Kenneth Archibald, caretaker of the Holland Park Lawn Tennis Club, had a crafty, money-making idea. He’d turn his rent-free basement flat on the tennis club premises into an all-night drinking den. All that was required was a record player and a bar, which he could construct himself. After all, he was the resident DIY factotum. This was duly completed at the start of 1964 and he circulated the news on the underground grapevine that his private little club would be open for drinking and dancing all through the night, and the pavilion and courts, conveniently hidden from the public, could be utilised for ‘all kinds of pleasures’. He reckoned that he’d tapped into a real nice little earner. And so it was for about six or eight weeks, until the night of the fracas and the call to the police.
Archibald, who hailed from Sunderland, tried to blag his way out of the predicament. It had been a private party, he argued, no drinks were sold, and there was so much convivial noise and gambolling that he hadn’t noticed the disturbance or the damage to the property. One of the constables who had gone to the club at 1 Addison Road, Kensington said he’d have to report the incident to the secretary.
Piqued, Archibald said, ‘Do you have to?’
‘Yes, I do… I have a public duty,’ replied the constable.
‘But I’m in charge here when the club isn’t open,’ Archibald protested.
‘But you’re not part of the management, are you.’ This wasn’t a question but simply meant to put Archibald in his place.
‘You realise I could be fired,’ said Archibald, playing the sympathy card as a last resort.
‘Then that’s something you’ll have to deal with.’ Heads have no chance against a brick wall.
From questioning people who had attended the alleged ‘private party’, the constables quickly sussed that it was no such thing and Archibald was guilty of running an unlicensed drinking club, used by many prostitutes to find punters. These officers had no sympathy for Archibald whatsoever.
Archibald didn’t lose his job but was told he would have to make good the damage out of his own pocket and that there would be no more ‘parties’ or else…
On the 27th of that month, Archibald phoned Notting Hill police station to report a break-in. He was informed that the matter would be ‘looked into’, but that afternoon he walked into Notting Hill police station, where he introduced himself to the front-desk officer and said starkly, ‘I’ve come to give myself up.’
A detective constable, standing behind the desk-officer, knew about Archibald’s report that morning and stepped forward, a little perplexed, saying, ‘What, the break-in job at the tennis club?’
With a complete blank look, Archibald said, ‘No, I pushed the girl in the river.’
Further bemused, the detective struggled for clarification. ‘Girl? What girl are you talking about?’
‘You know, the blonde Lockwood at Chiswick. It was me. I did it. I’m the bloke you’re looking for. Do you want me or not?’
Nonplussed, the detective said, much more shakily than Archibald, ‘Are you serious? You’re not tossing me off?’
‘I tell you, it was me,’ Archibald repeated, his face pained with sincerity. ‘I want to get it off my chest.’
Archibald was taken into custody. The murder squad at Shepherd’s Bush was alerted. The news spread through the ranks like a bushfire. At first the CID at Notting Hill were told to ‘hold on to him. Lock him up.’ Minutes later, the order changed. ‘Bring him to us. Quick as you can. No press statement. A complete publicity blackout.’
In under ten minutes, the partially deaf and semi-disabled Archibald, a former merchant seaman and soldier before that, was on his way to notoriety. If it was recognition he was seeking, he would soon be fully rewarded.
Frank Davies was still compering the ‘Irene Lockwood Show’, so he cautioned Archibald and oversaw the taking of his confession, which went: ‘I finished work at the Holland Park Lawn Tennis Club at between eight-thirty and nine p.m. on 7 April this year, 1964. After that, I went on a pub crawl. I can’t remember how many or which ones I went in, but they were my regulars and the last one was definitely the Windmill in Chiswick High Road.
‘I got chatting with a blonde at the bar, a customer – she wasn’t working there – and after a while I realised from things she said that she was on the game. It wasn’t long before she asked me straight out, brazen as you like, if I fancied a quickie with her.
‘She was drinking gin and tonic, which I’d bought her. I was on beer, a pint of draught. All the booze had made me pretty randy, so I said yes to her proposition and asked her where she wanted to go. “I’ll show you, just follow me,” she said. So we left the Windmill together.’
At that stage he asked the interviewing detectives if he could have a cup of tea because he was thirsty and also needed an intake of caffeine to ‘bring him round’ because he had a ‘belter’ of a hangover. Accordingly, the interview was suspended while one of the three officers in the interview room fetched Archibald a mug of tea.
Anyhow, Lockwood had steered him to the Thames, which was nearby. ‘She kept pestering me for the money,’ he continued. ‘All she would talk about was the money, demanding it before she was prepared to do anything. She was getting on my nerves, probably more so than she would have normally because I was drunk. Finally, my nerves snapped and I grabbed her throat. We grappled for a few seconds. She was swearing like a trooper and kicked me in the balls. I really went mad then and gave her a mighty shove, with all my strength.
‘There was a wall behind her and she cracked the back of her head, then fell to the ground. She was out cold. That’s when I started stripping her. When I’d got all her clothes off I rolled her over and over, like a barrel, down a ramp until she splashed into the river. I thought the cold water might revive her, but she didn’t make a sound. It was the first time she’d been quiet all night. I just stood there a few minutes waiting and watching, but she was gone. I couldn’t see her. The Thames took her.’
Then came the questions. Did you intend to kill her? – ‘I just wanted to shut her up.’
What did you do with the clothes? – ‘I took them home in a bundle and burned the lot. They stank to high heaven.’
Did you have sex with her? – ‘No. We never got that far. It all went wrong before that. I didn’t give her any money. I would have done, though, if she’d just shut up and waited until we’d come to an arrangement. I’d no intention of trying to rape her, nothing like that.’
Are you absolutely sure about not having any form of sex with her? – ‘One hundred per cent. My flies stayed done up the whole time.’
Had you seen Miss Lockwood before that night? – ‘No, never.’
Do you make a habit of going with prostitutes? – ‘No, I’m too old for that game generally.’
But not too old when it came to Miss Lockwood? – ‘I’d had too much to drink that night. I didn’t know really what I was doing.’
Did you mean to kill her? (A repeat question) – ‘She’d made me so mad, I just wanted to shut her up.’ (A repeat answer.)
You must have been aware that by rolling her into the river she could easily drown? – ‘I suppose so.’
Have you attacked women before? – ‘No, never. Only cowards hit women’.
Are you a regular drinker? – ‘I like my tipple.’
Do you drink every day? – ‘Most days.’
So you can handle drink? – ‘Usually. When you’ve been in the army and merchant navy, you’re not likely to be teetotal, and especially coming from the north-east. We can really drink, not like the soft-bellied southerners around these parts.’
He was shown mug shots of Tailford and Rees: Were these women known to you? – ‘I think I’ve seen them before.’
Where? – ‘Round about. Weren’t they the ones in the ’papers? They were done in recently, weren’t they?’
Were you responsible? – ‘Not to my knowledge.’
What does that mean? – ‘Well, if I did. I must have been so skunked because I can’t remember a thing about it.’
So you could have? – ‘I don’t think so. I’m not confessing to it.’
You fully understand what we’re saying? – ‘Yes.’
He was taken to a cell while his statement was typed in triplicate. Later he was returned to the interviewroom and was asked to read the typed version.
Is that a fair and accurate record of what you’ve told us? – ‘Yes.’
Do you wish to make any changes or add to it in any way? – ‘No. Nothing.’
With those formalities completed, he was then asked to sign the bottom of each page of the top copy, which he did. Tape-recorded interviews were not then a part of the interviewing process of suspects.
Archibald wasn’t legally represented and hadn’t been offered a lawyer to protect his legal interests. At least one of the detectives believed that Archibald was drunk or suffering a severe hangover when he gave himself up.
On 30 April, at 6.45 p.m., Archibald was charged with the murder of Irene Lockwood. Hence the forewarning call to me from ‘Jack’. Of course, from the moment Archibald was charged the entire case became sub judice. Newspapers could report nothing more than the name of the accused and the charge, so that the case for prosecution and defence could not be compromised. This didn’t mean that journalists or the police were required to stop investigating. On the contrary, for the media, the tempo was racked up a couple of notches. More than ever there was an insatiable appetite within the press for background material, not confined to evidence related to the charge but a comprehensive history of the defendant who would be in the dock in the coliseum of British courts, the Old Bailey. ‘Jack’ was going to be a more essential conduit for me than ever.
So to the Jack of Clubs and its subdued lighting and an atmosphere that swathed this archetypal nightclub of the Sixties with a suffusion of decadence, a melting-pot of cultures, where vicars and villains could put away dog-collars and weapons (usually): was Archibald, this short, tubby, limping, semi-alcoholic really the ‘Stripper Ripper’?
‘Jack’ was in a dilemma, so was Scotland Yard. Archibald was inflexible about his guilt, but he’d lied in his confession. Rudimentary detective plodding had uncovered incontrovertible proof that Lockwood and Archibald had known one another long before that alleged fateful meeting in the Windmill pub. She had been a regular at Archibald’s illegal drinking club. Furthermore, she’d visited him several times at his basement flat in the daytime for sex, with no quarrels over price and payment in advance, the way it’s done the world over. This information had come from friends of Lockwood and a couple of men who did some shady business with the tennis-club caretaker. Archibald wouldn’t have balked at paying upfront for sex because it was the norm.
Archibald’s lie about not being acquainted with Lockwood didn’t make sense. This untruth didn’t add to his guilt or point to his innocence: a pointless lie. What it did demonstrate, though, was erratic behaviour and a Walter Mitty aberration. The pathologist’s report hadn’t mentioned anything about a bump to the back of Lockwood’s skull, which would have been substantial if she’d been knocked unconscious when hurled against a wall. Throughout, the confession lacked the ring of truth.
‘To be honest, all we have is his confession,’ ‘Jack’ said gloomily, comfortable in the knowledge that none of our conversation could be published.
Which brought me to the crunch question: ‘Did he kill the others? And if he didn’t, then he didn’t kill Lockwood, right?’
‘Jack’ was silenced. I’d pinpointed the flaw, the dilemma, the festering sore for which there was only one cure and that salve seemed further than ever away from Archibald.
‘You know what,’ I said, ‘I don’t reckon he’s your man. I think you’ve got a waster.’
‘And a wanker!’ he retorted, as instant as a ricochet. It was a considerable time before he spoke again, more content drinking, and when he did I had to admire his frankness. ‘It’s another classic cock-up. Just clutching at straws. No name, but one of our top dogs is even starting to think about witchcraft being at the root of the killings. He’s been consulting the weather forecasters about the type of moon on the nights of the murders. I tell you, it’s got us all going gaga. There are some great detectives who are just burying their heads in the sand. There are too many chiefs all doing a sort of tribal dance and hoping magic will save their reputations.’
‘Will they allow this to run all the way to a trial?’ I asked.
‘Looks like it,’ he said morosely. ‘Buying time; dangerous strategy, though. Scary!’
‘Because the real killer of Lockwood and others is still among us, on the streets, having a laugh?’ I suggested.
‘At our expense and just waiting to make bloody fools of us. He’ll probably strike again the day after Archibald’s convicted or freed. What will that make us in the public eye?’
‘As mad as he is,’ I said, hoping not to endanger our symbiotic friendship.
‘He should have been bailed pending further investigations and kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance.’ After another hiatus, he stated what was the fear among many murder squad detectives, including himself: ‘We’ve taken our feet off the pedal. Everything’s gone on hold. So much precious time’s being wasted. We should be pushing on, trying to prove that prick Archibald is guilty, regardless of his confession, and also involved in the deaths of the others, or just another nutter and boot him out. As it stands, there’s nothing to tie him to Tailford or Rees.’
On 23 June at the Old Bailey and after a six-day flimsy trial, the jury took a mere fifty-five minutes to clear Archibald of murder, after he’d withdrawn his confession in a late legal manoeuvre and pleaded not guilty. Standing at the rear of the court, red-faced and cringing with embarrassment, were some of Scotland Yard’s finest, now with egg all over their ego. This was yet another nadir for the Yard, the self-proclaimed citadel to all other police forces around the globe. Worse, far worse, was still to come…
Meanwhile, the idiot Archibald was holding his own court on the pavement outside the Old Bailey, with a captive audience of reporters, photographers and TV cameramen. ‘Phew! That’s the last time I’ll confess to anything, especially to a murder I never committed. Thank heavens I retracted my false statement in time.’
Of course the question coming from all corners was why did he concoct that absurd confession that no one, except apparently the police, believed for a second.
‘Well, I was fed up, depressed, confused [not the only one]. I felt I’d let my friends down at the tennis club, what with one thing and another. I saw myself losing my flat [which he now had], my job [which he now had, too] and my army pension [which he kept]. And somehow my imagination – yes, you can say it’s a highly lively one – just ran away with me. I’m turning my back on London. It’s no good for me. I’ve always led a normal life. [Questionable!]
‘I should never have had all that beer, then I wouldn’t have shouted my mouth off in that ridiculous way. I just kept talking, thinking up the story as I went along and, by amazing coincidence, certain details fitted in with what the police knew. I was confused and depressed, although I’ll never really know why I said what I did. I have been really silly.’ The truth at last!
However, the most disgraceful confession came years later when one of Scotland Yard’s most senior officers, Deputy Assistant Commissioner John du Rose, admitted that the detectives in charge of the Lockwood case knew all along that Archibald was innocent of the crime and was just another nuisance factor.
Du Rose said, ‘We had no reason to believe that Archibald had anything to do with the murder, but he had to be charged and a jury had to decide the case because he had repeated his false confession twice before eventually retracting it.’ Pompous rubbish! Cynical deceit!
As explored earlier in the book, detectives heading high-profile murder investigations always have a ‘control question’ retained from the public domain for the sole purpose of weeding out time-wasters, the hundreds of people, slightly deranged and for perverse reasons, who have a compulsion to confess. They are rooted out and never charged. Implicit for a successful conviction is the necessity for the police to verify with irrefutable evidence a defendant’s guilt, independent of a confession. All confessions have to be meticulously tested, sort of calibrated forensically, long before a case reaches court.
The ‘A6 Murder’ was a typical example. James Hanratty was charged, convicted, and executed in Bedford Prison in the early 1960s. Before he was even charged, throughout the trial, and long after the hanging, another man persisted with his claim that he was the killer and was the one who should have gone to the gallows.
Respected writer and TV presenter Ludovic Kennedy was even hoodwinked. He wrote virulently about the miscarriage of justice and vociferously led a campaign for Hanratty’s posthumous pardon. And then… along came the dawning of DNA science and profiling which ended the argument as firmly as a door slammed in the face of the campaigners: the state had hanged the correct man. All the critics of the investigation were silenced by a single lab technician. The detectives had refused to be deflected by a confession they conceived as a tissue of lies told by an unbalanced nuisance. As an irrelevant footnote, I never understood why the media immortalised this crime as the ‘A6 Murder’ when it was committed on Deadman’s Hill: surely a gift for all headline writers.
Exactly three weeks after Archibald walked from the Old Bailey a free man, another nude victim was awaiting collection in west London.
The police may have taken their feet off the pedal, but this serial killer wasn’t slowing down. And Archibald had kept his word and gone north, so he wasn’t around to confess to this one.