Listen to the witnesses in the recording or read their statements below.
Inspector Jonathan Whicher
Voice acknowledgments: Bill Bailey, Geoff Canton, Gillian Whitlock, Jack Stillwell, John Blake, Kathryn Abnett, Lee Shelden, Linda Rhodes, Mark Watson, Rick Sweetman, Simon Vernon-Penrose
Thomas Lewis Fanshawe, Vicar of Dagenham
I’m Thomas Lewis Fanshawe, Vicar of Dagenham. My family are the local squires and we own Parsloes Manor House. Dagenham has always been the sort of place where nothing ever happens, yet now this dreadful gruesome murder makes headlines across the country.
It fell to me to lead the funeral service for poor George Clark and to bury him in the churchyard. Then just weeks later the coroner made us dig up the poor fellow, just so they could find out if he’d been shot! He hadn’t, by the way.
Clark was a godly young man, but alas he didn’t attend my church but the new Ebenezer Methodist Chapel. Surely nobody would set out to kill such a harmless person, someone who had only arrived six weeks before?
I’m certain he was mistaken for someone else. Remember the attack happened in the middle of the night and in their uniform of cape and top hat, it would be hard to distinguish between the various police officers.
PC Abia Butfoy
I’m PC Abia Butfoy, and to me the solution’s obvious. I’m the one the murderers were after that night.
Three months ago, as I was patrolling Eastbrookend, I pulled over a notorious villain called William Walker (his brother Amos is just as bad) and demanded to know what was in his bag. He retorted that it was none of my business. I insisted on searching him and we had a bit of a punch-up. He eventually ran off, yelling, “I’ll get you for this!” Walker runs a beer shop in Romford and all the local dodgy characters meet up there.
Sergeant Parsons
Sergeant Parsons again. No, no, I’m convinced that I was the real target. A few weeks before the murder, I stopped and searched a Romford man named James Young, as he was driving a cart through Dagenham.
I discovered he was carrying pewter measures stolen from a pub in Rainham, so I arrested him and he was fined by the magistrates. His brother Thomas has a long criminal record too.
When a stallholder in Romford market overheard their father saying something implicating them in the murder, the detectives raided their house. They found a sharp double-edged knife, just like the one used to cut Clark’s throat.
Inspector Jonathan Whicher
I’m Inspector Jonathan Whicher. When this terrible murder happened, I was a sergeant in the detective force. Almost the first thing we did was to go to Romford to arrest and interrogate both sets of brothers, the Walkers and the Youngs. But if we were hoping to wrap up the case quickly, it didn’t turn out that way.
Try as we might, we couldn’t shake their alibis. Then Amos Walker barged into the inquest and insisted on speaking out, proclaiming their innocence.