Beyond Recognition Preview Episode 6

[00:00:01] At the heart of this violent, bloody case is a love story. A very unusual love story.

[00:00:09] This was Agatha Christie come to life.

[00:00:13] It's not something I've given a great deal of thought to about where to dump bodies.

[00:00:16] But if I was driving from Moffat up to Edinburgh, I can't think of any other spot.

[00:00:27] The Ruxton case is different.

[00:00:32] Any investigation before the Ruxton case was ancient history.

[00:00:38] Because it changed the way that we investigate serious crime.

[00:00:43] The public has been lining up for courtroom seats since before dawn.

[00:00:51] Latecomers are offering wads of cash for a position at the front of the line.

[00:00:56] An army of press from around the world are on hand to document every dark and dramatic moment.

[00:01:08] Beyond Recognition is a new limited series coming to the Small Town Dicks podcast feed on July 19th.

[00:01:15] Don't miss it.

[00:01:19] John, we're into Episode 6 now of Small Town Dicks with your series on Ruxton, the first modern murder, based on your book.

[00:01:26] Of course, it's called Beyond Recognition.

[00:01:28] A fantastic job they're making of it.

[00:01:30] John, before I ask you to sum up the final part and especially the repercussions of Ruxton, which I know you're at great pains in the book to stress how important this case was historically.

[00:01:42] Something that struck me was maybe something we haven't touched on.

[00:01:46] There was expert evidence led here in the court, obviously.

[00:01:49] In order to be an expert witness, you have to have credentials that the court accept you as an expert witness.

[00:01:57] It's not something that just anyone can say, oh, I am an expert witness, or somebody can make somebody an expert witness.

[00:02:03] It has to be proven to the court through your credentials, your history, etc.

[00:02:08] For example, fingerprint evidence, I was always told that in order to become an expert in fingerprint evidence, enough of an expert to lead evidence in court, you had to have seven years experience of examining fingerprints in all the different formats.

[00:02:24] This is a case where the whole circumstantial case rested on various strands of expert evidence.

[00:02:31] Was that landmark for its time in 1935 as well?

[00:02:35] It was certainly landmark that Scottish forensic scientists were giving expert evidence in an English court.

[00:02:44] Because although John Glacester and Sidney Smith and the great Professor Brash were well known in Scottish circles and in Scottish courts, they were not known in the English courts.

[00:02:55] And that's one of the issues that the prosecution had to overcome.

[00:03:00] And they made great pains when they were leading the evidence and introducing the witnesses.

[00:03:05] Of talking about their experience and their expertise and all the places in the world where they had worked.

[00:03:11] And of course, both Glacester and Sidney Smith had worked literally all over the world.

[00:03:17] And they'd both, at one point in time, been professors of forensic medicine at Cairo University, of all places.

[00:03:25] But the credibility point is a very good one.

[00:03:28] However, on the day, it wasn't a problem because their evidence was superb.

[00:03:33] Not just in expressing their opinions, but also in the balance and the fairness of their evidence.

[00:03:40] They did not come in as the confident professors telling the jury what had gone on,

[00:03:46] almost in a sort of a condescending schoolmaster-ish way.

[00:03:50] They didn't do that.

[00:03:51] That wasn't Glacester's tactic at all.

[00:03:54] What he came in to do, he came in and just wove with this incredible web of circumstantial evidence.

[00:04:03] And he never, and this was the clever thing, because the defence tried to lure them onto areas that they were not expert in.

[00:04:12] And of course, they were smart enough to know, and they were smart enough to say, I'm sorry, that's not a matter that I'm expert in.

[00:04:19] And they stuck very much to what they knew.

[00:04:21] And their evidence was fantastic.

[00:04:24] So much so that you'll see in the book, it's not covered in the podcast, but in the book,

[00:04:30] I go to some length to talk about the judges summing up at the end of the trial.

[00:04:35] And it was absolutely remarkable, because it was, as we know, the summing up and direction of the jury is the place where it often goes wrong.

[00:04:47] Misdirection of the jury.

[00:04:49] That perhaps the judge expressed a view, or perhaps the judge wasn't as balanced, etc.

[00:04:55] Well, in this case, the judge, Justice Singleton, he made it very clear that he had never in his whole time,

[00:05:05] either as a judge or in the legal profession, he'd never heard such a comprehensive and fair and balanced presentation of the forensic evidence.

[00:05:17] And the thing was that for the defence, this was an absolute body blow, of course.

[00:05:22] And they tried to appeal it, but the Lord Chief Justice sitting in the appeal court said, no, what the judge said was fair.

[00:05:30] Actually, that body of evidence was superb.

[00:05:33] And the judge was absolutely right to point it out to the jury.

[00:05:36] So it was a masterclass in the independent forensic expert, not the forensic scientist who's employed by the Crown to press the Crown case.

[00:05:48] It wasn't like that at all.

[00:05:49] Gloucester saw himself as being completely independent, and that came across in his evidence.

[00:05:55] And that, of course, laid down the principles and created the model that we worked with,

[00:06:01] where the forensic scientists who came in to give evidence in the box were not on our side,

[00:06:09] and they were not on the defence's side.

[00:06:13] They were on the side of science.

[00:06:14] And they just said it how they saw it.

[00:06:17] And this balance and fairness was something that very much started in the Ruxin case.

[00:06:23] It was a real feature of all our service as well, was that impartiality of the laboratories.

[00:06:29] And it had to be that way.

[00:06:31] And the fingerprint evidence that I alluded to with the seven years' experience that you required.

[00:06:37] It's a feature of our justice system, if you like,

[00:06:40] that the court, and I think it comes across in the Ruxin case really good,

[00:06:44] that the courtroom is a special dynamic, isn't it?

[00:06:48] It's a special atmosphere, all of its own, that you'll never find anywhere else,

[00:06:52] especially in a high court when there's a jury there, or a jury from jury,

[00:06:56] especially the old buildings that we're in.

[00:06:59] The whole experience of it can be a real numbing experience for a lot of people that have never done it before.

[00:07:05] And any copper that goes in and isn't intimidated by it is in danger,

[00:07:10] because you have to be intimidated by it to be on your guard,

[00:07:14] because there's real intellect in there,

[00:07:16] and there's real drama going on that's being led,

[00:07:20] especially in front of a jury.

[00:07:21] Every gesture, every pause, every comma, every look over the spectacles,

[00:07:28] everything that's going on in there is all an influence on the final result that comes out of the court.

[00:07:34] And it really is high drama, isn't it?

[00:07:37] Absolutely.

[00:07:37] And I mean, the court at Manchester was an old-fashioned Victorian court,

[00:07:42] a sort of cross between a theatre and the Roman circus.

[00:07:45] You know, it was a big amphitheatre with the accused sitting right in the middle.

[00:07:51] Everybody could see them, these long terrace seats.

[00:07:54] But when you read the trial, it's actually very, very interesting,

[00:07:58] because what the Jackson, J.C. Jackson, the lead prosecutor,

[00:08:03] he wasn't one of the elite prosecutors out of London.

[00:08:06] He was very much a Northern England man,

[00:08:08] and a wee bit of a barroom brawler of a prosecutor.

[00:08:12] But this was his masterpiece.

[00:08:14] And what you see is every day,

[00:08:17] what he does is his first witness makes an impact.

[00:08:22] His first witness is saying something incredibly important to catch the jury.

[00:08:27] Yeah?

[00:08:28] Yeah.

[00:08:28] And then in the middle of the day,

[00:08:30] he fills in with witnesses who are talking about fairly inconsequential things,

[00:08:36] but they need to be led.

[00:08:37] And then at the end of the day, about three o'clock in the afternoon,

[00:08:41] he brings in another very important witness.

[00:08:43] And bang.

[00:08:44] And then in his cross-examination of the witnesses,

[00:08:48] he leaves this sort of trail of breadcrumbs for the jury to ponder on.

[00:08:53] And so the jury go away every night with something to chew over.

[00:08:58] Yeah.

[00:08:59] It really was.

[00:09:00] It was extremely well done.

[00:09:02] And, of course, you can only do this in a long trial.

[00:09:06] You can't do it in a half-day trial.

[00:09:08] And let's be honest, most of the trials take a very short time.

[00:09:11] But funnily enough, where I saw this done again was in the World's End trial.

[00:09:18] The Lord Advocate, he did exactly the same.

[00:09:20] He led an important witness at the beginning and at the end of the day.

[00:09:24] And sometimes to wake people up after lunchtime,

[00:09:26] he would shuffle the order and bring in a witness with something to say after lunchtime,

[00:09:31] just to make sure the jury were still on their toes.

[00:09:36] Frank Mulholland, and I don't know,

[00:09:37] maybe I don't know to what extent they had studied these great cases or not,

[00:09:43] but certainly I saw a very similar pattern of the prosecution case being laid out very carefully.

[00:09:50] But every now and again, just a bang, bang, bang, just to keep the jury awake

[00:09:54] and just to make them keep in their mind how this evidence is building.

[00:09:59] I love that.

[00:10:00] I love that courtroom craft, if you like, that goes on.

[00:10:03] Yes.

[00:10:03] And I spoke to a lot of solicitors about it as well, and fiscal.

[00:10:06] The opposite side of that coin, Tom, is when you get, if you're a juror,

[00:10:11] and you're unfortunate enough to be called up to a big fraud trial.

[00:10:14] And I've seen umpteen fraud trials, major fraud trials lost because of the minutiae

[00:10:20] and the defence and system leading and questioning all the minutiae of the case

[00:10:26] and its documentary evidence and its long spiels of figures.

[00:10:30] And the jury get lost, and you can see them getting lost and getting switched off.

[00:10:35] And there's no remedy to it because there is no drama.

[00:10:38] There is no murder weapon.

[00:10:39] There is no photographs of the locusts or the deceased or whatever.

[00:10:43] And we end up we're not proven or are not guilty

[00:10:46] because it's so difficult to let a jury know what's going on.

[00:10:49] Well, that's right.

[00:10:50] And that's one of the reasons why there's always been suggestions

[00:10:53] that these complex fraud trials should be tried without a jury.

[00:10:57] Yeah.

[00:10:58] Only before a judge.

[00:10:59] But that too is a slippery slope.

[00:11:03] I mean, I don't agree with this recent thing about rape trials being held without a jury.

[00:11:09] Only judges.

[00:11:10] I just don't agree with it because my experience is that a jury, as often as not,

[00:11:17] will come up with a common sense verdict.

[00:11:21] Okay, there are exceptions to that, but there are not enough exceptions to it

[00:11:25] to make me turn away from juries.

[00:11:26] I think juries.

[00:11:27] And of course, juries are the most important involvement that ordinary people can have

[00:11:32] with their criminal justice system.

[00:11:35] Their criminal justice system.

[00:11:37] Everything is prosecuted in the public interest.

[00:11:41] So it's not this business about, oh, it's for the lawyers and for this and that.

[00:11:45] No, no.

[00:11:46] It's not.

[00:11:47] It's for the public.

[00:11:48] And being a member of a jury is the ultimate expression of that.

[00:11:52] Good, Tom.

[00:11:53] I'm sure it's a subject.

[00:11:54] In fact, I'm now 100% sure because I'm going to put it on a list of things.

[00:11:59] Some court stories that we can tell and some discussion.

[00:12:02] And of course, the laws of corroboration are very much under debate just now as well.

[00:12:07] But we will come back to all that.

[00:12:09] Let's get back to 1935 and the end of the trial.

[00:12:13] After the trial, I'm not going to give any spoilers here with a verdict or anything.

[00:12:17] You have to listen to Small Town Dicks to hear the actual trial.

[00:12:21] And you took that from transcripts from the trial, Tom.

[00:12:24] That was real.

[00:12:24] Yeah.

[00:12:25] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:26] Every word in that section is actually from the transcript of the trial.

[00:12:31] Fantastic.

[00:12:32] Yeah.

[00:12:32] And it did not need further dramatization because it was dramatic enough.

[00:12:37] Yeah.

[00:12:37] Yeah.

[00:12:38] It's back to the old fiction.

[00:12:40] Truth is stranger than fiction.

[00:12:41] So, Tom, give us your view because it's the most educated view, if you like, because of

[00:12:46] your research in this case of why the aftermath of the Ruxian trial is about the most important

[00:12:52] part of all, really, because of the repercussions.

[00:12:56] Yeah.

[00:12:57] The Ruxian trial is important, in my view, not because of what happened at the scene of

[00:13:01] the crime or even in the courtroom or in the laboratory at Edinburgh University, but

[00:13:06] the consequences of it.

[00:13:07] Because what happened was Glacester, Sidney Smith and Percy Silito, coming back to Percy

[00:13:13] Silito, your old chief in Glasgow, they used the publicity of the trial, the worldwide

[00:13:20] publicity of the trial.

[00:13:21] The trial was the first trial that had a separate media bureau, you know, because people came

[00:13:27] from all over the world to sit in on this trial.

[00:13:30] Agatha Christie come to light, you know, sex, murder, bloody murder, bodies cut up.

[00:13:37] It was just, it was pure tabloid fodder.

[00:13:40] It really was.

[00:13:41] Anyway, what these men did was they used the publicity and the kudos that came from the

[00:13:47] trial in order to advance their philosophy of scientific methods.

[00:13:53] So after the trial, such was the praise that was heaped upon the shoulders of Glacester and

[00:14:00] Sidney Smith particularly, that they used that to lever the government into building forensic

[00:14:07] laboratories all over England and Scotland.

[00:14:10] That's where the forensic laboratories in Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow came from.

[00:14:15] It was used as the vehicle for detective training.

[00:14:20] Before that, detectives had just been cops in plain clothes, basically.

[00:14:24] It was the first time after that that detective training was brought in and emphasising and

[00:14:29] specialising in crime scenes.

[00:14:32] And you remember even 30 years later when you and I were doing detective training, the heavy

[00:14:38] emphasis there was on the preservation of forensic materials.

[00:14:42] That all came about as a result of this trial.

[00:14:45] So it really did, for the first time, fully integrate forensic science into criminal investigation.

[00:14:53] And it was the prototype case for the system which you and I worked with.

[00:15:00] And you and I were introduced to as young detectives.

[00:15:03] And of course, we didn't know it had ever been any different.

[00:15:06] But of course, it had been.

[00:15:08] It had been a lot different prior to the Ruxton case.

[00:15:11] And I've said, you know, quite simply, everything before Ruxton is ancient history.

[00:15:18] Everything after Ruxton is modern, integrated criminal investigation.

[00:15:25] Joined up thinking.

[00:15:26] Joined up thinking and joined up working.

[00:15:29] Yeah.

[00:15:30] And seeing forensic science not as the icing of the cake, but the cake itself.

[00:15:35] Tom, I think we should finish on Ruxton himself.

[00:15:38] He went to the gallows.

[00:15:40] I don't think I'm giving away any secrets there at the end of the book.

[00:15:44] And I think what Smalltown did well was explain that he went to the gallows with some dignity latterly.

[00:15:51] Although he never, ever admitted his crimes, his last thoughts were about his children that he left behind and his legacy, if you like, that he had left behind.

[00:16:00] Because he had come here intent to be part of the establishment.

[00:16:04] That was his dream, was to be the doctor and live in a community and be respected.

[00:16:09] And I think they did that nicely on Smalltown.

[00:16:12] Were you happy with it?

[00:16:13] Yes, I was.

[00:16:14] I mean, Ruxton's a very complex character in some ways and a very ordinary, jealous man.

[00:16:20] Just a jealous and temperate man in another way.

[00:16:23] But Ruxton had this vision of destiny.

[00:16:27] And it's funny because as a young doctor, he used to talk about the fact that he was going to be famous and he was going to make a contribution to medical science.

[00:16:37] And of course he did, but not in the way that he thought.

[00:16:40] But the other thing he said was that he was going to be the perfect English gentleman.

[00:16:45] He dressed like an English gentleman.

[00:16:48] He spoke.

[00:16:49] He was beautifully mannered.

[00:16:51] As long as he weren't his wife, if he was jealous of, he beautifully mannered.

[00:16:56] And he went to the gallows in exactly the same way.

[00:16:59] He went to the gallows in the way he believed that an English gentleman would.

[00:17:05] Stiff upper lip and showing courage and dignity.

[00:17:08] And that's what he did.

[00:17:10] Brilliant, Tom.

[00:17:11] Of course, the link to Smalltown is on our show notes.

[00:17:14] And again, it's been fantastic chatting about it, Tom, and giving us that insight.

[00:17:19] Thanks for doing that to give us that behind.

[00:17:22] There's always behind the scenes all the nuances of the case.

[00:17:25] When it comes out on Netflix or when it comes out as a movie or whatever, we can talk about it all over again, Tom.

[00:17:32] Well, Simon, if I'm looking for any villainous characters for the type for the cast, I'll be sure to let you know.

[00:17:39] I've gone up in the world then because I was going to be one of the bodies that were getting chopped up last time.

[00:17:44] They were going to be ruxting or some villain.

[00:17:48] Great stuff, Tom.

[00:17:49] Speak soon.

[00:17:50] Bye-bye.

[00:17:53] It's a serene September morning in 1935, about two miles north of the Scottish farming village of Moffat, an area known as the Devil's Beef Tub.

[00:18:07] It's a beautiful area, despite the name.

[00:18:11] An isolated region of deep ravines, rolling green hills, and massive chunks of rock that punch out from the earth like gnarled stone fists.

[00:18:22] The River Annan winds through it all, flowing out to the sea.

[00:18:26] It's a lonely, striking place that attracts hikers and nature lovers from around the United Kingdom.

[00:18:35] People like 24-year-old Susan Johnson and her 19-year-old brother, Alfred.

[00:18:42] Susan and Alfred are tourists from the Glasgow area, just out for a morning stroll on a lovely fall day.

[00:18:49] Birds are chirping, the skies are blue.

[00:18:54] Then, crossing an old stone bridge, Susan and Alfred stumble upon a brutal scene, so dark and out of place,

[00:19:04] it's hard for them to make sense of what they're actually seeing.

[00:19:08] They'd gone there on a fishing holiday and had been out walking.

[00:19:14] That's Susan's niece, Sheila Livingstone. Alfred was her father.

[00:19:20] But apparently Susie had looked over the bridge and seen what she thought was a woman's hand.

[00:19:28] And father had scrambled her down into the ravine.

[00:19:31] And he had unwrapped one of the parcels and seen a face looking up at him.

[00:19:40] Except that it's not actually a face. Not anymore.

[00:19:45] The skin has been completely removed.

[00:19:48] So have the eyes, the nose, the lips, the ears and teeth.

[00:19:54] They've all been cut away.

[00:19:56] It's absolutely unimaginable.

[00:19:59] Alfred stares down in shock at this thing, this adult head wrapped in a child's onesie.

[00:20:08] Aunt Susie was a very talented fisherman.

[00:20:12] And father was a great shot.

[00:20:15] They slayed everything that moved and ate it.

[00:20:18] So that they were quite used to things gruesome.

[00:20:21] But I can assure you, they weren't used to anything like this.

[00:20:26] The choking stench of decomposition drifts up to Susan on the bridge as she looks down at her brother.

[00:20:35] Alfred stands up and turns away from the rotting head.

[00:20:39] He gazes downstream, hoping his stomach will settle.

[00:20:44] It's not going to.

[00:20:47] What he sees are more packages strewn about on the grassy banks.

[00:20:53] Arms and legs partially wrapped in torn cloth and newspaper.

[00:20:57] He notices hunks of something scattered among the weeds.

[00:21:02] He's not sure what it is, but the flies and maggots have already figured it out.

[00:21:08] Human flesh.