Murder conviction without a body

Conviction for murder in the absence of a body is possible. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science towards the end of the 20th century have in recent decades made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.[1]

History

For centuries in England there was a mistaken view that without a body there could be no trial for murder, a misconception that arose following the Campden Wonder case of 1660.[2] A local man had vanished, and after an investigation three individuals were hanged for his murder. Two years later, the supposed victim appeared alive and well, telling a story of having been abducted and enslaved in Turkey.[3] The mistaken view of "no body, no murder" persisted into the 20th century.[4]

The English murderer John George Haigh believed that dissolving a body in acid would make a murder conviction impossible. He had misinterpreted the Latin legal phrase corpus delicti (referring to the body of evidence which establish a crime) to mean an actual human body. But in any event, in that 1949 case direct evidence of a body was found: part of the dentures from the remains of his last victim. Her dentist was able to identified them; Haigh was found guilty and was hanged.[5]

In 1951, New Zealand criminal George Cecil Horry was convicted of the murder of his wife, although her body was never found.[6] The Horry case helped to overturn in other common law jurisdictions the long-standing expectation that such cases would fail.[6]

In the UK, the missapprehension that a killer could not be convicted solely on circumstantial evidence was directly addressed in the 1954 case of Michail Onufrejczyk. He and a fellow Pole, Stanislaw Sykut, had stayed in the United Kingdom after the Second World War and ran a farm together in Wales. Sykut disappeared and Onufrejczyk claimed that he had returned to Poland. Bone fragments and blood spatters were found in the farm kitchen, although forensic technology was then insufficiently advanced to identify them. Charged with Sykut's murder, Onufrejczyk claimed that the remains were those of rabbits he had killed, but the jury disbelieved him and he was sentenced to death, but reprieved.[7] He appealed,[8] but this was dismissed by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, saying that "things had moved on since the days of the Campden Wonder",[4] and

it is equally clear that the fact of death, like any other fact, can be proved by circumstantial evidence, that is to say, evidence of facts which lead to one conclusion, provided that the jury are satisfied and are warned that it must lead to one conclusion only.[9]

The 1960 United States case of People v. Scott[10] held that "circumstantial evidence, when sufficient to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis, may prove the death of a missing person, the existence of a homicide and the guilt of the accused".[11]

Circumstantial evidence was originally deemed sufficient to obtain a murder conviction in the Australian "dingo baby case", and in others such as Bradley John Murdoch and the murder of Thomas and Jackie Hawks.

Other modern cases

1980s

In 1984, Mark Tildesley, a seven-year-old schoolboy, disappeared after leaving his home to go to the fairground in Wokingham, Berkshire, England. In 1990, it emerged that on the night he disappeared, Tildesley had been abducted, drugged, tortured, raped and murdered by a London-based paedophile gang, led by Sidney Cooke. Another man named Leslie Bailey was charged with murder in 1991 and the following year was given two life sentences. Bailey was murdered in prison by other inmates shortly afterwards.[12][13] The case remains officially unsolved despite being featured heavily in the national press and on BBC TV's Crimewatch.[14]

In 1988, Helen McCourt, a 22-year-old insurance clerk from Lancashire disappeared.[15] Ian Simms, a local pub landlord, was subsequently charged with and convicted of her murder. This case was also one of the first in the UK to use DNA fingerprinting.[16]

American courts have also been allowed to press murder charges even if a body has not been recovered. In 1990, a Connecticut jury convicted Newtown airline pilot Richard Crafts of killing his Danish wife, Helle, in the 1986 "woodchipper murder", so-called for the machine he had rented to dispose of her body in nearby lakes and streams. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The state police's forensic unit, led by Henry Lee, was able to match the DNA of some of the fragments that were discovered to Helle Crafts and the wood chipper her husband had used. It was the first bodyless murder trial in the state's history.

1990s

In April 1994, Heidi Allen, 18, of the town of New Haven, was abducted from the Oswego County convenience store where she worked. Her body has never been found. Two brothers, Gary and Richard Thibodeau were charged with kidnapping and murder. Separate trials were held for the brothers. Gary was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life, while his brother Richard was acquitted.[17]

In 1996, Thomas Capano was convicted of the murder of Anne Marie Fahey, his former lover. Investigators did not have a murder weapon or body, nor any evidence that Capano had purchased a gun. He was convicted of first-degree murder in part due to the evidence given by his brother, Gerry, who had admitted to helping Capano dump Fahey's body in the Atlantic Ocean.

In May 1999, the New Zealand High Court convicted Scott Watson of the murder of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. Their bodies have never been found.[18]

2000s

In 2000, prosecutors in Orange County, New York, secured that jurisdiction's first-ever bodyless murder conviction. Gregory Chrysler and Lawrence Weygant were found guilty of beating Dominick Pendino, a coworker they mistakenly believed had given police the tip that had led to their arrest on drug-dealing charges, to death with a baseball bat and disposing of his body. They relied on eyewitness testimony from a former girlfriend and police informant, as well as forensic evidence showing that enough of Pendino's blood-stained a car seat for him to have died without immediate medical attention.[19] Neither the body nor the bat have been discovered: Chrysler and Weygant remain in prison and have rebuffed efforts to elicit the body's location from them.

In June 2001, Essex teenager Danielle Jones went missing and despite a body never being found, the required circumstantial evidence was provided by forensic analysis of text messages sent by the accused, her uncle Stuart Campbell, who was convicted of her murder 18 months later. Police determined that Campbell had sent text messages from Danielle's mobile phone to his own after she disappeared, to make it appear that she was still alive, and noted that the spelling of several words in the text messages sent from Danielle's mobile phone had changed after she was reported missing. Their suspicions were also supported by mobile phone records which showed that Campbell's mobile phone, and that of his missing niece, were within a short distance of each other when the messages were sent.

In 2002, Girly Chew Hossencofft's husband and his mistress were convicted of her murder, which occurred in 1999. Hossencofft's remains have never been located.[20]

In spite of advances in forensic technology, the possibility of the supposed victim turning up alive remains. In 2003, Leonard Fraser, having allegedly confessed to the murder of teenager Natasha Ryan, was on trial for this, and other murders, when she reappeared after having been missing for four years.[21]

In 2006, prosecutors in Nashville, Tennessee, had Perry March arrested and extradited from Mexico after he had been secretly indicted on charges of murdering his wife Janet, who had disappeared in 1996. An attempt to have March's in-laws killed while March was awaiting trial led to the arrest of his father, who as part of a plea agreement confessed to burying his daughter-in-law in a pile of brush near Bowling Green, Kentucky, but he was unable to lead police to the body after the intervening nine years. Perry March was convicted in 2006 almost ten years to the day after his wife disappeared.

In the Australian no-body murder of Keith William Allan, evidence from forensic accountants established a motive for his murder. The chance police finding of one perpetrator driving Allan's car and the conduct of all perpetrators, in particular mobile telephone records, were also important factors in their conviction.[22]

In 2007, in Omaha, Nebraska, Christopher Edwards was convicted of murdering his girlfriend Jessica O'Grady, whose body has never been found. His mattress was soaked with her blood.

In 2008, Hans Reiser was convicted of first-degree murder of his wife, Nina Reiser. After conviction and before sentencing, Reiser pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder in exchange for disclosing the location of his wife's body.[23]

2010s

In 2012, in Scotland, the prosecution twice won a conviction without a body in the murder of Suzanne Pilley and the murder of Arlene Fraser.

In May 2013, Mark Bridger was convicted of the murder of April Jones, a five-year-old girl from Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, who disappeared on 1 October 2012. At his trial, Bridger claimed to have run her down in his car and killed her by accident, and to have no memory of what he did with her body after drinking heavily. The jury rejected his version of events, as bone fragments and blood discovered in Bridger's house within days of her disappearance were matched to the DNA of April Jones. The body of April Jones was not found, despite the largest missing person search in UK history. Bridger claimed in court that April's DNA was found in his house as he had held her body there before disposing of it, but his claims were not believed by the jury.[24]

See also

• Adolph Luetgert
• Henri Désiré Landru
• List of murder convictions without a body
• Seznec affair
• Lupara bianca

References

1. ""No body" Murder Trials in the United States". nobodymurdercases.com.
2. Morton, James (2015). "1". Justice Denied. Robinson. ISBN 978-1-47211-131-9.
3. "The Campden Wonder". thecampdenwonder.com. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
4. Morton, James (3 June 2003). "No body of evidence". The Times.
5. "John George Haigh – Acid Bath Killer". horrorfind.com. Archived from the original on 27 June 2007.
6. Redmer Yska (11 December 2014). "Ain't got no body: NZ's history-making murder case". New Zealand Listener.
7. Bevan, Nathan (27 January 2008). "A grisly history of Welsh murders". Wales Online.
8. Reported as R v Onufrejczyk 1955 1 All ER 247, 1955 1 Q.B. 388
9. Baughman v The Queen [2000] UKPC 20 at para. 46 (25 May 2000)
10. People v. Scott 176 Cal. App. 2d 458 (1960)
11. "Direct Evidence of Corpus Delicti". 61: 740–744. JSTOR 1120202. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
12. "Paedophile gets life for killing boy, 7, at orgy: Homosexual ring abducted children and drugged them for group sex". The Independent. London. 23 October 1992. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
13. Operation Orchid (Aug '89 – Oct '92)
14. Police to reopen unsolved murders and other crimes – News – getwokingham – The Wokingham Times
15. "Helen McCourt murder: Body of 1988 killing victim not in grave". BBC News. 16 October 2013.
16. "Mum's torment after graveyard search fails to find remains of murder victim Helen". 17 October 2013. Retrieved 28 February 2017.
17. O'Brien, John (9 June 2017). "Court upholds Thibodeau conviction in 1994 Heidi Allen kidnapping". Syracuse.com. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
18. Milne, Rebecca (15 March 2009). "Pardon plea from Watson". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
19. O'Connor, Timothy (14 July 2000). "Two men guilty in Pendino murder case". Times-Herald Record. Retrieved 23 June 2015.
20. "Alien Love Queen: Desert Murder Mystery". poeticjustice.com. 2013.
21. "Alleged Australian murder victim found alive". The Guardian. 11 April 2003.
22. Andrew Rule; John Silvester (2005). Gotcha: How Australia's Baddest Crooks Copped Their Right Whack. Floradale Productions & Sly Ink, Sydney (NSW). ISBN 0-9752318-5-5.
23. Lee, Henry K. (9 July 2008). "Reiser deal ultimately hinges on judge's OK". San Francisco Chronicle. p. A-1. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
24. Grice, Natalie (31 May 2013). "April Jones: Murder trials without a body". BBC News Wales.