Background Forty-two-year-old Margaret Allen was a transgender lesbian who dressed in men’s clothes and preferred to be called “Bill.” She lived in a two-room dwelling at 137 Bacup Road in Rawtenstall, a former police station. Margaret was born in 1906, the 20th of 22 children in her family, and since her early 20s had rejected … Read more
40 year old Norman Goldthorpe was a married man whose wife, Lily, had left him for another man and they divorced in 1947 when he found out that she had been having an affair while he was serving abroad in the army.His mistress, Mrs. Myers, had left him three days before the murder to return … Read more
With special thanks to Richard Hodge for researching and writing this article. Discovering the Truth Until 2016, my interest in Arthur Boyce had been purely as a family historian, based on the information I had found through various genealogy sites. I knew nothing else about him—or various other goings-on in my family—as he and others … Read more
Early Life and Criminal Beginnings John George Haigh possessed a great deal of natural charm and passed himself off as an engineer. He served three prison sentences for theft and fraud and, whilst in prison, hit upon a new scheme to “get rich quick.” He would kill his victims and then dissolve their bodies in … Read more
Derek Bentley remains one of the most controversial figures in the history of British criminal justice and capital punishment. Convicted of the murder of Police Constable Sidney Miles following a failed warehouse burglary in Croydon on 2 November 1952, Bentley was sentenced to death and hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 28 January 1953, despite the … Read more
