The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

DEATH OF A MILLIONAIRE by Julian Symons

At seven a.m. on the morning of 8 July 1943, the Duke of Windsor, former King of England and then governor of the Bahamas, took a telephone call. His friend and local businessman, Harold Christie, was on the line with the shocking news that Sir Harry Oakes had been brutally murdered in his bed. Oakes was one of the richest men in the British Empire. According to Christie, having spent an undisturbed night at the multi-millionaire’s luxury Bahamian home after a dinner party there, he had discovered Oakes’s battered and partly burned body not long after daybreak. The Duke took personal charge of the investigation and called in the police-but not the local police. Neither did he summon Scotland Yard from London, nor even the American FBI. Instead the Duke called the police department in Miami. Their investigation was a sham. They ignored the obvious suspect: Harold Christie himself, Oakes’s business agent. Instead they arrested a twice-divorced French-Mauritian playboy, Alfred de Marigny, who had fallen foul of Bahamian society by marrying Oakes’s eighteen-year-old daughter Nancy. The accused son-in-law was tried and acquitted, leaving the question of who killed Sir Harry Oakes unresolved. Julian Symons (1912-94) was one of Britain’s leading crime novelists and critics, hailed as the heir to Dorothy L. Sayers or Agatha Christie. He was a highly versatile man of letters who believed strongly in the literary value of crime and detective novels. Symons was fascinated by real-life crime, and in Sweet Adelaide (1980) proposed a solution to the Victorian case of Adelaide Bartlett (qv, Murder Hath Charms in this collection). In 1960 he published A Reasonable Doubt, a collection of true-life cases in which he questioned the verdicts in three British murder cases, and recapitulating others, such as the Oakes case, which remain unsolved.

There was nothing unusual about the last day in the life of the Canadian millionaire, Sir Harry Oakes. He planted trees at Westbourne, his home near the Bahamas Country Club in Nassau. In the afternoon he played tennis at the Club with his friend Harold Christie, a local estate agent and a member of the Governor’s Executive Council.

That evening there was a small dinner party at Westbourne, with Christie and two other friends of Oakes’s as guests. The party broke up early but Christie stayed the night, as he often did. He told Sir Harry good night, went to his own room, which was separated from Sir Harry’s by a bedroom and a bathroom, undressed, crawled under the mosquito net and went to sleep.

Christie woke after daybreak. He went to the screen door of Sir Harry’s room on the northern porch and called “Hi, Harry”, but got no reply. He then went into the bedroom, and there saw the millionaire’s body. Oakes was lying on the bed, his body burned in several places. Fire was still smouldering in the mattress. The mosquito net was burned. There were burns on the carpet and on the wardrobe, and a fine soot was lying about the room. Christie did not notice all these things at once, but he saw enough to call a doctor and the police. Sir Harry Oakes was dead. At some time during the night he had been attacked, and his skull fractured by a hard, blunt instrument. Death was caused by this fracture, by a brain haemorrhage, and by shock.

Sir Harry’s sudden and violent death shocked the whole island. The Duke of Windsor, who was governor-general, cancelled all his appointments so that he could take a hand in the inquiry. He telephoned to Miami, and the Florida police arranged to fly out two experts at once. Sir Harry Oakes died on the night of 7 July 1943, and on the following day Captain E. W. Melchen, homicide investigator, and Captain James O. Barker, fingerprint and identification expert, arrived. Sir Harry’s body had been taken by plane to the United States for burial. Now the plane was recalled for an autopsy. Melchen and Barker moved swiftly. Three days after the death Sir Harry’s son-in-law, Marie Alfred Fouqueraux de Marigny, was charged with murder.

So opened one of the most curious crime puzzles of this century, a puzzle still unsolved. It is remarkable partly for the characters of the participants, and partly because “expert evidence” of identification through fingerprints has seldom, if ever, been so utterly destroyed in cross-examination.

Let us look at the people and their backgrounds. Sir Harry Oakes was a remarkable man by the standards of any period. He had tramped Canada in youth as a poor prospector. Kicked out by a railway guard when he hitched a lift in a car travelling north to Northern Ontario, he found the second richest goldfield in the world on Lake Shore, one reputed to bring him an income of a million pounds a year.

Oakes looked for the railway guard and had him pensioned. His generosity was multifold, his influence international. He gave £90,000 towards the rebuilding of St George’s Hospital. He had homes in Florida and Maine, a house in Kensington Palace Gardens with separate flats for each of his five children by the Australian girl he had married, an estate of 850 acres in Sussex. When he decided to settle in the Bahamas, he financed Bahamas Airways for inter-island communication, built Oakes Airfield, and stocked a 1,000 acre sheep farm with sheep specially imported from Cuba. In the early days of the war he had made a gift of £5,000 to the Ministry of Aircraft Production for a fighter plane, and more recently had given £10,000 to provide two Spitfires, named Sir Harry and Lady Oakes.

The multi-millionaire, now in his late sixties, was a man of simple and unpretentious tastes. In the Bahamas he wore often the slouch hat, khaki shirt, corduroy breeches and top boots of a prospector. Generous in the ordinary affairs of life, and indulgent to his children, he was not a man who took kindly to having his wishes thwarted. He made no secret of his disapproval when, in 1942, his daughter Nancy secretly married Alfred de Marigny, two days after her eighteenth birthday. The marriage took place in New York, just after Nancy had left school. Sir Harry and his wife learned of it on the evening after the wedding. It is hardly surprising that they were displeased, and what they knew of the man generally called Count Alfred de Marigny cannot have reassured them.

He was not, as his name implied, a French nobleman, nor was his name Marigny. He had been born in Mauritius, and although his mother’s name was de Marigny, his father’s was merely Alfred Fouqueraux. The Count had blended the names and added the title, although his friends called him Freddie. He had come to the Bahamas in 1937 with his first wife, was active in yachting circles, bought and sold estates. He was a fast, fluent talker, a playboy devoted to all kinds of sport, lavishly hospitable. Where his money came from-whether, indeed, he had any money-was not known. In fact, he was in receipt of £100 a month from his first wife.

From the beginning Sir Harry disliked his son-in-law, and an incident a few months after the marriage widened the estrangement. Nancy became very ill with typhoid while travelling with her husband in Mexico, and her state of health on recovering from this was so bad that an operation was necessary to terminate her pregnancy. Marigny came into hospital at the same time for a tonsil operation, and occupied the room next to his wife’s. Sir Harry told him to get out of this room, or he would kick him out. Marigny left the hospital. His feelings were not openly expressed at the time, but may be imagined.

On 10 February, Marigny went to see a lawyer named Foskett, who acted for the Oakes family, and asked Foskett to do his best to establish good relations with Sir Harry. He was a gentleman, Marigny said, and he was not treated as one. Foskett said that he disapproved of the way in which Marigny had pursued Nancy in New York, and had married her without the knowledge of her parents. He refused to give any help. Five days later Foskett prepared a new will for Sir Harry by which, although the body of the estate was to be divided among the five children, none of them obtained a share until they reached the age of thirty.

In the following month there was a furious scene. Sir Harry went to Marigny’s house in Nassau where his eldest son, sixteen-year-old Sydney Oakes, was staying the night. He made Sydney get up, dress and leave. He was like a madman, said the foreman of Sir Harry’s Nassau estate, as he called Marigny a sex maniac, said that he had better not write any more letters to Lady Oakes, and threatened to horsewhip him if he did not leave the Oakes family alone. After this Nancy wrote a letter in which she said that the Marignys were cutting themselves off from the Oakes family until they had confidence in Alfred.

So much for the background. How had Marigny spent the evening of 7 July? With his wife Nancy away in the United States, Marigny, in the company of his friend and fellow Mauritian the Marquis Georges de Visdelou Guimbeau, had entertained the wives of two RAF officers to dinner. Mrs Dorothy Clark and Mrs Jean Ainslie testified that Marigny drove them home at one-thirty in the morning. This, however, did not provide him with an alibi, since the time of death was placed between half past two and five o’clock. Marigny said that he had gone straight home, and his friend the Marquis de Visdelou was prepared to support that statement.

A neighbour had seen a light on in Marigny’s room between twelve-thirty and four a.m. on the vital night. On the following morning, very early, he had come in to the local police station, with bulging mouth and wild eyes, to make some routine inquiry about a car.

Slowly the prosecution accumulated evidence. Fingerprint expert Barker found the print of Marigny’s little finger on a screen drawn across Oakes’s bed. He also carried out a heat test and found that Marigny’s beard, and the hair on his hand, forearm and head all showed signs of scorching under a microscope.

Homicide investigator Melchen found smudge marks in the hall. He reconstructed the case to show that Sir Harry had staggered into the hall, pyjamas aflame, had gripped the stair railing and tottered against the wall. Then he had been dragged back to his room, and the bed set on fire.

Melchen said Marigny had told him: “Oakes hated me for marrying his daughter, Nancy. I hated him because he was a stupid old fool who could not be reasoned with.”

The prosecution suggested that Marigny, tired of attempting to reason with Sir Harry, had planned and executed his murder, and then attempted to burn the body. The strong points of their case were the expert evidence relating to fingerprints and scorched hair. It was essential to the prosecution to prove these beyond question in court.

Into the small court room at Nassau people crowded every day to watch the case, bringing sandwiches and ice cream sodas, often sitting two to a seat. The preliminary investigation in the Magistrates’ Court had opened a week after Marigny’s arrest. It was adjourned more than once, dragged on through August. The trial itself finally opened on 18 October in the Supreme Court, before Sir Oscar Daly, Chief Justice of the Bahamas. The Attorney-General, the Honourable Eric Hallinan, led for the Crown, with one of the colony’s leading lawyers, the Honourable A. F. Adderley, to assist him. The Honourable Godfrey Higgs led for the defence.

The trial lasted more than three weeks, with preliminary challenging of many jurors by both sides, and several others providing medical certificates to say that they were unfit to serve. During those three weeks the prosecution saw the case steadily slipping away from them, because of the inefficiency of many of the police officials who worked on it.

Consider that vivid reconstruction of the case made by Captain Melchen, when he said that Sir Harry had staggered into the hall, tottered against the wall and been dragged back to his room. In face of positive medical evidence that Sir Harry never got out of the bed in which he was found, Melchen retracted this evidence. He admitted that no analysis had been made of the material used to light the fire in the bedroom. Certain hand marks on the wall of Sir Harry’s room had not been measured.

There followed the curious story of the bloodstained towels. Major Herbert Pemberton, head of the CID in the colony, had removed a bloodstained towel from Sir Harry’s bed. He had also found a towel with what appeared to be bloodstains on it in Christie’s bedroom.

While giving evidence in the Magistrates’ Court Pemberton had forgotten all about these towels, and indeed denied seeing them. He was tired, he explained, and didn’t recollect the matter. As a matter of fact the towel in Sir Harry’s room had been in his possession for some weeks, and he had forgotten all about it. As for the towel in Christie’s bedroom, why, it had just been left there. He had not made a note of finding the towels, Pemberton told an astonished court room, and did not think they were important.

How had bloodstains got on to Christie’s towel? The estate agent explained that when he found Sir Harry’s body he poured water in his mouth, wet a towel and wiped his face with it. He believed that the towel came from his own bathroom. There were certain bloodstains on the glass door and screen door of Christie’s bedroom, and he said that these were probably from his own hands, after he had found Sir Harry.

A strange story was told by Captain Sears, the Assistant Superintendent of Police. Driving in Nassau on the fatal night Captain Sears had seen a station wagon with Christie sitting in the front seat, and somebody else driving. Sears, however, must have been mistaken, for Christie said positively that he did not leave Westbourne on that night.

The severest blow struck at the prosecution came with the evidence of Captain James Barker. It was evidence which at times turned the tragedy into something like a farce. It was also evidence of historical importance about the methods of obtaining fingerprints.

The first step in taking fingerprint evidence is usually to photograph the prints. This fingerprint expert, however, had left his fingerprint camera behind. Perhaps Pemberton might have one? Well, yes, he had, but it was out of commission.

Without bothering to make any further inquiries about cameras or to send for his own camera, Barker proceeded to take prints by “lifting” them on to Scotch tape. This is a recognized method. When he ran out of tape he “lifted” them on to rubber, a procedure which has the effect of destroying the original print. Having done this, he forgot all about the print on the screen for ten days when, he said, he examined it and found that it was Marigny’s.

Judge Daly called Barker’s conduct “quite incomprehensible”, and his forgetfulness was really extraordinary. In court he identified the place on the screen where the print had been found-and it turned out to be the wrong place. He said that certain lines on the screen were not made by him-and they turned out to be marked with his initials. Looking at the lifted print, this expert was unable even to say which way the finger was pointing.

There was worse to come. It was obvious that, for the fingerprint evidence to be effective, Marigny must have had no possible access to the screen before it was fingerprinted. Now, Marigny had been taken upstairs at Westbourne to be interviewed on the day Barker took the prints. Had he gone before or after the work was done? In the Magistrates’ Court all the police officers agreed that it was after.

Pemberton said the screen was under constant police guard. Two other police witnesses said that Marigny, on strict instructions, had not gone upstairs in the morning, while the screen was being fingerprinted. Melchen confirmed that he had taken Marigny upstairs between three and four in the afternoon.

At the trial, however, Mrs Clark and Mrs Ainslie said that they had been summoned to Westbourne that morning, and that Marigny had been taken upstairs between eleven o’clock and noon. Now, quite suddenly, the prosecution evidence on this point collapsed. The police guards admitted that they had been mistaken about the time, and so did Melchen. It was just a mistake, he said.

“What a mistake,” defence counsel commented ironically. “What a coincidence that you and the constables should make the same mistake.”

In his final speech for the defence Higgs plainly accused these winesses of perjury. While Melchen was examining Marigny upstairs Barker had come to the door and asked if everything was OK. The defence suggested that Marigny had been taken upstairs deliberately, to get his print on to the screen.

By the time that Marigny went into the witness box, the incompetence or corruption of the police had made his acquittal almost inevitable. He explained that the burnt hair on his beard and forearms had been caused when he lit a cigar over a candle in a hurricane shade. He was a confident witness, laughing, joking occasionally, winking at his wife.

The jury voted nine to three for acquittal. They unanimously recommended Marigny’s deportation.

Talking to reporters afterwards Marigny told them to keep out of prison. “It’s a hard life,” he said. “I could see that I had a good foreman to guide the jury. By the way, did you notice that he was the only one who was awake all the time?” Asked if he would try to solve the mystery he said, “I’ll leave that to Erle Stanley Gardner.”

Echoes of the case can be heard occasionally through the years. In 1950 a Finnish seaman said he had been told the name of the Oakes murderer by an American landscape artist, and a search was made for a blonde model named Betty Roberts, who gave evidence in the case. When found, Miss Roberts, now happily married, proved to have nothing to say. In this same year Betty Ellen Renner, who came to the Bahamas to investigate the case, was murdered and put into a well. At this time, also, Marigny was heard of, working as a part-time French translator in New York. His marriage to Nancy Oakes had been annulled. In 1953 Barker was shot dead by his son, after a quarrel. But these are mere sidelights on some of the characters. Neither Erle Stanley Gardner (who was there as a reporter) nor anyone else has ever solved the problem: who killed Sir Harry Oakes?

Any investigation of the Oakes case is bound to leave one with the feeling that much less than the whole truth has been told. But in the welter of contradictory evidence, and the evasions of police officials (the jury expressed their regret that no evidence had been obtained from Lieutenant-Colonel Erskine-Lindop, Commissioner of Bahamas Police, who left to take up another appointment between the Magistrates’ hearing and the trial), some questions stand out. They are questions that seem, strangely enough, never to have been asked:

(1) Oakes was killed in his bedroom, as the result of a blow with a heavy instrument. The night of the murder was stormy, but still, there must have been considerable noise. Why was it not heard?

(2) Where did the inflammable material come from that was used to set the fire?

(3) And why, having decided to burn the body, did the murderer make such a bad job of it, when he had apparently all night at his disposal? Was he disturbed? Or was the body-burning an elaborate pretence to lead suspicion away from the real murderer?

There are other questions too, which it is not possible to ask publicly, even fifteen years after Marigny’s trial. But the Oakes case is one on which the file is not completely closed. It is possible, at least, that one day an answer will be provided to one of the most remarkable murder mysteries of the twentieth century.