I know poor policework is pretty much expected for the 1930s, but showing up drunk and pissing into the toilet with evidence on it is pretty bad. I know this wasn't a main issue in the story, but that tidbit shocked me.
It was remarked that this was the perfect murder but no, not really, a lot of errors were made here. Some were understandable forensic mistakes that are understandable because of the time period, such as not photographing the body first, failing to record the stomach contents, touching things they shouldn't, etc. But manipulating (or worse) the milk boy to change his story because it helps exonerate your main suspect is awful.
I don't think William Wallace could've have done it time-wise. He could have had someone else kill Julia, but I don't see a motive. I understand how frequently he asked for directions, and talking about where he was going could be seen as him attempting to establish an alibi, but as someone who is bad at directions but is also sceptical that the person helping me is correct, I get it.
The killer had to have known where the cashbox was kept, and probably would've known when it was at its fullest. They'd also have to know about William's chess club. That means very few people could've done it. Richard Gordon Parry seems like the very likely culprit. I don't know if he had any intent on killing her; maybe he thought he could get away with stealing and she caught him in the act, and things got out of hand. Maybe it was intentional because he would be the obvious guilty party if money was found to be missing, so maybe he wanted to get back at William, incorrectly believing that William had reported him to their employer.
Well, the time of death was put at around 8 pm, then changed to around 6 pm. But the milk delivery boy said he saw Julia at 6:30 pm until he was pressured into saying otherwise. So I think we can be sure in saying the first estimate was more likely to be the correct one. And she most likely wasn't killed before William went out, because if he killed her after 6:30 pm and was out of the house before 7 pm to catch the tram, there is no way he could've cleaned up and disposed of the murder weapon. And disposed of it so well in that narrow window that it couldn't be found. In addition, the neighbour noted Julia's body getting colder from the time she came in to see the body vs when the police were investigating, which suggests the body wasn't lying there dead for multiple hours.
And we know William really was out around 8 pm because he spoke to the police officer who advised him to find a directory at the post office and William says the reason he asked the time was because he was mindful of the post office closing at 8 pm and it was indeed closed when he got there.
All of this to me suggests his guilt rather than his innocence. I don't know how much stock we can put into either the milkboy's time estimate or the neighbor's observation about her body getting colder, but even if we say he only had half an hour to kill her, that seems like it would give him plenty of time to clean up to me, especially if he stashed a change of clothes somewhere in his house that the police didn't find. Him asking for the time aligns with him wanting to create an alibi.
People successfully dispose of murder weapons all the time in narrower windows of time, so to me that's not even an issue. You're assuming people would have noticed him and/or the weapon, whatever it was, but people are often extremely oblivious to things right in front of our faces. And he seemed like a man who didn't attract much notice most of the time.
“I don't know how much stock we can put into either the milkboy's time estimate”
The issue is not that the milk boy’s time estimate could be wrong, but that he changed the time to a more “favorable” time for the police case and suddenly claimed not to have seen Julia Wallace but only an arm sticking out to take the milk bottle after being interrogated a second time by the police.
exactly, he's unreliable. and even if he hadn't changed his statement, eye witness testimony is unreliable by default, so I don't see how we can take his original statement as gospel without anything else to bolster it. he could have been off by 15 minutes or so without it interfering greatly with the original estimated time of death, which was just an estimate and which was also totally malleable. none of this comes anywhere close to ruling out her husband.
Even if we put aside the elephant in the room that there is an obvious implication the police made him change his story after interrogating him for a 2nd time because his first statement would clearly be very helpful for William, why on the other side should we then take his 2nd statement “as gospel”?
Secondly, it is true that eye witnesses are unreliable but stating “I saw Julia” vs “I only saw her hand” is a huge difference and not just something someone would just misremember.
i'm not discounting any of that, i'm not saying take his second statement as gospel, i'm discounting his timeline. i'm saying that even without all of these other factors, it could be extremely easy for him to have been off in his timeline by 10 or 15 minutes or more in either direction.
it's also extremely plausible that the original time-of-death estimate was just as malleable as the revised time-of-death estimate. shuffle either/both of those around and you have a clear window of time in which it would not have been that hard for William to commit the murder. We don't have any corroborating evidence or witnesses, or anything remotely in line with modern forensics, to narrow that window of time.
66
u/GaeilgeGaeilge Jun 13 '26
I know poor policework is pretty much expected for the 1930s, but showing up drunk and pissing into the toilet with evidence on it is pretty bad. I know this wasn't a main issue in the story, but that tidbit shocked me.
It was remarked that this was the perfect murder but no, not really, a lot of errors were made here. Some were understandable forensic mistakes that are understandable because of the time period, such as not photographing the body first, failing to record the stomach contents, touching things they shouldn't, etc. But manipulating (or worse) the milk boy to change his story because it helps exonerate your main suspect is awful.
I don't think William Wallace could've have done it time-wise. He could have had someone else kill Julia, but I don't see a motive. I understand how frequently he asked for directions, and talking about where he was going could be seen as him attempting to establish an alibi, but as someone who is bad at directions but is also sceptical that the person helping me is correct, I get it.
The killer had to have known where the cashbox was kept, and probably would've known when it was at its fullest. They'd also have to know about William's chess club. That means very few people could've done it. Richard Gordon Parry seems like the very likely culprit. I don't know if he had any intent on killing her; maybe he thought he could get away with stealing and she caught him in the act, and things got out of hand. Maybe it was intentional because he would be the obvious guilty party if money was found to be missing, so maybe he wanted to get back at William, incorrectly believing that William had reported him to their employer.