THE LADY KILLER - AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN
A tall, handsome young Air Force hero, home from the war...to women his easy charm was utterly fatal. Neville Heath was more than a fraud... he was certainly suave, but also a violently depraved sex-maniac.
Lunchtime had come and gone, yet there was still no sign of life from Room No. 4 at the Pembridge Court Hotel in Notting Hill, London. The maid responsible for the room, eager to get on with her cleaning and tidying, was understandably irritated. She peeped through the keyhole. The room was in darkness and there was nothing to be seen. She knocked at the door again. Still there was no answer.
Perhaps she should inform someone. She sought out Mrs. Alice Wyatt, who helped her father-in-law to run the 19-bedroomed hotel, and explained the situation. Mrs. Wyatt looked at the clock. It was 2 p.m. She thought it was time to investigate. She let herself into the bedroom with her pass key and drew back the curtains. In one of the single beds, the sheets and blankets pulled up around her neck, lay a young, dark-haired woman. It was hardly necessary to move the bedclothes to establish that she was dead. The red bloodstains all over the second bed told their own story.
The police arrived within minutes. Beneath the bedclothes they found a badly mutilated body. The dead woman's nipples had been practically bitten off. There were 17 weals, apparently made by the plaited thong of a whip with a metal tip, across her back, chest, stomach, and face. Her ankles were bound together with a handkerchief and she had bled from the vagina. It was clear that her face had been washed, but there were still traces of blood on her cheeks and in her nostrils. The blood on the second bed suggested that she had been killed there and her body moved after death — while interlacing markings on the pillowcase pointed to a bloodstained whip having lain there.
Female companion
The victim's body was removed to Hammersmith Mortuary where Dr. Keith Simpson, the pathologist, carried out a post-mortem. He found the woman had died from suffocation, probably caused by a gag or by having her face pressed into a pillow.
Meantime, the police had started the hunt for the killer. The trail did not prove difficult to follow. The woman’s body was found on Friday, June 21, 1946. Room No. 4 had been let the previous Sunday to a man with a female companion (not the dead woman), who had signed the register “Mr. and Mrs. N. G. C. Heath”, giving an address in Hampshire.
Within hours, Superintendent Thomas Barratt, who was in charge of the case, had established that Mr. N. G. C. Heath was Neville George Clevely Heath, a handsome, 29-year-old former officer, six feet tall and the possessor of a criminal record, although not for violence. The police had also uncovered the identity of the dead woman. She was 32-year-old Mrs. Margery Gardner, occasionally a film extra, separated from her husband and fond of the gay, bohemian life.
On the night before the killing, she drank and danced with Heath at the Panama Club in South Kensington. Around midnight they left the club together, hailed a cruising taxicab and directed it to the Pembridge Court Hotel. Harry Harter, the cabdriver, remembered the journey well. "I picked them up in the Old Brompton Road and put them down about 50 yards from the Pembridge Court Hotel,” he told detectives. “The man asked me how much the fare was. I said it was 1s. 9d. and he gave me 2s. 2d. Then they walked towards the hotel. He put his arm round the woman's waist and I saw them enter the hotel gate.”
The police were well pleased with their progress. It was beginning to look as if an arrest was merely a matter of days. It was decided to release Heath's name and description to the newspapers as a man who, in the cautious legal phrase, the police would like “to assist them with their inquiries”. At this point, however, the police faced a dilemma. They had collected four photographs of Heath from his home in Merton Hall Road, Wimbledon. Should these photographs be published along with Heath’s name and description? It seemed on the one hand that identification would prove a critical issue in Heath’s trial if, as expected, he proved to be the murderer, and widespread publication of his likeness might easily prejudice the chances of a conviction. If, on the other hand, Heath's suave and easy charm masked a sex maniac, he might easily kill again unless he were captured quickly. In the end the decision was taken not to release the photographs. As a result, another woman was to die.
Name and description
While his name and description was being flashed to police stations and newspapers all over the country. Heath was in the Sussex seaside resort of Worthing. He had travelled down to the South Coast on the day Margery Gardner's mutilated body was found, and booked in under his own name at the Ocean Hotel. The purpose of his visit was to look up yet another of the many women in his life,
A RAKE'S PROGRESS...THAT ENDED IN MULTIPLE MURDER
Police pieced together details of Heath’s extraordinary career of crime and service in the armed forces, during which, in the course of ten years, he managed to get himself commissioned and dishonorably discharged on three occasions. In outline, his dossier reads:
February 1936. Obtained short-service commission in R.A.F.
August 1937. Court-martialed for being absent without leave for nearly five months. Other charges included escaping while under arrest and “borrowing” a non-commissioned officer’s car without permission. Sentenced to be cashiered. Commuted subsequently to dismissal.
November 1937. Placed on probation on charges of fraudulently obtaining credit at a Nottingham hotel and attempting to obtain a car by false pretenses. Eight other offences, including posing as “Lord Dudley”, taken into account.
July 1938. Sentenced to three years’ Borstal treatment for housebreaking and stealing jewelry worth £51 from a friend, and for obtaining clothing worth £27 by means of a forged bankers’ order. Ten other offences taken into account.
September 1939. Released from Hollesley Bay Colony because of the outbreak of the war.
October 1939. Enlisted in Royal Army Service Corps.
March 1940. Commissioned and posted to the Middle East.
July 1941. Placed under arrest after a dispute with a brigadier. Went absent without leave. Court-martialed for these offences and for obtaining a second pay-book by making a false statement; making a false statement to his commanding officer, enabling him to be absent from his unit; and on five charges relating to dishonored checks. Sentenced to be cashiered.
November 1941. Absconded from the troopship that was bringing him to England when it docked at Durban in South Africa. Went to Johannesburg where he passed himself off as a Captain Selway, M.C., of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
December 1941. Enlisted in South African Air Force under the name of Armstrong. Commissioned.
May 1944. Seconded to Royal Air Force. Shot down on the Dutch-German border while piloting a Mitchell bomber.
August 1945. Court-martialed and dismissed the service in South Africa on six charges, three of conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline and three of wearing military decorations without authority.
February 1946. Arrived back in Britain.
April 1946. Fined at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court in South London for wearing a military uniform and decorations to which he was not entitled.
Yvonne Symonds, whom he had met at a dance in Chelsea the previous Saturday. After the dance he took her to the Panama Club. “Let’s find a hotel and sleep together,” Heath suggested. His new companion refused.
Heath spent the whole of the next day with her. He was at his most debonair and charming. Yvonne Symonds found him fascinating. When he proposed, she gladly accepted —although she had known him for only a few hours. Once again Heath suggested: “Let's spend the night together.” This time she agreed, and she was the “Mrs. N. G. C. Heath” who had occupied Room No. 4 at the Pembridge Court Hotel the previous Sunday night. Heath phoned her several times in the course of the week. Now, down in Worthing, he phoned again and arranged to take her out to lunch on the Saturday.
Utmost courtliness
By then the news of Margery Gardner’s killing was out, and, in the course of the meal. Heath suddenly said: “Yvonne, there’s been a nasty murder in London. Have you read about it in the papers?” Miss Symonds said she hadn’t. “I'll tell you all about it later,” Heath promised. He returned to the subject that night when he took her to dine and dance at the Blue Peter Club in Angmering. “That murder I mentioned,” he said. “It took place in the room we stayed in last weekend. I knew the girl. She was with some man who had nowhere to stay so I gave him the key to the room and went and slept somewhere else. The police — an Inspector (it should have been Superintendent) Barratt —got on to me and took me round to the room. I saw the body. It was a pretty gruesome sight.”
Miss Symonds did not doubt Heath's story for a moment. This, after all, was the man who had swept her off her feet, who, in their brief time together, had always treated her with the utmost courtliness and consideration. How had the girl died? “A poker was stuck up her,” replied Heath bluntly. “I think that’s what killed her —although Inspector Barratt seems to believe she might have been suffocated.”
Miss Symonds was horrified. “What sort of person could commit a brutal crime like that?” she asked.
“A sex maniac, I suppose,” shrugged Heath.
He took her home safely at the end of the evening and chastely kissed her goodnight. She was to speak to him only once again. That was the following morning after she and her parents had read Sunday newspaper accounts of the murder and a renewed appeal by the police —the first one had been published on the Saturday —for Heath to come forward. Miss Symonds immediately rang her fiancé at his hotel.
“My parents are very worried about the story in the papers,” she told him.
Heath remained the cool man-of-the-world. “I thought they would be,” he said laconically. Then he added: “I’ve got a car and I’m driving back to London to sort things out. I'll probably give you a ring this evening.” But he did not ring. Nor did he return to London. Instead he caught a train to Bournemouth where he booked into the Tollard Royal Hotel, using the improbable name of Group-Captain Rupert Brooke —Brooke being the brilliant young English poet who died in Greece in the First World War.
Until now, Heath had acted in a careless, almost reckless, manner for a killer who, presumably, did not want to be caught. Margery Gardner had been found in a room rented to him, and, in describing the murder to Yvonne Symonds, he had revealed an intimate knowledge of the crime. His claim that “Inspector” Barratt had taken him to the scene was quite untrue and would not withstand investigation if Miss Symonds talked. Before leaving Worthing, Heath therefore took his first positive step to try to point the finger of suspicion away from him. He wrote to “Chief Inspector” Barratt. The letter arrived on the police officer’s desk at New Scotland Yard on the Monday morning. It read:
“Sir. I feel it to be my duty to inform you of certain facts in connection with the death of Mrs. Gardner at Notting Hill Gate. I booked in at the hotel last Sunday, but not with Mrs. Gardner, whom I met for the first time during the week. I had drinks with her on Friday evening, and whilst I was with her, she met an acquaintance with whom she was obliged to sleep. The reasons, as I understand them, were mainly financial.
Invidious position
“It was then that Mrs. Gardner asked if she could use my hotel room until two o'clock and intimated that, if I returned after that, I might spend the remainder of the night with her. I gave her my keys and told her to leave the hotel door open. It must have been almost 3 a.m. when I returned to the hotel and found her in the condition of which you are aware. I realized I was in an invidious position, and rather than notify the police I packed my belongings and left.
“Since then I have been in several minds whether to come forward or not, but in view of the circumstances I have been afraid to. I can give you a description of the man. He was aged approximately 30, dark hair (black), with a small moustache. Height about 5ft. 9ins., slim build. His name was Jack and I gathered that he was a friend of Mrs. Gardner's of some long standing.
“The personal column of the Daily Telegraph will find me, but at the moment I have assumed another name. I should like to come forward and help, but I cannot face the music of a fraud charge which will obviously be preferred against me if I should do so. I have the instrument with which Mrs. Gardner was beaten and am forwarding this to you today. You will find my fingerprints on it, but you should also find others as well. N. G. C. Heath.”
The parcel containing the instrument never arrived, and for the next 13 days — from Sunday, June 23, until Saturday, July 6—Heath lived what was apparently the life of a carefree holidaymaker in Bournemouth. The guests, and the staff, at the Tollard Royal Hotel found him pleasant and amusing company. His entire wardrobe seemed to consist of grey flannel trousers and a mustard-colored sports jacket, and during most of his stay he appeared to have no cash, putting all his drinks on the bill, but nobody was particularly concerned. The man they knew as Group-Captain Rupert Brooke was obviously an officer and a gentleman.
It was also established that, while in South Africa, Heath was married in 1942 and had a son. His wife had divorced him in October 1945, on the grounds of desertion.
Within a couple of days of Heath’s arrival in Bournemouth, every police force in the country, including the local one, had a copy of his photograph as a wanted man. The decision not to release pictures to the newspapers was adhered to, however, even as the days passed, producing nothing but the inevitable crop of frustrating false leads as to Heath’s whereabouts. With each 24 hours that passed, death came a day nearer to 21-year-old Doreen Marshall.
Doreen Marshall was a pert and pretty ex-Wren (the Women’s Royal Naval Service), the daughter of a Pinner, Middlesex, company director. After being demobilized she suffered a severe attack of influenza, and her father decided that a few days by the sea would help to put her on her feet again. He packed her off to Bournemouth where she booked in at the Norfolk Hotel.
It is not exactly clear how her path crossed with Heath’s. His own account, written later, said: “On Wednesday, July 3, during the morning, I was seated on the promenade on Westcliff when I saw two young ladies walking along the front. One of these two was a casual acquaintance whom I had met at a dance at the Pavilion during the latter half of the preceding week (her Christian name was Peggy but I was unaware of her surname). Although I was not formally introduced to the other, I gathered that her name was “Doo” or something similar. The girl Peggy left after about half-an-hour and I walked along the front with the other girl whom I now know to be Miss Marshall. I invited her to have tea with me in the afternoon and she accepted.
Smilingly agreed
In the course of tea at the Tollard Royal Hotel that afternoon, Heath asked: “Would you care to join me for dinner tonight?” Miss Marshall smilingly agreed. After dinner they sat in the hotel lounge until shortly after midnight. Other guests noted that Heath seemed to be slightly drunk and, as the evening wore on, his companion appeared unhappy. At one point she begged one of the men present to order her a taxi. Soon afterwards, Heath cancelled it and said: “My guest has decided to walk home.” He left the hotel with Miss Marshall about 12.15 a.m.
“I’ll be back in about half-an-hour,” he told the porter.
“A quarter-of-an-hour,” snapped Miss Marshall.
Nobody saw her alive again. As for Heath, it was never established at what time he returned to the hotel. He regained his room by climbing a ladder and getting in through a window. It was, he explained later, “a little deception” on his friend the night porter. The mystified porter confessed subsequently that at 4.30 a.m. he had peeped into Heath’s bedroom to see if he was there. The guest was fast asleep.
Thursday passed apparently normally. So did most of Friday. Then the manager of the Tollard Royal Hotel, Ivor Relf, received a phone call from the manager of the Norfolk Hotel. “One of our guests appears to be missing,” he said, “and we believe she dined at your place on Wednesday.” He added that the missing guest, Miss Marshall, had come from Pinner, outside London.
Suave demeanor
Heath, in the meantime, showed no signs of agitation or excitement. The only changes in him —both significant, it was to turn out —was that he now seemed to have money in his pockets and had taken to wearing a silk scarf to hide a couple of scratches on his neck. There was nothing else about the demeanor of Group-Captain Rupert Brooke to arouse suspicion, and it was not until the Saturday morning that Mr. Relf got around to mentioning the phone call from the Norfolk Hotel.
Heath, playing it as coolly as ever, laughed off the notion that the missing woman might have been his dinner guest. “I believe she came from Pinner,” said Mr. Relf. “I have known that lady for a long while, and she certainly doesn’t come from Pinner,” replied Heath airily.
But he was now to take a step as extraordinary as his decision to write to Superintendent Barratt. He telephoned the police and asked if they had a photograph of the missing woman. The officer in charge of the case was out and Heath said he would ring again later. He phoned for a second time at 3.30 and, on hearing that the police did have a photograph of Miss Marshall, offered to come round a couple of hours later to have a look at it and see if he could be of any help.
He can hardly have suspected it, but the step he took through the door of the police station was to be his last as a free man. Heath identified himself as Brooke, but he was almost immediately recognized from the photographs circulated to police stations throughout the country as the man wanted for questioning about the death of Margery Gardner. Heath still insisted that he was Brooke. However at 9.45 that evening, Detective-Inspector George Gates told him: “I am satisfied that you are Neville George Clevely Heath and I am going to detain you pending the arrival of officers of the Metropolitan police.”
“Oh, all right.” murmured Heath, not, it seemed, particularly concerned.
Now the evidence began to pile up on all sides. Heath, who had gone to the police station without a coat, apparently believing that he would not be there long, asked if his sports jacket could be brought from the hotel. In a pocket the police found a cloakroom ticket issued at Bournemouth West station on the Sunday Heath arrived in the town. The ticket led the police to a suitcase which, on being opened, was found to contain a blood-stained scarf and a leather riding-whip with a plaited thong. The tip had worn away, exposing the metal underneath.
Artificial pearl
Detectives also found in the sports jacket the return half of a London-Bourne-mouth rail ticket, subsequently proved to have been the one issued to Miss Marshall, and an artificial pearl. In a drawer in Heath's hotel room was a soiled, bloodstained handkerchief, tightly knotted, with human hairs adhering to it. It was established also that, in the previous 36 hours, Heath had pawned a ring belonging to Miss Marshall for £5 and a fob watch for £3. But where was Miss Marshall herself?
A statement written by Heath after he was detained at Bournemouth hinted that she had probably left the town. After walking out of the hotel in the early hours of Thursday morning, it continued, they had “sat on a seat near the hotel overlooking the sea. We must have talked for at least an hour, probably longer, and then we walked down the slope towards the Pavilion. Miss Marshall did not wish me to accompany her but I insisted on doing so —at least some of the way. I left her at the Pier and watched her cross the road and enter the gardens. Before leaving her, I asked her if she would come round the following day, but she said she would be busy for the next few days, but would telephone me on Sunday if she could manage it. I have not seen her to speak to since then although I thought I saw her entering Bobby's Ltd., on Thursday morning.”
The body of Doreen Marshall was discovered in Branksome Chine on the Monday, two days later. It was the circling flies that led a passer-by, who had heard about a missing woman, to her. Her body had been dragged into some rhododendron bushes. She was naked except for her left shoe, but she was covered with her own clothing —underwear, a black frock and a yellow swagger coat —and some boughs of fir trees. Twenty-seven artificial pearls, which came from her broken necklace and matched the one found in Heath’s pocket, lay nearby. Her powder compact and stockings were some distance away and her empty handbag was found at the bottom of the chine.
Like Margery Gardner, she had been savagely mutilated. Her throat had been cut, causing her death. In places the wound was three-quarters-of-an-inch deep. Before that, her hands had been pinioned, but there were cuts on them suggesting that she had tried to fight off an assailant with a knife.
Question of sanity
Heath was charged with both murders, but his trial, which opened at the Central Criminal Court on September 24, dealt only with the murder of Margery Gardner. The horrifying details of Doreen Marshall's death came out in evidence, however. It was quickly clear that the real question was not whether Heath had killed the two women but whether he was sane. The defense did not bother to put him into the witness-box. They pinned all their hopes for cheating the gallows on insanity, and the debate about whether Heath was or was not in his right senses proved the only interesting part of the short, three-day trial.
At the end, however, the jury took only 59 minutes to find him guilty. He was sentenced on September 26 and executed on October 26. To the very last he remained the debonair playboy, completely in control of himself, ordering a grey, pinstriped suit, grey socks, grey shirt and polka-dot blue tie for his trial, asking for his diaries and address books to be destroyed once the verdict was known: “I have caused enough trouble in this world already without causing more.”
He refused to see any members of his family, but the day before he hanged he wrote two letters to his mother. The first said: “My only regret at leaving the world is that I have been so damned unworthy of you both.” In the second he wrote: “I shall probably stay up reading tonight because I'd like to see the dawn again. So much in my memory is associated with the dawn — early morning patrols and coming home from nightclubs. Well, it wasn't really a bad life while it lasted... Please don’t mourn my going—I should hate it — and don’t wear black.”
It was said that his last wish to the governor of the prison was for a whisky. Then, on reflection, he added: “In the circumstances, you might make that a double!”
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Blog written by Guy Hadleigh, author of Crimes That Time Forgot, the Macabre True Crimes & Mysteries Series, the Murder and Mayhem Series, the British Killers Series, the Infamous True Crimes and Trials Series - and many more!