William Herbert Wallace - The Real Murderer?

The Real Murderer?

Crime writer Jonathan Goodman made inquiries that led him to a man who had worked with Wallace at the Prudential. This man had been sacked for stealing money and had a record of various petty crimes. He knew Julia Wallace well. Goodman mentioned him, but not by name, in his book The Killing of Julia Wallace.

In 1980, Roger Wilkes, a news editor, investigated the case for a radio programme to be broadcast on the 50th anniversary of the crime in early 1981. He learned that Goodman's suspect had given the police an alibi for the time of Julia's murder. The alibi had been a woman to whom he was engaged, but, after being jilted, she offered to swear to Wallace's solicitor that the alibi had been false. Wilkes also discovered that, on the night of the murder, the man had visited a local garage. He'd used a high-pressure hose to wash down his car and a mechanic at the garage had noticed that one of his gloves was soaked in blood. Wilkes attempted to track down the suspect, only to learn he had died but a few months previously. His name was Richard Gordon Parry, a junior employee at Wallace's insurance firm.

In 1931 Parry was a petty criminal aged 22 who was always short of money. Wilkes's case is that Parry knew that Wallace's insurance takings for the day would have been in a cash box at Wallace's home. Since he also knew Mrs Wallace personally it would have been no trouble to visit her on some pretext once Wallace had been lured out of the house by means of the phone call sending him to a non-existent address. The murder of Julia Wallace for the insurance takings was somewhat in vain as there was very little in the cash-box that day. Parry was seen by the police as part of their investigations but given a false alibi by his girlfriend. Wilkes went ahead and named Parry in his radio show, and later developed his case in a book.

The case against Parry is much stronger than that against Wallace, and ascribes a more convincing motive (although recent speculation has centered around the possibility that Parry had an unknown accomplice who entered the house and murdered Julia). There was witness evidence of a blood-stained glove found in Parry's car on the night of the murder, when he took his car to a local garage for cleaning. The evidence from the man who cleaned the car was deliberately suppressed by the police at the time. Wilkes argues that there was, moreover, no motive or reason for Wallace to kill his own wife, and that he was charged because the immense publicity surrounding the case impelled the police to get a conviction at any cost. Parry died in 1980 without admitting any involvement in the crime. However, when Jonathan Goodman confronted him on his London doorstep in 1966, Parry displayed an astonishingly detailed knowledge of the case, and was aware of the deaths of several obscure witnesses connected with the case.

Parry may have been suspected long before Goodman or Wilkes began their investigations. In 1934 author Winifred Duke made oblique reference to the name of the killer as 'Harris', a common Welsh surname which just happens to be a cognate of Parry.