True Detective Magazine True Detective September 2019 Vorige editie

He was an illiterate epileptic with the mental age of an 11-year-old – but that did not stop Derek Bentley going to the gallows for a murder he did not commit. Years of campaigning would eventually result in Bentley being awarded a posthumous pardon, and in 1998 his murder conviction was finally quashed. Yet the case was always hugely controversial. A policeman had been shot dead on the night of November 2nd, 1952, the killer a 16-year-old friend of Bentley’s called Christopher Craig. Read “Crimes That Made The Headlines – ‘Let Him Have It’” in this issue for the full story.

Years before Derek Bentley’s execution, the gallows at Liverpool’s Walton Prison were in regular use dispatching numerous north-west England killers. Among the cases featured in Part 9 of “Hanged At Liverpool” is that of child-killer Michael Fagan who was drunk when in September 1911 he murdered two-year-old Lucy Kennedy after a suspected sex attack. Would you, as the jury did, give a strong recommendation for mercy?

“Hanged In Australia” this issue takes us back to the Melbourne of the 1930s when money was in short supply and a burglar found himself in a desperate fight with vicar Edward Cecil.

Ever wondered what it was like inside London’s notorious Newgate Prison? See this issue’s “Under The Spotlight” for a pictorial guided tour.


Highlights of this issue include:

* 57 Years For The Hatchet-Wielding Hitch-Hiker
* Crimes That Made The Headlines: “Let Him Have It”
* Hanged In Australia: Terrible Death Of The Wandering Vicar
* America’s Most Evil: Killer Kept Sex Slaves In His Torture Cupboard
* Hanged At Liverpool – Part 9
* Execution USA
* Lover Thought He’d Murdered A Corpse
* The Black Friday Torture Killers
* Under The Spotlight: A Guided Tour Of Newgate Prison
* Questions & Answers: “Do Not Go Upstairs – Get The Police”