Mystery of GI who escaped murder charge and vanished Surprise twist years after post-war killing of policeman shocked country
IT was the murder of a policeman that they tried to pin on a black GI lying low after fleeing Lichfield Barracks.
Freeman Reese was acquitted of the terrible crime committed more than 70 years ago in Burton-onTrent.
But it took a decade to find the suspect following the death of PC Brindley James Booth – and the real murderer has never been caught.
Yet even after being cleared, Reese was not allowed to walk free.
US military police were waiting outside court for him and he was taken back to the USA in handcuffs.
At court martial, he was sentenced to a staggering 20 years hard labour for desertion, later reduced to 12 years on appeal.
Now historians Richard Pursehouse and Ben Cunliffe have uncovered the real story behind a crime that gripped the nation – a tale that tops anything a TV whodunnit could offer.
It shines a spotlight on the racial intolerance of the day, but one thing cannot be argued – Freeman Reese was no saint. He was a man very comfortable on the wrong side of the law.
Not surprisingly, the burly fatherof-two immediately made his mark in the historic surroundings of Lichfield. He was one of 320,000 GIs based at Whittington Barracks from 1942 to 1945.
Reese, who reportedly made a small fortune from poker games in the area, struggled with, and bucked against, the disciplines of army life.
He was placed in the “glasshouse” for disobeying orders and fled the barracks after being struck with a bunch of keys by a guard, a blow which caused severe eye damage.
The crime that earned such a violent reprimand? He had used a ‘whites only’ toilet.
Reese disappeared without trace until the fateful night of May 29, 1946, when he was falsely branded a cop killer.
There’s no doubt Reese was up to no good that night. The roots of that damning accusation was a bungled safe job, a crime Reese was involved in.
Beat bobby PC Booth sprang into action after spotting a man wheeling the large safe in a child’s pushchair on Moor Street, Burton.
It had been stolen from the local Picturedome Cinema, and contained only £42.
The bobby gave chase. The prampusher, aware this was a race he would lose, hid round a street corner, leaping from cover to strike the officer with a jemmy.
At first PC Booth seemed to have survived the attack relatively unscathed. He had an inch-long cut, but was alert enough to give a description of the attacker: “Around 35, tallish, with bushy fair hair and a bit of a curl at the front.”
There was no mention assailant being black.
The officer’s condition quickly deteriorated, however. Still at the scene, he collapsed over the safe at 4am and was taken to hospital.
The 31-year-old father of two daughters died from his injuries on June 6 at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. He was buried on June 1946 at Byrkley Street Methodist Church, Burton.
For whatever reason, the investigation threw up the name of Freeman Reese. The case grew cold for 10 years, until a spot check on the Isle of Man uncovered Reese there.
He had fled there, with wife Elizabeth, after badly beating up a fellow drinker at the Swan Pub, Liverpool, in 1956.
Reese immediately “coughed” to the safe job, but vehemently denied attacking the police officer.
“I had a white accomplice,” he said during interview. “I knew him only as Slim. The robbery was his idea.
“We were pushing the pushchair of the away from the cinema when I saw the policeman. I stopped and Slim began pushing the pram to the right, with the policeman following him. I ran to a house in Heath Road.”
The police didn’t believe a word. The trial at Staffordshire Assizes, Stafford, in October, 1956, lasted only three hours.
Reese was represented by Rose Heilbron, nominated by the Daily Mirror in 1956 as Woman of the Year. There wasn’t nearly enough evidence to pin the murder on Reese and the judge concluded that there was probably an accomplice.
The sheer weight of the safe made that a near certainty.
But there was no time for Reese to crack open the champagne. US military police were waiting outside court and bundled him into a truck, then took him off to be court-martialed for desertion back in the USA.
The police probe and trial failed to find the answer to one important question... who was Slim?
Detectives didn’t think he existed, never sought anyone else, and closed the case.
Ironically, their prime suspect had been cleared by the statement of their deceased colleague, the victim.
The mystery had one final twist in the tale. Years later, Reese’s dog tags were found on an American soldier during the Indochina conflict, later to become the Vietnam War. American troops were present on an “advisory” capacity.
The dead man was not Reese. What happened to the reluctant trooper after his release from prison is yet another puzzle.