Neville Heath - Trial and Execution

Trial and Execution

The trial of Neville Heath for the murder of Margery Gardner began on 24 September 1946. Heath originally told his counsel, J. D. Casswell KC, to plead guilty, but when Casswell questioned this, said "All right, put me down as Not Guilty, old boy". Casswell chose not to call him to give evidence, and relied on the defence of insanity, calling Dr William Henry de Bargue Hubert, an experienced criminal psychiatrist, to testify as an expert witness. Dr Hubert testified that Heath knew what he was doing but not that it was wrong, but the prosecution easily destroyed Hubert's argument: unknown to Casswell, Hubert was a drug addict and was under the influence of morphine in the witness box. Two prison doctors testified that although Heath was a sexual pervert and a psychopath, he was not insane. Heath was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on 16 October 1946 at Pentonville Prison. Prior to his execution, as was the custom, Heath was offered a whisky by the governor. A playboy to the last, Heath replied, "While you're about it, sir, you might make that a double".

In February 1946, a few months before the murders, a woman, Pauline Brees, was found naked and tied up in a hotel bedroom in the Strand Palace Hotel, London. Heath stood over the woman, ready to thrash her. She had alerted the staff of the hotel by screaming. She refused to press charges to avoid any publicity. When Margery Gardner's body was found in June, Margery was mistakenly identified by the staff at the Strand Palace as having been involved in this incident in February.

This error was reported in the press at the time, suggesting that Margery Gardner had gone to the Pembridge Court Hotel fully aware of Heath's sexual tastes and that she, therefore, must have had some sort of masochistic tendency. Despite the assumptions of many studies of the case to date, in actuality, there is little evidence for this. Sean O'Connor suggests that Heath barely knew Margery Gardner and that they had never spent the night together before the night he killed her.