Edmund Berry Godfrey - Modern Analysis

Modern Analysis

John Dickson Carr, in his book The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936), analyzed all the above mentioned theories and exposes their weak points and contradictions. Then he scrutinizes the evidence, and concludes that Godfrey was murdered by Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke who took his revenge for having been prosecuted for murder some time earlier by Godfrey. The earl had been found guilty but had escaped execution by means of a pardon from the House of Lords. This same theory was expounded by English historian Hugh Ross Williamson, in his Historical Whodunits (1955).The introduction to the 1999 film Magnolia contains a sequence based on the death of Godfrey.

Stephen Knight's book The Killing of Justice Godfrey, published 1984, also suggests Pembroke as the assassin upon the orders of the "Peyton Gang". J.P. Kenyon, while conceding that the Pembroke theory has some attractions, concludes that the mystery is now beyond solution.

Dr. Alan Marshall, in his more recent book "The Strange Death of Edmund Godfrey" is sceptical that a definite conclusion can be reached, but suggests that the most likely explanation of Godfrey's death was suicide by self-strangulation.