Justice at last for victim of 1930s murder?
THE case of Evelyn Foster’s murder was fascinating to me. Found 70 feet away from the road crawling out of her flame-engulfed car, she’d used her dying breaths to explain what had happened to her.
But the case had never been solved. So, 86 years on, I set out to sdo just that.
Being a crime writer, I’m always after something new to sink my teeth into. When anyone dies, there’s a coroner’s inquest that gets filed away for 75 years. After that, they’re open to the public. In the case of Evelyn Foster, I was met with crates and crates of paper.
But it was obvious the records had been shoved in, all scrunched up and chaotic. Why had they been so desperate to close the case?
In 1931, the Chief Constable of Northumberland was in charge of the Evelyn’s case. His views were Victorian and outdated. He was set to retire in little over a year, and it was fair to say that during his time on the investigation he was winding down. Many even reported he was incompetent.
And, for reasons that became clear as I investigated, he didn’t like Evelyn at all. But the more I read about her, the more I liked her.
KNOWING EVELYN
SHE was 28 and drove a taxi for her father’s business. She did a regular taxi run on market days, picking up passengers from where the bus stopped and taking them the remainder of their jouney.
On 5 January 1931, she’d finished her shift, but was stopped by a man waiting at a road junction on her way home. He’d been dropped off by another car and was looking to continue to Newcastle on the bus.
In the freezing cold and dark, Evelyn explained he’d missed the bus by 20 minutes, but, as she was heading in that direction, she’d do the journey.
It was a high-fare job and Evelyn dropped him off at a pub, suggesting he ask any of the punters if they were heading that way as it would save him the fare. While he asked, she went to get extra petrol. No one was heading to Newcastle, but at least she’d tried to help him out.
It would be the last job she ever took. Hours later, her frantic parents, who were looking for her, were met by a scene of carnage.
Her car, destroyed by fire, was found off-road on a sharp bend called ‘Wolf’s Nick’. Evelyn, who had crawled from the car and rolled to put out the flames on her body, was scooped up by her dad and rushed home to see a doctor.
Taking one look at her, the doctor knew she wouldn’t make it. As the police turned up to interview her, she used her last moments to describe the person who had done this to her. He was 5ft 8in, dressed in an overcoat and a bowler hat. She explained he’d hit her, taken control of the car, thrown her in the back, and ‘interfered’ with her.
It was impossible to determine what she meant by ‘interfered’.
Her mother was convinced Evelyn had been raped, but later inspection found no evidence.
From that moment, the Chief Constable became convinced Evelyn had lied. In those days, if women got to an age like 28 without marrying, they were often deemed hysterical. He portrayed her as a dirty-minded spinster who cried wolf and even suggested the whole thing was an accident – with insurance due on her car, he said it was a cash scam gone wrong.
But it wasn’t a view shared by everyone. Evelyn said she crawled out of the back of the car. But the driver’s door was wide open – someone else had been driving.
Officers worked 14-hour days collecting more than 100 statements, but not one person saw the accused man. He never went inside the pub, and when the police asked for the man who had dropped him off to come forward, nobody did. To the Chief Constable, this all meant it hadn’t happened. Case closed.
As I started going through the statements, it became clear some of the timings in the case didn’t add up. I tried every single eventuality and found there was a window of time when there was nobody on the village street – the exact time the accused would have got out and waited for Evelyn. No one saw him because no one was there. At that moment, I had no doubt, Evelyn had been telling the truth.
CRUCIAL EVIDENCE
WHEN I realised that, I started to feel so angry with the Constable. He hadn’t listened to anyone’s opinion and had developed an irrational loathing of the victim.
This poor woman had been accused of such vile things when she had been the victim. And, when I stumbled across a crucial piece of evidence that was ignored, I felt the case was unforgiveable.
Someone had in fact reported meeting a gentleman fitting Evelyn’s description. He’d seen this man’s face on the front of a newspaper after he’d been charged and imprisoned for four years for a previous sexual assault and it triggered a memory.
He said when he’d met this man the case had come up in conversation and he had said, ‘She got what she deserved.’
An odd thing to say to a stranger.
The man was also wearing an overcoat, a bowler hat, and spoke about how he regularly stopped people for lifts. However, the chief constable had no interest in interviewing this man. It’s thought he said to his staff, ‘the chap concerned is a soldier, so go and ask his colleagues what they think if you like.’ Sure enough, it turned out he was on leave from the army at the time of the murder.
There are no fingerprints, no DNA, but I’m convinced he did it.
Evelyn’s family was never made aware of this lead. Her death utterly destroyed the Fosters.
One of the statements from a policeman read, ‘We haven’t found a single thing to prove what she said, but we also haven’t found a single thing to disprove it.’ It was clear they wanted to help.
I believe the Chief Constable became angry that they carried on looking into it and that’s why the files were shoved away.
I hope Evelyn knows nobody has forgotten her, and, that by trying to prove the truth, I can finally get justice for her.
Death At Wolf’s Nick by Diane Janes is published by Mirror Books. On sale now, £7.99. Order at Mirrorcollection.co.uk or call 0845 143 0001.
The official book launch is at The Memorial Hall, Otterburn (the site where the original inquest took place) on Friday 16 June at 7pm.