Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 7, July, 1955

The Repeater by Edward D. Radin

He knew just how to get away with murder. He confessed.

When a killer gets away with murder in real life, it’s usually because he has learned the wisdom of silence, a polite way of saying keeping his mouth shut. But there is one case on record where the killer deliberately confessed to a murder he had committed in order to beat the rap! What happened makes up not only the most unusual case in the modern history of Scotland Yard but one of the strangest in the annals of crime.

In some ways, Shaftesbury Avenue in London can be compared to Broadway in New York City. At one point the street is part of Piccadilly Circus, the Times Square of London, and is filled with bright lights, theatres and tinsel. But about a half-mile away it is just another street of small, unpretentious neighborhood shops.

This story opens on Shaftesbury Avenue, a half-mile from Piccadilly Circus, in London’s West End. One of the small stores on the street had gone out of business and a sign company was anxious to recover its property. On the morning of October 2, 1931, Douglas Barker, manager of the sign firm, arrived at the vacant store accompanied by Frederick Field, an electrician. Barker was to superintend the removal of the sign.

The men did not have the keys to the building, and, after checking the front and back doors and the rear windows, found all of them securely locked. They telephoned the real estate agent and received permission to force open a back window upon their promise to repair any damage.

The store consisted of a large front display area with a smaller stock-room in the back, the two sections connected by a narrow corridor. Using a heavy screwdriver, Field had no trouble prying open a rear window and the two men entered the dusty stockroom.

Barker opened the door leading to the narrow hall and paused on his way through to kick aside some newspaper spread on the floor. He stopped in surprise when his foot landed on something solid and he swept the paper away. His frightened outcry brought Field rushing to his side.

The body of a pert little blonde was stretched out in the corridor. A piece of cloth had been inserted into her mouth as a gag and a green belt that matched her coat was tied tightly around her neck.

To his credit, Barker did not pull rank. Although he longed to get away, he realized that he was in charge and so he sent Field out to notify police while he elected to remain with the body.

The electrician dashed along the street until he found a bobby and blurted out the story of the discovery. The cautious officer visited the store first and then notified headquarters.

Within a short time technical experts, and officials were at the scene with Superintendent George Cornish, one of Scotland Yard’s Big Five, heading the investigation.

Because his territory included many of the best-known sections of the city and crimes committed in these areas are worth more newspaper space than crimes elsewhere, Cornish had become an almost legendary figure. Reporters boasted in print that he never had lost a case and helped the legend along by referring to him simply as “Cornish of the Yard.” His appearance did not hinder the legend. A tall slender man, he moved quickly and gave orders swiftly. In profile, his fine features looked as if they had been chiselled by a master sculptor. His trademarks were a rolled umbrella and a derby hat, worn over closely cropped hair, and he was seldom without either, regardless of the weather.

From the dust in the vacant store, officials were able to reconstruct the crime. The murder had occurred in the rear stockroom, drag marks in the soot showing how the killer had pulled the body into the corridor where he covered it with newspaper. Time of death was set by the police surgeon as within the past twelve hours, probably during the night. The killer first had throttled the girl with his hands, later using the gag and belt.

Technical experts worked over the interior of the store without coming up with anything in the way of a clue. With the exception of the window opened by Field there was no sign of any forced entry. The killer must have had a key to get in and, with no indications of a struggle in the tell-tale dust, it was obvious that the murdered girl had entered the vacant store willingly with the man.

To Cornish, the crime appeared to be a planned murder rather than a spur-of-the-moment strangling. The girl’s pocketbook was missing and all identifying labels had been ripped from her clothes. The killer had not panicked, even spending time to spread newspapers over the body.

The victim’s flashy clothes indicated that she was more at home in the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus than in the quiet section where her body had been found and this was borne out when neighborhood storekeepers filed in to look at her and none of them recognized her. Slightly over five feet tall, she was a shapely and pretty girl in her early twenties.

The mystery of how the killer had entered the locked premises was solved when Cornish questioned the building agent and Field. The realtor said that he had just one set of keys for the front and back doors and had given them to Field four days earlier so he could remove the electrical wiring from the sign in preparation for its dismantling. Field had not returned the keys.

Questioned on this point, Field said that while completing his earlier work on the sign, a man entered the store and presented a note from the real estate office instructing him to turn over the keys. He did so. The visitor told Field that he had rented the store and was going to open a leather goods shop.

On the lookout for business, Field promptly suggested that the man hire him to make any electrical installations. The caller was agreeable but said he had to finish drafting his plans for the store layout. The electrician left him in the store but arranged to meet him later that night at the Piccadilly station of the underground where Field customarily boarded the tubes on his way home from work.

The man showed up on time, outlined the changes in lighting he wanted, and after haggling briefly over price agreed to the terms and paid the electrician an advance of two pounds against the work to be done. Since the other had drawn only a rough sketch of the store, Field suggested that they return to the shop so the new tenant could point out exactly where he wanted some lights located.

The new storekeeper thought it was a good idea but after searching his pockets remarked that he had forgotten to bring along the keys. He told Field to wait for him and that he would be right back.

“I stood there waiting and waiting,” Field told Cornish, “and getting hungrier by the minute.” After standing in the station for more than an hour, the electrician finally gave up and went home. He never saw the man again.

The renting agent said the store had not been leased and the man who presented the note to Field was an imposter.

The electrician quickly endeared himself to police by proving to be a witness with a photographic mind. Instead of the usual vague description officials are accustomed to receiving, Field was able to furnish a detailed account of the caller. He placed his height as somewhat taller than Superintendent Cornish, at about 6 feet 1 inch, said he was slender and in his early thirties. The man had mentioned returning from a holiday and his face and hands were deeply tanned. He wore his hair short at the back and sides, and had a thin black moustache. One of his right upper teeth either had a large gold filling or was gold capped. The observant electrician also noticed that he was wearing an expensive gold wristwatch which he described as “wafer thin.” The man had been attired in sports clothes, wearing a jacket and matching plus four knickers in a biscuit-brown color. The expensive cloth had been rather distinctive, containing a repeated two-inch square pattern. The visitor also wore a brown tweed cap.

With this satisfying description of the probable killer relayed to all patrolmen in the city, Cornish turned to the task of identifying the victim. No matching description of the girl was found in the missing persons files and men were assigned to check the theatrical district and the Soho restaurants and nightclubs. Meanwhile, Field agreed to accompany officers through the West End area to see if he could spot the man to whom he had given the keys.

Cornish’s hunch about the girl being an habitué of night spots was quickly confirmed when bartenders in various places recognized her from the morgue photograph, but the investigators were puzzled because she seemed to be known by different names in different places. One of the men who had taken the girl out supplied an address in Chatham and detectives hurried there.

They were startled to find the girl alive, an almost exact double of the murdered blonde. She revealed that she was a friend of the victim and they frequently went about posing as each other, playing jokes on their admirers.

The murder victim was Nora Upchurch, a gay girl about town, who had left home several years before to live by herself in London. She had not written to her family in that time. While Nora had dates with many different men, her double said she had been “sweet” about a sailor and intended to marry him.

Questioning of some of her male admirers brought out a conflicting picture of the murdered girl. To some she was just another good-time girl whose world centered about the tawdry nightclubs. To others she was a quiet girl who enjoyed good music, quoted poetry, and read good literature. Cornish realized that as a girl of many moods she had attracted different kinds of men, making the task of finding her killer all the more difficult.

A roll of film was found in a camera in her room but when it was developed the pictures proved to be just snapshots of several girl friends taken on an outing. The missing pocketbook offered a possible lead and several of her closest girl friends were asked to examine the purses in her room to determine which one was gone. The girls then were taken on a trip through the wholesale district where they located an exact duplicate. Photographs of the model were distributed to newspapers with readers urged to notify Scotland Yard immediately if the missing purse was found.

Cornish had no difficulty in tracing Nora’s sailor boy friend. He became a red-hot suspect when he was found to be lying about his-movements prior to the murder. Although he claimed he had been at his base all that week, Navy records disclosed that he had received leave twice in a week to go to* London.

Confronted with this evidence the sailor soon poured out a story of how he had been torn by doubt as to the virtue of his intended bride. He had seen Nora on the Saturday before her murder, obtaining his first pass for this date. When he took her up to her room to say goodnight he was shocked when he saw a man’s umbrella there. Nora said she had borrowed it from the father of a friend when she had been caught in a sudden downpour.

The unhappy youth returned to his base but after stewing about the story of the umbrella for several days, he managed to wangle a two day pass. He returned to London and played detective for two days-attempting to follow his fiancé around without her knowledge. He lost track of her both nights and still did not know whether she was true to him when he had to return to quarters. He was able to present an unshakeable alibi for the night of the murder and he was released.

Field was still working with detectives, making nightly tours with them on the lookout for the tall man in plus fours. But it fell to the lot of a suburban patrolman to pick up a tall slender suspect wearing knickers. Though he had no moustache and no gold front tooth, his description did tally fairly closely with the one supplied by the electrician.

Scotland Yard was notified and Field, who was on tour with detectives, was ordered by radio to rush to the local station house. He was shown the plus fours the suspect had been wearing but said the brown was too light in color. But when the man himself was led into the room, Field walked right over to him and remarked, “Hello, I haven’t seen you since that night at the tubes.”

The prisoner denied ever having seen Field before. When the discrepancy of the gold tooth was pointed out, the electrician shrugged. “I thought I saw a gold tooth, but he certainly looks like the same man.”

Moving with traditional British caution, Superintendent Cornish ordered the suspect detained for further questioning but did not book him for murder.

The case appeared to be solved when several days later Cornish announced he would present evidence at a coroner’s inquest. Newsmen flocked to the hearing ready to write how Cornish of the Yard once again had woven a net around the suspect, but when the inquest opened they found the Superintendent had other ideas. He presented a parade of witnesses, all of whom definitely cleared the suspect in plus fours. As the hearing continued, the reporters suddenly realized that Cornish actually was demolishing the story told by Field and that he suspected the electrician really was the killer.

While Field had been busy riding around with detectives, Cornish was conducting a quiet but searching investigation into his background. He presented evidence that Field had been in debt for two pounds, the exact amount that the stranger in plus fours had supposedly handed over to him. Field could offer no signed agreement covering the work to be done nor could he supply the name of the man who had hired him.

The Superintendent marshaled other facts. Field was the last known person to have the keys to the vacant store. By his own story, he was in Piccadilly Circus about the time of the murder, and he came into possession of the two pounds at the same time Nora’s purse had disappeared. Although married, Field had the reputation of being a woman-chaser and he played the bright-light district, where he could have met Miss Upchurch.

At the same time Cornish meticulously pointed out that he had not been able to locate the missing keys or the girl’s handbag, so Field’s story could not be disproved.

The puzzled coroner’s jury promptly cleared the man in plus fours but refused to take any action against Field, returning with a verdict of willful murder by some person unknown.

It was apparent to observers that Cornish of the Yard was in danger of losing his first case. He would need more evidence to move against Field and he had none.

Even though he continued to work on the case, almost two years passed with no results. Then in July, 1933, Field unexpectedly surrendered himself to police for the murder of Nora Upchurch, explaining, “I want the whole matter cleared up.”

Field confessed the murder to Cornish. He said that he had met Nora several months before the strangling and had fallen for her. They met on clandestine dates. He claimed that one night he admitted to Nora that he was married and the girl promptly began blackmailing him, demanding payments or threatening to inform his wife of their affair. On the night of the murder he met her at a busy corner and lured her to the vacant store for which he had the keys. He took her in through the back door and, once she was inside the stockroom, strangled her.

He proved to be hazy about many details, claiming that he could not remember all that had occurred. Asked about the missing purse and keys, Field said he had buried them under a tree about ten miles from London. The electrician took police to the spot but even though the officers dug and sifted around all the trees in the areas, they were unable to find either the keys or the purse.

The confession appeared to be a complete vindication of Cornish and once again mention was made of how he had never lost a case. But, as it turned out, it was the lull before the storm. The only evidence against Field was his confession and when he took the stand he not only repudiated it but said he had taken the unusual step of confessing to a crime he had not committed in order to clear his reputation.

He painted a picture of himself as an innocent man forced to walk around with a cloud over his name as a result of the unjust suspicions of Superintendent Cornish. Because of the police official’s constant prying he had been unable to get a job and found that former friends were shunning him, afraid they would be called in for questioning if seen in his company.

Standing erect in the prisoner’s dock, he said he could not allow the situation to continue. “While matters stand this way, I know people are thinking that I might have done it. I could not do anything or say anything to change their minds. I wanted to be arrested and put on trial to have my innocence proved in a court of law.”

The presiding judge glanced at the prisoner and remarked that he had chosen an unusual method, the understatement of the year.

“It is the only way,” Field replied. He pointed out that his confession was vague because he did not know the details, since he had not murdered Nora Upchurch.

With the validity of the confession in doubt and the failure of police to produce such vital evidence linking him to the crime as the missing handbag and keys, the case against Field collapsed and the judge in his charge to the jury directed them to return with an acquittal verdict.

The case was lost forever to Cornish of the Yard. Even if the keys and handbag now were found, it would be impossible to try Field again. He stepped out of court a free man, though Cornish still was convinced that he was the killer. The Superintendent realized now that Field had talked but not enough; he had cleverly omitted the details from his confession in order to get away with murder.

Even so, the case was far from over. Several weeks later Field confirmed Cornish’s theory when he publicly boasted that he had committed the murder. He sold his detailed confession to a newspaper, in which he still claimed that he had murdered Nora because she was blackmailing him. In it he wrote, “I have never had any regrets. A judge has classified blackmail as a moral murder, so it is my contention that she got what she deserved.”

Cornish of the Yard was grim when the second confession appeared in print. “He thinks now that he’s cleverer than the law and he’ll try something else,” he predicted to friendly newsmen.

However, it seemed that Cornish had made his second mistake. Field seemed to enjoy the white light of notoriety for a brief time and then he quietly enlisted with the Royal Air Force. He kept to himself and performed his duties as storekeeper efficiently, avoiding getting into trouble.

As the years passed, Field was forgotten. In April, 1936, the public and Cornish of the Yard had a new interest. Mrs. Beatrice Sutton was found strangled in the bedroom of her home in Clapham, a London suburb. The killer had vanished and officials could find no motive for the crime. Separated from her husband, she had lived quietly and did not run around with men. Her husband, who was shocked by the crime, was cleared when he was able to account for his movements on the night of the murder.

Cornish was assigned to the difficult case. He studied the meagre evidence, hoping to find a clue that somehow had been overlooked. He read again the description of how the strangling had been done and startled his colleagues by suggesting that the murder had been committed by the forgotten man, Field. He called for the dusty files on the murder of Nora Upchurch and read aloud from both reports. The method of strangling of both women was almost identical. Nora’s body had been covered with newspapers; Mrs. Sutton’s body was covered with pillows.

A request was made to the Air Force for information on Field. The former electrician had gone AWOL in March, the week before the murder, and was still absent.

The long hours of work Cornish had put in previously checking on Field now began to pay off. He had a list of every woman the electrician had known then and officers were assigned to visit them. The missing soldier was found at the home of one.

When Field was brought into Cornish the scene was a playback of the one three years earlier. Once again Field was suspected of murder by the Superintendent. Once again there was no evidence to link him with the victim. And once again Field voluntarily confessed.

“I murdered Mrs. Sutton,” he calmly told Cornish of the Yard. “I did it because I want to commit suicide and I can’t carry it through myself.”

He explained that he had run away from the Air Force in order to destroy himself. On the day of the murder he had purchased a bottle of poison but found that he did not have the courage to take his own life. Then he met Mrs. Sutton on the street, told her he had no place to sleep and asked if she would put him up for the night. The kind-hearted woman invited him to her home.

“I went there solely to murder,” he said in his signed confession. “I put my hands around her throat and pressed for two or three minutes. She struggled a little at first and then lay still. I relaxed my grip, but then she moved her legs and I gripped her throat again, and after two or three minutes she did not move again. I put two pillows over her face because I did not want to see it. I left the flat, closing the door behind me. I had never seen the woman before in my life, and had not the least malice toward her. I just murdered her because I wanted to murder someone. I had not the nerve to take my own life. Now the hangman can do it for me.”

Understandably, Field’s confession to his second murder caused a sensation in England. British newspapers, by law, are forbidden to comment on a case before trial, but there was no lack of discussion about it in every pub in the land. And everybody asked the same questions: What was Field up to now? Would he pull the same sort of trick he did in the Upchurch murder?

Hours before the trial got underway extra officers had to be rushed to Old Bailey to hold back the large crowd seeking entry to the small courtroom.

Once again history repeated itself in a situation too unbelievable to be dreamed up by any fiction writer. The only evidence against Field was his voluntary confession and Field again promptly repudiated the confession he had given to Cornish.

The only part of his confession that had been true, he told the jury, had been his desire to die and his lack of nerve. “So I thought I would stick myself in the position where somebody else would do it.”

The position he stuck himself into, he maintained, was his false confession to the murder of Mrs. Sutton.

He said he had met Mrs. Sutton several days before the murder and she had allowed him to sleep in a small rear room. He had been in his room on the night of the murder and heard her quarreling with a man. Their voices suddenly stopped, there was an abrupt silence for some ten to fifteen minutes and then he heard the man leave.

When he failed to hear Mrs. Sutton moving about, he went to her bedroom, knocked on the door, but received no reply. He then opened the door and found her dead on the bed, covered with the pillows. That was all he knew about the crime. He had not seen the killer and doubted that the other was aware he was in the house.

The courtroom spectators looked at Cornish of the Yard wondering how he would counteract Field’s new story. Although no mention of the Upchurch trial had been allowed, the facts were familiar to everybody there.

Cornish leaned over and whispered to the prosecutor who then announced to the court that the Crown had a witness in rebuttal.

The Scotland Yard man had not been caught this time. Immediately after Field’s arrest he had interviewed the woman at whose home the suspect had been picked up. Field had come to her only several hours after Mrs. Sutton had been murdered. He seemed excited and told her, “I have done something. I will try and tell you what it is, but if I can’t you will see it in the newspapers.” He said nothing beyond that.

The woman repeated Field’s words on the witness stand. The prosecutor hammered home that four-word sentence, “I have done something,” and suggested that since he admitted being in Mrs. Sutton’s home it could only mean that he had done in Mrs. Sutton, murdered her.

Field had talked just four words too many after his second murder. There were no missing keys or purse to befog the issue this time and he was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to be hanged.

In an appeal for a new trial before the Lord Chief Justice of England, his attorney admitted that Field’s story was fantastic but raised the possibility that both confessions had been due to mental disturbance. The court turned down the suggestion and denied the appeal.

On June 30, 1936, Field was hanged at Wandworth Prison. Although, officially, he was executed for the murder of Mrs. Sutton, as far as Cornish of the Yard was concerned, Field went to the gallows for the murder of Nora Upchurch. Cornish never would have connected Field with the strangling of Mrs. Sutton had not the details of his first lost case been etched so deeply in his mind.