Harold Hill – “The Babes in the Wood murder”.
Harold Hill – “The Babes in the Wood murder”.
Doreen Joyce Hearne, aged 8 and Kathleen Tradle (or Trendell) age 6, left Tyler’s Green school as usual at 4 p.m. on the afternoon of Wednesday the 10th of November 1941.
The pair started their journey home on foot but at around 4.15 p.m. were seen by fellow students climbing into an army truck. One of the more observant ones, 13 year old Gordon Page, noted the truck’s identification number and also that it had a Remembrance Day poppy in the grille. A huge search for the girls was mounted by police and volunteers.
On the 13th of November their bodies were found in Rough Wood off Mop End Road in Penn Street, Buckinghamshire some four miles from their home. Both had been strangled and repeatedly stabbed in the throat and chest, but had not been sexually assaulted. They were buried side by side at St, Margaret’s church in Tyler’s Green on the 27th of November.
Police investigations found that the truck was based at the 341 Battery of the 86th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery at Yoxford in Suffolk.
One of the child witnesses was able to pick out 26 year old soldier, Harold Hill, at an identity parade, as the driver of the truck. Hill was overheard to tell another soldier “You saw me at 4.20 pm.” At this point the officers had made no mention of the time of the abduction.
The investigation uncovered more evidence against Hill. There were 20 miles more on the truck’s odometer than he could account for. There was a tunic with blood stains and a handkerchief found at the crime scene bore the same laundry mark, RA1019, as did other items of Hill’s clothing. His fingerprints matched those found on one of the little girls’ gas masks. Tyre tracks found at the crime scene matched those of the truck Hill had been driving.
Hill was arrested and subsequently tried at the Old Bailey before Mr. Justice Humphreys on the 2nd to the 5th of March 1942. His counsel, Mr. Richard O’Sullivan KC, put forward a defence of schizophrenia and called Dr. John Lovell Barnes as an expert witness. His testimony was rebutted by Dr. Hugh Grierson of Brixton prison who declared Hill to be sane and a sadist.
His appeal before the Lord Chief Justice and Justices Charles and Lewis was dismissed on the 16th of April 1942.
Hill was hanged at Oxford prison at 8.00 a.m. on Friday the 1st of May 1942, by Tom and Albert Pierrepoint on the gallows in C Wing. He weighed 175 lbs. and was given a drop of 6’ 6 1/2” which produced the required result. Oxford was unusual in having the gallows some distance from the Condemned Cell.
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