[14] The bottle itself had inexplicably been removed from its customary place (a trolley at the end of the ward) and placed beside the child's cot. She was found guilty but her elderly second husband, Alfred Merrifield, who seemed to be completely complicit in the crime, escaped without punishment. [26] When asked to provide his fingerprints, Griffithswhose niece had been in Queen's Park Hospital at the time June Anne had been abducted[27]supplied them without hesitation. As LancsLive's resident historian I have been researching the lesser known murders and true crime incidents that have stained Blackpool, Burnley and Blackburn's history red with blood. Lee Kenyon, 35, stabbed Jim Murray, 51, in the chest after a row in Largs Road in Blackburn, Lancashire on 2 October. June's murder provoked mass media coverage as papers across England followed updates of the police investigation closely throughout May of 1948. In a joint effort between local police forces and senior detectives from Scotland Yard, the Detective Chief Inspector in charge of the investigation, DCI John Capstick, then proposed that every male at or over the age of 16 who lived or was in the vicinity of Blackburn (then a town of 123,000 inhabitants) between 14 and 15 May be fingerprinted. As always you can unsubscribe at any time. Due to his height Haslem's faced a record breaking execution. Queens Park Hospital in Blackburn, June was taken from the ward and murdered on the other side of the building. He attended St Anne's Roman Catholic School on Felliden Street and later joined the illustrious ranks of the Welsh Gaurds. Those who continue to kill their wives are known as Bluebeards, after the 15th Century French fairytale. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. "FreeBMD: Births Registered: July, August, September 1944", "Freedom of Information: Records Released as a Result of Freedom of Information (FOI) Requests", "The Fingerprint Society Commemorates 60 Years Since Landmark Fingerprint Identification", "The History of the First Mass Fingerprinting Operation", "Federal Bureau of Investigation Law Enforcement Bulletin", "A Brutal Murder Begins an Unusual Investigation", "The Blackburn Child Killer and Rapist who Changed Criminal Forensics Forever", "Split Mind Defence in Child Murder Trial", "Peter Griffiths. blackburn, lancashire murders. Wearing a grey T-shirt and a mask over his face . On the rare instance a member of the public did refuse to give his fingerprints, this individual was visited by a senior police officer, who in each instance, succeeded in obtaining the individual's fingerprints. [19], Peter Griffiths did not lodge an appeal against his conviction. [3], The investigation into the murder of June Anne Devaney was a milestone in the history of forensic science, being the first time a mass fingerprinting exercise had been employed to solve a murder in the United Kingdom. In huge debt, Bill murdered the woman for her money. Blackburn daily updates and information - direct to your email inbox. Miao was hanged for the murder in 1928 but the crime still fascinated the public. | He was demobilised in February 1948, surely one of the last to be released from the army, three years after the war came to an end. A depiction of William Fish bearing down on Emily Holland. Seven men have been jailed for life for the murder of a Lancashire law student who was mistakenly gunned down in a botched drive-by shooting. The ward where June was taken from, her cot is the second one on the left, on the floor you can see white marks where bare feet had made an impression on the waxed floor. His lawyer pleaded insanity on the part of Wren but, like so many cases at the time, this was ignored. Det Supt Andy Cribbin of Lancashire Police said . One Lieutenant Holt returned from the First World War injured and shell shocked. Det Insp Mark Dickinson said Mr Scott's death was being treated as an "isolated incident and there is not thought to be a wider threat to the public". We use your sign-up to provide content in the ways you've consented to and improve our understanding of you. sweet things to write in a baby book. Her 31-year-old father Albert was a foundry worker at the Northrop Loom company and her 33-year-old mother Emily worked as a mill winder and had given birth to her new baby sister Margaret on May 5. VideoRecord numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. The incident went down in legend however, inspiring a song called the ballad of Private McCaffery. Nigel Scott, 58, was discovered unconscious on the pavement in Clarendon Road East, Blackburn shortly after 10:00 GMT on Sunday. "Well, if they are my fingerprints on the bottle," he told the officer. Henry Starr stabbed his wife Mary so much and so ferociously that the surgeon's examining her mangled corpse could fit his fist through one of the wounds. June was admitted to Queens Park Hospital suffering with Pneumonia on May 5. Unable to take the rejection he slipped into Frances' house and slit her throat with a razor blade. Dr Ruxton not only killed the pair after growing increasingly jealous of his wife and her supposed affair, but set out about dismembering them. Being so short, Max required one of the longest recorded drops in British history for him to be killed instantly using the humane long-drop method. Victim: Jim Dawson Age: 46 What happened: On a rainy night in March 1934, farmer Jim Dawson was walking home to the manor house of Bashall Hall after drinking in the Edisford Bridge Hotel, near Clitheroe. Mr Scott's family said they were "devastated" by his tragic and sudden death. [n 4] He had then decided to walk around in an attempt to "sober up" before returning home. They had a witness, Dr Bailey, who had treated Griffith's father for Schizophrenia. - On May 17, 2020, Aya Hachem was shot dead on King Street in Blackburn. The murder of June Anne Devaney is a British child murder which occurred on 15 May 1948 when a girl aged 3 years 11 months was abducted from her cot while an inpatient at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, Lancashire. He was employed at a cotton waste factory but had found a new job in August 1948, working at the nearby Appleby Flower Mill doing night shifts. He had then picked up the Winchester bottle to use as a weapon in the event any member of staff had attempted to challenge him, before he had chosen June Anne as his victim. 05 August 2021. To demonstrate this, enlarged copies of both sets of fingerprints were displayed to the jury, with Inspector Campbell indicating 16 ridge characteristics which were in agreement on both sets of impressions. Dr Ruxton not only killed the pair after growing increasingly jealous of his wife and her supposed affair, but set out about dismembering them. In 2018, 21 years on from her murder, Lancashire Police issued a fresh appeal in hopes of finding her killer. The public were getting restless and parents were growing scared. A nurse told the police, and later the Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News, that she had seen the face of a man peering through one of the hospital windows and later heard a car driving away. Video, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story, Prince Andrew offered Frogmore Cottage - reports, Beer and wine sales in Canada fall to all-time low, Bieber cancels remaining Justice world tour dates, Trump lashes out at Murdoch over vote fraud case, Man survives 31 days in jungle by eating worms, Eli Lilly caps monthly insulin costs in US at $35, Ed Sheeran says wife developed tumour in pregnancy. By this time the police had taken the fingerprints of the 2,000 people who had access to the hospital and put them against the set found on the bottle. [38], Just weeks prior to the execution of Peter Griffiths, all the fingerprint records obtained from individuals who had been in the vicinity of Blackburn between 14 and 15 May were publicly destroyed in a mass pulping exercise at a local papermill. Blackburn. A "much-loved" father who was found lying in the street with serious head injuri Bill worked as a man, sat in pubs drinking and swearing before telling people that he had gone to have special procedure performed at a hospital to change gender. he was determined to catch the killer and if it took weeks of strenuous checking then he was willing to do it. It took a jury just 22 minutes to find him guilty on Friday, October 22. [10], A subsequent post mortem revealed that June Anne had died of shock due to both extensive internal injuries and multiple skull fractures. He showed no remorse for he did, blaming his intoxicated state but did end his formal statement with a sentence indicating he wished to behangedfor his crime. Among those to testify on behalf of the prosecution was Inspector Colin Campbell, who testified as to the prints on the Winchester bottle being a precise match for the samples Griffiths had twice provided for investigators, and which he readily acknowledged were his own. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most notorious murders in Lancashire's history. Read the full story here. Each individual had been eliminated. I am not ashamed to say I saw it through a mist of tears. It looked as though she had been partly conscious when her attacker left her bleeding in a pasturage. On the day after the 22-year-old lost Date of imprint from date of execution, August 14, 1876 -- Capital Punishment UK site via WWW, viewed January 8, 2008. He would hand himself in to Burnley police station admitting to the crime and telling officers: "I don't know what made me do it.". (Image: who-did-we-think-we-were.webnode.com). This does suggest that Griffiths chose to remain in the army and could have been part of one of the battalions of Welsh Guards stationed in Palestine and Israel after the war as the British government and the United Nations sought to create a Jewish state. All the children in wards CH4 and CH3 on the night of 14-15 May were under the age of seven. The trial lasted for two days. A murder inquiry has begun after a woman who was hit by a car in a "dreadful" and "deliberate" act died. . 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The 22-year-old refused to actually talk about what he done to June, only saying that he had killed her in a fit of rage because she had started crying after he had carried her from the ward. It is bounded to the south by Darwen and forms the authority of Blackburn with Darwen. Gunshots heard in area before 19-year-old found dead, detectives say Seven men have been found guilty of murdering a law student, Aya Hachem, in Blackburn last year after a longstanding feud between two tyre firm owners. [9], Shortly after midnight on 15 May, nurse Humphreys was in the ward's kitchen preparing the children's breakfast when she heard the cry of a small boy emanating from Ward CH3. At the pawnbrokers they were able to recover the suit and trousers worn by Griffiths on the night of the murder, matching bloodstains on the clothes with June's own. Latest Blackburn news, including the latest headlines on crime, weather, property, employment, local news and much more on the Lancashire town. [19], The mass operation began, and a special card was developed so that the identifiable sections of the perpetrator's left hand found upon the bottle (the left forefinger, middle finger, ring finger and a section of the left palm) could be recorded swiftly. (After hearing Griffiths' recollection of the events, Dr. Alaistair Grant privately conceded that Griffiths was of sound mind.[19]). He initially denied all involvement in the harrowing events of June's murder but as soon as DCI Capstick told him about the fingerprint match Griffith's guise slipped. [11], Nurse Humphreys made a quick search of the ward, desperately attempting to find June Anne, before alerting other staff to the fact a child was missing. It is unlikely that this ever happened but Bill was convicted of killing 68-year-old Nancy Ellen Chadwick, an eccentric in Rawtenstall who was known to have inherited large sums of money. Murder probe after woman killed in suspected shooting in Blackburn. This time, despite his best efforts and usual tricks of signing the death certificate himself, the authorities found that Victoria had been poisoned using morphine. They were also sentenced for the attempted murder of the intended target, Pacha Khan, then 30, also from Blackburn . [28], Peter Griffiths was arrested by DCI Capstick as he left his Blackburn home to attend work on the evening of 12 August. Tyre firm boss Feroz Suleman, 40, arranged the . Griffiths claimed to have drunk at least 11 pints of, This claim to have been offered a lift by an unknown stranger in a car was called into question by a taxi driver named Bernard Regan who informed investigators that on the night of the murder, he had given a lift to a man matching Griffiths' description, who had specifically requested to be driven to a quarry located adjacent to the Queen's Park Hospital. She checked the ward, soothed the child six-year-old Michael Tattersall[9] and returned him to his cot, noting as she did so the child in the adjacent cot June Anne Devaney was sound asleep. The death of a secret millionaire by the name of Ruth Clarkson in 1936 came as a shock to the whole of Nelson. 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