Vera Page case
The Vera Page case was an unsolved murder case from the early 1930s. Vera Page was born on 13 April 1921 in Hammersmith, London. On 14 December 1931, Miss Page was reported missing by her parents whilst living in Notting Hill, London.[1] Two days later, her raped and strangled body was found in the bushes by a house at Addison Road, about a mile from the victim's own house. The police thought she had been murdered somewhere else and then dragged into the growth alongside the road. The remains were examined by Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who discovered coal dust and candle wax on the girl's body, as well as a piece of ammonia-stained finger bandage lodged against her inner elbow, which had likely dislodged from the hand of her murderer as he deposited her body.[2] This coal dust, plus the candle wax upon Page's clothing, led Spilsbury to the conclusion that the girl's body had been hidden in a coal cellar prior to her disposal at Addison Road, and that this cellar most likely had no electric light, as evidenced by the spatterings of candle wax also found upon the victim's clothing. One coal cellar close to Addison Road was found with the door ajar, and investigators theorized the child's body had been hidden in this cellar after her murder.[3]
Over a thousand people were questioned about the Vera Page case, with one individual stating that, at dawn on 15 December, he had seen a man fitting the description of one Percy Orlando Rush pushing a wheelbarrow covered with a red table-cloth in the direction of Addison Road.[4]
Rush quickly became the prime suspect.[5] He was a forty-year-old married man, who worked as a flannel washer in a nearby launderette, and in this occupation, he had regularly come into contact with ammonia.[6] Furthermore, he had injured a finger on his left hand in his workplace less than a week prior to Page's murder, and freely admitted to having worn a finger bandage since this date.[7] Unremarked upon at the February, 1932, inquest into Page's murder was the fact that Rush had been previously found guilty of exposing himself to girls.[8]
Rush was never officially charged with the murder of Vera Page. No eyewitness accounts could place him with Vera on the day of her death, and no chemist could recall having sold bandages to Rush. Though his movements were never verified, Rush claimed that on 14 December, he had finished work and immediately travelled to Kensington. He died in 1961.
References
- ↑ Murder in the 1930s p. 56
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ The Glasgow Herald 22 Dec., 1931
- ↑ Murder in the 1930s p. 62
- ↑ Murder in the 1930s p. 62
- ↑ The Age 12 Feb., 1932
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Unsolved London Murders: The 1920s and 1930s p, 123
Cited works and further reading
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