Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to The Unseen Podcast, a podcast
Speaker 1: dedicated to missing people, unresolved cases, and UK true crime.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to be exploring the murder of Herbert
Speaker 1: Wilkinson in nineteen sixty seven in Middlewich, in Cheshire. His
Speaker 1: murder has many unexplained questions and this is the reason
Speaker 1: why it has lay unsolved for decades. This episode contains
Speaker 1: descriptions that some listeners may find distressing, so listener discretion
Speaker 1: is advised. On October ninth, nineteen sixty seven, two men
Speaker 1: were walking in the area of Wcraft in Northwich, in Cheshire.
Speaker 1: After walking close to Whatcroft Hall, the men headed down
Speaker 1: towards the banks of the Mersey and Trent Canal. They
Speaker 1: were looking to prepare the ground for hunting season and
Speaker 1: were looking carefully at different areas along the waterway in
Speaker 1: order to find fox holes. While examining a copse, the
Speaker 1: two men discovered something lying on the ground. It was
Speaker 1: the badly decomposed body of a man, which looked to
Speaker 1: have been there for a while. This was an alarming
Speaker 1: sight and immediately it was reported to the police. Police
Speaker 1: arrived at the scene to find that the body had
Speaker 1: been partially buried in a shallow grave along the canal bank.
Speaker 1: This was something that the officers quickly noted and immediately
Speaker 1: implied that this was most probably a murder that they
Speaker 1: were looking at. There was a problem from the outset
Speaker 1: of the investigation. The body was very decomposed, and trying
Speaker 1: to identify the man was going to be an issue
Speaker 1: given that there wasn't much that they could use to
Speaker 1: do that. There didn't seem to be any identify find
Speaker 1: belongings with him, and his clothing was ragged and tattered.
Speaker 1: They could see that this was a middle aged man
Speaker 1: of a small stature, and that there were clear injuries
Speaker 1: to the body, but they could not make out what
Speaker 1: these injuries were. Divers began searching the canal close to
Speaker 1: where the body was found, and officers with police dogs
Speaker 1: were sent to search the area. The man's teeth were analyzed,
Speaker 1: as well as pieces of the tattered clothing and his
Speaker 1: shoes in the hope that something could be found out
Speaker 1: about them. Police also began looking into local missing person reports.
Speaker 1: Given that they did have a loose time frame for
Speaker 1: when this person could have gone missing, they knew that
Speaker 1: the body must have been lying there for several months
Speaker 1: before being recovered. One of the missing person reports which
Speaker 1: quickly drew the attention of detectives was that of fifty
Speaker 1: two year old Herbert Wilkinson. Herbert lived at seventy nine
Speaker 1: Nantwich Road in Middlewich, around seven miles from where the
Speaker 1: body had been recovered. Herbert has been described as a
Speaker 1: bachelor who lived alone in his home. He worked as
Speaker 1: a solicitor up until March nineteen sixty seven, when he
Speaker 1: was struck off the role of solicitors. It's reported that
Speaker 1: Herbert had been struck off as working as a solicitor
Speaker 1: due to irregularities in procedure. Nothing more has been reported
Speaker 1: about what exactly that meant. On June the second, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Herbert's housekeeper had attended the home to clean
Speaker 1: when she found a note that he had written to her.
Speaker 1: The note stated that Herbert had gone to Manchester for
Speaker 1: the weekend. He never returned. His home was left with
Speaker 1: all of his belongings in it, and there was no
Speaker 1: indication as to why he hadn't returned. This led to
Speaker 1: a missing person report being filed. By October, when the
Speaker 1: body was recovered, Herbert had still not been located and
Speaker 1: he was still a missing Person head of cheshasea ID
Speaker 1: Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Benfield, would initially not say if
Speaker 1: they believed the remains to be that of Herbert Wilkinson,
Speaker 1: saying at this stage we cannot assume that this is
Speaker 1: the body of Herbert Wilkinson. The body is so badly
Speaker 1: decomposed that physical identification is impossible. Just a few days later,
Speaker 1: it was reported that police now did believe that the
Speaker 1: body that was found was Herbert Wilkinson. It was later
Speaker 1: corroborated by identification of clothing by his sister in law,
Speaker 1: along with evidence of her sewing on the tattered pieces
Speaker 1: that had been found. The question now was what had
Speaker 1: Herbert been doing around the time that he had gone missing,
Speaker 1: and how had his body ended up on the canal
Speaker 1: banks in a shallow grave. It was known that Herbert
Speaker 1: lived alone, and he was described as a lone wolf
Speaker 1: by those that knew him or saw him around Middlewich.
Speaker 1: The note to his housekeeper was certainly strange, as from
Speaker 1: the recovery of his body there was a strong possibility
Speaker 1: that Herbert had not gone to Manchester as he had said.
Speaker 1: Protects were able to narrow down a time frame for
Speaker 1: when Herbert had last been seen. Given that the housekeeper
Speaker 1: had found the note on the second of June, police
Speaker 1: began to make inquiries by distributing Herbert's image and a
Speaker 1: description of him in the hope that someone could fill
Speaker 1: in any of the gaps that they had in his
Speaker 1: movements around this time. On June the sixth, just four
Speaker 1: days after Herbert had left the note for the housekeeper,
Speaker 1: a report was filed to the police. A housewife reported
Speaker 1: that she had seen Herbert in odd Fellow's passage in
Speaker 1: Middlewich on June the fifth. This witness said that she
Speaker 1: recognized him as she knew him, but she said that
Speaker 1: he didn't look his usual self. He looked ill, vacant
Speaker 1: and harassed. This was quite a credible sighting, given that
Speaker 1: the witness knew him and she reported it immediately after
Speaker 1: she saw him. This meant that Herbert may have been
Speaker 1: in the Middlewich area after Dune. The second one aspect
Speaker 1: of the case that perplexed investigators was how Herbert's body
Speaker 1: got to the location at the banks of the canal.
Speaker 1: To get to the location, a person would have had
Speaker 1: to walk through a mile of fields past the dairy
Speaker 1: house farm, and this didn't seem like a plausible way
Speaker 1: that his body could have got there. Police quickly came
Speaker 1: up with the hypothesis that Herbert may have been transported
Speaker 1: via the canal, perhaps on a boat. Detectives put a
Speaker 1: lot of their efforts into investigating the Mersey and Trent
Speaker 1: Canal and its waterways. In fact, they conducted one of
Speaker 1: the biggest investigations in history of the waterways that had
Speaker 1: been done to that point. They began looking into anyone
Speaker 1: that had been on the water around that time. In June,
Speaker 1: as well as interviewing every man and boy over the
Speaker 1: age of fifteen in Middlewich. They began appealing for information
Speaker 1: about people that had been on the canal during that time,
Speaker 1: including a couple in an orange canoe that had been
Speaker 1: seen on June the second, and an appeal for anyone
Speaker 1: that saw a boat near Bridge one seven seven. In
Speaker 1: early June. They even went to Grenada Studios to watch
Speaker 1: a program called The Flower of Gloucester, which had filmed
Speaker 1: some scenes on the exact bank of the canal where
Speaker 1: the body had been found. No stone seemed to have
Speaker 1: been left unturned by the police force, and it reported
Speaker 1: that they sent seven thousand questionnaires out to boat owners
Speaker 1: in the hope that they would know something. They were
Speaker 1: also interested in finding Herbert's belongings, which were not found
Speaker 1: with his body. They didn't recover his wallet, his watch,
Speaker 1: or any of his personal items. They had also not
Speaker 1: recovered his glasses, which was odd, and so they had
Speaker 1: a mock up of his glasses made so they could
Speaker 1: show the public what they looked like in case they
Speaker 1: had come across them. The fact that none of these
Speaker 1: things were found also indicated to police that Herbert had
Speaker 1: come across someone who wanted to harm him and possibly
Speaker 1: rob him of his possessions. In the months that followed,
Speaker 1: the investigation continued, but it began to slow down and
Speaker 1: grow cold. Police continued to investigate all lines of inquiry,
Speaker 1: including heading up to the Midlands after a tip off
Speaker 1: about a couple that might have information. It didn't appear
Speaker 1: that this tip off panned out. The inquest into Herbert's
Speaker 1: death was concluded in March nineteen sixty eight, when the
Speaker 1: Central Cheshire Coroner, Mister John F. Hibbert, revealed a verdict
Speaker 1: of murder by person or persons unknown. The post mortem
Speaker 1: established that Herbert had a dent in his skull which
Speaker 1: had been caused by a bunt instrument. He also had
Speaker 1: lacerations to his skull and the suggestion of pressure applied
Speaker 1: to his neck. As well as this, there was a
Speaker 1: hole about four x two in diameter above his right ear.
Speaker 1: It was officially confirmed that the remains were that of
Speaker 1: Herbert Wilkinson. It was clear that this was a murder,
Speaker 1: but the reasons why we was still unknown and the
Speaker 1: motive had not been established by the police. This was
Speaker 1: a frustration for the detectives, who believed that someone in
Speaker 1: the local area knew something and that the answer lay
Speaker 1: with those people who had been on canal boats that June.
Speaker 1: They returned to the area a year after the murder
Speaker 1: to interview boat owners again. Once again, however, there was
Speaker 1: no new information provided. Police also investigated a tip off
Speaker 1: which had been provided by officers at Risly Romand Center
Speaker 1: in Warrington. They had discovered a note in a cell
Speaker 1: which related to Herbert Wilkinson's murder. The note had been
Speaker 1: left by nineteen year old William Lawrence Ansell and he
Speaker 1: had committed suicide in his cell before they had found it.
Speaker 1: William Lawrence Ansell had been interviewed by police in the
Speaker 1: initial investigation However, this had not gone much further. He
Speaker 1: told police that he had met Herbert in a Manchester cafe. However,
Speaker 1: this could not be confirmed and there was no confirmation
Speaker 1: that Ansell had ever visited Middlewich. Ansell's diaries were examined,
Speaker 1: as was the note, but it was reported that there
Speaker 1: was nothing material found in it relating to the case.
Speaker 1: Since the initial investigation in the year after the body
Speaker 1: had been recovered, there has not been much movement or
Speaker 1: progress on the case. Herbert's murder is still unsolved many
Speaker 1: decades later, and despite the large investigation that was done
Speaker 1: by police, little of what was uncovered has been published.
Speaker 1: As a result, there are many questions left unanswered, such
Speaker 1: as where are Herbert's belongings, how did he get to
Speaker 1: the location, what was he doing during the days between
Speaker 1: the second of June to the fifth of June. Had
Speaker 1: it really been Herbert that the witness had seen on
Speaker 1: the fifth in Middlewich? Why had he been struck off,
Speaker 1: the role of solicitors and how had it affected him.
Speaker 1: There are so many questions which have not had answers,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, as the years have passed, is become harder
Speaker 1: and harder to solve. Despite the passage of time, there
Speaker 1: is always hope that someone will know something about the
Speaker 1: crime and may be able to help Herbert's family get
Speaker 1: the answers that they deserve. If you know anything about
Speaker 1: the murder of Herbert Wilkinson in nineteen sixty seven, then
Speaker 1: please contact police on one oh one. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to today's episode. If you'd like to support the
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Speaker 1: Caprice and this has been unseen the