Did deaf and dumb killer also murder pensioners and son?
Former detective calls for new probe into double killer and unsolved crime
FRANK Rudolph Moe killed at least twice. The deaf and dumb killer faced trial for a third murder but was ruled unfit to enter a plea and subsequently given an absolute discharge.
His victims, including a devout church-going pensioner, were abused and mutilated with sickening savagery. Now a former senior detective has called for one of Birmingham’s most barbaric unsolved crimes to be looked at again.
In December 1992, 72-year-old Harry Smith, wife Mary and wheelchair-bound son Harold were butchered in a bedroom at their Northfield bungalow.
Harry, a former car dealer, was stabbed no fewer than 100 times. Then there remains the unexplained deaths of a string of elderly men whose bodies were dragged from central Birmingham’s canal system.
Now a former senior officer thinks Moe may be a serial killer – and he wants to see an in-depth investigation reopened into the full extent of his crimes.
“It was always my opinion that he is a serial killer,” the ex-detective said. “I asked at the time for the scope of the investigation to be widened, but was knocked back.
“I suspect he did several male pensioners found floating in the Grand Union Canal.”
The killing spree at the Smiths’ home has similarities to Moe’s modus operandi.
Their Overbury Close bungalow is near the Number 11 bus route – a service used almost daily by Moe.
While riding the bus, he would befriend elderly passengers by offering to carry shopping.
There was no sign of forced entry. They knew the killer and invited him in.
The crime scene contained, to use one detective’s words, a “sense of theatre”.
The
killer had rearranged items and even added props in an attempt to cover his trail. A wine glass was placed in the lifeless hand of one of his victims.
“In all honesty, I’m fed up with reading about unsolved crimes and wondering did we cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s?”, said the former detective sergeant.
“Are we really saying we’ve looked at Moe in connection with other crimes? Are we really saying he’s been thoroughly profiled?
“In the space of 12 months up to and including 1994, we fished about seven elderly gentleman from the canal. We said at the time that was an unusually high figure.
“Seven elderly gentlemen walked along the edge of the towpath at night, fell in and drowned. Does that sound reasonable to you? Does that sound feasible? “DNA technology has moved on to such an extent, I’d put Moe in the mix and see what happens. He’s killed two, maybe three. Isn’t it at least conceivable he’s killed more?” Moe, a long-time inmate of Wakefield jail, dubbed ‘Monster Mansion’ because of its collection of evil inmates, will never wash the blood from his hands. He is a murderer without remorse. Born in Guyana, he arrived on these shores in 1971 at the age of 16 and lived in Erdington.
He had a strange pathological hatred of the elderly and enough low cunning to throw police off the scent by meticulously rearranging crime scenes and introducing evidence to mask the horrors he had committed.
“Moe is a very evil guy,” said one detective who played a key role in ending his reign of terror. “Remember
the Myra Hindley mugshot? His eyes were the same – no emotion, sympathy, empathy. Absolutely nothing.
“I don’t even believe he’s mute. As I led him away after four days of interviews, I said ‘You’re not f***ing deaf’. He turned round and laughed in my face. I’ll never forget that.
“I went to speak to the boss of the Nightingale (a Birmingham gay nightclub). He confirmed that Moe was a regular.
“When I said he was deaf and dumb, he told me, ‘you’ve got to be joking, he’s no more deaf and dumb than you and me.’ “Moe was deaf and dumb when it suited him to be deaf and dumb. That’s my opinion.”
In 1975, Moe, a bisexual, was charged with the murder of 62-yearold rough sleeper Walter Nevitt, whose body was discovered in a city centre coal bunker. He was also accused of assaulting six other men, mostly vagrants. But at Stafford Crown Court, it was ruled Moe was unfit to plead and, under the Mental Health Act, he was placed in secure accommodation.
In 1992, he was discharged and again free to roam the streets. That decision was to have terrible ramifications. Within two years, Moe had certainly become a killer. On March 10, 1994 the body of Peter Armstrong was discovered slumped against a trailer at the back of shops in Warwick Road, Acocks Green. He had been abused and beaten before choking on his own blood.
Tellingly, a glass and wine bottle had been placed on the 56-year-old’s mutilated body. The signature ‘sense of theatre’ was present.
“He had been so badly beaten he was unrecognisable,” said a detective. “You looked at the scene and knew something wasn’t right. The glass in his hand was done to make him look like a wino.”
DNA gained from a Coca-Cola bottle put Moe in the frame. On May 15, 1996, he was convicted of manslaughter by reason of lack of intent and sentenced to at least 10 years.
The jury was unaware that Moe, who communicated through sign language, had struck again just six weeks after attacking Mr Armstrong.
It would be six years before he was unmasked as the fiend who ended the life of 83-year-old former Sunday school teacher Rosella Middleton.
Rosella, who lived in a Perry Barr tower block, used the Number 11 bus the night she died.
Sexually assaulted before being battered to death, her bloodstained body was discovered by her son, Brian.
Reports at the time stated: “The pensioner was lying on the floor and she was wearing a beige anorak, brown and white scarf, long brown dress and black shoes, showing she had recently come in from the street.
“There were no signs of a break-in and police believed she may have known her killer – or been tricked into letting him in.”
This time, advances in DNA snared Moe. Hair found on the scarf matched his profile.
Sentencing the murderer, judge Mrs Justice Smith recommended Moe spend his entire life behind bars because he would always pose a threat to the public.
In July 2006, however, the High Court of Justice ruled that he should serve 18 years before being eligible to apply for parole.
Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Orencas, from the force Review Team, said: “This was a truly horrific crime, made all the more devastating for the family and community because no one has been brought to justice.
“We continue to review all unsolved cases on a periodic basis, but, of course, any new information that comes to light will be investigated thoroughly.”