Notes

Chapter 1

1. Wolverhampton Express and Star November 1953.

2. Lady Celia Congreve, The Firewood Poem 1930.

3. Joyce M. Coley, Bella: An Unsolved Murder, History into Print, 2007.

Chapter 3

1. Quoted in H.M. Howgrove-Graham, The Metropolitan Police at War, HMSO, 1947.

2. Molly Lefebure, Murder on the Home Front, Grafton 1990.

3. Robert Higgins, In the Name of the Law, 1958.

4. John Du Rose, Murder Was My Business, W.H. Allen, 1971.

5. Iain Anderson, The Great Detective, Frederick Muller, 1966.

6. Jack Henry, What Price Crime? Hutchinson, 1945.

Chapter 4

1. Robert Higgins, In the Name of the Law op.cit.

2. Keith Simpson, Forty Years of Murder, Granada 1978.

3. Professor Webster’s report at Regional Conference, Birmingham, 3 May 1943.

4. All quotations in this section are from Webster’s report of 23 April 1943.

5. National Crime Police Report May 1943.

6. Caroline Wilkinson, Bella in the Wych Elm; Bella’s Facial Reconstruction, Merrill and Wilkinson 2020.

Chapter 5

1. Keith Simpson, Forty Years of Murder, 1978.

2. All quotations in this section are from the Worcester CID files, Worcester Record Office.

3. Quoted in Coley 2007.

4. Donald McCormick, Murder By Witchcraft John Long, 1968.

Chapter 6

1. Most Ripper writers make the victim count five after the ‘canonical five’ listed by Melville McNaghten, Assistant Commissioner CID at Scotland Yard at the time. This was an assumption on his part and I believe he was wrong. See M.J. Trow, Quest For a Killer, Pen and Sword, 2009.

Chapter 10

1. Worcester Archive.

2. Haigh believed that without physical remains, a charge of murder could not be bought. His attempts to dissolve Olive Durand-Deacon in a vat of acid failed, however, and he was hanged for her murder.

Chapter 11

1. Jan-Willem van den Braak, Hitler’s Spy Against Churchill, Pen & Sword, 2022.

Chapter 12

1. McCormick p. 139.

2. Ibid p. 140.

Chapter 13

1. Coley p. 16.

2. Ibid.

3. Cited in Coley p. 17.

4. Worcester Archive.

Chapter 14

1. Unless otherwise specified, quotations in this chapter are from McCormick 1968.

Chapter 15

1. Murder Casebook Vol 71 1991.

2. Unless otherwise specified, quotations in this chapter come from McCormick 1968.

3. Simon Askwith, The Independent, quoted in Newman p. 104.

4. Ibid.

Chapter 16

1. Alleged because the Catholic Church has now formally acquitted de Rais, Marshal of France, of any wrongdoing. He was a victim of the politics of his day.

Chapter 17

1. All quotations in this chapter are from the West Mercia Police Case Closure Report unless otherwise stated.