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Speaker 1: stories of things we simply don't know the answer too.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Devin, joined us always by Steve, Joe and somebody
Speaker 1: else apparently. Yeah, that's true. Here today, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about a mystery, a pretty big mystery actually, kind of
Speaker 1: one that's touted as one of the biggest unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 1: This is one of those ones that you'll here referred
Speaker 1: to on the lists on the internet of locker room
Speaker 1: mysteries kind of style where it's the perfect perfect mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always ranked up in there. It is, and I
Speaker 1: have to say it's it's a puzzler for sure, But
Speaker 1: for as big a mystery it is, there's not it's
Speaker 1: not big. Yeah, well you know, but still people have
Speaker 1: been chewing over for a long time. A lot of
Speaker 1: famous people like Raymond Chandler, for example, says it's his
Speaker 1: favorite mystery of all time, or said it was like
Speaker 1: he's dead, but he might still say mystery. Yet he
Speaker 1: didn't have any knows the answer now and find out Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so he was ready, Yeah, okay. In the evening of Monday,
Speaker 1: January of nine one, sometime between sixty five and five pm,
Speaker 1: Julia Wallace was beaten to death brutally. Her husband, William
Speaker 1: Herbert Wallace seemed a really likely suspect and was arrested, tried,
Speaker 1: and convicted. So what's the mystery. Well, uh, it turns
Speaker 1: out the evidence was really really lacking in the case
Speaker 1: against Mr Wallace, pretty so shoddy in fact, that the
Speaker 1: Criminal Court of Appeals officially pardoned him and declared he
Speaker 1: was innocent and totally said nope, he's not guilty at all.
Speaker 1: He's free to go. And nobody knows who did this crime.
Speaker 1: He knows who murdered Julia Wallace. There's a few suspects,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's interesting. When he was tried, I think
Speaker 1: his demeanor kind of did him and he was kind
Speaker 1: of another one of those those Bramber cases. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he was apparently not liked by the jury because the
Speaker 1: judge when when he was instructing the jury all but
Speaker 1: told them they had to let him off. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they convicted him anyway because the evidence was just so weak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about that. Yeah, was actually kind
Speaker 1: of non existent. Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah. So so let's
Speaker 1: tell the story. Let's tell the story first, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: And I want to just introduce you to the two
Speaker 1: main characters. I guess the first character would be one
Speaker 1: Mrs Wallace. Her maiden name was Dennis. She was Julia Dennis.
Speaker 1: Originally she married Mr Wallace in March of nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: She was significantly older than Mr Wallace. I think it
Speaker 1: was seventeen years according to the dates I could find
Speaker 1: on the wiki. There's a lot of contention over that
Speaker 1: because for a long time people said that they were
Speaker 1: around the same age. Everybody thought that they were they
Speaker 1: were definitely contemporaries. And then I think somebody was able
Speaker 1: to find her original birth certificate was in the last
Speaker 1: decade or two. Yeah, I think so too, um, which
Speaker 1: which said that she was seventeen years older than him.
Speaker 1: So she was fifty three when they were married and
Speaker 1: he was thirty six, which is quite reverse. It's a
Speaker 1: reversal of roles for the time, but it's also still
Speaker 1: that's still a big gap. But it used to be
Speaker 1: the old man would marry the younger woman. Days, some
Speaker 1: people kind of point to that as maybe something that
Speaker 1: had to do with the murder. I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's really silly, but I've seen that tossed around,
Speaker 1: so uh, just to go ahead and throw that out. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think that her age might have had if you
Speaker 1: if you didn't need to killer, her age might have
Speaker 1: had something to do with it. You want to hear
Speaker 1: about it now? No, No, I don't know what could
Speaker 1: you talk about that later. Julia was originally the daughter
Speaker 1: of a quote ruined alcoholic farmer unquote, and there's really
Speaker 1: like nothing about her except for that she played the
Speaker 1: piano quite well. I think she was an accomplished pianist,
Speaker 1: is how they describe her. And she doesn't even have
Speaker 1: her own Wikipedia page, just bite being the victim of
Speaker 1: this crime. No, I mean that's it's interesting that there's
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot to be said about a victim.
Speaker 1: I think that the victim really informs the crime a
Speaker 1: lot of times. So I am sad that there's not
Speaker 1: more information about her out there because I think it
Speaker 1: just seems like we would be able to know more
Speaker 1: about the crime maybe or everybody focused on her husband.
Speaker 1: Details of her were just left behind, and that maybe
Speaker 1: why we won't ever be able to solve it, because
Speaker 1: there may be things about her that we just don't
Speaker 1: have access to anywhere. Absolutely, I was able to find
Speaker 1: some quote some people, some people about her. She was
Speaker 1: described as meek and kind of uninteresting, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was one person who was looking in on them
Speaker 1: for about three weeks in her name was Florence Mary Wilson,
Speaker 1: and William Wallace had about a pneumonia and so this
Speaker 1: this person was basically, you know, looking after them, and
Speaker 1: she said that she says she thought Julie was a
Speaker 1: poorhousekeeper who basically laid around and did nothing, and she
Speaker 1: said she had no enthusiasm for anything. And she said
Speaker 1: she didn't really think that they were a happy couple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so there's a there's a little bit of insight.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, that's a small window. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean she was always that way. But there were
Speaker 1: other people also who said that they didn't really think
Speaker 1: it was a happy marriage. Yeah, it's interesting. They people
Speaker 1: didn't seem to think it was a happy marriage. But
Speaker 1: they lived in this kind of townhouse row house situation
Speaker 1: that's pretty common in London Liverpool, I guess. But they
Speaker 1: so they shared walls with their next door neighbors, and
Speaker 1: their neighbors said they never heard them raised voices or
Speaker 1: really talking at all, which may have been a sign.
Speaker 1: I guess that they didn't talk that much, but it
Speaker 1: could be they had their own but they didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's there's definitely loudly. There's two different ways
Speaker 1: to go about hating each other, and we've seen and
Speaker 1: really it's people with their relationship they or yell at
Speaker 1: each other, were they say nothing. So it maybe that
Speaker 1: that's why nobody heard anything. They just did their own
Speaker 1: thing and ignored each other. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Wallace. Mr Wallace. We're just gonna call We're
Speaker 1: going to refer to him as Wallace through the rest
Speaker 1: of this thing, because apparently he's the only one that
Speaker 1: really matters. And then we'll call Julia Wallace Julia Okay.
Speaker 1: Wallace was born in eighteen seventy eight, and he left
Speaker 1: school at fourteen when he started to train to be
Speaker 1: a Draper's assistant. He got a job with the company
Speaker 1: that outfitted Her Majesty's Armed Forces and the Colonial, Indian
Speaker 1: and Foreign Services in Manchester. He spent five years with
Speaker 1: the company. Company then transferred to Calcutta, India, then Shanghai
Speaker 1: two years after that with the same company. His youngest
Speaker 1: brother lived in Shanghai, so there was a familial connection.
Speaker 1: He had a bum kidney, so he had to return
Speaker 1: to England in nineteen oh seven. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: have it cut out in Shanghai. Yeah, for some reason
Speaker 1: in England. Yeah, he decided to come back to England,
Speaker 1: so we did actually have the operation he had to
Speaker 1: cut out. And then there's about a four year gap
Speaker 1: in between there until he became an election agent in
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven where he met Julia and then they got
Speaker 1: married in nineteen fourteen, as we said, and then they
Speaker 1: moved to Liverpool in nineteen fifteen because he had lost
Speaker 1: his job. And yeah, it was because it was it
Speaker 1: wasn't didn't you lose his job because the position of
Speaker 1: elections was just basically totally eliminated in that the reason
Speaker 1: there was some Crown rule that eliminated all of the
Speaker 1: work that he was doing. Yeah, yeah, I was totally eliminated.
Speaker 1: So he lost his job and he called his dad
Speaker 1: and was like, Dad, I need a job, and he
Speaker 1: his father helped him get a job with the Prudential
Speaker 1: Insurance Company as a collections agent. And the Prudential is
Speaker 1: an insurance life insurance company by and large, and they're
Speaker 1: based in Liverpool. So yeah, the couple is described as meek.
Speaker 1: Wallace had an unusually curious brain for the time I gather,
Speaker 1: and that I guess it wasn't typical for a person,
Speaker 1: particularly a man, but a person to take interest in
Speaker 1: kind of a wide variety of topics, but Wallace did.
Speaker 1: He supplemented his time and income by lecturing in chemist
Speaker 1: He had an interest in botany. He was a violinist,
Speaker 1: He was an amateur electrician, He had a lab electric
Speaker 1: with electricity at home. And he loved chess. And he
Speaker 1: was in fact a member of the Liverpool Central Chess Club.
Speaker 1: Not to be confused with the Liverpool Chess Club or
Speaker 1: the Central Chess Club, because those are two other things.
Speaker 1: And this that's a very serious offense to be taken.
Speaker 1: Apparently in my research I found I didn't know that
Speaker 1: is this a Chess Club still in existence and they
Speaker 1: still meet at the same place. No, No, the Central
Speaker 1: Chess Club is still a thing, I think, but this
Speaker 1: particular one, I'm pretty sure was eventually disbanded. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was pretty small when Wallace was going to it. It
Speaker 1: was you know, they weren't very good chess players, and
Speaker 1: it was a small chess club and then this whole
Speaker 1: thing happened and it was kind of a third drink club. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So actually, uh, our story kind of begins at a
Speaker 1: meeting of this club. So we want to just transition
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, definitely hustling into cool. So January nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, Wallace was meant to be competing in
Speaker 1: a chess championship over a number of months, and so
Speaker 1: this was one match that he was supposed to be
Speaker 1: competing in. His game was scheduled to start at seven
Speaker 1: forty five pm, and at seven twenty pm, I believe
Speaker 1: the Chess Club received a phone call from a R M. Quality.
Speaker 1: He was looking for Wallace um and he left a
Speaker 1: message with the club captain, whose name was Samuel Beattie.
Speaker 1: The message was that Mr Wallace was requested to call
Speaker 1: upon Mr Qualtro that's how he's going to say from
Speaker 1: now on Qualtro. The next evening, at about seven thirty pm,
Speaker 1: at twenty five men Love Gardens East regarding an insurance issue,
Speaker 1: because one of Wallace's jobs was to sell insurance as
Speaker 1: well as collect insurance, does and things like that, and
Speaker 1: so it seemed that this gentleman had some insurance business
Speaker 1: to carry out. I think that's one thing it took
Speaker 1: me a while to figure out, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people aren't familiar with this now, but in those days,
Speaker 1: you had to walk around and collect payment from your customers.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the big things he did, is
Speaker 1: he walked around town all day and pick up money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got money from probably get him in good shape, probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Mr Wallace obviously wasn't there at the time, and
Speaker 1: the caller did ask Beatie is Mr Wallace expected to
Speaker 1: be there tonight? And he said, oh, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I can expect him or not, because it turns
Speaker 1: out he was fairly delinquent in his attendance. I thought
Speaker 1: it was they said once a fortnight, so once every
Speaker 1: two weeks, fourteen fourteen days. So he didn't know. Beati
Speaker 1: didn't know if Wallace was going to show up or not.
Speaker 1: He said he if he was going to be there,
Speaker 1: he'd be there soon and he'd relay the message. While
Speaker 1: said that he had never heard of Caltra, and he
Speaker 1: also hadn't heard of Men Love, Men Loves Garden, Men
Speaker 1: Love Gardens East, and he and a member of a
Speaker 1: few other members of the chess club discussed it, and
Speaker 1: he just I think he said, well, I've got a
Speaker 1: Scotch tongue in my brain or in my head or
Speaker 1: something like that, a very odd meaning that he would
Speaker 1: find it. They all figured it was just off Men
Speaker 1: Love Avenue somewhere and that'd be that, and that that's
Speaker 1: the way it was. Because I did I did some
Speaker 1: reading on this because I didn't understand why this guy
Speaker 1: would just go trooping across town not knowing where he
Speaker 1: was going. That would freak me out. But it just
Speaker 1: turns out, you, okay, well, I know this has got
Speaker 1: to be off of that, so I'm just gonna walk
Speaker 1: down it until I find it. Yeah, and they, and
Speaker 1: you know, one of the guys at the club said, well,
Speaker 1: I know Men Love Gardens North or something, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think they just all thought, well, it must
Speaker 1: be there somewhere. There's a north south and west east. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So despite knowing really anything about this, it just being
Speaker 1: kind of a blind call, Wallace decides to keep the appointment.
Speaker 1: So the next day on he arrives home from work
Speaker 1: around six pm, and then sometime between six thirty and
Speaker 1: sixty five, the milk boy stopped to pick up his money,
Speaker 1: which he got from Julia. He said, I got it
Speaker 1: from Julia. There's been some speculation that it was Wallace
Speaker 1: and Drag but I'm sure it wasn't. It was definitely Julia.
Speaker 1: And then I don't know how the milk boy would
Speaker 1: have known what time it was. He said this other
Speaker 1: time when a church clock and there was either right
Speaker 1: before or right after, and there was one. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a church a few walks away that's got
Speaker 1: three clocks on its on it, so he would have known,
Speaker 1: so we can presume his time is about correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody checked at the police checked
Speaker 1: the church to see if the clocks were correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have something to check on the we're running
Speaker 1: on daylight savings something like that. That would be too bad.
Speaker 1: The Liverpool Police in this case that they the locals
Speaker 1: called them the jiggery Pokey. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't have
Speaker 1: the best reputation. Um. I think the Milk boys saw
Speaker 1: Wallace there too. I'm not sure, but I got on
Speaker 1: Google Maps. I pulled the Joe, got on Google Maps
Speaker 1: and map directions from Wallaces the Wallaces rented flat to
Speaker 1: men Love Gardens West, because I that's a natural address
Speaker 1: and on today's transit it would take no less than
Speaker 1: thirty seven minutes. And according to the train schedules at
Speaker 1: the time, which I actually looked up, he would have
Speaker 1: had to have been on the tram at sixty nine
Speaker 1: pm for the whole timeline to make sense. And it's
Speaker 1: verified that he's coming off of that tram at exactly
Speaker 1: the right time. So we can assume, I think pretty
Speaker 1: reasonably that he was definitely on the tram at six
Speaker 1: pm that night. Yeah, and how he's done the conversations
Speaker 1: that directly followed that, Yeah, absolutely. And how far was
Speaker 1: the tram stop from his house? Not very far, but
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a walk, maybe five minutes, not
Speaker 1: anything now, Okay, hang on, So I remember something about
Speaker 1: in their awesome investigations police having a young fit officer
Speaker 1: played the part of Wallace, and I remember there was
Speaker 1: discussions of him running, and so I was under the
Speaker 1: impression that meant that he was running from the house
Speaker 1: to the tram stop, which made me think the tramp
Speaker 1: shop was farther the two mile running things, okay, and
Speaker 1: that he ran to get there at seven oh six
Speaker 1: to make this transfer. I don't remember, okay. So the
Speaker 1: two miles thing is that he made a transfer to
Speaker 1: a different tram and had an interaction with the conductor
Speaker 1: of that tram, and that transfer spot was two miles away.
Speaker 1: So I presumed that they were trying to see if
Speaker 1: anybody fit could run that two miles in the allotted
Speaker 1: time that that they would have needed and bypassed that
Speaker 1: first train bad Kidney had recently, Yeah, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a heavy smoker too, wasn't Heah. Yeah, Actually,
Speaker 1: it's absurd to assume that he could have kept that
Speaker 1: page well and then nobody would have noticed this guy running,
Speaker 1: you know, breakneck page right, or or that the conversation
Speaker 1: he would have had with the conductor, the conductor wouldn't
Speaker 1: have said, oh and he was super breathless by the way, sweating. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: the police actually didn't just do one detective running. They
Speaker 1: sent out a hole like a half a dozen teams
Speaker 1: at various times to try different just to see yeah,
Speaker 1: which is only probably the most thorough job they did
Speaker 1: on any part of it. But no, I think that's
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. The two miles that you're thinking of.
Speaker 1: I think the tram stop and I'm sorry to anybody
Speaker 1: who's going to call us out on that. I don't
Speaker 1: actually know, but I think it was a five minute
Speaker 1: walk or something. It wasn't that far, Yeah, Because the
Speaker 1: two miles that you are talking about is the transfer
Speaker 1: he made two miles away from his home for one
Speaker 1: tram to the other like their street cars, right, you
Speaker 1: guys know what trams are, okay. And that was at
Speaker 1: seven oh six pm, which you know was right on
Speaker 1: schedule with him being on the tram right before at
Speaker 1: the sixtine mark, and he had a conversation with the
Speaker 1: conductor and he he asked him directions to men Love
Speaker 1: Gardens East and was told to transfer trams again at
Speaker 1: Penny Lane and he spent most of that ten minute
Speaker 1: ride pestering the driver to not forget to call out
Speaker 1: Penny Lane. And a lot of people think that's suspicious.
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's just like a nerve.
Speaker 1: I would. I've done stuff like that before, not like
Speaker 1: the entire time, because I've then gotten really awkward and
Speaker 1: thought like, oh, I'm annoying this person. But if I
Speaker 1: don't know where I'm going, I get really anxious, And
Speaker 1: especially if I were trying to make a meeting and
Speaker 1: I really didn't know where I was going and was
Speaker 1: maybe running a little late. By my own sense, I
Speaker 1: I definitely can see the like, okay, but don't forget
Speaker 1: to call, Like, don't forget to do it. Don't have
Speaker 1: we missed it. I really don't know where I am
Speaker 1: right now, Like everything was lit up and easy to see.
Speaker 1: It's January, it's you know, it's December, and it's dark
Speaker 1: at you know, four o'clock right now, so it's it's
Speaker 1: dark out. And also you know, he can't pull your
Speaker 1: map or phone out of your back pocket. You have
Speaker 1: no idea what's going on. Wasn't as easy back in
Speaker 1: those days. Yeah, So I just I don't think it's
Speaker 1: as suspicious as most people think, but some people do
Speaker 1: think it's really suspicious. Yeah, A lot of people feel
Speaker 1: that he tried to call people's attention to himself repeatedly.
Speaker 1: There there's a lot of that in this story though,
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of I gotta admit. I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you right now. There's several things that I'm just
Speaker 1: going to point out with one word, which is claim. Yea,
Speaker 1: they claim. They make a lot of claims about certain
Speaker 1: things that he did them. So the conductor, of course
Speaker 1: did not forget to st Yeah, he was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, get off now. He's like, this is your stop,
Speaker 1: get off, uh, And Wallace made the connection no problem.
Speaker 1: He got on the next tram and he asked the
Speaker 1: conductor promptly, Hey, where do I get off for men
Speaker 1: Love Gardens East. The conductor said, you get off at
Speaker 1: men Love Avenue and walk and probably was told to
Speaker 1: just saw it off and look for it, because I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: just get off here. And it was only like a
Speaker 1: six hundred foot ride or something like that. It was
Speaker 1: stupid short, but I think all the conductors were just like,
Speaker 1: you do this. I don't know, you just do this thing.
Speaker 1: But he did. He got off at the avenue and
Speaker 1: started to search for men Love Gardens East. There was
Speaker 1: a men Love Gardens North, South and West but not east.
Speaker 1: Apparently he was really determined, so he asked a number
Speaker 1: of passers by, you know, where is the street? None
Speaker 1: of them had ever heard of men Love Gardens East.
Speaker 1: He went to men Love Gardens West to see if
Speaker 1: they knew anything about it. They said, no, we've never
Speaker 1: heard of anybody, and we didn't make a call. Go away.
Speaker 1: Wallace did what you're meant to do and found a
Speaker 1: local beat cop next and okay, people, there's the claim.
Speaker 1: And I think the cops said this, so I'm willing
Speaker 1: to say that this happened. But instead of just saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for this address, he apparently regaled the cop
Speaker 1: with the entire story of the call and then the
Speaker 1: train ride, and then the difficulty he's been asking people
Speaker 1: all the time, and oh, do you know where this
Speaker 1: address is? Finally, you know, at the end of that,
Speaker 1: when the cops said, no, that place doesn't exist. I
Speaker 1: got the feeling through some of the things that he's
Speaker 1: said and done before everything happened, and then as it
Speaker 1: was going on, he was just kind of an awkward guy.
Speaker 1: He was just one of those ones. I think he
Speaker 1: was and anxious and and didn't really know how to
Speaker 1: interact with people. That was my sense of him. Yeah, definitely. Um,
Speaker 1: so he was not satisfied with the copper saying no,
Speaker 1: that's not a thing. But he did ask the cop
Speaker 1: what time it was, and he asked it in kind
Speaker 1: of a strange way apparently, and he said, it's not
Speaker 1: eight o'clock yet, is it? And the cops said no,
Speaker 1: So he checked the time and he said no, it's
Speaker 1: seven forty five. And Wallace looked at his watch and
Speaker 1: he said, oh, yeah, at seven forty five. And again
Speaker 1: people think that's suspicious, which I don't think so, but okay, well,
Speaker 1: fine whatever. He was still not satisfied, so he walked
Speaker 1: over to a local newsstand and they had directories in
Speaker 1: the news stand apparently, so he looked through the directory.
Speaker 1: Still the address didn't exist. So finally he's had enough.
Speaker 1: At this point he would have been really late, or
Speaker 1: as some people claim, he'd made enough stink to have
Speaker 1: a good albi. Well, and he also made a stink
Speaker 1: with the person at the Yeah again it was saying
Speaker 1: where this address is a distinct interaction and again you know,
Speaker 1: he asked her, he said, he looked up and he said,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm looking for and she said no,
Speaker 1: And he told her the address and she said no,
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. And he said, okay, fine, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go home. Then fine, and he got home.
Speaker 1: I guess it seems like he searched for about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes all all told. He got off the trammet
Speaker 1: seven fifteen, left probably about eight, got home. I guess
Speaker 1: around you know, I think that that trip takes about
Speaker 1: forty five minutes. I think my my math is good.
Speaker 1: It's half an hour, half an hour. But then again
Speaker 1: he's got to wait for stupid thing is there when
Speaker 1: you're there? Right? I mean maybe it is, but rarely, rarely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he based Long story short, you got home about
Speaker 1: eight thirty or eight thirties. Probably the earliest he could
Speaker 1: have gotten home reasonably etive is probably when he got home.
Speaker 1: But again, the next time he's seen in his forty five,
Speaker 1: he's standing outside of his back door and his neighbors,
Speaker 1: the Johnston's, are just leaving. They encounter him in the
Speaker 1: back alleyway and he looks, God, what's the quote, worried
Speaker 1: and confused, worried and confused, thank you? He looks worried
Speaker 1: and confused, and they say, okay, Mr Allis, what's up?
Speaker 1: And he says, well, my my keys aren't working. McKy
Speaker 1: in the front or the back door, they're not working.
Speaker 1: And they said, well, we you know, we have a
Speaker 1: spare key to your house. Do you want us to
Speaker 1: try our key? And he said, oh, I don't. I've
Speaker 1: never heard what he said, so I just assume he
Speaker 1: just kind of mumbled, and then he tried his back
Speaker 1: door key again and miraculously at open uh. And they
Speaker 1: waited around because they were good neighbors. They thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: he seems confused and worried and weird, and we'll just
Speaker 1: wait till he gives us the all clear. So they
Speaker 1: kind of waited around, and he went upstairs and he
Speaker 1: lit the gas in the parlor, and then he came
Speaker 1: back down and just very calmly said, uh, come and
Speaker 1: see she's been killed. Strange. Strange. I think he was
Speaker 1: in shock, like I think he is in chocked, because
Speaker 1: I would be in shock if I walked into this. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But can we stop for a second and talk about
Speaker 1: the door. So he tried, if I understood correctly, and
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure I understand this. He
Speaker 1: tried the front door and his key wouldn't work or
Speaker 1: the door wouldn't unlock. And then he went to the
Speaker 1: back door and he couldn't get it to unlock with
Speaker 1: his key, and then he tried it again in front
Speaker 1: of the Johnstones and that's when it opened. Yes, correct,
Speaker 1: the back door open, the back door, so they were
Speaker 1: they were apparently the dead or the latch events had
Speaker 1: been shut on the inside. Is that what it was?
Speaker 1: Because I was thinking, well, maybe there was somebody like
Speaker 1: was there was the front door unlocked when they went
Speaker 1: to look at it later, because it makes me wonder, Hey,
Speaker 1: you can't maybe see in and so he's trying his
Speaker 1: key and somebody's holding the lock. No, But you know
Speaker 1: what I didn't actually I just thought of is maybe
Speaker 1: the front door was unlocked when he arrived and he
Speaker 1: accidentally locked it. It seems unlikely, but I guess it
Speaker 1: seems like a I just got home and impeeved kind
Speaker 1: of moved. But it's interesting because you know, if you
Speaker 1: if he actually was telling the truth and say the
Speaker 1: bolt had been shot from the inside on both the
Speaker 1: front and the rear, then he comes home, that if
Speaker 1: he is totally telling the truth and he wasn't just
Speaker 1: confused not using his key. Correct, mean that must mean
Speaker 1: the murderer was inside exactly where I was going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's he's been he's been rattling the front door.
Speaker 1: And then the murderer like boogies out the back door,
Speaker 1: and of course he can't shoot the bolt this time around.
Speaker 1: He pulls the door shut behind him and sneaks out
Speaker 1: down the alley. Oh that he would have tried the
Speaker 1: back door first, and that didn't work. So he tried
Speaker 1: the front door and that didn't work. So he came
Speaker 1: back around, at which point they encountered him kind of
Speaker 1: walking back to try the back door again. Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying? Yeah? Yeah, and that he said, Mike,
Speaker 1: he's not working, and they said okay, and he tried
Speaker 1: it again and the bolt wasn't locked. Is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Yeah, Yeah, So the door was locked, but
Speaker 1: the bolt was not had not been shot from the inside.
Speaker 1: Interesting because that's the only way this, this whole I
Speaker 1: can't get my key to work thing makes sense to me,
Speaker 1: is if somebody else was inside, you know, manually operating
Speaker 1: a lock that he couldn't have access to. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a bad point, although that would mean the
Speaker 1: murderer had to key to the house, not necessarily because
Speaker 1: you don't use a key to lock your door from
Speaker 1: the but the I guess it's he could have left
Speaker 1: the door unlocked and that Mr Wallace, just out of habit,
Speaker 1: tried to unlock it and it worked, right, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Okay, that's fair, that's good. Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: thought about that. There's not a scrap of evidence to
Speaker 1: support that, but well, that's that's the refrain of this
Speaker 1: entire case. Though there's not a scrap of evidence to
Speaker 1: support that, but we're gonna say it anyway. So what
Speaker 1: did Mr Wallace find? And I guess the Johnston's when
Speaker 1: they Johnston's Johnstones, but john Stones Johnston's either way, they
Speaker 1: saw something they could never unsee. Yeah, uh, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a really gruesome scene. In the parlor, Julia
Speaker 1: had her head had been bashed in eleven times, her
Speaker 1: brain was exposed, and the blood splatter in some places
Speaker 1: was seven ft up on the walls, which is pretty high.
Speaker 1: What happens when he beatbody definitely would Yeah, and the Johnston's,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, the walls were thin in between and
Speaker 1: I think the parlor wall. They shared a wall, and
Speaker 1: they had been home all night and they said they
Speaker 1: hadn't heard anything, which is kind of weird, Like one
Speaker 1: would assume that you would at least scream a little
Speaker 1: the first time that the first one catches you unar
Speaker 1: and rattles your little brain. Yeah, followed by several swift hits.
Speaker 1: You're out. There is one other explanation for them not
Speaker 1: hearing anything, and that is that they did it. I
Speaker 1: found her. I found somebody out there that claims we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in theories because it's it's actually not
Speaker 1: the worst theory out there. Um. So yeah, as we
Speaker 1: were talking about, uh, we kind of I guess shot
Speaker 1: our load a little early. The big whole mystery on
Speaker 1: this thing is that all of the windows and doors
Speaker 1: were locked ostensibly when when Mr Wallace arrived. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of those locker room mysteries where
Speaker 1: you're just like, how how did the murderer get out? Well,
Speaker 1: they weren't. They weren't dead bolted though, were they? I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I see that's the thing that yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because you can always pull the door shut
Speaker 1: behind you, Yeah, although it's nineteen thirty one, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, I don't think they were. I think
Speaker 1: they were mostly dead bault locks at that point. Well
Speaker 1: I know, okay, my experience in Britain with locks has
Speaker 1: never been good because I get locked out all the
Speaker 1: time when I'm over there because they don't believe indoor handles.
Speaker 1: It's all keys, and they auto locked behind you, which
Speaker 1: is why I'm wondering if, like Joe said, they just
Speaker 1: auto locked automatically that was the standard way to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I guess I don't know. I guess the frustrating
Speaker 1: thing in that case then, right, is that? Like then
Speaker 1: why is that such a big mystery? Like if it's
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous in this area, that doors which is locked
Speaker 1: behind you, why is everybody saying and the doors were
Speaker 1: locked like okay, cool, then the murderer left out the door.
Speaker 1: Why are there's so many claims about the things this
Speaker 1: guy could do? Like that's that's right up there with Yeah,
Speaker 1: although if it was the old fashioned kind, like the
Speaker 1: church key kinds, you know what kind of talking about,
Speaker 1: if it was one of those a lot of in
Speaker 1: those days that a lot of the times people would
Speaker 1: leave their key on the in the lock on the inside,
Speaker 1: and that's why that's the way to block somebody from
Speaker 1: the outside picking your lock, and so your key is
Speaker 1: blocking it. And that was very common in those days.
Speaker 1: So there might have just been a key in one
Speaker 1: of the front of the rear door is just there.
Speaker 1: He just takes the key out, steps outside, pulls it
Speaker 1: shut and takes the key and locks the door, walks
Speaker 1: away and walks away. I'll cover with gore. Yeah. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm super covered in blood because is that like this
Speaker 1: person would have been just wrenched in blood, coated in blood.
Speaker 1: There wasn't really anything missing. Mr Wallace said that there
Speaker 1: were a couple of pounds maybe missing, and then they
Speaker 1: the only other thing that was missing were to fireplace instruments,
Speaker 1: a poker and a metal bar. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the metal bar. I could never determine what the bar was.
Speaker 1: Showed up that one finally, Yeah, did show up. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the poker didn't show up, and actually the bar showed
Speaker 1: up with no blood on it. Yeah. Years later it
Speaker 1: was like in the back of the fireplace, it'd fallen
Speaker 1: through a hole in the bottom or something. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then there's the whole, the macintosh, the raincoat. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there was a partially burned Macintosh or a
Speaker 1: raincoat underneath her body. It was supposedly his, it was
Speaker 1: it was his that there was no supposed it definitely
Speaker 1: was his, But that doesn't mean that he was involved. Really,
Speaker 1: I would have been by the door. Okay. See that's
Speaker 1: funny because I had heard contention that it might not
Speaker 1: have been his, like it may have been somebody else's,
Speaker 1: And they took his on the way out, So I
Speaker 1: guess that's fair. I it matched his. I thought it
Speaker 1: was his. I thought it was his too, But I'm
Speaker 1: reading a lot. But the investigation into this is so
Speaker 1: poor that I don't I guess. I can't say definitively
Speaker 1: that it was his. It looked like his, that's all
Speaker 1: I can say. They didn't. They also didn't know any
Speaker 1: evidence or anything like that because it had been partially burnt.
Speaker 1: It had been partially burned. Yet, so can I ask?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry? I know I do this to you all
Speaker 1: the time. I have a question crime scene photo. I
Speaker 1: swear I've seen it, but I also thought it was
Speaker 1: a recreation. Yeah, so I have seen a lot of
Speaker 1: pictures that look like they might be crime scene photos.
Speaker 1: I think they're all re enact re enact recreation recreations
Speaker 1: because I don't because there's not enough blood in any
Speaker 1: of them. Well, I saw a couple of photos and
Speaker 1: I think they were the real thing. They were taken.
Speaker 1: They were taken either by police or by reporters on
Speaker 1: the night of Yeah, I saw those two, and I
Speaker 1: just didn't think that there was enough blood. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell. The
Speaker 1: kind of murky pictures. Yeah, I saw these in a book.
Speaker 1: Guy who was John Gannon wrote a book called The
Speaker 1: Killing of Julia Wallace. He did we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about book. He's got a lot of pictures in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I can't. I guess I can't
Speaker 1: authenticate what the pictures, if they were real or not.
Speaker 1: Just again, because it doesn't seem like it looks like
Speaker 1: the crime scene was described to have been. But it's
Speaker 1: also possible that the description of the crime scene is inaccurate.
Speaker 1: What I was going to say is, that's the thing
Speaker 1: is that I saw something that talked about when Julia
Speaker 1: was struck and she fell. I saw something I swear
Speaker 1: that said that the reason that the macintosh had caught
Speaker 1: on fire was that she had fallen forward into a fireplace,
Speaker 1: so that that he had fallen forward into the fire.
Speaker 1: The person wearing the macintosh had fallen forward into the
Speaker 1: fireplace and it had partially caught fire. Oh so they're
Speaker 1: saying this doesn't make any freaking sense weight and that
Speaker 1: it that it was that they put the fire out
Speaker 1: and then pushed it under her body. Oh so killer
Speaker 1: wearing said macintosh catches on fire, stops drops of rolls
Speaker 1: and then rolls her up in it it underneath her.
Speaker 1: Was somebody to do that, though, I don't know. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any sense. It makes
Speaker 1: I think it makes more sense that that she died
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, it's it's entirely you know. One theory
Speaker 1: about the macintosh is that it was indeed Wallace's macintosh.
Speaker 1: She hadn't taken it with him, and he had probably
Speaker 1: hanging on a hook by the front door, and somebody
Speaker 1: somebody called on her for whatever reason, rang the bell
Speaker 1: and she put that on against the cold or whatever,
Speaker 1: or maybe they and that she was actually wearing it
Speaker 1: and not necessarily with her arms at the sleep was
Speaker 1: just straped over her shoulders. Maybe you know, who knows.
Speaker 1: Maybe she was in her pajamas and she was feeling
Speaker 1: modest or something for some reason or you know, whatever reason,
Speaker 1: probably the cold, and so I think that's probably what
Speaker 1: it was. I agree. But fireplace, fireplace was on, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could say somebody came over for whatever
Speaker 1: reason to murder her, obviously, but it was it would
Speaker 1: have been somebody she knew. Yeah, let's let's save this.
Speaker 1: So Um, Despite having a pretty solid alibi created or
Speaker 1: not um and a really severe lack of forensic evidence,
Speaker 1: the cops arrested Wallace, as we said, and it was
Speaker 1: a couple of days later. Yeah, as we as we
Speaker 1: talked about a little bit to this case. It's it's
Speaker 1: another case of the jury just kind of not liken
Speaker 1: the guy. The public they hated him, yeah, they did. Um.
Speaker 1: He was definitely condemned in public for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. Yeah, he got constantly got hate mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did and stuff. He took the witness stand against
Speaker 1: Earth in his defense, I guess, not against himself, but
Speaker 1: he did kind of work against himself. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: he appeared detached and cold. Um. And the jury did
Speaker 1: convict him. The trial lasted four days and the jury
Speaker 1: deliberated for less than an hour, and he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to hang for the crime. But then in March of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, the Court of Appeals did overturn the ruling.
Speaker 1: They just said there there just wasn't enough evidence to
Speaker 1: have convicted Wallace and um, so he was innocent. He
Speaker 1: obviously found it hard to return to normal life in Liverpool,
Speaker 1: so he moved to the country and then he died
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, just two years later, of kidney issue. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't, he didn't move to the country right away
Speaker 1: because I know he took he took a he tried
Speaker 1: facing job with the insurance company, he tried to return,
Speaker 1: he moved. I think I think he lived in Liverpool
Speaker 1: for six months or and then he moved to the country.
Speaker 1: But he was also he was pretty sick too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was getting progressively worse. Yeah, he was not one
Speaker 1: of those two was really in great healthy. So he
Speaker 1: was fifty one at the time of the murder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seventeen year age difference means his wife would have been
Speaker 1: sixty eight. I'm just I'm just thinking about Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: they both would have been a rather rather slow pair.
Speaker 1: And I can see her age at that time, of
Speaker 1: being sixty eight in the thirties is to me kind
Speaker 1: of the equivalent of being ninety today is I mean,
Speaker 1: just because of the way that you live and the
Speaker 1: harsh lifestyle. So I can see why she may have
Speaker 1: been considered kind of lackluster and just old and tired
Speaker 1: and she couldn't dig it anymore. Well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that he didn't really have much in the way of motive,
Speaker 1: except maybe he was just sick of her. But the
Speaker 1: other thing about it was I was going to mention
Speaker 1: her age as as a motivation for him, Like you said,
Speaker 1: that was that that would have been back in those days,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of eighty five or nine years old, and
Speaker 1: he's starting to look at the US and thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to spend I don't want to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of my life changing her diapers. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put her out to past year. That's
Speaker 1: kind of the way he looked at it. That would
Speaker 1: be a motivation, I guess. Yeah, maybe he was just
Speaker 1: sick of her. Yeah, that's also possible. But there's some
Speaker 1: quote actually gosh. The quote I think was that you
Speaker 1: need no more motivation than being married. Yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: I think is probably fair, I say to a newly
Speaker 1: led Steve. Yeah I did, and matro side my list
Speaker 1: of words. Yeah, I'm now going to start using around
Speaker 1: the house. Yeah, so that it's not actually yeah, she'll
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Yes, absolutely, So we can. We can jump
Speaker 1: into theories. But I just want to mention two or
Speaker 1: three things. First. One big, really big thing is that
Speaker 1: the police unit that came to investigate the murder was
Speaker 1: really really really really subpar to say the least. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the Liverpool Police, I'm sure they're highly professional today, but
Speaker 1: they had actually it was I think it was in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen there was a huge strike and they lost
Speaker 1: more than half of their police force. It was a
Speaker 1: huge amount. Yeah, and so you know, I guess within
Speaker 1: ten years essentially they had tried to replace everybody and
Speaker 1: it was just it was not going very well. I
Speaker 1: believe the term ring saw for the staff was underqualified. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But okay, so the really fine whatever, they were unqualified.
Speaker 1: The biggest blow to this case that happened was their
Speaker 1: forensic expert. I guess they His name was John McFall,
Speaker 1: and he operated under the pretense that his instinct was enough. Um.
Speaker 1: He didn't take notes, he didn't run tests. He observed
Speaker 1: Julia's body and decided, based just on the rigor of
Speaker 1: her body, that she had to have been killed at
Speaker 1: six pm, give or take an hour. He actually had
Speaker 1: originally said she died somewhere around eight o'clock or so,
Speaker 1: and then wound back the clock on that to match
Speaker 1: up when they charged Wallace. Yeah, so there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of that. That's that's hinky, that's hinky step number one. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the only test that was and that that was the
Speaker 1: only test that was done on her at the time.
Speaker 1: He didn't do body temperature, They didn't take any blood samples.
Speaker 1: They didn't take any they didn't collect any forensic evidence.
Speaker 1: They didn't try and fingerprint or anything like that. Um,
Speaker 1: they did I guess somehow, and I don't know how,
Speaker 1: but I guess they were able to determine that nobody
Speaker 1: had cleaned themselves up at the house. There wasn't evidence
Speaker 1: that somebody took a shower to clean. The drains were dry.
Speaker 1: The drains were drying, So okay, that was That was
Speaker 1: good at least they did that, so we know that
Speaker 1: whoever killed her would have been really, really bloody and
Speaker 1: would have had to have probably left the house pretty bloody.
Speaker 1: And that that fact alone completely to me blow blue
Speaker 1: their theory of what he did out of the water,
Speaker 1: because you're saying, hey, we've proved that nobody took a
Speaker 1: shower or used water in this house. But this guy,
Speaker 1: he was buck naked and he killed his wife. Or
Speaker 1: my favorite is he was buck naked. Yeah. The police
Speaker 1: actually questioned him quite extensively about the practice around his
Speaker 1: house of they totally made this up, but they decided
Speaker 1: that he and Julia Julia, they he played the violin
Speaker 1: and Julia played the piano. They had these music nights
Speaker 1: um and they said, well, yeah, you like to do
Speaker 1: that naked wearing just your macintosh, don't you. And he said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what and they said, yeah, yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you play the violin. When she's playing the piano, you're
Speaker 1: just wearing your raincoat. And he said, no, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about, And they said, no, no no, you you
Speaker 1: like hanging out like that. So we're just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and enter that as a matter of fact, you
Speaker 1: would like hanging out with that, so obviously you killed
Speaker 1: her like that. So that's the kind of detective work
Speaker 1: that was happening around these caves. Um So I think
Speaker 1: that that does it blows a pretty big hole, especially
Speaker 1: because the timeline just doesn't match up right. You know,
Speaker 1: we know, based on the timeline that she was seen
Speaker 1: alive at about sixty five he left. He had at
Speaker 1: the earliest he had to have left the house at
Speaker 1: the latest, I would say at six forty nine, but
Speaker 1: probably at six forty five ish. He would have had
Speaker 1: to left the house to be on the tram to
Speaker 1: get there in time. There's no way that he ran it,
Speaker 1: No way he ran those two miles away. And when
Speaker 1: he got home he was he didn't have any blood
Speaker 1: on it at all. Yeah, well, he was clean as
Speaker 1: a whistle. None of his clothes had blood on it.
Speaker 1: He didn't have blood on it, you know, there was
Speaker 1: there was no blood anywhere. And then the earliest he
Speaker 1: could have come back really is eight So there could
Speaker 1: have been a forty five minute gap there, but I
Speaker 1: think he probably was there more like eight thirty based
Speaker 1: on when people were seeing him around that it couldn't
Speaker 1: have got back that earlier because he had the interaction
Speaker 1: with the policeman. That's seven. So the earliest he could
Speaker 1: have been back really is like a thirty Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's fifteen minutes there. So really you got fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: on either end to commit a brutal murder for you know,
Speaker 1: probably provoked reasons, then totally clean up. That's that's insane
Speaker 1: to me. That's crazy to me. Clean up outside of
Speaker 1: the house because he couldn't do it, because he couldn't
Speaker 1: have done it in the house. Yeah, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: but the only way they were able to get a
Speaker 1: conviction here it was by impeaching the testimony of the
Speaker 1: milk boy, whose name was Alan Close. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know that he was not I thought it was credible.
Speaker 1: Of course I never saw that the guy I heard
Speaker 1: him and actually speak, but yeah, there's no reason to
Speaker 1: not believe. So anyway, that's a big thing, right, the
Speaker 1: medical example that, yeah, and the drains were all dry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you guys want to talk about theories because there
Speaker 1: are only two. Yeah, I mean there's two big and
Speaker 1: then there's like some sub theories. Well well, because really,
Speaker 1: well really, either Mr Wallace killed his wife or he didn't.
Speaker 1: And the quote you hear around. This is even Mr
Speaker 1: Wallace killed his wife or he didn't, And if he didn't,
Speaker 1: then we have the perfect crime. I disagree, but hey,
Speaker 1: well yeah, if he did it was a perfect crime.
Speaker 1: If he didn't do it, it it wasn't really the perfect crime.
Speaker 1: That's how, you know, lots of people get lots of
Speaker 1: people get killed and bludgeoned to death, and nobody ever
Speaker 1: gets got So let's talk about he totally did it first,
Speaker 1: as repeated over and over again, as we just talked about,
Speaker 1: there's no more motive needed to kill your spouse than
Speaker 1: being married to them. It sounds like their marriage wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly happy. It didn't sound like it was horrendously unhappy, though,
Speaker 1: it just sounded kind of yeah. But and he but
Speaker 1: he wasn't like an adventure seeker, you know. It's not
Speaker 1: like he was saying, oh, I wish that my wife
Speaker 1: would go and take more risks with me and things
Speaker 1: like that. He seemed totally satisfied to just do his thing.
Speaker 1: He sat at home with chemistry, played with electricity, and
Speaker 1: she just kind of things like doing stuff. He was
Speaker 1: hebes and people back in those days, I don't think
Speaker 1: we're quite as romantic about marriage either. So I don't.
Speaker 1: While I while I'm happy to say their marriage wasn't
Speaker 1: happy and passionate, I also don't think it was unhappy.
Speaker 1: I think it was. I would I would describe it
Speaker 1: as an ambivalent marriage, which usually you don't kill over
Speaker 1: usually well, yeah, maybe you do. But even if you do, maybe,
Speaker 1: like you know, chemistry, maybe you poison your wife her
Speaker 1: to death. I mean yeah, And you know, definitely, if
Speaker 1: he was really truly sick of her and wanted out,
Speaker 1: then that was a way to avoid paying alimony. So
Speaker 1: that was a motive. Yeah, insurance wasn't a motive. She
Speaker 1: didn't have much in the ways was insurance policy. And
Speaker 1: he would have known that absolutely. So there's the argument
Speaker 1: that he made too much of a fuss over his
Speaker 1: alibi stuff. Another factor is that phone call that he
Speaker 1: originally received at the chess, you know, the message that
Speaker 1: was left for him. Yeah, So it turns out that
Speaker 1: Wallace wasn't that consistent, as we said, of an attendee
Speaker 1: to these things. Beatie did say that he came about
Speaker 1: once every two weeks, and Wallace said that he didn't
Speaker 1: like to He didn't come that often because he didn't
Speaker 1: like to leave his wife alone at night, which okay,
Speaker 1: you know why not. She may have been um, trying
Speaker 1: to think of the right word to say here, a
Speaker 1: little prone to flights of fancy in terms of paranoia.
Speaker 1: Almost she may have been hysterics, thank you. She may
Speaker 1: have just been you can't leave me alone. It's dark
Speaker 1: and scary and yeah, yeah, like he may have chess
Speaker 1: club may have been one of those few times that
Speaker 1: he could pry himself away from her at night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe she really had enemies, so my
Speaker 1: life we didn't know about. She was a government assassin.
Speaker 1: The reason that that that his attendance of the chess
Speaker 1: club is brought up is because how would that mysterious
Speaker 1: caller have known that he was going to be there
Speaker 1: that night? How would you have for that matter of
Speaker 1: how would that guy have even known that he went
Speaker 1: to the chess club at all? Yeah? How would he
Speaker 1: have known that there are some really are? So the
Speaker 1: big claim here, to use Steve's term, is that Wallace
Speaker 1: made the call himself. Right, We can do some debunking
Speaker 1: on this. First of all, Beatie described the caller's voice
Speaker 1: as strong and gruff, pretty much opposite of Wallace's demeanor.
Speaker 1: And he he didn't think that he could have made
Speaker 1: that call. He didn't think that he could have faked
Speaker 1: the voice, which I think is probably fair. Also, there
Speaker 1: there was a posting of the Chess Championships that he
Speaker 1: was taking part in stuff and what day they were Well,
Speaker 1: the time was the same, the time was assistant, but
Speaker 1: it was what days they were showing up. And then
Speaker 1: it was actually posted on a bulletin board next to
Speaker 1: the phone booth that the phone call was received too
Speaker 1: that had the phone number of the phone booth on it,
Speaker 1: so one could have looked at that list and gotten
Speaker 1: the phone number simultaneously. And actually this was not a
Speaker 1: dedicated chess club. It was it was Caddle's City Cafe,
Speaker 1: and a lot of different clubs met there, so it
Speaker 1: was a totally public space. Yeah yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: and one of these, the one of the persons who's
Speaker 1: been named as either a suspect or a person of interest,
Speaker 1: who we'll talk about a little later, was seeing at
Speaker 1: least once at this club. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about that a little bit. But you know,
Speaker 1: the question is how would that person know that he
Speaker 1: would show up? Well, they had no reason to believe
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't show up. There's some discussion around the
Speaker 1: fact that he actually hadn't been there in a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, because you can see that it was recorded
Speaker 1: that he lost his first game on the first night
Speaker 1: of the championship on the sheet of paper there's pictures
Speaker 1: it all over him, and then the next two games
Speaker 1: he missed, and then he played that night the nineteen
Speaker 1: He didn't actually play the game he was meant to
Speaker 1: play in the championship. He played somebody else because his
Speaker 1: partner didn't show up again. Reasons this chess club was
Speaker 1: probably disbanded is that nobody seemed to take it very seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so while there's no reason to believe that he wouldn't
Speaker 1: show up, there's also no reason to believe that he
Speaker 1: would show up. I think that it's it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to see how that person knew that he was going
Speaker 1: to show up based on where the phone call was
Speaker 1: placed from, and it was placed from a phone booth
Speaker 1: that was about three yards from Wallace's house, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people again point to oh, well, then Wallace
Speaker 1: obviously placed the call himself, but no, because he the
Speaker 1: tram that he was on, he would have had to
Speaker 1: have been on the tram about that time. You would
Speaker 1: have had to be at the same time if not,
Speaker 1: the phone was being yeah, that the phone calls being placed.
Speaker 1: How many how many tram rides to take to get
Speaker 1: to the chess club A couple? I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: don't remember seeing that specifically listed. I just remember the
Speaker 1: times being called out and that was it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I think it would have been really easy for somebody
Speaker 1: to kind of watch him, see that he was leaving
Speaker 1: and no probably where he was going, because it seems
Speaker 1: like that would be the place that he would be
Speaker 1: going at that time, and call and say, oh, is
Speaker 1: he coming tonight? Oh you don't know. Okay, well I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave this message for him anyway because I know
Speaker 1: he's on the tram and uh. It actually became very
Speaker 1: important to Wallace after he was questioned by the police
Speaker 1: once and then let go, and it became really really
Speaker 1: important to him to know what time, And he asked Beattie, Okay,
Speaker 1: what time exactly? You kind of asked him a lot
Speaker 1: actually did, and Beatie kept saying, I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: the exact same behavior though that we saw him exhibiting
Speaker 1: with the tram drive, right, and so that's the true
Speaker 1: is you there? There's two sides to his claim, right.
Speaker 1: Either he was trying to make sure that Beattie said
Speaker 1: it's this time, It's definitely this time, and that he
Speaker 1: would have been able to say, well, I had to
Speaker 1: have been on the tram that time, you know, to
Speaker 1: establish a further alibi. Or he was trying to recall, okay,
Speaker 1: around that time, where would I have been. Can I
Speaker 1: prove that I'm wasn't there? Oh? And also was there
Speaker 1: anybody kind of like, did I see anybody I knew
Speaker 1: hanging around? Because if I saw somebody I knew hanging around,
Speaker 1: they placed the phone call, they were responsible for me
Speaker 1: being gone when my wife was murdered, and they were
Speaker 1: probably responsible for murdering my wife. He's trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out. So either on either side of that, I
Speaker 1: think um and Beatty said he couldn't recall what time
Speaker 1: the phone call had been placed, But it turned out
Speaker 1: that the Anfield Telephone Exchange somehow by the way that
Speaker 1: the call was placed, and I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe through an operator, but they had it
Speaker 1: recorded and it wasn't exactly seven pm, so that's the
Speaker 1: time the call was placed. I think that I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that Wallace would have had to have been on
Speaker 1: the tram by that point. But yeah, it's just everything
Speaker 1: that I've seen about the guy doesn't show me that
Speaker 1: he has it any Yeah. I don't think he had
Speaker 1: the guile. I don't think he was smart enough either,
Speaker 1: And I really don't. I don't think there was any motive,
Speaker 1: and I don't think at the time. Yeah, even if
Speaker 1: it didn't like his wife, you know, I mean, beating
Speaker 1: somebody to death, I would imagine this. You know, he
Speaker 1: didn't seem to have that kind of character. He didn't. Again,
Speaker 1: he knew chemistry, why not just poisoner. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: move on to the theory heading not just the theory,
Speaker 1: the theory heading that he totally did not do it
Speaker 1: and new end at the time? Right. The time is
Speaker 1: such a huge problem for me in this is like,
Speaker 1: where did he have the time to commit this murder? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where and clean up after himself? Yeah, that's the whole
Speaker 1: problem is even if say the milk Boy was totally off,
Speaker 1: totally wrong about the time, there's still the whole question
Speaker 1: of how he managed to do it and go somewhere
Speaker 1: and get all cleaned up and change and not be
Speaker 1: seen and not be seen. Of course this was like
Speaker 1: probably would have been pretty dark in Liverpool, six pm
Speaker 1: at the most. At the most, he had forty nine minutes,
Speaker 1: because it's the somebody saw him coming home at six thirty.
Speaker 1: So it's substantiated that are at six. Sorry that he
Speaker 1: didn't get home any earlier than six, and he had
Speaker 1: to have left at six before probably, But you know, again,
Speaker 1: the most unaccounted time that we can give him is
Speaker 1: forty nine minutes. And that's not still not a lot
Speaker 1: of time, not really, it's still not And I'm not
Speaker 1: willing to say that the milk boy was wrong. I
Speaker 1: think he. I think he. There's every reason to believe
Speaker 1: that he knew exactly what time it was when he
Speaker 1: picked up the milk money. Yeah, he saw that there
Speaker 1: was a church nearby and it was invisible actually from
Speaker 1: the house. But but it was about that time, but
Speaker 1: from not far away. That's why there's that little you know,
Speaker 1: it was either six thirty or sixty five. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just the time is such a big problem for me.
Speaker 1: I interrupt, absolutely awesome, So I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about this, and I've never actually
Speaker 1: seen this given much credence at all. But if he
Speaker 1: has such an ironclad alibi, well maybe he did do it,
Speaker 1: but he hired it out, like he may have hired
Speaker 1: somebody and said, Hey, I'm gonna go get on the tram,
Speaker 1: go call me and then okay, I'm going to my appointment.
Speaker 1: Wink wink. Go do your job and you'll get your
Speaker 1: twenty pounds in a couple of days when the heat
Speaker 1: dies down, because everybody's gonna you know, people do this
Speaker 1: all the time, and they they get somebody killed and
Speaker 1: they expect all of the sympathy to be thrown at
Speaker 1: them and they're the poor sad widower now and then
Speaker 1: it all backfires. Just doesn't seem Again, there are toldly
Speaker 1: Guet that it doesn't make sense for him because that's
Speaker 1: not the way he seems. There are there there are
Speaker 1: people out there who say that he did actually hire
Speaker 1: somebody to do it. Um. There are there are people
Speaker 1: out there who's said that aliens did it too. So
Speaker 1: I mean that hated her. They just hated her for
Speaker 1: because she knew too much. I guess I don't know
Speaker 1: she insulted their big eyes. Well. Another thing is that,
Speaker 1: like everybody talks about this case being perfect and there
Speaker 1: they admire it because it's like this mastermind chess game,
Speaker 1: which okay, one of the things that Wallace liked was chess.
Speaker 1: But he was horrible at it. He was so bad
Speaker 1: at it. I probably could have beat him. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: can't play chess at all. I mean, he was okay,
Speaker 1: he won everyone something. I thought it was kind of
Speaker 1: mediocre rather than actually terrible. He was a mediocre player.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say mediocre at best. But he was not
Speaker 1: this like chess mastermind. Chess wasn't his whole life. He
Speaker 1: liked it, sure, but he liked chemistry too. He liked
Speaker 1: botany too. He liked playing with electrics too. He liked
Speaker 1: playing the violin. He was awful of the violin. He
Speaker 1: liked me he wasn't really very good at He hadn't
Speaker 1: actually been playing the violin very long, really late in
Speaker 1: life for sure. But I'm just saying that, like, it
Speaker 1: seems like it was a thing that he liked and
Speaker 1: it happened that, Yeah, the call was placed when he
Speaker 1: was at this chess club. But he didn't go that often.
Speaker 1: It also appears that the media at the time really
Speaker 1: drove home the idea that he was some kind of
Speaker 1: chess mastermind, because they're spreads from the time that you
Speaker 1: can see and they may look his long, spindly, pointy fingers.
Speaker 1: He obviously has a genius brain. All this really weird
Speaker 1: claims you could get away with at the time. But
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the whole chess thing it's the media's fault. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I just think it's it's interesting and I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure everybody knows he wasn't some like
Speaker 1: mastermind chess player. He was a mediocre at best player.
Speaker 1: I think it was an intelligent guy. Your smarts and
Speaker 1: your your gamesmanship are two. Yeah, you can, you can
Speaker 1: be very smart, but allows you chess player. I'm very
Speaker 1: smart and I'm a terrible chess player. Oh you're very smart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm saying. No, I mean it's yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. You don't have to be smart to be
Speaker 1: a good chess player and vice versa. But I just don't.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't see it. I don't see him
Speaker 1: as this like calculate. I mean, he lost his job
Speaker 1: so many times, and he kind of like, he seemed
Speaker 1: kind of like this meek little I want to use
Speaker 1: the term bumbling. I don't think that's right, but he
Speaker 1: just kind of seems like, you know, criminal masterminds want
Speaker 1: you to believe that. But didn't you see the usual suspects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, except for that he would have if he
Speaker 1: but if he had been taking that personality on, he
Speaker 1: would have appeared that way in his trial to right,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have appeared detached and cold, right, which makes
Speaker 1: makes me think it's more authentic. You know, all of
Speaker 1: the interactions to hear about before his wife's murder, I
Speaker 1: think he's kind of awkward and weird and you know,
Speaker 1: again bumbly, even though it's not the right word. And
Speaker 1: then after he sees his wife having been bludgeoned to death,
Speaker 1: he detaches and goes cold. And that seems like a
Speaker 1: normal human behavior to me, but apparently everybody else that
Speaker 1: seems like a criminal mastermind. So there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if it's not him, then who That's the big
Speaker 1: question right there. There are a couple other suspects, actually,
Speaker 1: and one of them is a young man by the
Speaker 1: well he was young at the time. Excuse me, he's
Speaker 1: dead now he's not. He wasn't young. Uh. Yeah. His
Speaker 1: name is Richard Perry and he was twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: and he had very recently left or been fired from
Speaker 1: his job with the Prudential. I didn't see anything they
Speaker 1: indicated that he had been fired that indicated that he
Speaker 1: had been less sort of let go, because apparently he
Speaker 1: had a similar job as as Lawless And I know,
Speaker 1: I know where you're going with that. But the things
Speaker 1: that I had read all indicated that he was there
Speaker 1: for a while after everything happened. But nothing that did
Speaker 1: I read indicated that he was fired. It just he
Speaker 1: left a job similar company. I heard that there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little bit of embarrassment over
Speaker 1: money not turned in, and then his parents came forward
Speaker 1: and paid basically the thirty poundfference. Then then then you
Speaker 1: found something he didn't get Okay, I did not get
Speaker 1: fired exactly, but he did leave the job, and there's
Speaker 1: that he was he was asked kindly to leave, and
Speaker 1: that then there was a rumor that Wallace had played
Speaker 1: a part in that. Yeah, there was that rumor that
Speaker 1: that Wallace knew because he was he had taken over
Speaker 1: some of Wallace's account when Wallace had about of meningitis, pneumonia.
Speaker 1: I think it was bronchitischitis, one of those meningitis is
Speaker 1: you're right, yeah, bronchitis, right. I think it was brons
Speaker 1: So Perry had been collecting and uh, somebody I think said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, this account didn't pay and bowl and and
Speaker 1: and Wallace thought that's odd. I'm sure they did. And
Speaker 1: it turned out that Perry had stolen some money and
Speaker 1: Wallace reported him or didn't report. You can read some
Speaker 1: accounts that say like and Perry just didn't report him
Speaker 1: and just but oh no, I'm sorry that Wallace didn't
Speaker 1: report Perry, but that Perry knew that Wallace knew, and
Speaker 1: or I believe more than probably Wallace reported Perry because
Speaker 1: he might have reported him, or he might have got
Speaker 1: to Perry and say, hey, dude, you either cough up
Speaker 1: this money or I'm turning you in. And so that's
Speaker 1: when he went to his parents and got some money
Speaker 1: and paid it off and then left. Eventually left anycause
Speaker 1: he really fancied himself as a bit of a playboy,
Speaker 1: but he was always broke. Yeah, I've got all this money.
Speaker 1: Just not right now? Yeah? Yeah, speaking of Perry, he
Speaker 1: is he isn't He is a suspect for some people.
Speaker 1: And then there's other people who say that P. D. James,
Speaker 1: for example, that the mystery writer. We're gonna talk about this,
Speaker 1: talk about that lay Yeah, no, no, no no, sorry, just
Speaker 1: keep your hat on. There's another did you did you
Speaker 1: hear anything about Joseph Caleb mars Marsden. Yeah, but we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that too, Okay. So it seems that actually
Speaker 1: collection agents at the time, would you know, walk around,
Speaker 1: like Steve was saying, and collect their money, their dues
Speaker 1: and keep them in a lock box, often overnight at
Speaker 1: their homes and then go in the next morning and
Speaker 1: turn all the money in. And that's what that's what
Speaker 1: Wallace tended to do, although I don't think it was
Speaker 1: even a lock box. I think it was more like
Speaker 1: a cigar box a box. Yeah. Yeah, Perry apparently being
Speaker 1: the jerk that he was, um and he knew Julia.
Speaker 1: They because I guess Perry and Wallace had been mildly
Speaker 1: friendly at least when when Perry was doing Wallace's collections. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he had to stop by at the end of
Speaker 1: the day and turn the money over. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: theory goes that he made the fake call in order
Speaker 1: to rob Wallace because he thought Wallace would have all
Speaker 1: all of these collections at the end of the next night.
Speaker 1: And he knocked on the door and Julia said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's you, Mr Perry, come in, and so he came
Speaker 1: in and bludgeoned her to death and tried to rob
Speaker 1: Mr Wallace of all of his takings for the day.
Speaker 1: But it turned out that it was just like a
Speaker 1: couple of pounds. It was four pounds something like that,
Speaker 1: you know, some some tiny, tiny amount, and so it was,
Speaker 1: you know, that sucked for him, and he left, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, never came forward, obviously obviously understanding about
Speaker 1: the way that the way it worked is. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what the timing was, but it's like
Speaker 1: there were some people who paid like once a week
Speaker 1: and other people paid like once a month. So on
Speaker 1: those days when the once a month payers are paying,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money. That's go be a lot
Speaker 1: of money, right, Yeah, So he miscalculated, maybe he misfigured,
Speaker 1: which was that all these people were going to be
Speaker 1: paying making their monthly payment or not. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: there's a little evidence. I guess. I don't know how
Speaker 1: reliable it is, but that's going to say this, this
Speaker 1: is circumstantial to Yes, yeah, he did have a car.
Speaker 1: Perry did. And apparently a mechanic either saw a bloody
Speaker 1: glove in Perry's car or saw Perry hosing the interior
Speaker 1: of his car out with a high pressured hose while
Speaker 1: his gloves were covered in blood. I'm not totally sure.
Speaker 1: And then um, Perry's alibi when the police questioned him
Speaker 1: was given by his then fiance, who later jilted, adacted
Speaker 1: the statement and offered a new statement saying that Perry
Speaker 1: had not been with her that night. Yeah what did
Speaker 1: I say? I'm oh, I yeah, retracted is what I meant. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: that kind of same thing, crossed out the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So lesson to all of your gentlemen out there. If
Speaker 1: you're in a relationship and you murder someone and your
Speaker 1: significant other is your alibi, do not jilt that person?
Speaker 1: What that person? Forever? Haven't you guys learned your lesson?
Speaker 1: Come on, guys. Yeah, anyway, she said, you know, Perry
Speaker 1: asked me to provide this alibi. I have no idea
Speaker 1: where he was that night. I mean, you know, he
Speaker 1: had time, he had a kind of possible motive. He
Speaker 1: had a shoddy alibi, shoddier alibi than Wallace had. To
Speaker 1: be fair, there's actually more evidence for Perry to have
Speaker 1: done this than there is Wallace. Definitely, well there's not
Speaker 1: much in the way of evidence, but definitely it's it's
Speaker 1: possible where it doesn't appear to be really possible that
Speaker 1: Wallace could have done it. Yeah. So the only other
Speaker 1: thing to like add to this is there were a
Speaker 1: couple journalists at the time who were pretty convinced that
Speaker 1: Perry had done it, and they questioned him, and he
Speaker 1: kept saying no, no, I didn't do it, No, I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. But they finally questioned him on his
Speaker 1: doorstep in nineteen sixty six. No, no, no, on Perry's doorstep. Sorry,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, excuse me, And reportedly he had
Speaker 1: a shockingly in depth understanding of the case and including
Speaker 1: the fact that he knew lots of details that were
Speaker 1: like way unknown by the lay person and d tales
Speaker 1: on lower level witnesses like when they died or how
Speaker 1: they died, um and basically basically knowledge that somebody shouldn't
Speaker 1: have necessarily. It seems that he took a very keen
Speaker 1: interest in the case. Yeah, although you know what, he
Speaker 1: was questioned by the police at the time, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't think this is that unusual because
Speaker 1: number one, that was a very famous case. He was
Speaker 1: perfectly involved, So you know, I don't think as much
Speaker 1: as he can but to continue to learn about, like
Speaker 1: he tracked those witnesses and knew about their lives after
Speaker 1: the case. Maybe he was trying to solve it. Maybe
Speaker 1: he was. Yeah, maybe he was. Yeah. So that's the
Speaker 1: evidence for Perry. And then there's one of the things
Speaker 1: we were that Joe was about to talk about and
Speaker 1: now we're going to actually talk about it is Pete
Speaker 1: James's claim that Perry made the prank phone call but
Speaker 1: then Wallace committed the murder anyway, and that they were
Speaker 1: totally unconnected. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she said, because Perry, because
Speaker 1: Perry apparently was a little a little angry over his
Speaker 1: the whole incident at the Prudential. Yeah, so just for
Speaker 1: funny thought, he play a mean little prank and send
Speaker 1: him on a wild goose chase, and so that so
Speaker 1: it might have been him, and that would explain why
Speaker 1: the phone call was made from that particular phone booth,
Speaker 1: because he's gonna like observe him leaving for his chess
Speaker 1: club thing. Perry was the one Perry, by the way,
Speaker 1: I was involved with an acting club and they actually
Speaker 1: met at the same place that the chess club did,
Speaker 1: and so he would have he would have known if
Speaker 1: he had seen him there. He had seen Wallace at
Speaker 1: the chess club at that place before, so he would
Speaker 1: have had an idea. So it's Monday night, he sort
Speaker 1: of stakes at the place on Wolverton Street where they lived,
Speaker 1: and then season leaving assume it's for the chess club,
Speaker 1: goes to the goes to the phone booth, makes that
Speaker 1: phone call and leaves that message sending on a wild
Speaker 1: goose goose chase. But it was just a mean, practical
Speaker 1: joke more than anything else. It wasn't the whole thing
Speaker 1: about that street sounds so much like just a practical joke.
Speaker 1: It was a snipe hunt. H Yeah. But then so
Speaker 1: I read and I read an article or two about
Speaker 1: Pete james Is claims that she had solved it and
Speaker 1: that she you know, she knew it was Wallace that
Speaker 1: had done. And I still don't quite get her argument.
Speaker 1: I don't either, Yeah, yeah, I mean I really don't.
Speaker 1: Actually I think her theory about Perry making the phone
Speaker 1: call is reasonable, but as far as Wallace still not convinced,
Speaker 1: I'm not either. And then we have one more theory
Speaker 1: with Marsden, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joseph Caleb Marsden, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he had. And this is a game from John Gannon's
Speaker 1: book The Killing of Julia Wallace. Uh and he says,
Speaker 1: he alleges that Wallace hired he hired Joseph Caleb Marsden
Speaker 1: to do it through through Richard Gordon Perry because actually
Speaker 1: Perry new Marsden, and and so Marsden actually did the
Speaker 1: dirty work. And that's theory, yeah, yeah, or the other theory.
Speaker 1: I also heard that Marsden did the dirty work for Perry,
Speaker 1: not for wall I mean, you know, there's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that is troubling about this case.
Speaker 1: For instance, is there a lot of books written about
Speaker 1: this case, and and some of the information in there
Speaker 1: is shoddy at best. I would say, um, like one
Speaker 1: of them says that it's unknown if Wallace won the
Speaker 1: prize for the Chess Championship which he was competing, which
Speaker 1: is absurd because he played in one official maybe two
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know if that one on January nineteen
Speaker 1: counted or not towards the championship, but there were like
Speaker 1: seven games, eight games. He played in one and lost,
Speaker 1: played in another one and one, but it was it
Speaker 1: was different than he was in jail, so he definitely
Speaker 1: didn't win. So I don't know why this book is
Speaker 1: saying we don't know if he's a series that ran through.
Speaker 1: I think that was March, March, very March, somewhere in
Speaker 1: there and it ended, so there's no way. Yeah, he couldn't.
Speaker 1: But it just goes to show you that even before
Speaker 1: the Internet existed, there there was the bills getting out
Speaker 1: there in the public spaces. Yeah. Yeah, Actually, you know
Speaker 1: what I just remembered while we were talking about this.
Speaker 1: That second match that he played that night. He played
Speaker 1: against a friend who was ranked like a couple of
Speaker 1: ranks higher than him, so they were ineligible to play
Speaker 1: against each other in the championship. So he did win
Speaker 1: that game on the internet. Okay, he won the game,
Speaker 1: but officially he only played one game in the championship,
Speaker 1: and he lost, So he definitely and he was super
Speaker 1: proud of winning that match, which he should have been.
Speaker 1: He should have been because this guy was really good
Speaker 1: chess player, actually a really good chess player. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I guess you know. My final thoughts on this is, um,
Speaker 1: there's I'm just going to quote Gerald Abrams. He uh,
Speaker 1: he's a barrister who lived in Liverpool at the time.
Speaker 1: He's written a lot about the Wallace case, and he says,
Speaker 1: um quote. Journalists have agitated their readers for many years
Speaker 1: with the question was Wallace guilty? There are three approaches
Speaker 1: to this question. One Legally, it's academic, there was no
Speaker 1: evan against him. To personally, his acquaintances, excluding those who
Speaker 1: revel in the troubles of their quote friends, seemed convinced
Speaker 1: of his innocence. The author takes the view that to
Speaker 1: vest Wallace with guilt in the circumstances to credit him
Speaker 1: with a mental power, a skill and agility, and a
Speaker 1: cold blooded nervelessness, nerveless efficiency of which he seemed utterly incapable.
Speaker 1: And three scientifically, it is a much easier hypothesis to
Speaker 1: assume another person as a murderer whose task would have
Speaker 1: been easier mental effortless by the principle of simple explanation,
Speaker 1: Wallace was innocent, unquote. I especially like him saying it's
Speaker 1: crediting Wallas this with a lot of stuff that he
Speaker 1: was just not capable of, which is the most most
Speaker 1: of us, frankly, are not capable of. UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he's entirely correct. I think either that or
Speaker 1: he's he's a mad genius. Yeah, maybe, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't think Wallace did it. But I don't
Speaker 1: know who did well. Again and again, I we said
Speaker 1: this in the very beginning, because we don't know anything
Speaker 1: about Julia. I mean, really, there's very little on record
Speaker 1: that we know about her. We don't know if there
Speaker 1: was something in her past. They the police were able
Speaker 1: to rule out. Neither of them had any lovers, you know,
Speaker 1: neither of them had any debts really that anybody could find.
Speaker 1: So it seemed unlikely that it was wrapped up in Julia.
Speaker 1: I guess, but maybe it was the the amount of
Speaker 1: anger that was in the murder, because it was ethan brutal.
Speaker 1: It really means that somebody had a personal stake that
Speaker 1: they were taking out on her, whether it be a
Speaker 1: past jilted lover or a wrong family member or hell,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe she had a kid and she
Speaker 1: gave that kid up and that kid tracked her down
Speaker 1: all these years later her and said, you made me
Speaker 1: an orphan. I'm going to take it out on you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what it is, or could
Speaker 1: be a bazillion things, or there could truly still be nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could actually it could actually be somebody who didn't
Speaker 1: even know her and just a serial killer who just
Speaker 1: weren't who needed money and he had money. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: maybe this is where Perry comes into. You know, he
Speaker 1: like he like knows this guy who's a real skuts
Speaker 1: bag and says, hey, I know these people aren't going
Speaker 1: to be home, and I know he keeps a buttload
Speaker 1: of money. You know, then you run into the there.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, there was no sign
Speaker 1: of a struggle. I've never seen anything that there was
Speaker 1: a sign of a struggle. And she let the person in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you assume that she knew them and that it
Speaker 1: started out totally peacefully or at least mildly comfortable, and
Speaker 1: they surprised her with the hit over the head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that leads to our last series and this this
Speaker 1: has actually been put out there, which is said, what's
Speaker 1: the Johnston's Yeah, yeah, which at least one, and it
Speaker 1: could have been really realistically, it could have been they
Speaker 1: had a key, they had a key, she knew them.
Speaker 1: They could have said, we're just going to come around
Speaker 1: for They would have known about the money. That she
Speaker 1: could have been cheating with the Johnston I mean, really
Speaker 1: cheating with one of them, cheating with both of them. Really.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I wanted to cheat with Julie myself,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I wouldn't there, but hey, some
Speaker 1: people are into stuff like that. Yeah, anyway, see you
Speaker 1: have anything, I don't. This one just it's baffling. It's
Speaker 1: baffling because of the amount of build as Joe put
Speaker 1: it's out there, and the total lack of evidence for
Speaker 1: anything other than the fact that the only thing that
Speaker 1: we can confirm is that she died, most likely by
Speaker 1: being beaten to death with the fire poker. The only
Speaker 1: thing pretty confident that she died by being beaten. But
Speaker 1: that's really the only only solid fact we have this
Speaker 1: entire case. Yeah, that's somebody somebody being into death on
Speaker 1: left with the poker. I'm not sure what the poker
Speaker 1: was never found, so yeah, but yeah, other than that,
Speaker 1: I can't say it's uh, you know, it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: to that somebody set Wallace up. You know, they made
Speaker 1: the phone call to the chess club deliberately from a
Speaker 1: phone near his house to to you know, suspicion upon him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's totally possible, although it doesn't seem like he had
Speaker 1: any really enemies, I mean other than Perry. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it could have been somebody trying to create the actually
Speaker 1: commit the perfect crime. It's just a hobby sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And so here's what we're Hols and the area. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but but think about that. I mean, so he makes
Speaker 1: the phone call, no, I mean that that's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna be recorded. It's going to cast suspicion upon him
Speaker 1: that he made to call himself, not realizing that Wallace
Speaker 1: is going to go out there and he's gonna like
Speaker 1: totally badger everybody sees along the way. I'm not realizing
Speaker 1: that and picking that. Yeah, I thought, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: gonna disappear, he murders the wife, he's gonna come back
Speaker 1: with no alibi, he's going to go off to the
Speaker 1: pokey and instead he comes back with a great alibi.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, it's possible. This was a listener's suggestion.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. I'll say at the end instead of
Speaker 1: the beginning, we forgot. I totally forgot. Yeah. Mike b
Speaker 1: Uh suggested it in like September two thousand and fourteen.
Speaker 1: It's been a while, yeah, and then the artful Dodger
Speaker 1: on Reddit also suggested it recently. Um, and I think
Speaker 1: we've had a couple of there's been a couple over time. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so thank you guys. If you want to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for us, you can do that on our website
Speaker 1: in the about the show. It's probably the best place
Speaker 1: to do it, but you can. Well that's where everybody
Speaker 1: goes to do it. I don't know why, but that's
Speaker 1: where they go. Yeah. Um. That website is thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. You can also stream us there, leave
Speaker 1: a comment about the show. You can find our links
Speaker 1: to the PayPal, to the Patreon, and to merch. You
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Speaker 1: If you have serious feedback for us. We prefer an
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Speaker 1: and like get understand what you're saying. Um. That email
Speaker 1: address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You
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Speaker 1: I'm not. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we're from. The note
Speaker 1: on Twitter is we're Thinking Sideways, not Thinking Sideways. And
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Speaker 1: It's where you make a sustaining donation per episode. And
Speaker 1: we super duper appreciate that because you guys have been
Speaker 1: really awesome and we'd like to keep that momentum going
Speaker 1: so we can actually pay for the show entirely instead
Speaker 1: of us paying for the show. Yeah, prefer that, yeah
Speaker 1: breaking even my credit card loves it. Oh no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I know what you're getting, fire miles or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: all of that having been said, I think we're gonna
Speaker 1: get on out of here. Yeah. Yeah, So thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week, folks. Bye bye, bitter guys.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll hear them next week. We won't see them, yeah,
Speaker 1: well they'll hear us. Yeah that's true.