Speaker 1: Unsolved mysteries. Out of deference to people who may still
Speaker 1: be living. Character names in some of these true unsolved
Speaker 1: mysteries have been changed. Murder has many tongues, and there
Speaker 1: have been times when these tongues have accused falsely, as
Speaker 1: for instance, the trial and conviction of Herbert Bennett was
Speaker 1: thought by many to be a miscarriage of justice. Not
Speaker 1: that Bennett was a desirable citizen, for that he most
Speaker 1: certainly was not. But guilty of murder. Would a jury
Speaker 1: today say not guilty.
Speaker 2: Where almost forty years ago they.
Speaker 1: Said he must hang. If that be so and they agree,
Speaker 1: then the murder on Yarmouth Sand stands today as one
Speaker 1: of England's unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: The scene is South Beach, Yarmouth, England, and the time
Speaker 1: six o'clock on a summer's morning. An early morning bather
Speaker 1: strides down the tide damp sand toward the sea. South
Speaker 1: Beach is deserted. But for this lone figure. Not a
Speaker 1: sound breaks the stillness, but the cawing of seagulls, the
Speaker 1: timeless beating of the waves on the shore. The lone
Speaker 1: bather stops, turns white, his eyes start in their sockets.
Speaker 1: A cry of horror, dies in his throat and turning,
Speaker 1: he runs down the beach. In a few minutes a
Speaker 1: police inspector, a policeman, and the lone bather staring down
Speaker 1: on the body of a beautiful woman.
Speaker 4: You found her here, not five minutes ago.
Speaker 5: That's right, inspector, is going from the morning swim. Not
Speaker 5: a thought on my mind.
Speaker 4: I almost stepped on it. She has been dead most
Speaker 4: of the night, I'd say some time.
Speaker 6: Anyway, we let the medical examiner decide that how how
Speaker 6: is she killed?
Speaker 4: Strangled? Strangled with a no hair bootlace, look tied in
Speaker 4: the reef. Now, no signs of a struggle either, Inspector. No,
Speaker 4: his hand isn't disturbed.
Speaker 6: Doesn't look like robbery either, since the rings are still
Speaker 6: on her fingers.
Speaker 4: I don't want to disturb her too much.
Speaker 7: But I can't find a single identifying mark on her clothing.
Speaker 4: Wait, here's a number, a laundry tag, number five nine nine.
Speaker 4: You live around these.
Speaker 5: Parts, yes, Inspector, But I never saw this woman before,
Speaker 5: and this isn't a very big place.
Speaker 4: She's in the city, all right, What are these shoes?
Speaker 7: The chance of following anything from footprints tied pretty near
Speaker 7: came up to her. That's true when you come right
Speaker 7: down to it, there isn't a clue as to who
Speaker 7: she is or who was with now. And on top
Speaker 7: of that, you can't even tryish the murder weapon. Practically
Speaker 7: everyone has bought bootlaceless like that one around her neck
Speaker 7: at some time or another.
Speaker 4: M nothing under her fingernails to indicate that she fostered
Speaker 4: her life. We know that the sand isn't even disturb
Speaker 4: but she could have been brought here after she was killed.
Speaker 4: Don't forget that. If you don't need me any more,
Speaker 4: I'll get dressed.
Speaker 5: I I don't think I'll go into my swim after all.
Speaker 1: With nothing but the laundry mark as a clue. The
Speaker 1: Yarmouth police combed the town for someone to identify the
Speaker 1: murdered woman. Dozens of people visited the morgue, but not
Speaker 1: one could say that they knew who the woman was.
Speaker 1: Late the day following the murder, a Missus Rudram went
Speaker 1: to the police to report that one of her boarders,
Speaker 1: a Missus Hood, had not returned to her lodgings for
Speaker 1: two days. The desk sergeant led the way to the morgue,
Speaker 1: motioning to Missus rudraam to follow him.
Speaker 4: Is that the woman?
Speaker 8: Yes, all the poor soul let her?
Speaker 4: All right, you're absolutely certain, yes?
Speaker 8: And besides, look at this I brought it along.
Speaker 4: Oh whilloose photographs? They take her on the beach.
Speaker 8: Why was it taken not more than three days ago?
Speaker 4: You're certain of that?
Speaker 8: Of course, I'm certain.
Speaker 9: Didn't the poor soul come to my room and show
Speaker 9: her to me? Told me she did that she'd had
Speaker 9: it taken that very day, and that was Friday.
Speaker 7: And we found the body Sunday morning, or inspector, inspector?
Speaker 4: What did it come here?
Speaker 5: Quick?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Found something?
Speaker 4: Flatty? Look at this photograph of the murdered woman. But
Speaker 4: it was taken only three days ago.
Speaker 8: That's right, it is, Although I don't see what there
Speaker 8: is in that to get all excited about.
Speaker 2: You don't.
Speaker 6: Well, look here and the photograph of this woman is
Speaker 6: wearing a chain looks like a silver chain with a
Speaker 6: watch of tats, right, sir.
Speaker 4: I noticed it and look at the body, no chain
Speaker 4: or what.
Speaker 8: She was wearing that chain, and watched the night she
Speaker 8: went out Saturday night.
Speaker 4: Tell us some more. You're the perfect mine of information.
Speaker 8: Well, I'm not one.
Speaker 9: You understand, to be asking questions and aborted and missus hood.
Speaker 9: She wasn't one to be saying much about itself, but
Speaker 9: she was.
Speaker 8: Going out to meet a man Saturday night because.
Speaker 9: She dressed herself with a lot of extra care and
Speaker 9: something else too, that the only man all she ever
Speaker 9: got with a couple of bluish gray envelopes. The Woolwich
Speaker 9: there was, and I remember she got one that morning
Speaker 9: and she was excited all day. Maybe it was a
Speaker 9: letter telling her to meet somebody that night, because she
Speaker 9: was seen by one of my neighbors waiting outside the
Speaker 9: station for the evening train from London.
Speaker 1: Thanks, come on, officer, this is where we can go
Speaker 1: to work. And to go to work, the police did.
Speaker 1: Every laundry in Woolwich was canvassed. Post officers were watched
Speaker 1: for bluish gray envelopes. Pawn shops came in for their
Speaker 1: share of scrutiny, but no signs of the silver chain
Speaker 1: or the watch could be found. Newspapers were loud and
Speaker 1: long in their denunciation of the police slowness in finding
Speaker 1: the murderer. Hints, none too veiled, were thrown out that
Speaker 1: a husband should be looked for, and all over England
Speaker 1: The main topic of conversation was the murderer on Yarmuth,
Speaker 1: saying terrible, that's what it is.
Speaker 4: The police are not doing their duties.
Speaker 9: If I had anything to do with it, I'd find
Speaker 9: that woman's husband by says.
Speaker 4: That the police know the murderers but won't make an arrest.
Speaker 8: See no business going to a place like that at night,
Speaker 8: married or not.
Speaker 4: More than likely was someone too prominent. And if the.
Speaker 8: Police can't solve the mystery, let them who can sarve?
Speaker 5: But take good gandal rage it more than we're not, say,
Speaker 5: hopeless muddling who'll be next?
Speaker 1: Day after day, Scathing letters to the press, burning hot editorials,
Speaker 1: speeches in parliament, a perfect furore of invective, harassing the
Speaker 1: police at every turn, phone calls from cranks, letters from
Speaker 1: amateur detectives, visits from maniacs.
Speaker 4: Who claimed that they could tell who.
Speaker 2: The murderer was. But one morning at the Woolf's.
Speaker 7: Police station, I mean, what's this, sergeant, first inspector is
Speaker 7: the murderer of the yarm of Sands mystery?
Speaker 4: What here's the evidence?
Speaker 5: Sir?
Speaker 7: Name is Bennett murdered. Woman's name was not Hood, It
Speaker 7: was Bennett. Bennett here works at Woolwich Arsenal.
Speaker 4: A lot of nonsense. I'll have you kicked off the
Speaker 4: fourth for this. I'm not finishing her head, Sage.
Speaker 7: Bennett has been going around with a woman by the
Speaker 7: name of Meadows. She thinks he's not married, and he's
Speaker 7: been posing as a single man for months. Jan He
Speaker 7: was at the arm of Saturday evening, landed on the
Speaker 7: eight train, went to the hotel and left for London
Speaker 7: again on the first morning. You think this is evident,
Speaker 7: and here, Inspector, is the final link the only thing
Speaker 7: needed to put the rope around his neck.
Speaker 4: Yes, but Shane and the watch.
Speaker 2: The sergeant spoke the truth.
Speaker 1: The chain and the watch placed the hangman's rope around
Speaker 1: Herbert Bennett's neck, and on a cold gray morning in
Speaker 1: March the following year, Bennett walked the thirteen steps that
Speaker 1: lead to eternity. But that hanging was not considered by
Speaker 1: everyone the solution to the Yarmouth Sands mystery. A great
Speaker 1: many people agreed with Bennett's attorney, the famous Marshall Hall,
Speaker 1: who stated that while the jury may have accepted the
Speaker 1: watch and chain in Bennett's possession as one and the
Speaker 1: same with that in the photograph of the murdered woman.
Speaker 2: It was not the same.
Speaker 1: In just a moment, you will hear a solution to
Speaker 1: the Yarmouth Sands mystery, a.
Speaker 10: Fame in the.
Speaker 2: Publis ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Inasmuch as any solution must have necessity be supposition, liberties
Speaker 1: of time, place and character exist in the solution for
Speaker 1: which you have been waiting.
Speaker 4: The scene is the home of one of New Scotland
Speaker 4: Yard's most.
Speaker 1: Able detective inspectors. The inspector is talking to one of
Speaker 1: his friends.
Speaker 2: No, Jim.
Speaker 5: Now that the years have rolled past and I've had
Speaker 5: more experience with circumstantial evidence, I don't believe that the
Speaker 5: jury would bring in a guilty verdict on the evidence
Speaker 5: presented at Bennett's trial.
Speaker 4: It was rather strong evidence, even if it was circumstantial.
Speaker 4: I know it was.
Speaker 5: Now. Department fully believes that they had a motive. Now
Speaker 5: forty years ago, any jury would consider that a man
Speaker 5: with a criminal record and who was posing as a
Speaker 5: single man though married, was guilty. I say that the
Speaker 5: jury would under these conditions consider that sufficient motive the
Speaker 5: murder there today they wouldn't.
Speaker 2: You think not?
Speaker 5: I wouldn't press the charge on such a motive.
Speaker 4: The fact that a.
Speaker 5: Man married man is in love with a woman not
Speaker 5: his wife, is not, in my opinion, motives the murder. Well,
Speaker 5: even allowing that what about the chain, That photograph was
Speaker 5: one of these things taken on metal, you know, the
Speaker 5: kind that they take at the beach for tuppence, It
Speaker 5: was such a poor reproduction that the jury wasn't really
Speaker 5: satisfying and justified in using it for identification as such
Speaker 5: a small article of that chain.
Speaker 4: And Bennett never confess to it.
Speaker 5: No, he maintained his innocence up to the last, and
Speaker 5: Marshall Hall always believed his client innocence. And Marshall Hall
Speaker 5: was one of the most brilliant legal minds of the day,
Speaker 5: besides being a shrewd judge of character, and his reputation
Speaker 5: is most certainly beyond reproach.
Speaker 4: You certainly have some of the seeds of doubt in
Speaker 4: my mind.
Speaker 5: You know, I've often wondered it. What would have been
Speaker 5: the results if the inspector and the officer who discovered
Speaker 5: the body had started their investigations along different lines that
Speaker 5: morning as they stirred looking at that woman's body.
Speaker 4: Not a sign of a struggle here at all. And
Speaker 4: her clothing isn't disarranged. No, pretty obvious that she was
Speaker 4: murdered someplace else and carried here.
Speaker 7: And look here this boot lace around her neck and
Speaker 7: tied with a reef. Now see the way was slipped
Speaker 7: over her head, tightened, knotted or right done by a sailor.
Speaker 7: That's what you'd expect out here anyway. After dark this
Speaker 7: place has darted from miles with sailors on their sweethearts.
Speaker 4: You never saw before, did you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: Not me the stranger to Yarmouth, I'd say, women here don't.
Speaker 4: Wear clothes like that.
Speaker 7: Oh she's from London, all right, No identification at all,
Speaker 7: nothing but this long, great tag.
Speaker 4: Well, let's get back to the police station. We've got
Speaker 4: to find out who she is. But more important than that, we've.
Speaker 6: Got to start searching for a sailor, a big husky fellow,
Speaker 6: big enough to have carried this woman here after he
Speaker 6: killed her.
Speaker 1: And we too wonder what the results would have been
Speaker 1: had the investigation not been influenced by public clamor. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the mystery of the murder on Yarmut's sands might not
Speaker 1: have quite so much the air of an unsolved mystery.
Speaker 8: The a something a.
Speaker 10: A some pore time of the public
Speaker 2: Stat