of fact, you would like hanging out with that, so obviously you killed her like that. So that's the kind of detective work

that was happening around these caves. Um So I think that that does it blows a pretty big hole, especially because the timeline just doesn't match up right. You know, we know, based on the timeline that she was seen alive at about sixty five he left. He had at the earliest he had to have left the house at the latest, I would say at six forty nine, but probably at six forty five ish. He would have had to left the house to be on the tram to get there in time. There's no way that he ran it,

No way he ran those two miles away. And when he got home he was he didn't have any blood on it at all. Yeah, well, he was clean as a whistle. None of his clothes had blood on it. He didn't have blood on it, you know, there was

there was no blood anywhere. And then the earliest he could have come back really is eight So there could have been a forty five minute gap there, but I think he probably was there more like eight thirty based on when people were seeing him around that it couldn't have got back that earlier because he had the interaction with the policeman. That's seven. So the earliest he could have been back really is like a thirty Yeah, so

there's fifteen minutes there. So really you got fifteen minutes on either end to commit a brutal murder for you know, probably provoked reasons, then totally clean up. That's that's insane to me. That's crazy to me. Clean up outside of the house because he couldn't do it, because he couldn't have done it in the house. Yeah, and so yeah, but the only way they were able to get a conviction here it was by impeaching the testimony of the

milk boy, whose name was Alan Close. Yeah, I don't know that he was not I thought it was credible. Of course I never saw that the guy I heard him and actually speak, but yeah, there's no reason to not believe. So anyway, that's a big thing, right, the medical example that, yeah, and the drains were all dry. Yeah. So you guys want to talk about theories because there are only two. Yeah, I mean there's two big and

then there's like some sub theories. Well well, because really, well really, either Mr Wallace killed his wife or he didn't. And the quote you hear around. This is even Mr Wallace killed his wife or he didn't, And if he didn't, then we have the perfect crime. I disagree, but hey, well yeah, if he did it was a perfect crime. If he didn't do it, it it wasn't really the perfect crime.

That's how, you know, lots of people get lots of people get killed and bludgeoned to death, and nobody ever gets got So let's talk about he totally did it first, as repeated over and over again, as we just talked about, there's no more motive needed to kill your spouse than being married to them. It sounds like their marriage wasn't particularly happy. It didn't sound like it was horrendously unhappy, though, it just sounded kind of yeah. But and he but

he wasn't like an adventure seeker, you know. It's not like he was saying, oh, I wish that my wife would go and take more risks with me and things like that. He seemed totally satisfied to just do his thing. He sat at home with chemistry, played with electricity, and she just kind of things like doing stuff. He was hebes and people back in those days, I don't think we're quite as romantic about marriage either. So I don't.

While I while I'm happy to say their marriage wasn't happy and passionate, I also don't think it was unhappy. I think it was. I would I would describe it as an ambivalent marriage, which usually you don't kill over usually well, yeah, maybe you do. But even if you do, maybe, like you know, chemistry, maybe you poison your wife her to death. I mean yeah, And you know, definitely, if he was really truly sick of her and wanted out, then that was a way to avoid paying alimony. So

that was a motive. Yeah, insurance wasn't a motive. She didn't have much in the ways was insurance policy. And he would have known that absolutely. So there's the argument that he made too much of a fuss over his alibi stuff. Another factor is that phone call that he originally received at the chess, you know, the message that was left for him. Yeah, So it turns out that Wallace wasn't that consistent, as we said, of an attendee

to these things. Beatie did say that he came about once every two weeks, and Wallace said that he didn't like to He didn't come that often because he didn't like to leave his wife alone at night, which okay, you know why not. She may have been um, trying to think of the right word to say here, a little prone to flights of fancy in terms of paranoia. Almost she may have been hysterics, thank you. She may

have just been you can't leave me alone. It's dark and scary and yeah, yeah, like he may have chess club may have been one of those few times that he could pry himself away from her at night. Yeah, you know, maybe maybe she really had enemies, so my life we didn't know about. She was a government assassin. The reason that that that his attendance of the chess club is brought up is because how would that mysterious caller have known that he was going to be there

that night? How would you have for that matter of how would that guy have even known that he went to the chess club at all? Yeah? How would he have known that there are some really are? So the big claim here, to use Steve's term, is that Wallace made the call himself. Right, We can do some debunking on this. First of all, Beatie described the caller's voice as strong and gruff, pretty much opposite of Wallace's demeanor. And he he didn't think that he could have made

that call. He didn't think that he could have faked the voice, which I think is probably fair. Also, there there was a posting of the Chess Championships that he was taking part in stuff and what day they were Well, the time was the same, the time was assistant, but

it was what days they were showing up. And then it was actually posted on a bulletin board next to the phone booth that the phone call was received too that had the phone number of the phone booth on it, so one could have looked at that list and gotten the phone number simultaneously. And actually this was not a dedicated chess club. It was it was Caddle's City Cafe, and a lot of different clubs met there, so it

was a totally public space. Yeah yeah. And one of and one of these, the one of the persons who's been named as either a suspect or a person of interest, who we'll talk about a little later, was seeing at least once at this club. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So that we'll talk about that a little bit. But you know, the question is how would that person know that he would show up? Well, they had no reason to believe

that he wouldn't show up. There's some discussion around the fact that he actually hadn't been there in a couple of weeks, because you can see that it was recorded that he lost his first game on the first night of the championship on the sheet of paper there's pictures it all over him, and then the next two games he missed, and then he played that night the nineteen He didn't actually play the game he was meant to play in the championship. He played somebody else because his

partner didn't show up again. Reasons this chess club was probably disbanded is that nobody seemed to take it very seriously. Yeah, so while there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't show up, there's also no reason to believe that he

would show up. I think that it's it's pretty easy to see how that person knew that he was going to show up based on where the phone call was placed from, and it was placed from a phone booth that was about three yards from Wallace's house, and a lot of people again point to oh, well, then Wallace obviously placed the call himself, but no, because he the tram that he was on, he would have had to

have been on the tram about that time. You would have had to be at the same time if not, the phone was being yeah, that the phone calls being placed. How many how many tram rides to take to get to the chess club A couple? I don't remember. I don't remember seeing that specifically listed. I just remember the

times being called out and that was it. Yeah, So I think it would have been really easy for somebody to kind of watch him, see that he was leaving and no probably where he was going, because it seems like that would be the place that he would be going at that time, and call and say, oh, is he coming tonight? Oh you don't know. Okay, well I'm gonna leave this message for him anyway because I know

he's on the tram and uh. It actually became very important to Wallace after he was questioned by the police once and then let go, and it became really really important to him to know what time, And he asked Beattie, Okay, what time exactly? You kind of asked him a lot actually did, and Beatie kept saying, I don't know. That's the exact same behavior though that we saw him exhibiting with the tram drive, right, and so that's the true is you there? There's two sides to his claim, right.

Either he was trying to make sure that Beattie said it's this time, It's definitely this time, and that he would have been able to say, well, I had to have been on the tram that time, you know, to establish a further alibi. Or he was trying to recall, okay, around that time, where would I have been. Can I prove that I'm wasn't there? Oh? And also was there anybody kind of like, did I see anybody I knew

hanging around? Because if I saw somebody I knew hanging around, they placed the phone call, they were responsible for me being gone when my wife was murdered, and they were probably responsible for murdering my wife. He's trying to figure

it out. So either on either side of that, I think um and Beatty said he couldn't recall what time the phone call had been placed, But it turned out that the Anfield Telephone Exchange somehow by the way that the call was placed, and I don't know what that means. I thought maybe through an operator, but they had it recorded and it wasn't exactly seven pm, so that's the time the call was placed. I think that I'm pretty sure that Wallace would have had to have been on

the tram by that point. But yeah, it's just everything that I've seen about the guy doesn't show me that he has it any Yeah. I don't think he had the guile. I don't think he was smart enough either, And I really don't. I don't think there was any motive, and I don't think at the time. Yeah, even if it didn't like his wife, you know, I mean, beating somebody to death, I would imagine this. You know, he didn't seem to have that kind of character. He didn't. Again,

he knew chemistry, why not just poisoner. Okay, so let's move on to the theory heading not just the theory, the theory heading that he totally did not do it and new end at the time? Right. The time is such a huge problem for me in this is like, where did he have the time to commit this murder? Yeah?

Where and clean up after himself? Yeah, that's the whole problem is even if say the milk Boy was totally off, totally wrong about the time, there's still the whole question of how he managed to do it and go somewhere and get all cleaned up and change and not be seen and not be seen. Of course this was like probably would have been pretty dark in Liverpool, six pm at the most. At the most, he had forty nine minutes, because it's the somebody saw him coming home at six thirty.

So it's substantiated that are at six. Sorry that he didn't get home any earlier than six, and he had to have left at six before probably, But you know, again, the most unaccounted time that we can give him is forty nine minutes. And that's not still not a lot of time, not really, it's still not And I'm not willing to say that the milk boy was wrong. I think he. I think he. There's every reason to believe that he knew exactly what time it was when he

picked up the milk money. Yeah, he saw that there was a church nearby and it was invisible actually from the house. But but it was about that time, but from not far away. That's why there's that little you know, it was either six thirty or sixty five. I don't know. I just the time is such a big problem for me. I interrupt, absolutely awesome, So I just I don't know. I hadn't really thought about this, and I've never actually

seen this given much credence at all. But if he has such an ironclad alibi, well maybe he did do it, but he hired it out, like he may have hired somebody and said, Hey, I'm gonna go get on the tram, go call me and then okay, I'm going to my appointment.

Wink wink. Go do your job and you'll get your twenty pounds in a couple of days when the heat dies down, because everybody's gonna you know, people do this all the time, and they they get somebody killed and they expect all of the sympathy to be thrown at them and they're the poor sad widower now and then it all backfires. Just doesn't seem Again, there are toldly Guet that it doesn't make sense for him because that's

not the way he seems. There are there there are people out there who say that he did actually hire somebody to do it. Um. There are there are people out there who's said that aliens did it too. So I mean that hated her. They just hated her for because she knew too much. I guess I don't know

she insulted their big eyes. Well. Another thing is that, like everybody talks about this case being perfect and there they admire it because it's like this mastermind chess game, which okay, one of the things that Wallace liked was chess. But he was horrible at it. He was so bad at it. I probably could have beat him. And I'm like, can't play chess at all. I mean, he was okay, he won everyone something. I thought it was kind of mediocre rather than actually terrible. He was a mediocre player.

I'm gonna say mediocre at best. But he was not this like chess mastermind. Chess wasn't his whole life. He liked it, sure, but he liked chemistry too. He liked botany too. He liked playing with electrics too. He liked playing the violin. He was awful of the violin. He liked me he wasn't really very good at He hadn't actually been playing the violin very long, really late in

life for sure. But I'm just saying that, like, it seems like it was a thing that he liked and it happened that, Yeah, the call was placed when he was at this chess club. But he didn't go that often. It also appears that the media at the time really drove home the idea that he was some kind of chess mastermind, because they're spreads from the time that you can see and they may look his long, spindly, pointy fingers. He obviously has a genius brain. All this really weird

claims you could get away with at the time. But I'm pretty sure the whole chess thing it's the media's fault. Yeah, yeah, But I just think it's it's interesting and I just want to make sure everybody knows he wasn't some like mastermind chess player. He was a mediocre at best player. I think it was an intelligent guy. Your smarts and your your gamesmanship are two. Yeah, you can, you can be very smart, but allows you chess player. I'm very

smart and I'm a terrible chess player. Oh you're very smart. Yeah, that's that's what I'm saying. No, I mean it's yes, that's true. You don't have to be smart to be a good chess player and vice versa. But I just don't. I don't I don't see it. I don't see him as this like calculate. I mean, he lost his job so many times, and he kind of like, he seemed kind of like this meek little I want to use

the term bumbling. I don't think that's right, but he just kind of seems like, you know, criminal masterminds want you to believe that. But didn't you see the usual suspects. Yeah, that's true, except for that he would have if he but if he had been taking that personality on, he would have appeared that way in his trial to right, he wouldn't have appeared detached and cold, right, which makes

makes me think it's more authentic. You know, all of the interactions to hear about before his wife's murder, I think he's kind of awkward and weird and you know, again bumbly, even though it's not the right word. And then after he sees his wife having been bludgeoned to death, he detaches and goes cold. And that seems like a normal human behavior to me, but apparently everybody else that seems like a criminal mastermind. So there you go. Yeah, So if it's not him, then who That's the big

question right there. There are a couple other suspects, actually, and one of them is a young man by the well he was young at the time. Excuse me, he's dead now he's not. He wasn't young. Uh. Yeah. His name is Richard Perry and he was twenty two years old, and he had very recently left or been fired from

his job with the Prudential. I didn't see anything they indicated that he had been fired that indicated that he had been less sort of let go, because apparently he had a similar job as as Lawless And I know, I know where you're going with that. But the things that I had read all indicated that he was there for a while after everything happened. But nothing that did I read indicated that he was fired. It just he

left a job similar company. I heard that there was a little bit of a little bit of embarrassment over money not turned in, and then his parents came forward and paid basically the thirty poundfference. Then then then you found something he didn't get Okay, I did not get fired exactly, but he did leave the job, and there's that he was he was asked kindly to leave, and that then there was a rumor that Wallace had played

a part in that. Yeah, there was that rumor that that Wallace knew because he was he had taken over some of Wallace's account when Wallace had about of meningitis, pneumonia. I think it was bronchitischitis, one of those meningitis is you're right, yeah, bronchitis, right. I think it was brons So Perry had been collecting and uh, somebody I think said, oh, you know, this account didn't pay and bowl and and

and Wallace thought that's odd. I'm sure they did. And it turned out that Perry had stolen some money and Wallace reported him or didn't report. You can read some accounts that say like and Perry just didn't report him and just but oh no, I'm sorry that Wallace didn't report Perry, but that Perry knew that Wallace knew, and or I believe more than probably Wallace reported Perry because he might have reported him, or he might have got to Perry and say, hey, dude, you either cough up

this money or I'm turning you in. And so that's when he went to his parents and got some money and paid it off and then left. Eventually left anycause he really fancied himself as a bit of a playboy, but he was always broke. Yeah, I've got all this money. Just not right now? Yeah? Yeah, speaking of Perry, he is he isn't He is a suspect for some people. And then there's other people who say that P. D. James,

for example, that the mystery writer. We're gonna talk about this, talk about that lay Yeah, no, no, no no, sorry, just keep your hat on. There's another did you did you hear anything about Joseph Caleb mars Marsden. Yeah, but we'll talk about that too, Okay. So it seems that actually collection agents at the time, would you know, walk around, like Steve was saying, and collect their money, their dues and keep them in a lock box, often overnight at their homes and then go in the next morning and

turn all the money in. And that's what that's what Wallace tended to do, although I don't think it was even a lock box. I think it was more like a cigar box a box. Yeah. Yeah, Perry apparently being the jerk that he was, um and he knew Julia. They because I guess Perry and Wallace had been mildly friendly at least when when Perry was doing Wallace's collections. Yeah, because he had to stop by at the end of

the day and turn the money over. Yeah, so the theory goes that he made the fake call in order to rob Wallace because he thought Wallace would have all all of these collections at the end of the next night. And he knocked on the door and Julia said, oh, it's you, Mr Perry, come in, and so he came in and bludgeoned her to death and tried to rob Mr Wallace of all of his takings for the day. But it turned out that it was just like a

couple of pounds. It was four pounds something like that, you know, some some tiny, tiny amount, and so it was, you know, that sucked for him, and he left, and I don't know, never came forward, obviously obviously understanding about the way that the way it worked is. And I'm not sure exactly what the timing was, but it's like there were some people who paid like once a week and other people paid like once a month. So on those days when the once a month payers are paying,

there's a lot of money. That's go be a lot of money, right, Yeah, So he miscalculated, maybe he misfigured, which was that all these people were going to be paying making their monthly payment or not. Yeah, so, um, there's a little evidence. I guess. I don't know how reliable it is, but that's going to say this, this is circumstantial to Yes, yeah, he did have a car.

Perry did. And apparently a mechanic either saw a bloody glove in Perry's car or saw Perry hosing the interior of his car out with a high pressured hose while his gloves were covered in blood. I'm not totally sure. And then um, Perry's alibi when the police questioned him was given by his then fiance, who later jilted, adacted the statement and offered a new statement saying that Perry had not been with her that night. Yeah what did I say? I'm oh, I yeah, retracted is what I meant. Yeah, sorry,

that kind of same thing, crossed out the same thing. Yeah, So lesson to all of your gentlemen out there. If you're in a relationship and you murder someone and your significant other is your alibi, do not jilt that person? What that person? Forever? Haven't you guys learned your lesson? Come on, guys. Yeah, anyway, she said, you know, Perry asked me to provide this alibi. I have no idea where he was that night. I mean, you know, he had time, he had a kind of possible motive. He

had a shoddy alibi, shoddier alibi than Wallace had. To be fair, there's actually more evidence for Perry to have done this than there is Wallace. Definitely, well there's not much in the way of evidence, but definitely it's it's possible where it doesn't appear to be really possible that

Wallace could have done it. Yeah. So the only other thing to like add to this is there were a couple journalists at the time who were pretty convinced that Perry had done it, and they questioned him, and he kept saying no, no, I didn't do it, No, I didn't do it. But they finally questioned him on his

doorstep in nineteen sixty six. No, no, no, on Perry's doorstep. Sorry, in nineteen sixty six, excuse me, And reportedly he had a shockingly in depth understanding of the case and including the fact that he knew lots of details that were like way unknown by the lay person and d tales on lower level witnesses like when they died or how they died, um and basically basically knowledge that somebody shouldn't have necessarily. It seems that he took a very keen

interest in the case. Yeah, although you know what, he was questioned by the police at the time, right, Yeah, I mean I don't think this is that unusual because number one, that was a very famous case. He was perfectly involved, So you know, I don't think as much as he can but to continue to learn about, like he tracked those witnesses and knew about their lives after the case. Maybe he was trying to solve it. Maybe he was. Yeah, maybe he was. Yeah. So that's the

evidence for Perry. And then there's one of the things we were that Joe was about to talk about and now we're going to actually talk about it is Pete James's claim that Perry made the prank phone call but then Wallace committed the murder anyway, and that they were totally unconnected. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she said, because Perry, because Perry apparently was a little a little angry over his

the whole incident at the Prudential. Yeah, so just for funny thought, he play a mean little prank and send him on a wild goose chase, and so that so it might have been him, and that would explain why the phone call was made from that particular phone booth, because he's gonna like observe him leaving for his chess

club thing. Perry was the one Perry, by the way, I was involved with an acting club and they actually met at the same place that the chess club did, and so he would have he would have known if he had seen him there. He had seen Wallace at the chess club at that place before, so he would

have had an idea. So it's Monday night, he sort of stakes at the place on Wolverton Street where they lived, and then season leaving assume it's for the chess club, goes to the goes to the phone booth, makes that phone call and leaves that message sending on a wild goose goose chase. But it was just a mean, practical joke more than anything else. It wasn't the whole thing about that street sounds so much like just a practical joke.

It was a snipe hunt. H Yeah. But then so I read and I read an article or two about Pete james Is claims that she had solved it and that she you know, she knew it was Wallace that had done. And I still don't quite get her argument. I don't either, Yeah, yeah, I mean I really don't. Actually I think her theory about Perry making the phone call is reasonable, but as far as Wallace still not convinced, I'm not either. And then we have one more theory

with Marsden, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joseph Caleb Marsden, Yeah, yeah, he had. And this is a game from John Gannon's book The Killing of Julia Wallace. Uh and he says, he alleges that Wallace hired he hired Joseph Caleb Marsden to do it through through Richard Gordon Perry because actually Perry new Marsden, and and so Marsden actually did the dirty work. And that's theory, yeah, yeah, or the other theory.

I also heard that Marsden did the dirty work for Perry, not for wall I mean, you know, there's you know, one of the things that is troubling about this case. For instance, is there a lot of books written about this case, and and some of the information in there

is shoddy at best. I would say, um, like one of them says that it's unknown if Wallace won the prize for the Chess Championship which he was competing, which is absurd because he played in one official maybe two maybe I don't know if that one on January nineteen counted or not towards the championship, but there were like seven games, eight games. He played in one and lost, played in another one and one, but it was it was different than he was in jail, so he definitely

didn't win. So I don't know why this book is saying we don't know if he's a series that ran through. I think that was March, March, very March, somewhere in there and it ended, so there's no way. Yeah, he couldn't. But it just goes to show you that even before the Internet existed, there there was the bills getting out there in the public spaces. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, you know what I just remembered while we were talking about this.

That second match that he played that night. He played against a friend who was ranked like a couple of ranks higher than him, so they were ineligible to play against each other in the championship. So he did win that game on the internet. Okay, he won the game, but officially he only played one game in the championship, and he lost, So he definitely and he was super proud of winning that match, which he should have been. He should have been because this guy was really good

chess player, actually a really good chess player. Yeah, but I guess you know. My final thoughts on this is, um, there's I'm just going to quote Gerald Abrams. He uh, he's a barrister who lived in Liverpool at the time. He's written a lot about the Wallace case, and he says, um quote. Journalists have agitated their readers for many years with the question was Wallace guilty? There are three approaches to this question. One Legally, it's academic, there was no

evan against him. To personally, his acquaintances, excluding those who revel in the troubles of their quote friends, seemed convinced of his innocence. The author takes the view that to vest Wallace with guilt in the circumstances to credit him with a mental power, a skill and agility, and a cold blooded nervelessness, nerveless efficiency of which he seemed utterly incapable.

And three scientifically, it is a much easier hypothesis to assume another person as a murderer whose task would have been easier mental effortless by the principle of simple explanation, Wallace was innocent, unquote. I especially like him saying it's crediting Wallas this with a lot of stuff that he was just not capable of, which is the most most of us, frankly, are not capable of. UM. So, yeah, I think he's entirely correct. I think either that or

he's he's a mad genius. Yeah, maybe, but I don't. I just don't think Wallace did it. But I don't know who did well. Again and again, I we said this in the very beginning, because we don't know anything about Julia. I mean, really, there's very little on record that we know about her. We don't know if there was something in her past. They the police were able to rule out. Neither of them had any lovers, you know, neither of them had any debts really that anybody could find.

So it seemed unlikely that it was wrapped up in Julia. I guess, but maybe it was the the amount of anger that was in the murder, because it was ethan brutal. It really means that somebody had a personal stake that they were taking out on her, whether it be a past jilted lover or a wrong family member or hell, I don't know, maybe she had a kid and she gave that kid up and that kid tracked her down all these years later her and said, you made me an orphan. I'm going to take it out on you.

I mean, I don't know what it is, or could be a bazillion things, or there could truly still be nothing. Yeah, it could actually it could actually be somebody who didn't even know her and just a serial killer who just weren't who needed money and he had money. Yeah. Again, maybe this is where Perry comes into. You know, he like he like knows this guy who's a real skuts bag and says, hey, I know these people aren't going to be home, and I know he keeps a buttload

of money. You know, then you run into the there. As far as I can tell, there was no sign of a struggle. I've never seen anything that there was a sign of a struggle. And she let the person in. Yeah, so you assume that she knew them and that it started out totally peacefully or at least mildly comfortable, and

they surprised her with the hit over the head. Yeah, and that leads to our last series and this this has actually been put out there, which is said, what's the Johnston's Yeah, yeah, which at least one, and it could have been really realistically, it could have been they had a key, they had a key, she knew them. They could have said, we're just going to come around for They would have known about the money. That she could have been cheating with the Johnston I mean, really

cheating with one of them, cheating with both of them. Really. I don't know if I wanted to cheat with Julie myself, I don't know if I wouldn't there, but hey, some people are into stuff like that. Yeah, anyway, see you have anything, I don't. This one just it's baffling. It's baffling because of the amount of build as Joe put it's out there, and the total lack of evidence for anything other than the fact that the only thing that we can confirm is that she died, most likely by

being beaten to death with the fire poker. The only thing pretty confident that she died by being beaten. But that's really the only only solid fact we have this entire case. Yeah, that's somebody somebody being into death on left with the poker. I'm not sure what the poker was never found, so yeah, but yeah, other than that, I can't say it's uh, you know, it's entirely possible to that somebody set Wallace up. You know, they made the phone call to the chess club deliberately from a

phone near his house to to you know, suspicion upon him. Yeah, it's totally possible, although it doesn't seem like he had any really enemies, I mean other than Perry. Yeah, I mean, it could have been somebody trying to create the actually commit the perfect crime. It's just a hobby sort of thing. And so here's what we're Hols and the area. So yeah, but but think about that. I mean, so he makes the phone call, no, I mean that that's gonna it's

gonna be recorded. It's going to cast suspicion upon him that he made to call himself, not realizing that Wallace is going to go out there and he's gonna like totally badger everybody sees along the way. I'm not realizing that and picking that. Yeah, I thought, yeah, he was gonna disappear, he murders the wife, he's gonna come back with no alibi, he's going to go off to the pokey and instead he comes back with a great alibi. That's true. Yeah, it's possible. This was a listener's suggestion.

Oh that's right. I'll say at the end instead of the beginning, we forgot. I totally forgot. Yeah. Mike b Uh suggested it in like September two thousand and fourteen. It's been a while, yeah, and then the artful Dodger on Reddit also suggested it recently. Um, and I think we've had a couple of there's been a couple over time. Yeah. Um, so thank you guys. If you want to suggest a topic for us, you can do that on our website in the about the show. It's probably the best place

to do it, but you can. Well that's where everybody goes to do it. I don't know why, but that's where they go. Yeah. Um. That website is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can also stream us there, leave a comment about the show. You can find our links to the PayPal, to the Patreon, and to merch. You are probably listening to us on iTunes. If you are, leave a comment and a rating. Those are helpful to us. Um.

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breaking even my credit card loves it. Oh no, no, no, no, I know what you're getting, fire miles or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, Um, all of that having been said, I think we're gonna get on out of here. Yeah. Yeah, So thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week, folks. Bye bye, bitter guys. I guess we'll hear them next week. We won't see them, yeah, well they'll hear us. Yeah that's true.