...and another one this fine Friday. The Murder of Mary Georgina Roberts: With the majority of cases, murder investigations start with a body and then the police have to find the killer, but on the odd occasion the killer does their work for them as in the case of the murder of Mary Georgina Roberts. When 24-year-old warehouseman, Kenneth Roberts arrived home in the early hours of 11th May 1955, about 12.25 am, his pregnant wife was not amused and asked where he had been, expecting an excuse of drinking with friends or such like, she was chilled to the bone when he made a sudden and startling confession by saying that he had just killed a girl. She rang called the police who hurried to his Scunthorpe house. As they entered he looked at them and clearly stated: "I have strangled a girl." He led officers to a nearby timber-yard, where they found the body of 18 year-old unmarried mother Mary Georgina Roberts, to whom he was not related. There was and still is some speculation as to her profession, but speculation of this type only stands to upset living relatives and therefore should not be alluded to unless there is proof, and there is none, she was a victim of a callous crime and her young life was taken in a brutal, meaningless act of violence and that is what matters. He was charged with murder, but when Kenneth Roberts appeared in court at Nottinghamshire Assizes, in front of Mr. Justice Finnemore between 21st & 22nd June, he pleaded not guilty; he claimed he could not be guilty of murder because when he strangled Mary he thought she was already dead. His counsel stated: "He placed his hands on her throat and throttled the girl until her heart stopped beating, he panicked and then made a half-hearted attempt to conceal what he had done. Thinking, as he must have done, that the girl was dead, he tied a scarf round her neck when she was to him a lifeless corpse, for just a few moments before he did that he felt her heart stop beating. Had he left her then she would still be alive today." "My submission is that even if you are satisfied that he intended to murder the girl, and that when he had his hands on her throat he attempted to do so, he must have thought when her heart stopped beating that she was dead and what he did afterwards is not, in my submission, therefore murder." Although many tricks are used in court to cast ‘reasonable doubt’ in the minds of the jury, this attempt must have just left them bewildered, in all of the court transcripts from the hundreds of trial I have studied, I have never heard such a ridiculous attempt at getting a murderer of such an obvious charge. The jury agreed and quite rightly returned a guilty verdict and Kenneth Roberts was hanged on this day 12th July 1955, by Steve Wade and Robert Stewart.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:25:36 +0000
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