By 1917, the First World War was gradually coming to an end. Throughout the conflict, the Army had used Salisbury Plain as a training ground for soldiers before they were sent abroad to fight on the front lines. The entire area bristled with the clusters of huts and tents used to accommodate the soldiers and all day long the surrounding countryside reverberated with the noises of war – explosions, gunfire, horses’ hooves and the rumbling movement of heavy artillery.
One particular group of trainees were already far from their native land. They were young Australian soldiers, who had been sent to Sutton Veny to learn how to use Lewis machine guns at the firing range there.
Two of the instructors charged with teaching the young recruits were also Australian. Verney Asser, aged thirty, and Corporal Joseph Harold Durkin, aged twenty-four, shared a hut and, at one stage, were both competing for the affections of the same woman. Durkin won that particular competition and, in spite of the fact that he had a fiancée back home in Australia, began to see the young English widow on a regular basis. Asser seemed to accept the situation and the two men were, to all intents and purposes, on friendly terms.
In November 1917, Durkin wrote to his English girlfriend asking her to visit him at camp on the evening of 28 November. On the day before her expected visit, he and Asser went to the canteen together. Both seemed to be in good spirits as they ate their food before retiring to their hut for the night.
At some time during the evening, Durkin probably told Asser that the young woman was coming the next day and at 9.30 p.m., Asser left the hut and went to the nearby ammunition store, where he asked the officer in charge, Corporal Milne, if he might have some empty magazines. He was told to help himself.
Just minutes later, as Milne was getting ready for bed, he was startled by the sound of a shot from the direction of Asser and Durkin’s hut. Immediately after the noise, a bullet came through the wall of Milne’s hut, passed through a haversack and a tunic, and then went out through the opposite wall of the hut. Assuming the shot had been fired accidentally, Milne did nothing about it and went to bed. Asser was to make a further two visits to the ammunition store before 11 p.m., rummaging around in the area where the Lewis gun ammunition was kept for a few moments then leaving abruptly. Milne was unaware if he had taken anything. Ten minutes later, there was a second shot from Asser’s hut and, shortly afterwards, at just after 11 p.m., Asser went to the guardhouse to report that Durkin had shot himself.
Two views of Sutton Veny, c. 1910. (Author’s collection)
Durkin was found lying on his right-hand side in his bed in the hut. He was undressed and the bedclothes were pulled up as if he had been sleeping normally. His arms were outstretched and his rifle lay across his wrists. A bullet had entered his left cheek, exiting just below his right ear. The spent cartridge had been ejected from the rifle after it had been fired.
Asser told officers that he had been awakened from sleep by the sound of the shot and, having struck a match, had realised immediately that Durkin had shot himself. Almost as a reflex action, he had taken the rifle from him and ejected the cartridge before replacing the weapon where he had found it. However, aspects of Asser’s explanation just didn’t ring true.
It was noticed that his bed had not been made up and that the bedding was still in its roll, making it unlikely that he had been sleeping. When this was pointed out to Asser, he explained that he had been asleep on the floor. In addition, when Asser had alerted the sergeant about Durkin’s alleged suicide, he was fully dressed in his uniform, including his boots and puttees. The guards felt it highly unlikely that, had he been asleep at the time the shot was fired, he would have lingered for long enough to completely dress himself before calling for assistance.
The shooting was reported to the civilian police and an inquest into the death of Corporal Durkin was opened on the following day. At the inquest, Asser stated that Durkin had been depressed about his engagement to his Australian fiancée and his relationship with the young English widow. The jury returned a verdict of suicide.
Meanwhile, Superintendent Scott of the local police force had visited the scene of the shooting and he too had doubts that Durkin had committed suicide, believing instead that he had been murdered. When the wound on Durkin’s face was examined, it showed no traces of gunpowder residue or burning at the point of entry of the bullet, indicating that the muzzle had not been in direct contact with Durkin’s skin when the rifle was fired. Even if the weapon had been pressed tight against his cheek, the trigger would then have been impossible for Durkin to reach since he had particularly short arms.
Scott decided to conduct some experiments and obtained some cuts of mutton, which were used to represent human flesh. The rifle was loaded with identical ammunition to that which had killed Durkin and test fired at the joints of meat from varying distances. It was found that, when the rifle was fired with its muzzle about 5in away, a wound similar in appearance to that of Durkin’s wound was produced on the meat.
With the gun muzzle 5in away from his face, Durkin could not possibly have pulled the trigger with his finger. The only way he could have committed suicide was by using a toe to fire the gun and he was found tucked into bed, covered by his bedclothes.
As a result of the ballistics experiments, Asser was arrested on 3 December 1917 for the murder of Corporal Joseph Harold Durkin. He was tried at Devizes on 15 January 1918 before Mr Justice Avory, with J.A. Foote and T.H. Parr prosecuting and S.H. Emmanuel defending.
Asser continued to claim in court that he had retired to bed at about 9.40 p.m. on the night of Durkin’s death and had slept soundly until he was disturbed by the fatal shot. He denied visiting the ammunition store and also denied firing the wayward shot that had travelled through the ammunition store as Corporal Milne had prepared for bed. Asked why he had ejected the cartridge from the rifle, Asser replied that he didn’t know, arguing that removing the cartridge was probably a normal reaction that would have been done by any soldier. Yet this argument didn’t explain why he had then replaced the rifle as he purported to have found it, lying across Durkin’s wrists. Asser was also unable to give a satisfactory explanation for the fact that his bed had not been slept in, nor was he able to explain why he had stopped to dress himself before seeking assistance for his comrade.
The counsel for the prosecution reminded the jury of the results of the experiments carried out using the murder weapon and the joints of mutton, which had clearly indicated that it would have been a physical impossibility for Durkin to shoot himself, given his short arms and the fact that his feet and legs were covered by his bedclothes. The only problem that the prosecution encountered was in trying to establish a motive for the murder. Durkin and Asser had quarrelled in the past and were also rivals for the affections of the same woman, yet there was no indication that Asser had been jealous.
In his summing up for the jury, Mr Justice Avory told them that the case boiled down to whether the jury accepted Asser’s account of events or Corporal Milne’s. At the end of the two-day trial, it took the jury just ninety minutes to decide that they favoured Milne’s version and find Verney Asser guilty.
The High Street, Sutton Veny, 1917. (Author’s collection)
Asser was sentenced to death for the wilful murder of Corporal Durkin, but Mr Emmanuel immediately appealed against the conviction on the grounds that no insanity defence had been considered at the trial.
Emmanuel claimed that the only material he was given at the trial relating to the defendant’s mental state was a military record sheet on which it was noted that, in July 1916, Asser had been admitted to hospital for ‘mental derangement’ and remained an in-patient for four days. There had been no opportunity at the trial for the defence team to investigate further, but enquiries had been made since the end of the court case that had both confirmed the admission and offered an explanation for the symptoms of mental derangement, with the stark words ‘Diagnosis: alcoholism’.
The counsel for the defence had found evidence of insanity in Asser’s immediate family, his father having committed suicide some years previously. The defendant himself had been an inmate of various asylums and mental hospitals. He also claimed to have previously enlisted as a bugler boy on one of his Majesty’s ships but to have been discharged due to suffering from dementia. Records did show that a boy called James Nugent had been discharged from the services under these circumstances and Asser claimed that he was the James Nugent concerned and that he had enlisted in the Army under a different name to avoid the military authorities finding out that he had been treated in a lunatic asylum.
Asser maintained that, if he had actually committed the act for which he had been sentenced then he could not have been responsible for his actions. However, the Court of Criminal Appeal was of the opinion that they were being asked to consider evidence that had not been brought up in the original trial and this was not within their power. Only the Home Office could legitimately rule on the sanity or insanity of the defendant and therefore the appeal was dismissed.
The fact that the Home Secretary made no intervention against Asser’s sentence is evidenced by his execution, carried out by John Ellis on 5 March 1918 at Shepton Mallet prison.
[Note: In contemporary accounts of the murder, Verney Asser is also referred to as Verney Hasser. The two variations of the name appear almost equally – I have used the spelling Asser as it appears in both The Times and in the online History of the Wiltshire Constabulary.]